Approximately 15 years ago, as I turned forty, I remember sitting on the couch enjoying a documentary on cosmology and Einstein’s General Relativity. About halfway through the special, I had an elementary concept of how space-time may work. This may seem normal for someone knowledgeable in science, but I did not possess a scientific background. Instead, I worked as a Chief Technical Officer for a privately owned business and enjoyed science as a hobby. I was unaware of Sir Isaac Newton and his laws. Still, the idea consumed me and refused to release its grip on my soul. At this point, I remember asking myself if I could hang with these brilliant scientists. The only way to answer that question was to perform the same study as they did. Having only a two-year business administration degree, I returned to college mid-life. Working full-time and attending classes on campus proved exhausting, but it was rewarding. I had to start my Bachelor of Science (BS) degree over because of the math and science requirements. And so, 4 years later, I graduated with a BS in Physics.
Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I always kept sight of the original idea I had when watching the documentary. An idea that drove me to overturn my life. Even in undergraduate studies, I could present (with minimal science or math knowledge) a conceptual overview of my idea. I assembled a simple scalar field and performed a few rudimentary calculations. To my surprise, and I am sure to my professors’ surprise, the mapping produced known empirical results, including the perihelion advancement of the planet Mercury.
The concept stalled in my first year or two of graduate school as I continued to learn new maths and science. However, an experience I had led me down a path that renewed my passion for the original concept. I was sitting in Quantum Mechanics class, and the professor discussed an idea that confused me. He said virtual particles move instantly. Confused, I raised my hand and asked, “Isn’t the speed of light the universal speed limit?” that was my first introduction to the dividing passion of two major groups: the Quantum Enthusiast versus the General Relativity Enthusiast.
It was a great disappointment to me that in our grand intellectual advancements, we have adopted different governing rules for different areas of science. This great divide occurred around the turn of the twentieth century. The divide reverberates to this day in mainstream physical science. The divide drove my logic to believe we (humankind) made a mistake at the time of the Great Divide. It is like looking for a bug in a program code; you look at the point and time it first showed up. I discovered one factor during the same time as the rise of these two grand theories: two new mathematical methods gained popularity. One method was Riemannian Geometry, and the other was Linear Algebra. As it would be, Riemannian Geometry fits well within the structure of the theory of General Relativity, and Linear Algebra, especially linear operators, fits well within the structure of quantum and its discrete wavelike nature.
Right or wrong, I decided to pursue my concept as though I was living in the early nineteen hundreds. As a constraint, I would not use the new math of the time to explain what was being observed. Instead, I worked to limit it to algebra and calculus. The second part of the approach considered experiments showing results that needed interpreting, such as time dilation and the ultraviolet catastrophe. In looking at these findings, I asked, how would a person approach writing a hypothesis (or governing equation) to represent what was observed without biasing the approach by constraining it to a specific mathematical method?
From these two directives, I slowly forged a concept. Eventually, the idea gave birth to a theory. I began my approach with time dilation and Newtonian gravitational forces. After successfully modeling what was observed, I applied the concept to a simplistic Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom, but without the discreteness. This journey led me to a master’s in computational science and a doctorate in computational science and engineering with a concentration in theoretical physics.
After many unfulfilling rabbit holes and tossed papers of wrong approaches, I arrived at a rudimentary working theory of space-time of the very large (cosmology). When I applied it to the very small (quantum), I found a discreteness that closely correlated to various aspects of quantum.
It should be noted that one particular inspiration in my journey arose from the use of Special Relativity in the calculation of the time dilation between the GPS and its ground-based stations. I remember reading a few papers and Wikipedia articles about calculating this. Each paper divided the time dilation calculation into two parts: the gravitational effect as predicted by General Relativity and the relative motion effect predicted by Special Relativity. Immediately, this aggravated my science senses. Anyone studying Special Relativity (SR) knows it is special because it is confined to inertial frames of reference. There is no known instance in my knowledge or experience in which a rotating frame is inertial. Yet, they applied it to the GPS time dilation calculation within a rotating, accelerated frame.
Another part of SR is there is no preferred frame of reference. Thus, if two observers move at a constant velocity relative to each other, it does not matter which one is at rest. This implied the seemingly paradoxical situation of one observer observing the other’s clock. Each observer’s clock appeared to be ticking faster than their clock. This concept is abandoned when applying SR to the GPS to have a preferred frame. A frame in which only one observer sees the other’s clock running faster. To this day, it still frustrates me how loosely and half-hearted scientist throw around their application of SR.
As I understood, the only way to accurately match the empirical data to the theories was to apply both GR and SR. That understanding made me believe only one theory was needed and inspired me to prove it.
Einstein stated there is no detectable difference between an accelerated frame and a frame in a gravitational potential, which led me to ask, why is this true? If I accelerate, I do not change the clock rate of observers near me, but if I increase or decrease my gravitational potential (like gain or lose mass), I will change the clock rate of observers near me. Thus, this seemingly trivial difference troubled me. Later in my journey, I came to believe there is a local effect and a global effect producing time dilation. This will be discussed later, showing how this leads to the first real deviation of the NUVO theory from GR. The local effect also produced a discrete effect found in NUVO when applied to the very small. Other small and often trivial questions or discrepancies inspired me to explore further and refine my theory. However, the use of SR in GPS and the equivalency of acceleration and gravitational potential frames have always been the driving force in my journey.
Finally, I am often asked. How did the name NUVO come about? Does it stand for something? The name comes from a love of architecture and art from the Art Nouveau period. My continual inability to spell nouveau properly necessitated the four letters NUVO. Nouveau has a wonderful meaning and place in history. In the late 1800s, machinery took over many aspects of architectural designs, replacing the beautiful aspects of curves and free-flowing transitions with a calculated, rigid design structure. A design that firmly said this is man-made, vacating nature’s touch. Art Nouveau came in and reclaimed the beauty of nature and incorporated it into the mechanics of man. Nouveau’s meaning encompasses ideas such as “a change or improvement, newly arrived or developed,” “Newly appearing, arrived or made,” and “something new because it is different.” The reason it was new was that the mechanical design disregarded nature for the sake of autonomous engineering. Thus, the beauty of Art Nouveau was not the only reason I chose it as a name for the theory, but the idea of returning to nature and allowing it to guide one’s thoughts and direction instead of the autonomous rigid math journey. This sense of elegance discovered in allowing nature to speak inspired me.
There have been various attempts to justify the lettering of NUVO. Such as, “Newtonian Units Variable Observation”. But that would just be making up something after the fact. A close friend of mine, Ben, who has assisted in this journey for over a decade, often jokes that it should be called the “chips and salsa” theory since that is what we always snack on when discussing. Ultimately, it is just a passion for that period between 1880 and 1930, and it so happens to correspond with the period of the Great Divide in physics. That, coupled with my nature first, math second philosophy, provided an elegant, nature-driven approach to science. In the end, nature doesn’t perform differential equations or complex treatment of manifolds before it acts; it simply performs its symphony of beauty while man tries to reduce it to an equation. Therefore, I call it the NUVO theory, but “Chips and Salsa” was a close second.