The Riemann Hypothesis and the Monster are at the Heart of the Vacuum Catastrophe
- Trevor Alexander Nestor
- Jul 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 29
(Will be making further corrections and edits to this early draft)
Today I am releasing the preprint of my latest paper "The Riemann Hypothesis and the Monster are at the Heart of the Vacuum Catastrophe." What I attempt to do here is provide an entirely new direction for quantum gravity research beyond models reliant on supersymmetry which have failed to produce evidence in particle collider experiments.
Here is the abstract:
We introduce an alternative interpretation of quantum gravity by introducing a Monster-symmetric spectral operator whose spectrum precisely realizes the nontrivial Riemann zeros, enforcing Li’s positivity via a parity projection with a novel correspondence between the Monster and the Riemann zeta function's Euler product. This modular invariance yields exact vacuum energy cancellation in both 2D and 4D, and admits a Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity dual with centaur/minotaur geometries - offering an alternative approach to resolving the vacuum catastrophe from supersymmetry, which has failed to find empirical support in particle collider experiments. By linking to SYK, Liouville theory, and braid-encoded toric codes, we show that fundamental constants emerge from symmetry constraints. Finally, we recast gravitational collapse as a modular phase transition due to entropic limits in entanglement entropy at the UV fixed point described by asymptotically safe gravity models, provide directions for unification of forces and dark matter beyond the standard model, and provide re-interpretations of string theory and causal fermion systems recast with twistor-braid channels - unifying number theory, holography, and quantum information in a nonperturbative quantum gravity framework.
The central claim here is that the critical line of the Riemann Zeta function, the ultraviolet (UV) fixed point in asymptotically safe gravity, and the Monster group are all interrelated - signaling a tipping point beyond which entanglement entropy within particle entanglements result in a gravitational action. At the Planck scale, the structure underlying the nontrivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function is in fact the same symmetry associated with the Monster group.
So it is important to note the key contributions here. Firstly, I've shown the mathematical relationship between the Monster CFT and the Riemann Zeta Function, which, to my knowledge has not previously been fleshed out in literature. I've also introduced a novel geometry - the Minotaur geometry, which is the inverse of the Centaur geometry (the Centaur geometry is useful in studying gravity in 2 dimensions), which provides an avenue for investigating our framework that links spectral interpretations to geometric ones. In this paper I also re-interpret string theory and loop quantum gravity, tying them to entropic gravity theories.
These ideas dovetail nicely into my previous work on resolving the shortest vector problem in postquantum lattice cryptography (having any class of truly uncrackable encryptions is too hubristic a request of the universe). I have been in touch with several leading scientists on these proposals for joint research.
The motivations here are that the foundations of physics need a radical redirection to address outstanding problems, and there has not been substantial progress on related unresolved problems in mathematics. A part of that can be ascribed to academic gatekeeping but more troublingly I believe financial incentives have distorted research directions.
This is almost universally recognized as a problem in the scientific and physics community. I did recently see an interview with Leonard Susskind to this effect, as well as from science popularizer Sabine Hossenfelder - and was highlighted in Dr. Penrose's book "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy."
In my view a good amount of the work that has been done has been distorted and is purposefully obtuse as it has been in the service of developing cryptographic schemes (a motivation for the development of much of the math in string theory was explored specifically for that purpose which I've mentioned in this draft). As a consequence of this, scientific progress has been stalled and frameworks lack falsifiability. My main goal is to break from the norm and introduce new paths for the field.
During my undergraduate program, I was a student of fields medalist Dr. Richard Borcherds (expert in lattice maths and theories of quantum gravity), who was awarded for discovering the famous “Monstrous Moonshine” relationship. At the time I was very interested in ideas that the human brain must operate by means of unexplored physics, and in the course of my studies I concluded and bet a friend I met during the program that the brain must not be fully explained by classical physics or forms of computation due in part to the ramifications of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. I was astounded to discover Dr. Roger Penrose’s (controversial) work, who independently made the same heuristic argument - implicating quantum gravity in the generation of consciousness.
During my studies, UC Berkeley devolved into violent riots (Occupy Cal) and due to a 500 million dollar budget cut to the UC system, 10% of my peers were left homeless, with critical understaffing. I eventually fell through the cracks, did not feel safe, and initially dropped out - then was denied re-entry, even though I was not on academic probation at the time. This initially served as a bar of entry towards my participation in many research roles and academic circles, which I have resented very strongly over the years, and has no doubt made my journey very frustrating. My mental health declined significantly. No doubt this will grow worse in the coming years due to political volatility in the United States.
Nonetheless, I decided to build a trailer to travel the country off-grid, was sponsored for the highest level security country in the country by the NSA, have worked both at startup companies and at several top tech companies including Meta and Boeing, and even on the US Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense system as well as on rocket engine controllers. Still, my passion was always research and physics, motivating me to refine my ideas. During 2017-2018, I discovered NIST’s attempts at developing a post-quantum encryption based on lattice cryptography, and in my frustration with the secrecy and exclusion within elite circles, I was guided by my belief that it is too hubristic a request of the universe for any class of truly uncrackable encryption that could be exploited by any class of elites to hide information from the public - and my frustration with elite circles compelled me to complete my first paper on breaking post-quantum cryptography (the Shortest Vector Problem) by means of emerging ideas in quantum gravity. My paper referenced several of my earlier ideas and was peer reviewed and even cited by leading researchers (including the leading scientist at the World Economics Forum) in a smaller journal.
This submitted work introduces a novel, conditional framework that synthesizes number theory, conformal field theory, and quantum gravity. What I’ve done here is more precisely approach the physics I explored in my initial paper Theoretical Approaches to Solving the Shortest Vector Problem in NP-Hard Lattice-Based Cryptography with Post-SUSY Theories of Quantum Gravity in Polynomial Time by Orch-Or that ties together several loose ends in quantum gravity. During my undergraduate studies, Dr. Borcherds and others were interested in using the E8 lie algebra as a grand unification scheme - but the attempt failed to produce predicted results at the LHC. I was offput by string theory due to its lack of testable predictions and over-reliance on supersymmetry (which also failed to produce predictions at the LHC) and while some interesting maths have come out of the programme, it has not significantly advanced the foundations of physics in recent years. I have been particularly interested in tying together insights from loop quantum gravity, asymptotically safe gravity, and entropic gravity into a larger - more monstrous - proposal.
As this thesis implicates Majorana physics, during my recent employment at Microsoft I did reach out to their research and development department because they are using Majorana zero modes in their approach towards quantum computation (and have failed miserably at doing so), but while I have received positive reception from many postdocs in physics, at Microsoft like I have experienced with many other ostensibly elite circles, they ignored me and instead decided to lay off thousands of critical engineering staff to be replaced by their nonfunctional AI tooling.
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