This isn’t a story about AN old guy’s PAIR of wrinkled balls. No… it’s a story about a pair of old guy’s wrinkled ball.
The wrinkled ball of a pair of old guys. Singular. One. One wrinkled ball. Two old guys. One wrinkled ball.
And here’s an odd request… I want you to give it a look. Take a good look at their wrinkled ball. Before you think too much, here it is… probably not what you were expecting:
One wrinkled ball. Made by two cosmologist/mathematicians, who were looking into the nature of the universe and gravitational waves and a bunch of other Einstein-ish stuff. They made their wrinkled ball to demonstrate the effect of gravity waves on a planet (if the planet was soft and easy to mould). They published their wrinkled ball in Scientific American in May of 2014, for all the world to see. (or at least anyone that bought Scientific American that month).
That is where I found the wrinkled ball of Marc Kamionkowski, and Robert R Caldwell.
In a magazine. In a drugstore. While I was waiting for my girlfriend who was waiting for a prescription. I browsed magazines looking at hot rods, model trains, super cars and mega-mansions, and then… found an old-guys’ wrinkled ball. (Marc and Robert aren’t actually “old”, its just fun saying “old guy’s wrinkled ball”, so I hope they forgive me, if not now, at least when they get older)
Now, it would be fair if you were thinking “Wrinkled Ball… so what?”.
Fair question. Now that you know, from whence it came, now I’ll tell you what it may be, in reality.
May be. Maybe. Might be. A candidate answer to everything. (like a theory, but if validated, it’s the answer, not next best approximation. The foundation from which all other physics, and all other phenomena emerge.
You saw what I asked you to see “the wrinkled ball” made by a pair of mathematicians and cosmologists.
Now see what I see. A candidate universal lowest common denominator. A persistently physically present “body” to hold momentous energy plausibly. To act as a generator and host of the fields and phenomena we consider “fundamental forces and energies and fields”.
A “gear” of sort. A one-of-many, populating a lattice that fills all of existing. (in varying densities and arrangements). Like this:
Immutable (and therefore eternally ancient) non-changing physical solid fundamental units or building blocks.
A simple concept. Some might be quick to dismiss.
One physicist focused on “Phenomenology of quantum gravity, cosmology, and particle physics”, with over 80 published papers, who reviewed the building block idea conceptually. A PhD-Physicist-for-Hire service. They were neither encouraging, nor discouraging. Taught me some terminology, gave me some theories and concepts to check into. They were helpful.
Then a few months later I got this e-mail:
And I began to think I might be none of, wrong, deluded, or crazy. I might have found the fundamental component of reality.