Tuesday, December 07, 2010

A possible explanation of Shnoll effect

I have already earlier mentioned the work of Russian scientist Shnoll concerning random fluctuations. This work spans four decades and has finally started to gain recognition also in west. By a good luck I found from web an article of Shnoll about strange regularities of what should be random fluctuations. Then Dainis Zeps provided me with a whole collection of similar articles! Thank you Dainis!

The findings of Shnoll led within few days to a considerable progress in the understanding of the relation between p-adic and real probability concepts, the relationship between p-adic physics and quantum groups emerging naturally in TGD based view about finite measurement resolution, the relationship of the hierarchy of Planck constants (in particular the gigantic gravitational Planck constant assignable to the space-time sheets mediating gravitation) and small-p p-adicity, and also with the understanding of the experimental implications of many-sheetedness of space-time in concrete measurement situations in which the measurement apparatus also means non-trivial topology of the space-time.

The most important conclusion is that basic vision about TGD Universe seems manifest itself directly in quantum fluctuations due to quantum coherence in astrophysical scales in practically all kinds of experiments- even in the distributions of financial variables! Needless to tell how far reaching the implications are for quantum gravity. This is one of the biggest surprises of my un-paid professional life which outshines even the repeated surprises caused by the incredibly unintelligent response of most colleagues to my work! I glue below an abstract of a brand new preprint titled A possible Explanation of Shnoll Effect. I attach below the abstract.

Shnoll and collaborators have discovered strange repeating patterns of random fluctuations of physical observables such as the number n of nuclear decays in a given time interval. Periodically occurring peaks for the distribution of the number N(n) of measurements producing n events in a series of measurements as a function of n is observed instead of a single peak. The positions of the peaks are not random and the patterns depend on position and time varying periodically in time scales possibly assignable to Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon gravitational interaction.

These observations suggest a modification of the expected probability distributions but it is very difficult to imagine any physical mechanism in the standard physics framework. Rather, a universal deformation of predicted probability distributions would be in question requiring something analogous to the transition from classical physics to quantum physics.

The hint about the nature of the modification comes from the TGD inspired quantum measurement theory proposing a description of the notion of finite measurement resolution in terms of inclusions of so called hyper-finite factors of type II1 (HFFs) and closely related quantum groups. Also p-adic physics -another key element of TGD- is expected to be involved. A modification of a given probability distribution P(n| λi) for a positive integer valued variable n characterized by rational-valued parameters λi is obtained by replacing n and the integers characterizing λi with so called quantum integers depending on the quantum phase qm=exp(i2π/m). Quantum integer nq must be defined as the product of quantum counterparts pq of the primes p appearing in the prime decomposition of n. One has pq= sin(2π p/m)/sin(2π/m) for p ≠ P and pq=P for p=P. m must satisfy m≥ 3, m≠ p, and m≠ 2p.

The quantum counterparts of positive integers can be negative. Therefore quantum distribution is defined first as p-adic valued distribution and then mapped by so called canonical identification I to a real distribution by the map taking p-adic -1 to P and powers Pn to P-n and other quantum primes to themselves and requiring that the mean value of n is for distribution and its quantum variant. The map I satisfies I(∑ Pn)=∑ I(Pn). The resulting distribution has peaks located periodically with periods coming as powers of P. Also periodicities with peaks corresponding to n=n+n-, n+q>0 with fixed n-q< 0.

The periodic dependence of the distributions would be most naturally assignable to the gravitational interaction of Earth with Sun and Moon and therefore to the periodic variation of Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon distances. The TGD inspired proposal is that the p-dic prime P and integer m characterizing the quantum distribution are determined by a process analogous to a state function reduction and their most probably values depend on the deviation of the distance R through the formulas Δ p/p≈ kpΔ R/R and Δ m/m≈ kmΔ R/R. The p-adic primes assignable to elementary particles are very large unlike the primes which could characterize the empirical distributions. The hierarchy of Planck constants allows the gravitational Planck constant assignable to the space-time sheets mediating gravitational interactions to have gigantic values and this allows p-adicity with small values of the p-adic prime P.

For detals see the new chapter A Possible Explanation of Shnoll Effect of "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis and Dark Matter Hierarchy".

6 comments:

Tim Ruth said...

Finally! I hope this evolves into a trend so the waking world may understand the implications of the astounding "NATURE" of TGD. Non optical atmospheric entities that metabolize torque generated by phase locked molecules atom by atom in a local/non local hyper reality, massive in scale, taking various ancient forms such as the classic trilobite only skyward, the plasmoids have rights to be just as we do.

Matti Pitkänen said...

To my opinion, the findings of Shnoll are something comparable to the discoveries that led to quantum theory. They simply challenge the world view.

It would be really high time for theoretical physicists receiving their salary from studying quantum gravity to realize the implications of these discoveries. If still nothing happens, it is high time to reconsider throughly the criteria used to select the people people receiving the funding.

Matti Pitkänen said...

Dear Nige,

I can convince you that they have certainly done the required tests. They have worked forty years with this phenomenon and experimented with incredibly many situations. Biology, nuclear decays, etc... . At this moment the anomalies have been finally taken seriously and there is world wide experimentation going on.

You can find references from the reference list of the article.


Certainly the graphs represent considerable deviations from Poisson statistics. They would not have studied this phenomenon for forty years if there were no deviations! Only in smoothed out sense you have hopes of getting Poisson statistics.

Anyone in his right main realizes that similar deviations from say Poisson distribution appearing at different sides of globe and periodically with astrophysical periods cannot be random deviations. The deviations get also more pronounced as the size of sample increases rather than disappearing.


The intelligent attitude is to accept the facts rather than try to put the discovery of century under the rug just because it is inconsistent with existing theoretical prejudices! A theoretician worth of his salt should be jumping from joy in this kind of situation rather than getting "extremely depressed"! [God grief...]

Ulla said...

Something is missing here?

There are islands of stability, there are also on-shell charachters. What exactly determine those? You say reals (algebraic) and complex (p-adic) numbers are glued, but on what? On surroundings? Pythagoras triangle? That is already existing hadrons and that interaction happens through the zero ontology. That is the Fermi surface and the kaon oscillations? Or carbon? The mass gap. Like all those Millenium Problems belongs together.

This assymmetry is quite sure now, somewhere I read about 6 sigmas. How is it possible to explain it without dark matter, or invisible matter?

This is great news. Three worlds?

Ulla said...

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2010/today10-12-10.html
A laboratory search for chameleon dark energy
a common suspect for this dark energy is a new spinless (scalar) field.

One viable model for such a field is the chameleon model. The hypothesized chameleon particles are so named because they change their mass depending upon the local environment. In the vacuum of space, they have small masses and produce long-range forces. However, in the presence of ordinary matter, like a piece of glass or metal, the chameleons become much more massive and the mediated force is short ranged – too short to have appeared in searches for new forces.
The GammeV Chameleon Afterglow Search (CHASE) uses this mass-changing property to try to trap these chameleon particles for study. If low-energy chameleons are produced inside a vacuum chamber, they would be trapped in that chamber since their masses become too large to escape when they approach the chamber walls. http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0988
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How can mass change? Usually they say the interaction demand a comparable mass (=equal). In this case the wavelength is changing together with the mass, around some fixpoint? Is that fixpoint the zero hole, so this would proove the zero energy ontology? (=mass gap change)
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Ulla said...

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/12/the_threefold_way_part_3.html

Numbers can also show hierarchies? P-adic as nonmaterial, algebraic material then and these irregularities (universalangelsor gods?) as a third hierarchy? Like a math in math? The math trinity?