To our present knowledge (but there is little doubt about) both Gravity and Quantumness are fundamental and general phenomena, meaning that their laws govern anything & everything. (The third such is Relativity, and as far as we know any further is at best such a general philosophy as e.g. Causality.) But Gravity and Quantumness, as well in their old forms as in the present best ones contradict each other.

          But General Laws of Physics must not contradict each other. So if they contradict, they are incorrect. (At least one of them; but most probably both.) Very probably the way out would be Unification. Gravity & Relativity contradicted each other until 1916; then Einstein unified them, and the unified theory, General Relativity, is free of at least self-contradiction. Similarly, Relativity and Quantumness contradicted each other, but then they were unified c. 1947 as Quantum Field Theory. The unification was gradual, with such names as Dirac, Tomonaga &c., and the present status is a matter of argumentation. QFT does give infinities; but in some cases they are renormalisable, i.e. the infinities "can be removed". Also a lot of Field Theories, quite respectable in nonrelativistic limit, are unrenormalisable. Now this may mean that QFT is an erroneous Unification; but also that Relativity rules out the unrenormalisable Field Theories. This latter is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of QFT experts; and it may quite be correct. Anyways, Relativity rules out an acceleration to FTL velocities, and this "prediction" is generally accepted (with some sad feeling) by physicists.

          Quantumness and Gravity are also in contradiction in their original forms (as I told), but up to now the unification is not ready. The need of it and the reasons why it has not been made are the topics of this series (which will be being unfold or in Latin simply evolving gradually in several steps. The main reason to write these sequences is Advertisement; either of my own or of my viewpoint about. My feeling is that we are not far from the unification (see e.g. Refs. [1]-[7]), but surely we are not yet ready.

          I must state that (Unified) Quantum Gravity is/will be not the (Final?) Theory of Everything. The latter (sought by many, claimed by few and made by none so far) would be a Unification of Gravity, Quantumness & Relativity, a theory containing 3 fundamental constants, G, h & c, in a theory free of self-contradiction. I am less ambitious (more realistic?) for looking the third and last dual Unification, a Theory of G & h. You will see that it is a task enough in itself: and it would have quite enough new predictions in itself.

          At References for some articles I give  English translation. This does not happen if I am able to reach the original.

          Now let us proceed. The  third part is an absurdity in Hungary just after the War; but it happened indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRAVITY VERSUS/AND QUANTUMNESS, PART 3

 

GRAVITY VS. QUANTUMNESS IN HUNGARY IN TROUBLE, 1918-19, ATL=OTL

 

B. Lukács

 

CRIP RMKI, Theory Dept., & President of Matter Evolution Subcommittee of HAS

 

H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49, Budapest Hungary

 

lukacs@rmki.kfki.hu

 

            ATL is the standard abbreviation of Alternative TimeLine, while our one, which certainly exists, is OTL. ATL's are visualized as diverging from ours at different key events; or we branched from another one, the difference is mere philosophy. ATL is a trick in Science Fiction, maybe the seminal novel was [8]; but not only there. The Alternative Quantum Mechanics of Everett [9] tells that at QM Measurements there is no reduction to one eigenfunction, but rather Reality splits, all the possible results of the Measurement realise "somewhere", and the histories continue independently. So all the alternatives are real "in some sense".

            While I do not feel necessary this alternative of the von Neumann (born at Margitta, Bihar County, Hungary, 1903) Axiom of Measurement (after some sequels you will see why not), so far no experimental evidence has been found against the Everett picture (as not either against von Neumann's one). Still any physicist has the right to accept Everett's multiplicity of TimeLines. (By the way note that in Hungarian John von Neumann was Neumann János; in Hungarian registration the "von" is not part of the name. Some historians tell that the family had Austrian nobility, not Hungarian; this is a somewhat obscure point but I know the habits of some Hungarian noblemen abroad indicate their nobility by taking up the particle "de"; and "von" is the same. Some 10 % of Hungarian families were ennobled during History.)

            There may be very many ATL's. The actual one diverged just before 1896, when Albert Einstein did not go to the Technische Hochschule of Zürich (or possibly to any University as student in Physics). If you want, you can think of encefalitis. It was not infrequent in that time, and even if the patient survived, he was not fit for University.

            To clarify my opinion, this would be a catastrophe for Physics. But it might have happened easily.

References are automatically OTL if not indicated otherwise.

            The present Part 3 is exactly the same in ATL & OTL, but the comments will be made from OTL. The present would be very, very different in ATL. (No atomic bomb in Japan; joint USA-SU occupation or conflicts in Japan, or what?) I am not an SF writer.

 

ABSTRACT

After the War Hungary starts her own internecine struggle, which is rather bad for Quantum Gravity.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

            This story may be strange or absurd for non-Hungarians. Hungary, after losing the war, was in catastrophic situation; Turkey is a parallel, Germany is not. Then first a Count (from an old, historical family; Count Mihály Károlyi), started a leftist revolution. (Social Democrats, Radicals & Feminists.) The new Government dissolved the Army. After some months Communists revolted against the Government of the Count, took Social Democrats as inferior partners, formed a Soviet system and called workers to arms against Entente. Maybe this was the example to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, later. The Soviet government of Hungary was supported by the majority of intellectuels and a substantial part of the bourgeoises of Budapest, but not by peasants and only by the minority of workers.

            However Entente gave arms to the so called Little Entente and the extra-leftist nationalist attempt failed. Then Rear Admiral Horthy, aide of the King, Charles IV, took the disordered country, and governed as Governor of the Kingdom. When his King returned, Horthy put him out; but the country remained a Kingdom.

            Interestingly enough, this influenced Quantum Gravity. In the true tale below the leaders of the University parties are: Drs. Pekár & Rybár on the side of Baron Roland Eötvös, leading figure of the Hungarian Gravity school, measurers of Equivalence Principle up to 8 orders of magnitude, on the Right; vs. Drs. the Right Honourable György Lukács (that is George Lukács of foreigners, the son of a Baron and Treasurer of the leading party of Old Hungary), Béla Fogarasi (you do not know him, we do), Tódor Kármán (that is the USA military general Theodor von Kármán), and György Hevesy (he will get the 1943 Nobel Prize; son of a big merchant, Purveyor by Appointment to His Majesty the King and a Baroness), on the Leftist side. Plus university people, rectors, deans &c., and Red Guards. (Red Guard was not Army but Political Militia.)

            The above sentences were ATL, although the same as OTL. Hungary’s 1919 history was quite independent of Einstein; only the Marity & Ruzits families were weakly affected (under Serbian occupation). The story seems absurd, but Hungarian History of Science wrote it (otherwise even I would not fully accept it); see Refs. [10] & [11], and also some stories orally preserved.

 

2. A GHOST FROM A DEFUNCT ARMY

            Tódor Kármán was a University (or Technische Hochschule) professor in 1914 in Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany (Aachen in German); Hydrodynamics & such. When War broke out, he was conscripted. He was Hungarian, but he went to the Common Austro-Hungarian Army (there was too a Hungarian Army, and Austrian militia to Austria plus Croatian militia in Croatia which must have been understood as part of the Hungarian State compared to Austria, although neither Croatia was part of Hungary nor Hungary of Croatia. I stop here because explanations would confuse the foreigners, while we fully understood everything.) So Lieautenant Kármán served at the Vienna Airport, developing airplanes.

            At the end of October 1918 the Common Army started to evaporate and Lieautenant Kármán came home. But after the armistice he was not permitted to return to his University at Aix-la-Chapelle, because he was military officer of a defeated Army. He had to wait for Peace. For Hungary it will be on 4 June, 1920.

            Somebody drafted him into the personnel of the Ministry of Religion & Education, to the Department about Universities. In Spring came the second, Red, revolution. Kármán continued to serve. His high boss was György Lukács, son of a Baron, as Popular Comissar; the Department was led by Béla Fogarasi, philosopher (about him see [12]), and Kármán (von Kármán in USA, another nobleman) led the sub-Department of Universities. (That was the Red Comissariat, to be sure). Hevesy was a Docent at University but his papers were at the Ministry since November to be a Full Professor. He worked in Physical Chemistry, but his topics would be called later Quantum Chemistry, radioisotopes & such. He was a personal friend of Kármán.

            One Department plus the Geophysical Institute (hard to distinguish) was led by Baron Eötvös, earlier Minister of Religion & Education. He measured and measured Equivalence Principle, and the stores were full with excellent torsion pendulums (Eötvös pendulums). Baron Eötvös was Rightist, and ill. He died in 8th April.

            From that day everything is confuse. Eötvös had inheritors; maybe Dr. Pekár was thought his second at the Geophysical Institute and maybe Dr. Rybár at the Department. Pekár was an extraordinary experimenter with the torsion pendulum, but it seems he did not have great ideas of his own.

            And now starts the play.

 

3. ACT ONE: QUANTUM PHYSICS GAINS SOMETHING

            Kármán finds his friend's papers, and makes him a Full Professor. But where? He nominates him to the Head of the old department of Eötvös. The dead does not need department.

            True enough; but the inheritors do. May & June are turbulent: Hevesy checks the buildings, sometimes with Kármán. Hardly reconstruable dialogs are reported. Hevesy is claimed to have told that the torsion pendulums are rubbish and they would be thrown out; but modern apparatuses would be brought for (of course) radiochemistry. Reconstruction work starts; then Dr. Rybár asks him (or Kármán?): on what right. It is reported that the answer is that the Red Guard will come with guns and then... Later Dr. Rybár reports that he wanted to perform some heroic act but his students advised him against, considering consequences.

            Near the Victory of Quantum Physics above Gravity; but then protagonist Hevesy goes to travel on the West. (He can do it; finally he has got passport from the victors.)

 

4. ACT TWO: GRAVITY HITS BACK

            Why a department to somebody travelling on the West? It seems that in July Kármán is uninterested in the fate of the buildings and torsion pendulums. Plus sometimes in July Lukács resigns from the head of the ministry, and goes to the front to lead troops(!). He is disastrously unsuccessful, but that is not the topics of Quantum Gravity History. In the last days of July the Red Army breaks up, Roumanians cross Tisa River, and the Government flee to West and resigns (in this sequence), on 1st August.

            Roumanians occupy Budapest on 4th; Rear Admiral Horthy follows them without being detected, crosses Danube and go to Lake Balaton. Nobody knows who is Government. University is closed.

            After some time Entente tells the Roumanian Army to evacuate Budapest, Rear Admiral Horthy enters and makes a big speech against the City of Budapest. Returning University people recognise that Hevesy & Kármán lost against Rybár & Pekár. University investigation starts against Hevesy; Kármán does not belong to the Budapest University, so he is irrelevant. For some time Kármán goes underground (he was a Red Communist), and then flees to Aix-la-Chapelle where starts again to teach at the University. The pendulum went back; the torsion pendulums are saved.

 

5. ACT THREE: RETRIBUTION

            The charge is Violation of Autonomy of University. Hevesy obviously plotted with  outsiders (i.e. his friend Kármán) to force University to something. Now it turns out that the coup d'état against the torsion pendulums was not a good idea and that it is not nice to frighten University colleagues with Red Guard. Clearly the majority is against Hevesy. But how would you punish the son of a Royal Purveyor and a Baroness? He is a Red Terrorist, but his innocent victim is far from being the son of a Baroness. So the High Society of University declares that Hevesy is bad; and withdraws his venia legendi; then he is a Docent in theory but not in practice. Crime got its Retribution.

 

6. EPILOGUE: HEVESY GOES AWAY AND EVERYBODY BECOME HAPPY EXCEPT QUANTUM GRAVITY

            Hevesy goes to Copenhagen, becomes famous and gets Nobel Prize in 1943. In that time he is still solely Hungarian citizen; during World War II in German-occupied Denmark his position as Hungarian citizen is better than that of Danes.

            Kármán is in Germany/Holland. According to stories, in 1933 he is contacted by the German Ministry of Air: Air Generalissimo Göring would like him in high position [10]. He is hesitating for months, but at the end crosses the Atlantic. After World War II he becames a high officer of NATO.

            Rybár & Pekár remain in Hungary, became Members of Academy and are also happy; at lest until 1949. Then returning Reds (rather Fogarasi than Lukács; Lukács is politically not strong) expel them, with very many others, from Academy.

            In 1956 Lukács is Minister of Education, so in November he is interned in Roumania; later he is not imprisoned, but a Scholarly Discussion is made against him at Academy. The Chief Accuser is his ex-deputy, Béla Fogarasi.

            Enjoy the details. But surely, Unification of States may be done with guns, but Unification of Theories cannot.

            Gravity and Quantum Physics were hardly at speaking terms in Hungary just after Word War I. Hevesy wanted to throw away World's Best Torsion Pendulums of Eötvös and blackmailed Gravity with Red Guard; then Gravity accused Quantum Physics to steal military equipment for measuring apparatuses. Time was not ripe for Unification.

 

REFERENCES

 [1]       L. Diósi & B. Lukács: In Favor of a Newtonian Quantum Gravity. Annln. Phys. 44, 488 (1987)

 [2]       L. Diósi & B. Lukács: On the Minimum Uncertainty of Space-Time Geodesics. Phys. Lett. A142, 331 (1989)

 [3]       Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Is the Anomalous Brownian Motion Seen in Emulsions? Acta Phys. Hung. 70, 121 (1991)

 [4]       L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Károlyházy's Quantum Space-Time Generates Neutron Star Density in Vacuum. Nuovo Cim. 108B, 1419 (1993)

 [5]       L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Calculations of X-Ray Signals from Károlyházy's Hazy Space-Time. Phys. Lett. A181, 366 (1993)

 [6]       Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Is the Spurious Scattering a Quantum Gravity Phenomenon?. in Stochastic Evolution of Quantum States in Open Systems and in Measurement Problems, eds. L. Diósi & B. Lukács. World Scientific, Singapore, 1994, p. 69

 [7]       B. Lukács: Triality in the Depth of Physics? On the Fundamental Unification. in Proc. 6th Symp. on Matter Evolution, eds. B. Lukács & al., KFKI-1995-21, p. 6. Also on Internet: http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/3DEPTH.htm

 [8]       L. Sprague de Camp: Lest Darkness Fall. Ballantine Books, New York, 1974 (but a shorter magazine version appeared back in 1939)

 [9]       H. Everett III: Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 29, 454 (1957) [10]         G. Palló: Egy tudománytörténeti szindrómáról. (Kármán Tódor pályafutása alapján). Valóság, 1982/6, p. 20

[11]      G. Palló: Egy boszorkányper története. (Miért távozott el Hevesy György Magyarországról?) Valóság, 1985/7,

[12]      I tell a story; you can check it only in articles in Hungarian, but I will give one reference at the end. First, let us note that Lukács, his deputy Fogarasi, and lots of others, lived between the World Wars in the Soviet Union, under different conditions. E.g. B. Kun, effective leader of the Red Commune, was in very high  positions until 1937; then he was arrested and next year executed. Lukács had lots of problems, but could withdraw his various theses in expert manners, so finally survived. I heard practically nothing about Fogarasi in Moscow. Then the latter two returned to Hungary in 1945, both getting high scholarly positions. But Lukács again had to withdraw some theses in a theatrical manner in 1949. (It was connected with the exact nature of the Dictature of Proletariat & Popular Democracy. Then again once Lukács became a Minister of Education, as in 1919, in the revolutionary government of Nagy in Oct./Nov. 1956, so then he was deported to Roumania. But being popular amongst Western Leftists, after that he was not put into prison but the Academy of Sciences was asked to make a “scholarly argumentation”, ending with serious rebuke. Now, Fogarasi took the greatest role. His theses were as follows. Comrade Lukács came from High Bourgeoise. Therefore he could not have a proper Class Conscience. He tried and tried; but unsuccessfully. First he went too Left, and led ashtray the majority of Hungarian Philosophy (to Stalinism). Then he became afraid and ran into the opposite extreme, at least as bad, to Right, Counterrevolution. Now, he had been the confident of Lukács in 1919. You can read some Fogarasi at B. Fogarasi: A marxizmus és a revizionizmus harca a tudományban. (Approximately: The Battle of Marxism and Revisionism in Scholarship.) Magyar Tudomány 1958/9, p. 1336. As for the mentioned “argumentation” at the Academy, Fogarasi’s leading Theses can be found in Magyar Filozófiai Szemle 1958/3-4, p. 269, but this issue contains also almost so dirty contributions from other great scholars.