Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 13

Presumably one of the first tests of the validity of a particular NSM would be if it actually reproduces experimental particle physics data. If it is a correct model it should therefore automatically produce the various particles that we know of. In particular it should produce particle masses that correspond to actual values.

My question is: how do you know the mass of a particle propagating through a NSM. I was thinking it should be related to the number of nodes in the pattern of connections. Is that correct or is it more complicated?

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Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 167

The common proposals for a graph-theoretic "network substitution model" (NSM) focus on the Planck scale -- of order 10^-33 cm -- eighteen orders of magnitude smaller than the proton.

From the evidence available to us through the rest of the length scale, it would be reasonable to expect that one or three intermediate levels of organisation emerge between the fundamental self-regenerating graph and anything we can observe, even indirectly, with photons.

There are suggestions, partially explored in an old thread here, that gravitational mass might be proportinal to the nett rate of reduction of node count by the matter concerned. However that doesn't go a long way towards explaining even the apparent strict correspondence of gravitational and inertial mass.

As it would take around 10^54 Planck scale nodes to build a 3D proton, the observable behaviour of which might well be the average of 10^18 Plank time states, direct simulation of such a model is inconceivable. The most we can hope, and my reading of the NKS contribution, is to find some NSMs which are interestingly suggestive of a first level of emergent organisation on which a credible account of higher levels might be based. Exact mass prediction is a fantasy.

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Tony Smith
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Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 13

Wow, you guys really got into it in that other post. I'll have to wait until my semester is over to put the time in to digest it all.

Thank you for the info.

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