Hi Erwin, first of all, a very understandable essay about the essence of physics today. Physicists based in the Uk think that they have proof that ithere is more then meets the eye. (see New Scientist 28 july 2012, : Ghost in the atom, page 28-31, by Marcus Chown) They concoted a thought experiment which involved bringing two independent atoms together and making a particular measurement on them. Their results showed that the wave function cannot be a mere abstract mathematical device, IT MUST BE REAL (?). Their conclusion : Quantum Theory makes no sense if the wave function is merely a probability distribution instead, the wave function HAS TO BE A REAL THING associated with a single quantum system, informing it how to behave. I wonder what your opinion is here, I am doubting this view, because i think that a quantum system has true properties, even before any measurement (observation) has been made on it., further moer in my new essay "THE CONSCIOUNESS CONNECTION" which has still to be accepted by FQXi, I introduce the so called "subjective simultaneity" which is in fact a universal web of interactions (decoherence) in which almost every system influences every other system. The second doubt I have is that the wave function ofv two particles (in their view) exist in an abstract six-dimensional space and for three particles nine-dimensional and so on, this is not logical I think. Furthermore once you accept a wave as a reality (stuff) in an atom where is the origin of this wave ? It means that the wave must be created sometime as a result of particles merging but then ?

thanks in advance for your appreciated answer. Wilhelmus

    Dear Edwin Eugene,

    I think, demonstrating the relativity of simultaneity in accordance with the wave functions of two identical particles, may evolve consistency of wave mechanics with string dynamics within the framework of quantum mechanics.

    With best wishes

    Jayakar

    • [deleted]

    Dear Wilhelmus de Wilde,

    Great comments and great questions! And thanks for the link to "Ghost in the atom". I'll start with that. The animation is actually wrong in my view. They say that if the wave function is 'real' then you get a 'taco-dog-burger' in the box until you look at it. That is the 'collapse of the wave function' interpretation that I explain to be incorrect. It surprises me that physicists can insist that the wave function is real and still believe it is a mathematical superposition.

    But I do agree with you (and them) that "the wave function cannot be a mere abstract mathematical device, IT MUST BE REAL" and that "Quantum Theory makes no sense if the wave function is a mere probability distribution, instead, the wave function HAS TO BE A REAL THING."

    Recent measurements of the wave function (discussed in my essay) agree with a recent proof by Pusey, Barrett, and Rudolph ('PBR') than an "information only" wave function cannot predict quantum results. This is consistent with the work you mention and with my essay.

    I also agree with you that the system has true ('real') properties before it is measured [that is, it is a dog or a taco or a burger before you open the box, not a mysterious 'superposition' taco-dog-burger]. To not believe this leads to the situation I described in "down the rabbit hole" above where the first measurement shows what values the experimenter will choose **in the future**, before they have even made their choice. In other words, acting as if Bell's theorem [or the Copenhagen interpretation] is true leads to nonsense.

    You describe the wave as "informing it how to behave". I would not interpret this literally. The particle and physical wave function form one inseparable system. The motion of the particle induces the field that constitutes the wave and changes in the wave feed back to the particle. Neither is "boss".

    You propose a universal web of interactions in which every system influences every other system. We know that we have something like this (in the gravitational field, for instance) but the real question is how fast the influences travel. If they travel at the spead of light, then one side of the 'web' may not influence the other side for 14 billion years or so. But what if the changes are instantaneous (as you seem to imply with the word 'simultaneity')? Then every change propagates instantly to every other system, the reaction propagates back immediately, and the reaction-to-the-reaction propagates to all other systems immediately and all possible future changes and all reactions to these changes all happen at once, resulting, I believe, in nothing happening. So there must be a finite speed, but then one is back to such long delays that only local interactions seem to make much sense.

    You note that two particles are represented in an abstract 6-dimensional space, three particles in a 9-dimensional space and N particle in a 3N or abstract 'configuration' space. I also treat this is my essay (page 7). Einstein and others, believing that wave could exist *without particles*, concluded that momentum and energy were conserved *only statistically* in 3-space. Schrodinger then FORCED the 3N-dimensional solution to conserve energy (after all, Schrodinger's equation is just the conservation of energy relation, written using operators!) As explained in the essay, this seems to imply (in view of Einstein's confused 'statistical conservation' idea) a certain 'non-locality' that has haunted us to this day. I believe this is also the conceptual source of the "stronger correlations" that Joy interprets in a different fashion. It's complicated, but I believe that reading and rereading pages 7-9 in my essay will help clear it up.

    Finally, you ask about "the origin of this wave". It is the gravito-magnetic field ('discovered' by Maxwell and 'built-into' Einstein's relativity field equations). Just as an electric charge moving in an electric field induces electro-magnetic circulation, a mass particle moving in a gravitational field induces gravito-magnetic circulation. It's always there as a physical wave and I show in the essay how and why it corresponds to the probability amplitude.

    Thanks for those questions. I hope this helps.

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Dear Edwin,

    I read with interest your essay. I think that one of the major questions in physics is to understand the wavefunction, and how is it able to give the results we observe. I congratulate you for attacking this problem in such a beautiful essay. Good luck with the contest.

    Best regards,

    Cristi

      Thank you Edwin for the reply, and excuse for my typo error of Erwin, I will come back to you after the acceptation of my essay by FQXi (there was a refernce which was not 100%) I am now rereading your essay. Wilhelmus

      Dear Wilhelmus,

      I find that re-reading essays, combined with the comments, helps me to understand these important issues, so thanks for re-reading and for the very good comment above. I look forward to reading your essay and wish you luck in this contest.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Cristi,

      As I mentioned on your essay thread, your approach to the problem of singularities is of major significance, and your application to quantum fluctuations agrees with my understanding of this issue.

      I do agree that the wave function is another major issue in physics, and I am glad that you read my essay on the wave function with interest.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      • [deleted]

      Hi Edwin

      I really enjoyed reading your well written essay. You did a very nice work, quite intelligible. I do agree that the wave function represents a real particle. I understand your line of reasoning and why it is important for you the references you asked me.

      Eckard Blumschein mentioned in his essay the following:

      Hermann Weyl warned: We are less certain than ever about the ultimate foundations.

      - Feynman smugly declared quantum mechanics something that nobody understands.

      You said: So quantum mechanics is based on real local particle-plus-induced-wave, not on mystical non-local superposition of non-real wavefunctions of the kind Bohr, Feynman and others insist "no one can understand".

      And also: 'No one can understand this theory until he is willing to think of as a real objective field rather than just a 'probability amplitude'.

      I made the following comment to Eckard's essay which I think also apply to yours:

      ...I believe my essay offers viable solutions to the understanding of QM. Since the beginning of the XX, physics became so abstract that the physical and intuitive sense were demoted to a second plane. By the 1930s Heisenberg himself gave up trying to find an intuitive picture of quantum mechanical phenomena. He concluded that it was impossible to understand quantum mechanics intuitively; Schrondinger, Born, Bohr, Neumann, Feynman and others agreed with him. I believe that the reason for this is because they no longer had in mind some physical concepts that are crucial to accomplish the intuitive picture that they were looking for, namely: the PSR, the aether, the idea that particles are actually waves, and the notion that a field is a state of the aether. Once these concepts are restored in the physical conception of reality all the mysteries of quantum mechanics automatically disappear.

      Perhaps, you may not see clearly the connection but the last paragraph is highly connected with entanglement, as you said:

      Thus Bell is wrong --quantum mechanics is local.. Yet some physicists believe that quantum mechanics is inherently non-local...'non-locality' is fictitious, and the non-locality disappears from quantum mechanics.

      I agree with this. I think you are in the correct track, but if you really wish your view to be widely accepted you must grant your works with a different philosophical framework in which the physical conceptions I mention in my paragraph are included. The reason for this is not only because your works could acquire more physical and intuitive meaning but also because it could lead you to new unobserved physical phenomena. As long as you maintain your ideas within the current paradigm, they will gain very few attention from the physics community. As an example of this just bring to mind both Bohm's quantum mechanics and consistent quantum mechanics. The latter argues that there is no collapse of the wave function. But both attempts predict no new physics they are only different interpretations. Your case, at first sight, is similar, it appears only a different interpretation of the wave function.

      Good luck in the contest

      Israel

        Hi Israel,

        Thanks for reading the essay and giving well thought out advice. I agree with the gist of your remarks, and will keep them in mind going forward.

        Best,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        • [deleted]

        Dear FQXi'ers,

        An interesting situation has arisen where Joy's use of the topological spheres S0, S1, S3, S7 has 'collided with' Michael James Goodband's use of the same topologies. Joy, of course, claims that S7 is the *ONLY* solution to Bell's quantum correlation problem, while Michael Goodband employs S7 as 'particle space'. Although I am NOT an expert in these issues, they seem to be (or Joy claims them to be) relevant to my approach, so I have a natural interest here. After an initial period of familiarization with each others use of these topologies, Christian and Goodband are now comparing and contrasting...

        What I find most interesting is that Joy appears to be working in quantum mechanics (QM), where particle number is fixed, while Goodband is working at the deeper level of quantum field theory (QFT) where the number of particles varies. From this perspective Goodband has just (Aug 9, 2012 @15:53) noted the following [with notation as e^|e_ for electron spin up e^ and electron spin down e_ ]:

        "My point is that this is just quantum mechanics, think quantum field theory. Just as the emission of a photon converts e^ to e_ the emission of a W-boson converts an electron into an neutrino, an up quark into a down quark etc. and there are also inter-family conversion reactions. Such interactions mean that the most general EPR 2 particle scenario in QFT is *not* of the form A^|A_ but A^|B_ where particles A and B can be of any type; A=B is just a special case in QFT.

        The observables to consider in the correlation analysis are both the spin eigenvalues of the rotation group SU(2) - group space S3 - and the particle types which are eigenvalues of some 'particle space'. I use this term in place of particle symmetry group, because grand unified theories assumed that it was going to be a group - a hidden assumption I could have raised in my essay - whereas my work says that it is the quotient group SU(4)/SU(3) isomorphic to S7. So there are 2 sets of observables with quantum correlations {^,_} and {A,B,...} where the values of the first set are the eigenvalues of the rotation group with space S3. In my case the second set contains eigenvalues of SU(4)/SU(3) ~ S7 (after the symmetry has been broken) and the S3 is clearly distinct from this S7.

        Your analysis should also apply to the quantum correlations between the observables in each of the 2 sets {^,_} and {A,B,...} for the most general EPR 2 particle scenario A^|B_ in the Standard Model QFT. Ultimately my question is whether there is a way to use your analysis in reverse to place a constraint on the origin of these observables?

        I.e. some argument of the form

        Parallelised S3 => group space S3 for the observables {^, _}

        Parallelised S7 => 'group space' S7 for the observables {A,B,...}

        A straightforward argument doesn't seem to work, which is why I am asking :-)

        Michael"

        For those who have been following the "Disproof" blogs for a year or so, this is a fascinating new development..This is getting curiouser and curiouser.

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

          • [deleted]

          Edwin,

          I agree. It is helpful to follow discussions as they take place. Different viewpoints or different ways of expressing same or similar ideas when contrasted with each other adds clarity even when solutions still appear unclear. Its the reasoning processes that become clearer. More than reading someone's conclusion, I learn from the why they say it. What are their, the speaker's, truths from which their thoughts spring forth. I think the conversations taking place presently are great. Even if my truths are different truths, I want to understand what the professionals think and, if possible, why. I follow your participation with great interest.

          James

          • [deleted]

          Edwin,

          Michael wrote,

          "Parallelised S3 => group space S3 for the observables {^, _}

          Parallelised S7 => 'group space' S7 for the observables {A,B,...}

          A straightforward argument doesn't seem to work, which is why I am asking :-)"

          Actually, that looks quite straightforward to me -- Joy has always emphasized completeness, i.e., that *all* quantum correlations are explained by his framework. The simply connected space completes all these measure values in a locally realistic manner.

          Tom

          Hi James, Tom,

          Yes James, I find this FQXi contest more exciting daily. There are great essays and fantastic conversations going on. I wish I had more bandwidth (me, not my computer!).

          Tom,

          Of course you may be right, and I'll grant that you probably understand Joy's framework as well as anyone, but I'm not sure that you understand Michael's theory. In any case, the conversation has truly become fascinating. And not just this one, but a number of other essays and associated comments. FQXi made an inspired choice of topic, and this may turn into a seminal event.

          Best,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          • [deleted]

          Edwin,

          To my level of understanding, this is monumental for theoretical physics:

          "The problem (ignored for almost a century) isn't dispersing wave packets in the atom, but the impossibility of such wave packets even existing in the atom.

          The Nature of the Wave Function

          The particle-plus-wave is real, but de Broglie failed to specify just what the wave is. We do so here, beginning with an equation from general relativity."

          Was beginning to reread your essay just now and am continuing to read though it carefully.

          James

            Hi James,

            I agree. And I think there are quite a few monumental points being raised. And I assume many more essays are still to come.

            I'm glad you are re-reading my essay. I believe many of the current essays need to be read and re-read (and maybe re-read again.)

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            5 days later
            • [deleted]

            Edwin,

            I noted your comment about reading the soliton reference I cited in a comment on John Macken's essay. The universe has a habit of being consistent in presenting a particular manifestation. Since researchers have started looking, soliton action has been identified in a wide spectrum of processes.

            I made a comment in another essay, "the universe has very efficient energy transfer processes and the soliton is one manifestation of this process." So far, I have found just one essay in this contest where the author mentioned soliton and it was a very minor element.

            You made the statement in response to Gary Simpson (Jul. 8, 2012 @ 00:40 GMT)

            "I tend to think of the handedness as originating in general relativity, and Schrodinger just has to live with it, but there may be other fruitful ways to conceive of it." Right and left hand conventions have been used before quantum mechanics. In the Whyte article cited below, "Oersted (1820) discovered the anomalous R-handed screw action of an electric current on a magnet." The "right-hand" rule for expressing vector directions has been around well over a century.

            Chirality

            Many more handedness examples have been found since the Whyte article was published, but I have not found a good compilation of them.

            I consider a soliton as a permitted process, probably mandatory in some processes, wherein I consider handedness the result of some "universal" influence.

              Hi Frank,

              I agree that a soliton is a 'permitted' process, whereas handedness is 'universal' in character. In the above remark I did not mean that the handedness was 'new' to Schrodinger, only that the *left* handedness I refer to in my essay is based in general relativity, at least a decade before Schrodinger's equation was derived. Even this can be misleading, as Schrodinger's idea of the wave function is different from the explanation given in my essay. Schrodinger, as far as I know, had no knowledge of the handedness under discussion here.

              As noted, I did find your "Numerical Simulation of Electromagnetic Solitons" reference interesting, although I haven't had time (or energy) to check the math.

              Thanks for commenting on my thread.

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              • [deleted]

              Edwin,

              The metric reversal effect I mentioned to you earlier also arose in the discussion of apparent non-locality on Tom's thread, and I illustrated the effect with a toy model in the first 1 page attachment. In the second 1 page attachment I illustrate a toy model version of the particle-with-wave scenario as it arises in my essay, but hopefully the more general point should be clear about how such a change in the background metric could give a particle-with-wave model that might not fall foul to local causality issues.

              MichaelAttachment #1: 1_Local_to_nonlocal.pdfAttachment #2: Particle_with_wave.pdf

                Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman and Shan Gao,

                Edwin is right. Superposition of wave function associated with different objects leads us to observe them. In PicoPhysics this issue is integrated with action at distance and concept of exchange particle as the mode of interaction between objects. PicoPhysics view on the subject (Though discussed at stage 3 - only stage 1 is available at picophysics.org) is as below:

                Superposition:

                Space is not conserved but uniform and isotropic at micro level. At macro level, it is defined by space density gradient which can be resolved into three components along the three co-ordinates of reference system attached to observer. Similarly, Object as an observer has a reference system attached. Now the density gradient is with respect to this reference.

                The axis of the two reference systems can be assumed aligned and a picture drawn with respect to space density gradient. Knergy content in each object reacts with space as per unary law 'Space contains Knergy'.

                Conservation of space makes no room for limitation on space density. The superposition of effect of presence of objects in space is absolute.

                Space density

                That is how, superposition, effect of presence of different objects in space is computable in complex geometrical distribution.

                The density gradient itself is result of consumption of space by Knergy and affinity of space to possess Knergy. This consumption signifies non-conserved character of space.

                To address the perturbation introduced by presence of Knergy in space, PicoPhysics introduce g-space as geometrical space, and r-space the real space. The space density is seen as ratio of r-space to g-space.

                Space density = r-space/g-space.

                Kambhar

                The qualification of space as real and geometric is not kind to human perceptions about space. To keep the Space-Knergy dynamic with-in bounds the g-space is identified with space of mainstream physics. Real-space is given an alternative interpretation, 'Kambhar - host reality to anti-Konservation'. The ratio of this reality with respect to 3-D occupied space (G-Space) is now the density that defines Space-Knergy kinematics. Knergy is identified with Kambhar motion in space. The drift speed of Knergy in space is requirement of Unary law, independent of distribution of Knergy in g-space and governed by this density.

                Wave-function:

                When large amount of Knergy forming a large front confronts another similar front, then the conditions an develop in interference zone where it is not possible to satisfy the unary law - the drift speed, as a function of space density, independent of any particular distribution. So a complimentary process of conversion is hypothesised, which toggles Kambhar under such conditions into the complementary state. The interaction between the two states is only through conversion interaction. Knergy distributed in g-space can be hosted by Kambhar in either state. Kambhar in either state is conserved (Konserved but convertible to the other state).

                Kd = K1 + iK2

                Wave Function is function that describes the change in magnitude composition of Kambhar with position and time in space. Thus wave-function of quantum mechanics is seen as representing the Knergy density in space. It may be noted that PicoPhysics binds the space occupied by unit Knergy into a single unit to the observer. Schrödinger equation now represents the principle of least action, action being the result of non-Konservation of space. The details will be available at picophysics.org.

                Thanks and best regards,

                Vijay Gupta

                  Sorry, the Microsoft equation did not show-up. Below is an attempt to re-introduce the same,

                  Kd = K1 iK2

                  wave function = (K12 K22)eia

                  where

                  tan (a) = K1 / K2

                  Positive sign still not coming.