Bit is It by Mikalai Birukou

There is no physical difference between the microscopic and the macroscopic. Each particle is unique as is each galaxy. Each particle only exists once as does each galaxy. Each bit is unique. Each it is unique. Each bit only exists once. Each it only exists once.

Mikalai

Re postulate 1: Whatever constitutes the 'substance' of physical existence cannot be annihilated and re-created. What alters is the physically existent state of it (or them, if there is more than one type of fundamental substance).

Re postulate 2: There is nothing probabilistic about physical existence, neither is there any uncertainty or difference in any given reality. Otherwise physical existence could not occur. It is our problem in defining what did so, and that must not be deemed to be a characteristic of reality.

Re postulate 3: There exists no such thing as systems, this is a conceptualisation. Neither is there a "transition from some initial state to a final state". There is a sequence of existent states, each being different.

Re posulate 4: The closed system point is irrelevant. By definition, physical interaction can only occur at any given time (ie whatever can only be a cause of the next effect in the sequence) under certain conditions of spatial position and sequence order. Physical influence cannot 'jump' physical circumstance. And for something to have physical influence it must be physically existent.

"A change of states in quantum system is time"

Nearly, it is the rate at which different states occur, not the actual event. Which, leaving aside the notions of 'change' and 'system' indicates that time is not a feature of any given state of existence, it is concerned with the turnover rate thereof.

Paul

Joe

Correct. Physical existence can only occur in one fundamental way. It does not have different ways of operating. That is a function of our misconceptualisation of what is actually going on. But then be careful with the notion of particle and what constitutes a bit, as per my post on your blog.

Paul

To Joe, on "Physical existence can only occur in one fundamental way."

True. That is why lots of us are trying to find a way to fit Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Relativity theories. And the main problem is in Time, or how differently it comes in both of these theories.

Yet, if we close our eyes on this "cloud" over physics, Quantum Field Theories of Standard Model provides a good tool for predicting phenomena at smallest scale seen by man (recall recent discovery of predicted Higgs boson).

Conceptual step from QFT to QM is done in papers from 1940's, one of which was by Feynman. Its a bridge, or translation between QFT and QM languages, but existence of said bridge is a testament to the fact that these languages tell the same story.

Conceptual step from QM to Classical Mechanics is taught as a calculation problem in a class, were initial Schrodinger's equation in path integration (thank Feynman again) leads to classical action.

So, we do have "one fundamental way" to talk about nature. This way involves using languages that are efficient at their respective levels. And this point is illustrated nicely in "More is Different" by Anderson, reference #2 in essay. Google pdf file. It is a nice read.

Paul,

#1. We may want to use classical-like substance for fundamental level, but a story about luminiferous aether teaches us that this prejudice towards every-day concepts may not work. And postulate #1 takes concepts that are used in QFT's that predicted top quark and recently Higgs boson. Nothing new, only what nature does, whether we like it or not.

#2. Ask people at LHC if they can pin-point when and which event shall happen. With certainty. Nature is such, that this cannot be done, again, whether we like it, or not. And in postulate #2 we postulate experience, no more.

#3. On "There is a sequence of existent states, each being different." This statement is very, very general, and is true due to its generality. Unfortunately, this generality makes it useless in the quantum lab. On another hand, QM is usable, but it has its pains, which essay addresses.

#4. You missed the point here. It is obvious that information transfer should occur only via physical interaction. But it is not obvious that it leads to quantum entanglement, a behaviour very different from that of classical systems. Check references on EPR and Bell's theorem.

When we say that change of states is time, we highlight that time is a description of states, or their changes. It is relative, as opposed to absolute time. That is a point of such expression.

Joe,

Unfortunately, if we insist on all particles being unique, then lots of things in quantum experiments cannot be explained. But if we replace this every-day notions, as nature suggests, we are able to make progress.

Mikalai

1 I did not refer to a "classical like substance", but to whatever constitutes that. By definition, for there to be existence there must be something (or a variety of somethings). It is no consequence as to what it is in order to make the point that what alters is the physically existent state. There is an important distinction between whatever it is, and the state it is in, at any given time.

2 Whether people can identify any given physically existent state, which I think is probably impossible, is irrelevant. Physical existence does not therefore possess some form of 'vagueness'. It is definitive, we just do not have the ability to identify it.

3 It is a generic statement, how that manifests in reality is to be identified. But it certainly does not make it useless, because if people pursue science on the basis that physical existence does not occur that way, then they are going to create metaphysical theories.

4 Physically, what is "information transfer"?

"When we say that change of states is time, we highlight that time is a description of states, or their changes. It is relative, as opposed to absolute time. That is a point of such expression.

There cannot be a description of a state or change. If change there is a different state. Time is associated with difference, specifically the rate at which that difference occurs, as opposed to what the difference was or the sequence order of the differences. Everything is relative, in so far as anything can only be identified as a difference to something else. The rate of alteration is therefore calibrated with reference to another rate (this is timing), and the timing system is referenced to a conceptual constant rate of alteration. This is the purpose of synchronising timing devices.

Paul

Mikalai, you have provided a very intriguing and bold essay. Your aims are certainly admirable, but I think your argumentation in some places is a little too heuristic (though this might be owed to length constraints). One thing I noticed that's probably not quite right is in section 7: here, you say basically that the apparent increase in mass due to relativistic speeds is due to increased interaction with the Higgs field. But if I'm not mistaken, the Higgs interaction is responsible for a particle's invariant mass, i.e. the mass it possesses in its rest frame; you can see that by the fact that the relevant Yukawa coupling terms in the Lagrangean are Lorentz scalars, as they must be. The 'mass increase' (which is generally a deprecated term; usually, the fundamental mass of a particle is considered to be its invariant mass) is really just an increase in the total energy of a particle moving at relativistic speeds, having nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism. (In fact, most mass doesn't: quark and lepton masses provide an almost negligible part of the masses of the atoms.)

Also, I'm not quite sure I understand the detailed mechanism through which your 'Waterloo formulation' of QM solves the measurement problem, as you claim: how do you go from a state that's a superposition of measurement outcomes to a post-measurement state in which only one of the terms in this superposition, i.e. the actual measurement outcome, survives?

Jochen,

I'll do a post for each of your two questions.

Let's take first your "... not quite sure I understand the detailed mechanism through which your 'Waterloo formulation' of QM solves the measurement problem".

Postulate #3 about interaction of systems should apply to all systems indiscriminately. Anything we do in the lab is also described by it. There are no special 'measurement' interactions!

Your see, in Waterloo formulation we do not postulate Hilbert space upfront. This allows us (a) not to have to explain 'collapse' of this mathematical entity to just one outcome (like Copenhagen), and (b), not to have to pretend that the space of possibilities is just hidding (like multi-world implication of Everett's initial thesis).

But if, as according to the postulate, only one of the possibilities [math]|\psi_j\rangle |\phi_j\rangle[\equation] actually occurs, then you don't get any entanglement, since these are only product states. Entanglement only exists in states like [math]|\psi_1\rangle |\phi_1\rangle |\psi_2\rangle |\phi_2\rangle[\equation], that can't be written in tensor product form. Or in other words, as long as you only consider pairs of states as valid endpoints for any interaction, the combined Hilbert space of both systems will just be the direct product of the two systems' Hilbert spaces, rather than the tensor product space, and you only include those states in the Segre embedding of the full space---but those are just the separable states.

Or am I misreading your postulate?

Entanglement.

We, an external system, see two systems as being entangled because of confinement of their interaction. That is postulate 4. There is no need to put any 'magical juice' into existence postulates in order to get quantum entanglement.

Jochen,

Second technical question about Higgs mechanism for mass. Although you pin-point a technicality of currently done calculations, I want to make couple of remarks:

a) At the fundamental level we do not assume existence of a space. Any space. This sort of nukes the whole framework of calculations, which we currently (highlight currently) do. But to gain technical precision, which you ask for, we need to first go through contruction of a metric on top of point. This, most probably, will do something for divergent quantities we have, etc., i.e. we'll have to go through Standard Model again, keeping in mind new definitions of space and time. And only then we will be able to settle an argument precisely.

b) Even without Higgs, in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) we do a little calculation where we have a bare mass, and we assemble an effective mass. We renormalize something :) . So, there are many ways to 'skin this cat', so to speak.

Paul,

On, 'Physically, what is "information transfer"?' It is illustrated precisely in Shannon's work on communication, were he introduces quantified measure of information. That is reference #1 in essay, take a look.

On, too general of a statement, to be useful in the lab. I want to remind you the way it all done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffr69ZovHKc We make a statement, then refine it, making it more rigorous, and less general, so that we can calculate something, and then we compare it to experiment. Without these meticulous steps, initial grand statement is worthless, no matter how nicely it sounds (highlight sounds).

Hi Mikalai,

I think you are 100% on the right track, just like DR. Philip Gibbs. All that, are in line with my own ideas which I hope I can submit, time permitting. Especially the part where space is emergent from "particle events" and time is nothing but a change in state. This exactly what my upcoming theory predicts in a very clear and unambiguous way. Moreover I reproduce a lot of the standard QM/QFT results plus some other simply stunning results. I am sure you will love it because it is all through simulation.

And it is funny, I have used your Wheeler's last paragraph as the opening to my website ! which I created three years ago.

But let me ask you this. Would your theory be able to derive QFT or gravity or calculate the SM constants or CC to name a few?

We are basing ourselves on concepts from QFT in order to have compact and clean foundation, on which QM can be formulated. This part I consider complete.

The spacetime business needs ideas and exact calculations to arrive at Minkowski thing. Sort of like Sorkin & Co do, but for all four dimensions. Once this is done, one will need to apply this to QFTs of SM. If any parameters will happen to be derived, instead of inserted, if scale problem disappears, if renormalization procedure(s) starts to have a physical background, then kudos. But at this point I won't speculate. All that we have at this moment is a clean foundation for QM, which also gives a huge hint at how spacetime emerges.

Yet, in the absence of complete math for spacetime, we may think of a shortcut calculation for gravitational constant, using existing higgs math. But this is also just a speculation, for now.

I put a link to Wheeler's paper into references. Its a pdf, located somewhere in the cloud. Use direct text. By the way, Anderson's "More is Different" can be found in pdf with google. I've read when writing this essay. It is a profound piece.

I love your writing style! I have just read two first sections so far. Regarding this many world idea. Is it more propable that entanglement of two systems most likely vanishes at some point in time? "The chain" so to speak is broken down by some other events in space. More the nearby events more likely that break down.

I'm heading to the section seven and still loving your essay. I insist that you read this paper immediately -> http://toebi.com/documents/ToEbi.pdf

I'm sure that you will find it more than interesting.

Without that Higgs part it would have been perfect. But definitely the best essay so far!

Hmm, I can't seem to figure out how to apply your postulate 4 to reproduce the phenomenology of entanglement. Perhaps we can work through a concrete example together?

First, picture two two-level quantum system in your favourite physical realization---trapped ions, electron spins, polarized photons, whatever. I'll write as if I had electron spins in my mind, but of course everything readily translates. We can measure the electron spin in two bases,

[math]\lbrace|0\rangle,|1\rangle\rbrace[/math]

and

[math]\lbrace|\rangle=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0\rangle|1\rangle),|-\rangle=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0\rangle-|1\rangle)\rbrace[/math]

Now, we let the two particles interact to produce the state (in conventional quantum mechanics)

[math]1: \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0\rangle_A|0\rangle_B |1\rangle_A|1\rangle_B)[/math]

Here, the index refers to the party that has access to each particle, A for Alice and B for Bob. Now if Alice does a measurement in the {|0>,|1>} basis, it's plain to see that she will either obtain the 1 or 0 with 50% probability each. If Bob then does a subsequent measurement, he will obtain the same value as Alice with certainty---their measurements are perfectly correlated.

However, in your case, according to your postulate 3, after the interaction between both parties, we have either the state

[math]2a:|0\rangle_A|0\rangle_B[/math]

or the state

[math]2b:|1\rangle_A|1\rangle_B[/math]

with presumably 50% probability for the alternatives (though you don't seem to discuss how to get the usual Born probabilities in your framework). Now, if Alice does a measurement, she will again get either 0 or 1 with 50% probability, and again a subsequent measurement by Bob will agree with certainty. So all is well so far.

But now consider measurements in the {|>,|->}-basis. In this basis, the state 1 is written as:

[math]3: \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|\rangle_A|\rangle_B |-\rangle_A|-\rangle_B)[/math]

So the same conclusions as above apply: Alice measures, gets with 50% probability either or -, and Bob's subsequent measurement will perfectly agree.

But in your case, the state (for example) 2b expanded in the {|>,|->}-base, is:

[math]4: \frac{1}{2}(|\rangle_A|\rangle_B - |\rangle_A|-\rangle_B - |-\rangle_A|\rangle_B |-\rangle_A|-\rangle_B)[/math]

So if Alice now measures in this basis, she will obtain either or - with 50% probability, but if Bob then performs a measurement, he too will obtain either option with 50% probability, independently of what Alice has obtained! So their measurements will be wholly uncorrelated, in contrast to the standard quantum account on which they will be perfectly correlated.

So, my question now is, how does your postulate 4 work to avert this disaster?