Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 13

In chapter nine the idea is put forth that elementary particles can be thought of as irreducible patterns of connections of nodes. Within the pattern there would be a core or some other identifying feature that would be responsible for the charge of the particle.

What I've been trying to figure out is how this feature of the pattern of nodes is responsible for transmitting the information about the charge of the particle to the surrounding network. Basically, how would a test particle know that there exists a charged particle at some point in space?

The idea I've had is this:
The update rule for the network would repeatedly carry this information away from the particle, into the surrounding network. However this idea is odd because it implies (at least to me) that the carge of a particle would be felt not as a constant force but as a pulsating force.

An observer would gain knowledge about the particle charge when that information reached him. But presumably the observer would be continually updated while this information is being transmitted. To me it doesn't seem reasonable to think that the action of the observer being updated and the information about the charge reaching him would coincide.

So the observer would notice some passage of time in between each instance of this infomation reaching him. It would be seen as pulsating.

Does this make sense? Has anyone ever used this idea to describe particle charge?

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Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 712

I can't say I fully see your idea here. Of course the underlying network idea expects a full space-time to be an emergent appearance resulting from the network, not just space.

To get a sense of how topological features of connection in an abstract network may wind up corresponding to physically real features, I recommend the following paper on the category-theory similarities between the QM Hilbert space machinery and the space-time machinery of GR.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/quantum/node1.html

FWIW...

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