An Accidental Universe

John,

First, we have to be on the same page .

You and others assume what you expect "reality" has to be, according to your logical intuition, thus letting your personal beliefs color your opinion. Albrecht and Phillips don't make that mistake -- whereas you ask, "How do the emergent, higher orders arise from this apparently chaotic, quantum state? How do the probabilities collapse into actualities?" -- they ask, what happens if all randomness is fundamentally quantum?

Then there is no collapse. The "equally likely" hypothesis of mathematical probability applies across every scale. This is the same essential finding of the Joy Christian model -- though while Christian's research is concerned with reproducing quantum correlations in the S^7 topological limit, Albrecht generalizes without limit, finding that n-dimension extension of quantum probability implies a continuous function. If one understands how analysis and probability fundamentally work, this should be a VERY exciting research direction, because it points to how they can work TOGETHER -- i.e., continuous probability without boundary is a continuous function of unbounded time.

The framework also has the potential to explain the relativistic limit of our own "pocket" of the multiverse -- why time is a simple parameter of reversible trajectory, while other pockets are not constrained by this parameter. Which might be a very strong clue to the apparent self organized nature of our world, for which self-limitation is essential.

Tom

Paul,

In an earlier post, to my "I agree there are no fundamental physical laws that can describe the Universe" you say, "Incorrect".

In your last post to me, you write "no we cannot know the universe".

How can we know "fundamental physical laws that can describe the Universe" yet not know what is the Universe?

Please explain.

Constantinos

Sorry, lost my log in.

Tom

Tom,

Obviously I fall in the second camp. Something is missing.

I would agree that cat is necessarily self limiting, but that doesn't seem to be what they are saying.

The math may well be pointing to pocket universes, but there do seem to emergent levels of constraints not fully explained by a strictly bottom up theory.

To put it in biological terms, it seems to get to the viral level, but not be able to explain higher orders. Is that due to insufficient levels of complexity, or is something being overlooked on a fundamental level.

Obviously I've expressed various thoughts on the subject, not to have to repeat them, but from a strictly tactical viewpoint, sometimes stepping backward a few steps can give perspective that is not visible from close inspection.

Time is the same throughout physics formulation with the exception of thermodynamics. If you can accept the fact that space vibrates, you have a real clock with an arrow of time. The FOXi community is the best place for new ideas but is it the best place for ideas that work? What a proof means is someone is wrong. What a physical proof means is many people are obviously wrong. Do you think FOXi is the place for proof?

" ... sometimes stepping backward a few steps can give perspective that is not visible from close inspection."

If you really did think that, John, you would see that the many worlds hypothesis is as far back as one can step. More important, though, it has the advantage of being tractable to technical treatment as a physical framework. Your view simply doesn't have that foundation.

Tom

Anonymous,

There's no such thing as a physical proof. Physical validation of a scientific theory is simply the correspondence between mathematical theory (which is only component of science supported by formal proofs) and physical phenomena as observed.

Accepting that "space vibrates" (quantum fluctuations) is actually what Albrecht's research begins with. We know that Nature's thermodynamic "real clock with an arrow of time" is not singular, or else spacetime fluctuations would be meaningless -- i.e., if the "clock" only ticked one time, the world would have a singular smooth history and quantum mechanics would not exist. In the Albrecht framework, clocks tick continuously at local rates that vary in an infinite, perfect randomness (cf. coin toss probability).

The idea certainly works, because it allows an exact standard of disorder against which to measure the origin of every manifestation of order in our world.

Why would FQXi not be an appropriate place to air ideas that work?

Tom

Regarding: "Accepting that "space vibrates" (quantum fluctuations) is actually what Albrecht's research begins with." :

Back and forth, back and forth, forth and back, Matter to Space, Space to Matter, virtual particles out of thin Space, Black Holes from Spacetime, Expanding Universe from Stellar matter, new Bohr orbitals, back and forth; this is all in CIG's equation!: MTS

Please understand the theory.

Tom,

"We know that Nature's thermodynamic "real clock with an arrow of time" is not singular, or else spacetime fluctuations would be meaningless -- i.e., if the "clock" only ticked one time, the world would have a singular smooth history and quantum mechanics would not exist. In the Albrecht framework, clocks tick continuously at local rates that vary in an infinite, perfect randomness (cf. coin toss probability)."

Doesn't that make time a measure of that activity, like temperature?

John,

"Doesn't that make time a measure of that activity, like temperature?"

This gets the same 'so what' from me, as it always has. Your understanding of the difference between a measurement and a physical phenomenon hasn't advanced in all these years -- your claim about time and temperature is equivalent to saying that a meter stick is identical to the marks on the stick. The statement isn't untrue; neither, however, does it have any physical meaning.

Tom

Constantinos

Sorry that was just a slip with the negative or the word Universe. My point is that we can have fundamental physical laws to explain physical existence (ie existence as knowable-directly or potentially-to us). We obviously cannot have physical laws to explain existence (or whatever label is used to denote what is 'really' there), because as part of it, we cannot externalise ourselves from it, and hence acquire a reference ahgainst which to judge what it is. The point then being, so what physical process enables awareness of existence (ie knowledge), and hence how can that physical existence occur. In other words, what is physics investigating. Because if it does not first identify that, in logical terms, then it is (and has) very likely that it will slip into metaphysical presumptions about how physical existence is constituted.

So, going back to my last point, why not take a blank sheet of paper, and address the question, what, generically, is happening. Forget all your physics, basic questions, just what physcally enables us to know, what are the key characteristics of this process, how can what we can know physically exist. This might sound trivial, but I can assure you that once those questions are answered, it will become obvious what is wrong with certain major physical theories. I will put up a one page answer in a couple of days for you to compare notes.

Paul

Doug

"If it moves, it becomes spatial, and is no longer a point particle. It is a wave"

If it physically exists it is spatial. If it moves, it just has a different spatial position from previously, and it is still a point particle. It cannot be physically existent in different spatial locations at the same time. So, what is being said here is that these particles move in a wave like manner, as opposed to (say) a zig-zag, or randomly. My point to Peter being that a wave is not a physically existent entity.

Time dilation is non-existent, physical existence occurs. What happens with light, which is of itself physically existent, during its existence is an entirely different issue. c is the speed of light, not physical existence.

Paul

doug,

Yes. I agree. But with caveats; As infinite electron microscopes confirm, there is no such thing as a 'point' (Paul please note that point! (lol). If it is non zero spatially when at rest it in NOT a 'point! If it IS zero, then it does not exist so is only metaphysical. 'Lines' are the same. If they have zero thickmness they CANNOT EXIST. So let's be clear, points and lines are metaphysical, so of very limited use use for any physical theory.

When a non zero point moves it becomes another 3D form, so a tube, torus or helix (i.e. DNA as a 'tube). Now, insofar as a helix may be said from any viewpoint to describe a fluctuation, which is a REAL motion of a real entity, then it is a physical entity (Unfortunately we again lost Paul at the start line).

In fact I'd go further, pointing out the matter of 'spin' which infers that all particles are in motion, and again do not exist if there is no 'spin'!

But now let's stop assuming things and look more carefully at what 'speed' and 'motion' are. They are relative concepts. Something we to oft ignore. Find a particle in space, then tell me if it's 'moving'.

You're immediately in trouble. You have to find some datum. And yo CAN'T say it's moving with respect to it's previous 'rest' state, because that STATE may equally be considered to have been motion, and the acceleration actually deceleration, to a stop!

So: Analysis; There must always be a local background frame as a datum state for any 'speed'. Yes?

(This is VERY fundamental so requires the removal of decades of stupidities - and will prove VERY important).

Peter

John,

Frequency and amplitude are not equivalent; they are measured independently. A higher frequency, e.g., does not imply a higher or lower wave amplitude.

Regarding time and temperature, the same applies: time does not run faster or slower with an increase in temperature. Temperature measures the difference in speed between faster moving and slower moving molecules in a given domain, and averages them -- that says nothing about what an individual molecule is doing, no more than an increased frequency of oscillations (a complete cycle of crest and trough) says anything about the amplitude of the wave.

Getting back to the meter stick and the gradations marked thereon -- a meter stick is useful for measuring lengths less than the stick or any interval marked on it. It is not useful for measuring how many intervals there are in the universe. If time and temperature were equivalent, this would be the case -- because as every mathematician knows, there are as many points in this line: __ , as there are in this one: _____________, and as many in both as in the whole universe. How many? -- infinite.

It is the same with temperature -- there are an infinite states in which particles may be found, in any interval. If you understand Albrecht's hypothesis, you'll see that the free choice of interval determines the initial (cosmological) condition that led to the state.

This means that whatever mantra you invoke to try and identify time with temperature as a smooth function of uniform motion (E.g., "Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the Earth rotates"), the physics is against you. Tomorrows and yesterdays are all of one piece, and their clocks are random variables.

Tom

A mathematical proof is what was presented by (Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett and Terry Rudolph) on 02-28-2012 from the Imperial College London's mathematics department. "On the reality of the quantum state", in this article they reached the conclusion that wave functions actually exist.

The conclusion that wave functions exist had already been proven physically and peer-review published over a year before that publication. The mathematical proof was attacked because the logic could be attacked. The physical proof was validated when formulations were produced to explain the motion of binary stars. The physical proof not only said wave functions exist but it was the first successful link between quantum-like structures and the complex motion of stars. It also explained why wave functions exist. The physical proof showed that quantum mechanics has absolutely nothing to do with scale, a number of experiments had already conjectured a no scale limit. Is FQXi the place for ideas that work? When an idea actually works there is a different response to it than ideas that are conjectures. The response is usually to systematic attack to remove access to the literature. Prof. Albrecht has a conjecture which in part can be proven correct.

Take the double slit experiment. Take two sources and build a wall between them such that they are isolated one source from the other. Each impinges on its own slit. Behind the slits, is the screen upon which the source photons (electrons) ultimately end up. When "either/or" (but not both) source is on, the screen will reflect a single line, as the Spatial wavefront had nothing to interefere with. Nonetheless it was a spatial wavefront, not a stream of particles.

With both sources on, there will be two wavefronts, each source sending the spatial form of its orginal particle through its own slit, and we see the interferrence pattern.

CIG - explains the creation of new Space from Matter: MTS

doug,

I reported on a number of similar experiments here; Aberration

The the 'one line' isn't the right description as fringes derive from the slit edges of a single slit, but this even more strongly confirms wave based theory. In fact the HFP describes the positions and amplitudes very well.

Two separate sources are a big problem as their phases would have to be tuned in advance!

The waves are quantized again on interaction with the surface, so giving the illusion of particles.

The claims of firing single photons' are also unproven and remain highly suspect. It's only just now been shown probably possible possible to keep a single one extant within a cavity for picoseconds!

Matter is however created as easily as em waves 'striking' others, i.e. at the refractive plane transition zone. The Unruh effect put it down to 'acceleration' but it hasn't been found as it's not, it's simple relative speed through the QV. AE called it the photo-electric effect, or photo-ionization when very first discovered and not understood (as still seems largely the case now!).

I agree when the focussed energy that is matter reverts back to dark energy (annihilation) it still takes up space!

Peter

Copy of APS post ref Coin Toss findings of Tempt Destiny project of Manuel Morales. (for anyone interested in chance)

You asked, if ".. I'm saying causality is also exclusively probabilistic." then how do you know? What makes probability probable?

OK, two ways. Firstly from first principles considering every reaction to every causal action in the universe has a PAD, so non zero likelihood. That is my (new); 'Law of the Reducing (not excluded) Middle'. Of course selection defines the particular QPAD for each case, and what area of the curve we're working in (a PAD of PADS) but, as I said earlier, even dropping the coin directly over the cup there's a small non-zero chance it will bounce out. (PAD is 'probability amplitude distribution').

Secondly mechanistic and using quantum dynamic logic. There's now a better Lagrangian based method using LCS's, but consider a vector field; a balloon filled with gas with 100bn particles, each with different unique vectors. Send a soliton or short EM signal through it. Then two more identical ones. Each will causally interact and scatter with the gas particles it encounters.

But their state on exiting will depend on the state of the particle or surface 'last scattered', so each will be found different. Navier-Stokes finds the computable limit, which seems never better than within ~25%.

However. don't loose sight of the Lagrangian angle, which clarifies the matter of kinetic objectivity. In practice this means the balloon itself may be assigned a group state of motion, which, from a lab frame, and using Clausius's virial theorem, will then be an average of all the gas particle vectors. The is equivalent to the Montevideo interpretation of QM. Now the important bit. Light passes through the balloon at c wrt the balloon, which is a DISCRETE FIELD kinetically (or 'inertial system' or 'frame'), so conserves 'objectivity', which then also produces the underlying mechanism for CSL, with scintillation!

If the observer moves then the balloon velocity relative to him varies. He may then see apparent c+v (don't panic!) but nothing is actually propagating at c

Anonymous,

It has long been known that quantum theory cannot be internally consistent if it does not apply to the entire universe. In other words, if "the quantum" were not independent of magnitude, there would be no smooth connection between what we call quantum and classical domains; if we could tell the difference, the world would operate by different physics at the two scales. We know, however, that there is no physical point of demarcation between quantum and classical mechanics.

I think that Pusey, et al, are not so much concerned with proving that the wave function is real, as they are in showing that information is real: " ... many will continue to view the quantum state as representing information. One approach is to take this to be information about possible measurement outcomes, and not about the objective state of a system. Another is to construct concrete models of reality wherein one or more of our assumptions fail."

The physical reality of information is Wheeler's conjecture -- a world made entirely of information corresponds perfectly to mathematical theories of communication, and the whole of physics is comprised of bodies in communication.

Do bodies fail to communicate? -- according to relativity, only when causally separated by distances that light cannot have traveled.

If we apply the relativistic limit to the quantum universe, a continuous wave function (field theory) implies a multiverse -- i.e., we cannot speak of the collapse of the wavefunction; we must consider it a physically real phenomenon and test it against field-theoretic relativity. If general relativity fails, so does quantum field theory -- which is no victory for quantum mechanics, because now "the quantum" has no way to communicate with any other quantum, which is how Pusey et al " ... present a no-go theorem: if the quantum state merely represents information about the real physical state of a system, then experimental predictions are obtained which contradict those of quantum theory."

The information, IOW, has to be physical. An objective state.

I appreciate that you can say, "The physical proof showed that quantum mechanics has absolutely nothing to do with scale, a number of experiments had already conjectured a no scale limit. Is FQXi the place for ideas that work? When an idea actually works there is a different response to it than ideas that are conjectures."

That's sociology, though, not science. An idea that works on FQXi works in any other venue.

"The response is usually to systematic attack to remove access to the literature. Prof. Albrecht has a conjecture which in part can be proven correct."

Oh, I think it is correct -- in principle. What doubters want is more than internal consistency -- they want something like Einstein's eclipse experiment. Pusey et al may explain the motion of binary stars -- (research I'm not personally familiar with, but sounds interesting and I'll look into it) -- yet so may other competing theories. A novel prediction is more convincing.

Be assured, though, that belief in collapse of the wavefunction won't die easily.

Tom