It’s been nearly 3 months since my last post, and not because there’s been nothing to report.
Let me explain … No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Inigo Montoya
In early 2020, I was a director of the U.S. Go Congress. We had a lovely site picked out, The YMCA of the Rockies, and everything seemed to be going well until COVID came along. We were forced to cancel. So was the 2021 Go Congress.
In 2022, we decided to try again. Same place, same plan, except with vaccination and masks. So, I’ve been spending much of my time since February working on the Go Congress and not, sadly, writing here. This all ends in a few weeks.
Also, my wife dragged me off to Europe again. France, Finland (for a neuroscience conference), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Basically, almost all the countries that Russia wants to invade next after Ukraine. This should have resulted in more travel blogs, and perhaps eventually will. But I used it as a vacation from my Go Congress duties which, of course, did not go away.
On the physics front, I’ve made some progress on understanding how EM gauge invariance plays out in this class of theories. Expect a long post about that sometime soon. It’s a bit strange and counterintuitive.
I also realized that the question of exactly which phenomena do and do not get dilated by EM time dilation is more subtle and difficult than I thought. Even adherents of these theories don’t agree on, for example, whether you should be able to measure it with an ionic clock. This makes it hard to speak confidently about which experiments should and shouldn’t show the effect, and needs very careful reasoning to clarify. I hope to have time to sort through this mess in late August.
Although I want to re-propose the experiment at Paul Scherrer Institut next January, with some improvements, prudence require having a Plan B. So immediately after the Go Congress, I’ll be attending the North American Particle Accelerator Conference in Albuquerque New Mexico. Not because I plan on building my own accelerator, but because someone out there might have a small accelerator capable of producing the muons I need. I cannot buy, so someone must give. Like Shevek, I am the Beggarman.
Love comes empty handed, like Cordelia, bringing Nothing.
Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body p. 237
Energy and Time 