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James Keene

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James Keene
ResidencePortsmouth, Dominica
NationalityAmerican
Known forBinary Mechanics; derivation of physical constants from first principles
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, Quantum Theory, Cosmology, Neurophysiology, Computer science
InstitutionsBinary Mechanics Lab

James J. Keene is an American scientist, Director of the Binary Mechanics Lab, which he founded in 1999, and originator of Binary Mechanics — a theoretical framework that treats space, time and energy as fully quantized ("binary") rather than continuous, and that seeks to derive fundamental physical constants from first principles. Keene has served as Editor of the Journal of Binary Mechanics since 2010. Working outside the academic physics mainstream as an independent researcher, he argues that the continuous mathematics underlying legacy quantum mechanics and the Standard Model describes events at points in space and time that do not physically exist, and he is a frequent presenter in the CNPS online seminar series.

Biography

According to his professional profiles, Keene received a BA in Human Development (Behavioral Sciences) from the University of Chicago in 1967 and a PhD in Physiology & Biophysics (Neurophysiology) from the University of Michigan in 1972. He has published original research in peer-reviewed journals in quantum physics, neuroscience, behavioral science and computer science, including some thirteen papers in physiology and biophysics.

Since 1999 he has been Director of the Binary Mechanics Lab, which his profiles list as based in Portsmouth, Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies. He is also a software developer: he is the author of the HotBasic compiler, an extended-BASIC compiler producing console, CGI, GUI, DLL and OBJ applications for Windows and Linux, in development since the early 2000s. The Binary Mechanics Lab Simulator (BMLS), the numerical laboratory in which he tests his physical model, is itself written in HotBasic. Keene has additionally written essays, a screenplay and a novel.

From 2010 he collected his physics work in the Journal of Binary Mechanics, later republished as two archive volumes gathering some 79 papers (2010–2018) and 13 further papers (2019–2020). He continues to publish results on the Binary Mechanics Lab site and blog, and to present them in online seminars.

Scientific contributions

Binary Mechanics

Binary Mechanics (BM) begins from a pair of relativistic Dirac equations of opposite handedness, which Keene uses to guide the quantization of space and time into bit loci arranged on a cubic lattice. Each locus may hold only the value zero or one: there are no continuous variables anywhere in the theory, and space-time locations may take only integer coordinate values. Energy is quantized as a 1-state bit occupying a bit locus of edge length L.

In place of the quantum-mechanical wave function, Keene proposes a bit function — the spatial pattern of 1- and 0-state bits that constitutes the state of the system. His central criticism of the standard formalism is that the wave function, being defined over a continuum, assigns amplitudes to points of space and time which, on his view, do not exist physically; a fully quantized description of energy, space and time removes those assumptions. Because only integer increments of time are allowed, he argues that the infinitesimal time-evolution operators of legacy quantum mechanics and the Standard Model are not applicable.

The time development of the BM state vector is exact and deterministic. It is produced by four bit operations — unconditional, scalar, vector and strong — applied sequentially, one per quantized time unit. Keene holds that all the known forces of nature, gravitation included, are unified by these simple binary operations, and he reports as a result of the framework that the scalar potential resolves into three distinct spatial components.

Derivation of physical constants

Keene's most emphasized claim is that Binary Mechanics yields genuine derivations of physical constants from first principles. He distinguishes sharply between the equations common in the physics literature, in which one measured constant is expressed in terms of other measured constants — dependencies among "fundamental" constants that he regards as unexplained observations rather than derivations — and derivation proper, which takes no measured quantity as an input parameter. Full quantization of energy, space and time, that is, of the units of measurement themselves, is in his account what makes the latter possible.

On this basis he claims first-ever derivations of the electron rest mass, the vacuum speed of light c, the Planck constant h, the intrinsic spin of the electron and of the proton, the elementary charge e, fractional electric charge, and the intrinsic magnetic moment of the electron, referring the resulting system of units to what he calls the Keene scale. His light-speed derivation, presented in "Binary Mechanics™ Light Speed Derivation" (2020) and in "Light Speed Derivation" (Journal of Physics & Optics Sciences, 2024), obtains c from the BM time-development laws together with a physical interpretation of binary mechanical space, and is framed in terms of unidirectional (one-way) rather than round-trip light speed.

Particle structure, gravity and cosmology

Using the Binary Mechanics Lab Simulator, Keene models particles as bit cycles within the cubic lattice rather than as points or fields, and has published simulator-based accounts of proton and electron structure, of proton network formation and of mechanisms of motion. Among results reported on the Binary Mechanics Lab blog are an estimate of the proton radius near 1.34 femtometres, differing from the conventional charge-radius value; an account of electron tunnelling in which fractional charge quanta, rather than whole particles, cross the barrier; a proton-cycle mechanism for the Hall effect; and the argument that the Pauli spin matrices themselves encode the cubic lattice structure he posits.

He has applied the same framework to gravitation and cosmology, including the prediction — the subject of one of his earliest archived preprints — that gravity is increased by the lunar surface temperature differential, and, in his CNPS talks, quantum gravity mechanisms and a Binary Mechanics cosmology. He also treats classical anomalies as tests of foundations, notably the long-standing puzzles of unipolar (Faraday-disc) induction and the quantum measurement problem.

CNPS talks

He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:

YouTube videos

Talks presented in the Cosmology discussion sessions on Roger J Anderton's YouTube channel (@rogeranderton418):

Works

External links

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