Tensoring Heterotic Superstring Theories

The left-moving and right-moving modes of a string can be separated and treated as different theories. In 1984 it was realized that consistent string theories could be built by combining a bosonic string theory moving in one direction along the string, with a supersymmetric string theory with a single q₁ moving in the opposite direction. These theories are called heterotic superstring theories. That sounds crazy — because bosonic strings live in 26 dimensions but supersymmetric string theories live in 10 dimensions. But the extra 16 dimensions of the bosonic side of the theory aren’t really spacetime dimensions. Heterotic string theories are supersymmetric string theories living in ten spacetime dimensions. Heterotic string theories are built by tensoring a left- and a right-  moving string which do not have the same base fields. More explicitly, it is constructed by tensoring the right-moving super string with 10 left-moving bosonic and 32 internal left-moving fermionic fields. Internal here means that the field does not transform under Lorentz-transformations, this implies that the boundary conditions on these allow for rotations. The two types of heterotic theories that are possible come from the two types of gauge symmetry that give rise to quantum mechanically consistent theories. The first is SO(32) and the second is the more exotic combination called E8XE8. The E8XE8 heterotic theory was previously regarded as the only string theory that could give realistic physics, until the mid-1990s, when additional possibilities based on the other theories were identified.

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Comment on ‘SMART CITIES: WHERE DOES THE FINANCIAL VIABILITY LIE?’

I might be now be better placed to outline my critique of the notion of Smart Cities and the political thereof. The example of China is valid, but more inclined towards the domestic sector where export-oriented growth imploded, leaving the realty estate in a vacuum. Assuming that these habitats lend values to their inhabitants, the point of rupture would lie in setting up ground for vendors and their allies and alliances with a techno-savvy cognitariat operating the digitally conceived spaces. These would be precisely license-free, for they would have ample expertise in architecture of infrastructure and communication lines. Such technological platforms with network connections would plug and play into monetising services involving access to subscriptions and the latest big-thing in town, ‘data analytics’. A successful implementation of such would mean economising any sharing applications with others venturing out to have their version of success involving a plethora of professions and professionals creating a viability gap between the cognitariat and the precariat. And this would be precisely the gap where political fires would be ignited, grounded, and without an across the gulf implementation, systems integration would only be diffused. Such a diffusion would do no politics any good, and only exacerbate the already fragile ecology. 

Instead, what needs to be done is not any replication of failed systems, but a cognisance of how such monopolistic citadels are recognised and how and what intensity-level of intervention is required. In the form of monetisation when it comes to providing services, my political take goes from the inhabitants being charged to a massive costs overhead involved in when others try and replicate this successful model across other cities. Thats where the related question of monopoly would get in, and thats going to be a war of the corporations that poses a scare for me. And this is a political battle We’d be up against.If Smart City is a dystopia, their planners are much smarter than we have thought of them hitherto. That unbundling is what I mean by flipping the coin. 

Capitalism’s Triumph or Commoditizing Communism

Why is revolution not possible? This is an old debate.

Terms like “socialist” and “revolution”, and “right-wing groups” tend to mean different things to different people, according to their perspectives. which can be quite contradictory, in many regards. Revolutions don’t tend to resolve such contradictions as absolutely as idealists and ideologues tend to imagine. Counter-revolutionary tendencies persist in the society, and even among the revolutionaries, such that it’s never really “over”, and the struggle continues.

Technically, “socialism” is a theoretically “necessary” supposedly “interim” period, during which an elite vanguard seizes political power, “on behalf of” the proletariat, and struggles to transform society, toward the eventual emergence of communism, which is to say, democracy, the ultimate utopian communist dream. That transformation is essentially the suppression of counter-revolutionary (anti-democratic) tendencies, and inculcation and cultivation of revolutionary (democratic) tendencies among the masses.

Marxian concentration on capitalism was all about demonstrating how undemocratic, and thus unjust, irrational and inefficient capitalism tends to be, despite it’s claim to be, relatively speaking, “more democratic” than monarchy, say, or feudalism. He merely sought to show that it is not the ultimate, final stage of that evolution, as it’s proponents tend to assert, but that, like the “socialism” he proposed to supplant it with, an interim stage, which would, in fact, sow the seeds of it’s own destruction, even as previous socio-economic paradigms had done before them.

At the time he was doing all this theorizing, a hundred years ago, his premise of an educated working class, capable of democracy, seemed a virtually impossible utopian dream, considering conditions in the masses, steeped in centuries of ignorance, illiteracy, grinding poverty and religious indoctrination. Rather than second guess his conclusion, then, that further resort to elitism was “necessary” to change those conditions, I’d prefer to just point out that, in fact, those conditions have changed, profoundly, since then, such that the prospect of democracy is no longer such a distant utopian dream, but more feasible and viable a prospect than ever before in human history.

Technology, the engine of all socio-economic relations, has evolved, especially in terms of communications. Here and now, into the 21st Century, both capitalist and “socialist” elitism have become outmoded, I think, and need to “wither away” with the whole concept of the “State” as we now know it, as an externally imposed governor…as Marx predicted would some day be possible. Anymore, most of us aspire to democracy, and we realise that we aren’t there, yet. The issue is not whether anti-democratic rightwing reactionary conservative and fundamentalist counter-revolutionary elements of our society, will, or can, prevent democracy from ensuing. The issue is whether those, who tend to be staunchly opposed to racism, sexism, cultural chauvinism, eco-rape, murderous monopoly corporate fascist ripoffs, and imperialist warmongering, will call off the demoralized cynical defeatism of electoral boycott and excessive splitting, and will step up to actually seize the power, for a change…democratically, electorally…and then proceed to suppress counter-revolutionary anti-democratic tendencies legislatively and judicially, from now on…explicitly for justice and peace, to save the planet. Which, of course, is why the right is freaking out like they are, even now waging “low intensity” civil war, desperately trying to prevent that from happening. For Revolution to be at hand, we must not try and smash capitalism, or even right-wing resistance at that, as democracy is invested in and of itself with enough potency to destroy capitalism and its moribund form, fascism. But, the authorial point of exploiting freedom as against suppressing it is the Negri’s position on the corollaries of reaction to right-wing accelerationsim. So, whatever be the seductive power of neoliberalism, which indeed is undeniable, banking on the track record of proletariat would be stuck in the molasses of the past, or even getting to dynamically shift the agency to cognitariat be akin to letting the seduction of neoliberalism suck the agency in. The alternative is agency/ies, which someone like the obscure Agamben would call “Whatever Singularity” (even Gayatri Spivak flirts with the idea), or precariat, which is the umbrella term for the ones stripped of or dehumanised by the forces of neoliberalism. Unless, the left has this in vision, left is a position best avoided for excepting archival purposes. Yes, commoditising communism spells doom, and we are ideologically headed towards it.

The Physics of Epigenetics

Epigenetic regulation of gene expression involves silencing, i.e. a permanent and heritable inhibition of gene transcription (transciptional gene silencing) or translation (post-transcriptional gene silencing). The current paradigm is that gene silencing is achieved through chromatin condensation, in a so-called heterochromatinization process. Can we characterize the physical properties of heterochromatin and euchromatin? What are the physical consequences of heterochromatinization in terms of structure, dynamics and how do these physical consequences turn out into functional consequences? Histones simultaneously play a crucial role in determining the structure of chromatin; they are the substrate of a vast catalog of epigenetic markings, which is not a coincidence. This supports the hypothesis that epigenetic histone marks modulate gene expression through chromatin structural rearrangements at each level of the nuclear organization: nucleosome, chromatin fiber, chromatin loops, chromosome territories, whole nucleus.

the-physics-of-epigenetics by Ruggero Cortini et. al.

Spinors, Twistors and Ontologies of SpaceTime

Penrose’s conception of spacetime based on the complex analysis as well as Manin’s stem from the notions of spaces of spinors and twistors. Manin’s construction is complex space of spinors, which is a base by means of which 3-dimensional Euclidean space of the classical mechanics and 4-dimensional Minkowski’s space can be defined. The similarity to Plato’s world can be seen through the essential issue of the philosophy of nature, the issue of a relationship between a mathematical model described by a physical theory and the world. In contemporary physics, this relationship poses some subtle problems due to the fact that mathematical models themselves are constructions with abstract, intricate and many level structures. That is the case when we take into consideration the relationship between unitary space of spinors and the structure of physical spacetime. Here the relationship is indirect to a large extent. The Euclidean space and Minkowski’s space are the intermediate structures between fundamental mathematical structure — complex space of spinors — and physical spacetime. That the unitary complex space is fundamental means that it allows to define both, the Euclidean and Minkowski’s spaces. On the other hand, the indispensable intermediary role of those classical structures is played through their relation with experiments and measurement, that can be made only in their categories. Here, we find an analogy with Timaeus’ ontology. Plato’s triangles and bodies, geometrical substratum of the world, correspond to deep structure of spacetime — abstract, complex mathematical structure that allows to define models of spacetime of the classical mechanics. The significance of the latter models is not weakened since they describe adequately — to use the expression taken from the domain of linguistics — surface structure of the physical spacetime, as they enable us make concrete measurements, that serve as a base of verification of a physical theory. Therefore, they connect the ideal Plato’s world with the world of phenomena, similarly like in “Timaeus” a description of this surface structure of nature, i. e. concrete events, was made by means of the four elements, the frame of which was the actual geometrical substratum of nature. It is remarkable that Penrose, whose contribution to the examination of complex spaces of spinors and twistors was the most valuable in our times, shares the view of the strong mathematical Platonism concerning ontology as well as epistemology.

Relation: local-global is of great importance not only in ontology, but also in entire science and philosophy. On the one hand, ontology tends to be defined as knowledge concerning the notion of the whole — the notion of global nature, indeed. On the other hand, the contrast: local-global is often used to define and contrast scientific knowledge and philosophy. Such a view is expressed by René Thom, who thinks that the basic feature of a scientific theory is its locality expressed as the possibility to geometrize it. This view is also shared by Maurin, who states that a category of the whole is specifically philosophical, strictly religious. In the domain of the ontology of spacetime the latest mathematical models that use the methods of global analysis on complex manifolds let us obtain important results concerning the connection between local homogeneity of spacetime and its global homogeneity. The former one, well proved by the whole classical physics and through the Noether’s theorem connected with the principles of conservation in the classical mechanics, has purely scientific nature, the latter, on the other hand, left without any justification would be only an arbitrary metaphysical postulate commonly assumed, since it provides “comfortable” universality of physical laws in the whole Universe. And here, contemporary mathematics can give a kind of solution. The crucial significance for a demonstration of the global homogeneity of spacetime resulting from the local homogeneity of spacetime has Penrose’ postulate which defines spacetime as a 2-dimensional complex, i. e. 4-dimensional real, holomorphic manifold. For such manifolds the principle of identity binds. According to this principle, for any two holomorphic or meromorphic functions, if they are identical in optionally small neighbourhood, they are also identical on the whole manifold. Such a geometrical model of spacetime lessens remarkably the arbitrariness of the metaphysical postulate of global homogeneity of spacetime. What follows, is the connection between what is local, so scientific, and what is global, so ontological, — the means that enables this connection is mathematics, strictly speaking, global analysis.