Measurement problem in PROGRAM UNIVERSE

Abstract

We present a discrete theory that meets the measurement problem in a new way. We generate a growing universe of bit strings, labeled by 2/sup 127/ + 136 strings organized by some representation of the closed, four level, combinatorial hierarchy, of bit-length N/sub 139/ greater than or equal to 139. The rest of the strings for each label, which grow in both length and number, are called addresses. The generating algorithm, called PROGRAM UNIVERSE, starts from a random choice between the two symbols ''0'' and ''1'' and grows (a) by discriminating between two randomly chosen strings and adjoining a novel result to the universe, or when the string so generated is not novel, by (b) adjoining a randomly chosen bit at the growing end of each string. We obtain, by appropriate definitions and interpretations, stable ''particles'' which satisfy the usual relativistic kinematics and quantized angular momentum without being localizable in a continuum space-time. The labeling scheme is congruent with the ''standard model'' of quarks and leptons with three generations, but for the problem at hand, the implementation of this aspect of the theory is unimportant. What matters most is that (a) these complicated ''particles'' have the periodicities familiar from relativistic ''deBroglie waves'' and resolve in a discrete way the ''wave-particle dualism'' and (b) can be ''touched'' by our discrete equivalent of ''soft photons'' in such a way as to follow, macroscopically, the usual Rutherford scattering trajectories with the associated bound states. Thus our theory could provide a discrete description of ''measurement'' in a way that allows no conceptual barrier between the ''micro'' and the ''macro'' worlds, if we are willing to base our physics on counting and exclude the ambiguities associated with the unobservable ''continuum''. 27 refs

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