Mental Leaps Required in a Structural Model

Much of human development has required mental leaps, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups. Here, I sketch the leaps involved in "thinking in mnp." Some of those leaps are common to all science, some to any model that hopes to unify physics, some to a structural model, and some specific to the mnp Model. I conclude by listing some of the leaps made by all humans and all physicists, to illustrate that the leaps in mnp, if useful, would be a small part of life.

Leaps Required to be a Scientist 

• What exists and has been measured is. 
• A theory can be measured. 

Leaps Required in All Unifications 

• Simplicity is the ultimate goal. 
• The universe should not need a doctorate, in the author's opinion. Yes, that last sentence is a value judgment and not a fact. 

Leaps Required in All Structural Models

Structural Models, as defined by the author, posit or seek explanations using mechanisms and existences smaller than observed fields and elementary particles that interact in ways that cause observed phenomena to emerge. The author includes Preon models, String theories and Quantum Loop theories here, but should practitioners feel their theories are not structural they may opt out.

• All long distance interactions will be mediated by fields created by recruitment rather than by emission. Recruitment is key. Whatever creates gravity is either static or moves both in and out. 
• A structural model may seem like a great leap backward, since Special Relativity has been a better explanation than Lorentz-Poincare models have offered the last hundred years. Yet if "hidden variables" are to be explained, gravity to be integrated with everything else, MOND gravity data to be explained, and dark matter-energy to be understood, a great leap in some direction will be needed. 
• All structural models require a great leap. The author is convinced a Local Reference Frame will be required. Special Relativity and structural models cannot coexist. While the space-time effects of gravity may make General Relativity useful or even necessary, the author suggests a more fruitful approach is purely structural. The space and time experience we have as matter is different from the space/time experienced by the fundamental constituents of the universe. Matter measures space and time as it is able. So we need to be open to the possibility that geodesics, measuring time and length, may be properties of matter rather than properties of space. I offer this statement with apologies. 
• “Frame independence” has been such a useful concept to physicists and engineers that it will be hard to unlearn with respect to relativity partly because it was so hard TO learn with respect to relativity.
• The mental ability to picture frame independence must not be lost, since it is so useful in statics and non-relativistic dynamics as well as geometry. So, sorry undergrads, it will still be part of the curriculum. But since it will be useful, I'm not too sorry.

Leaps Useful in All Structural Models

• Opposing tendencies will lead to stability. 
• Rotation may be transmitted over distance by the units of the model, but Moment and Torque will not. For example, there are no strings leading to centripetal force.
• The tendency of the structural units to separate from each other is not absolute.
• The structural units can pass through each other.
• Interactions will occur by redirection rather than "Force" 

Leaps Requested in the mnp Model 

• Geometry is the key to each type of interaction. There must be some arrangement of the basic units that differentiates static charge from moving charge from magnetism from electro-magnetism. Gravitational acceleration must be different from the magnitude of the gravitational field and its time and length effects. 
• Structural units interaction depends on which edge approaches which edge. The time of interaction combined with the direction of interaction will lead to differentiation. 
• Minimal tools should suffice. Avoid adding concepts such as marking “I'm ingoing” wherever possible. Rigorous simplicity may lead to deeper understanding. For example, if gravitons go both ways as required by recruitment, only direction and convergence/divergence are available. The latter is the ONLY indicator of which way gravity goes. That may mean an infinite plane would have no acceleration, only time and length effects, in the limit? 
• Fields are formed in a random soup of structural units, and are local imbalances in that randomness. 
• Fields have conservation properties. There is no net movement of structural units either linear OR spin. Secondary fields may be generated, but they too lead to no net movement as well. The field created by a moving charge may be considered a “two deep” model. For example, by sending some units one way and other units another or by sending those units already upward bound more and the downward bound less, the balance for the propagator means no loss of “energy” or change in direction.
• If the field is affected by something else (measured) that will lead to a change in the propagator. Even then there is not “loss of energy” but just a different configuration or orientation.
• Fields attenuate. 
• “Energy” and “mass” are a matter of direction, not quantity. 

Note that this section used "requested" in the title. Since the Model is not complete, it can do no "requiring." When the Model is ready for prime time, the mental leaps required to understand the mnp Model will be smaller than those required by Quantum Mechanics. The leaps are more akin to statistical mechanics, which has been described as "the other life changer for physics students." The author suspects that, in practice, the mnp Model will have MANY similarities to statistical mechanics.

Leaps Required to be a Model Developer

Those interested in understanding Structural Models or the mnp Model can stop here. Those interested in the context of mental leaps can skip to the next section. Those interested in the leaps required to create or extend the mnp Model may continue here.

• Everything must be explained by short distance interactions.
• Everything must, in its essence, be simple even if the accumulation of simplicity leads to complexity.
• The universe does not have a doctorate, though it makes complexity possible. 
• Everything is “on the table,” so whatever it takes to form the conceptual house of cards, including cannibalizing earlier ideas or admitting I was wrong.
• If a measurement cannot be explained, either I don't understand the measurement, I haven't worked the principles well enough, I don't understand the principles, or the principles are wrong. In developing the mnp Model so far, I've experienced all four.

Leaps Required to be Human and a Physicist 

Humans, especially physicists, have made many mental leaps already, far outnumbering those requested by the mnp Model. Starting as babies with "Pushing back on our hands and knees will make us go forward" and ending when we give up learning. In roughly reverse chronological order I offer an incomplete list:

• ... 
• Manifolds 
• Shroedinger's equation 
• Quantum Mechanics 
• LaPlace transforms 
• Fourier transforms - flipping frequency to time or physical domain 
• Complex numbers to model “physical Hilbert spaces,” 
• Conservation of properties in Feynman diagrams 
• Differential Equations 
• Tensors 
• Frame independence 
• Integration by parts 
• Integration - chain rule
• Induction 
• Symmetry proofs 
• Matrix transforms 
• Equal and opposite reactions 
• Reversing point of view 
• Algebra (for example, dividing to solve a multiplication problem)
• Negative numbers 
• Making the string go back and loop when we want to make a knot that will tighten and tie a shoe 
• We are separate individuals 
• We can go to something, not everything comes to us. (If we were horses, who walk at birth, we would learn that if we wait some things will come to us) 
• Pushing back on our hands and knees will make us go forward 

So the mnp Model is learning to crawl now. Push back is useful.