If there is any testable variation then the best estimate we have for it should make that test regime easier; yes? Now what I find most significant about these three papers is the specifically cryptographic approach. Your mileage may vary. Maybe Jim, or fellow cypherpunk revolutionists can drill down with ' Professor Google "  and find some earlier examples using crypto to probe quantum-physics &/or cosmology. Its would be a huge boost for cryptoanarchy were the TOE ( or GUT - grand unified theory ) be discovered to be based on what looks more and more ( Sear " Wheeler, H. Pagels, S. Lloyd " ) like a public-key-encryption universe.  No string theory below us - above us only ...anything! If any Indymedia - smelling-cat style guerrilla journo's are lurking, I'd also appreciate a work up on the good professor Rhodes. I would do it myself but I'm no spring chicken any more and have had four operations since I was last here around 2003.  Yrs in anarchist revolution Grumpy old man Matt