Alan, nice essay. I'd just like to point out that current technology is capable of determining whether black holes are possible. Unless there is something seriously wrong with the scientific establishment, there should be some resolution to the question of black holes by the end of the decade. The missions proposed will be as historic as Eddington's nearly a century ago, whatever the outcome. We live in interesting times.

For example, the Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) would be capable of duplicating Eddington's measurement of deflection of starlight due to the Sun except with much greater accuracy using laser interferometry. The predicted accuracy is enough to measure the second order term in the expansion of your equation (5) which would be negative in the case of general relativity, and positive with twice the magnitude for the metric in your essay. Yet another choice is the exponential metric which has a positive second order term equal in magnitude to that of general relativity and is an approach I think you would find interesting. In my last year's essay there is a novel derivation based on a modern reformulation of Newtonian gravitational potential energy. -Colin

    Colin,

    You make an excellent point. What distinguishes science from pure philosophy is that science is subject to experimental or observational tests that may contradict a theory or interpretation. However, showing that a particular theory is consistent with the given evidence does not prove that the theory will be correct in other regimes. As new evidence becomes available, we should be prepared for surprises that may alter our understanding of the universe.

    Alan

    4 days later

    • [deleted]

    • Post #27

    Dear Alan,

    You wrote "the concept of absolute Newtonian time is contrary to physical evidence". While I am inclined to again appreciate some of your heretical thoughts, I would like to know what evidence you referred to.

    It happens I share Paul's view: We may blame Einstein for adopting from Poincaré or perhaps his teacher Alfred Potier a principle of synchronization that was only correct on condition there is no relative motion between emitter A and reflector B. Otherwise it destroys the symmetry and synchrony between A and B. Einstein made the next mistake when he calculated with c+v and c-v and arrived at the unfounded conclusion that two events that are simultaneous if seen from one coordinate system must not be considered simultaneous if seen from a coordinate system in relative motion to it. Actually, it is only reasonable to attribute the velocity of light to the distance between the position of the emitter at the moment of emission and the position of the detector at the moment of detection divided by the time of flight.

    Regards,

    Eckard

    10 days later

    Alan,

    A very enjoyable read, not just as it's well written and argued but because I agree with not only your thesis but most of the detail. In may ways our essays firmly support each other as they have many basics in common, founded on the power of orbital angular momentum (OAM).

    Your approach is well balanced between the theoretic and physical. If anything mine errs more to the physical and experimental proofs, but also delves into some more fundamental limits on mathematical applications to QM. I think you may understand and like my 'test' of OAM and the principles discussed for resolving power in the EPR paradox. I suspect and fear the resolution may be beyond the power of many others to follow. I greatly look forward to your comments.

    Best of luck in the contest. I think the essay certainly deserves a much higher score that it so far carries. A sad indictment on something or other!

    Best wishes

    Peter Jackson

      Peter,

      Thank you for your comments. I will read your essay carefully. Regarding Community Ratings, I have been keeping track of the individual ratings on my essay, and the distribution is bimodal - 1 and 2 alternating with much higher numbers. I suspect that the low scores may come from people who do not read past the unconventional assertions in the abstract.

      Alan

      Dear Alan,

      I think it is important to look for a consistent picture of Quantum Mechanics, in particular of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), how do you do it. But I think, too, that every attempt to solve the wave-particle duality in favor of a wave-like or particle-like picture does not work.

      You may be successful to a certain degree but at the end you will be faced with unsolvable problems, because wave-particle duality is a semi-fundamental feature of reality, which reflects a deeper still unseen logical duality of the ultimate foundational background (i.e. the quantum vacuum).

      As QED is a theory in that special relativity is built into each of its equations, special relativity is one of its crucial points. Einstein's theory determines essentially our view and understanding of Lorentz symmetry.

      But if we go back to the time when Einstein formulated special relativity, we can see, he tried to explain away the wave-particle duality that was already touched by this theory.

      According to A. Pais it is indeed a very striking characteristic of Einstein's early scientific writing that he left relativity theory separate from quantum theory, even on occasions where it would have been natural and straightforward to connect them. This separation is already evident in his paper on special relativity. It contains the transformation law for the energy E of a light beam, which Einstein commented in an unusual way: 'It is remarkable that the energy and the frequency of a light complex vary with the state of motion of the observer in accordance with the same law.'

      This statement is unusual insofar as Einstein had completed his light quantum paper concerning just this issue three months earlier. It was thus a good opportunity to refer to the quantum relation between energy and frequency of light, which must have been quite fresh in his mind. But Einstein did not use this opportunity...

      But there is an aspect in special relativity that has been overlooked since 1905 - an aspect, that is of fundamental importantce. If light is really of dual nature, one would expect, that the speed of light c is also of dual nature, which means, the speed of light c should exist in a wave-like and in a particle-like way - an assumption which I am calling the "Dual Parametrization of c".

      But if we consider special relativity, in particular its second postulate, we can easily see, in Einstein's theory the speed of light c is only defined in a wave-like manner - without any (explicit) reference to a particle-like supplement.

      And just this dual nature of c can be expressed in a "space-time-picture" whose Lorentz symmetry differs significantly from the relativistic version.

      I am convinced that this new space-time-picture allows us to avoid many problems caused by the usual Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics.

      Though you are explicitly relating to the relativistic spacetime, your picture of a rotating vector field could possibly be a part of this new dualistic space-time-picture. Actually it is composed of a circle (= wave-like part of c) and a square (= particle-like part of c). In other words: It looks very much like a MANDALA, which is in its essence a specific vectorfield.

      Helmut,

      I appreciate your comments, and I agree that prior attempts to resolve wave-particle duality were unsuccessful. However, my essay shows explicitly how macroscopic particle trajectories may be derived from microscopic quantum waves, even including relativistic time effects. This approach avoids the conventional quantum indeterminacy which is incompatible with general relativity. There are no point particles; on a microscopic level, everything consists of distributed relativistic rotating vector fields with quantized spin. These can be fully visualized in real space; there is no mysterious nonlocal quantum entanglement. Yes, this is quite unconventional, but appears to be consistent with the real physical foundations of both quantum mechanics and relativity. This could have been proposed in the early days of QM, but apparently never was.

      Alan

      12 days later

      Dear Alan M. Kadin

      You've found our common problems : "The foundations of modern physics are neither consistent nor unified".But if the conclusion is : "The New Quantum Paradigm provides a logically consistent foundation for all of physics,and reestablishes the classical guiding principles of local reality and determinism."can be enough for us to solve all the problems of the theory on reality platform?what is the specific answers for problems on our topics ?

      http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

        7 days later

        Dear Alan,

        Nice to see such an original approach. Away from the contest I utilise geometry to explain spin and quantum entanglement as hidden fixed constants, so appreciated something along the lines which you work.

        Also, despite my essay concluding differently, I like that you are one of the few who opt for Bit from It, as I feel too many assume the opposite.

        Refreshing read!

        Best wishes,

        Antony

          Alan

          What do you thinking about variation rest mass of proton and electron?

          http://vixra.org/pdf/1212.0080v3.pdf

          Regards

          Yuri

            Yuri,

            With regard to the rest masses of elementary particles, I am suggesting that these decrease in a gravitational field, at least as far as their long-range gravitational influence outside the field. However, because of the slowing of the local clocks inside the field, any local measurements will obtain the standard unmodified values of the rest masses. That is a subtle but important distinction.

            Alan

            Antony,

            Thank you for your comments. From general principles, I am convinced that information needs to be based on something physical, a real representation in the real world. That was certainly the case with classical physics, and I believe that the more modern efforts at giving quantum mechanics magical and mysterious properties divorced from real pictures was unnecessary and misleading.

            Alan

            Hoang,

            This is the final sentence in the Conclusion of my Essay:

            In response to the essay question: "It from Bit, or Bit from It? ", this essay comes down decisively in support of the latter; all physical information flows from real objects in real space.

            Alan

            4 days later

            Alan,

            If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

            Jim

            Dear Alan,

            It was interesting to read about your NQP. Could you kindly point me to some of your work that contains the mathematics of NQP - I would be interested in reading about it.

            Do you find any parallels between NQP and Bohmian mechanics?

            One issue is not clear to me: if I understood you right, you make a distinction between elementary and composite objects, and you say that microscopic composites do not exhibit Schrodinger cat states. Now we know that experiments do show double slit interference for composites such as atoms, fullerenes and even heavier molecules. Now the interference pattern does not `know' whether the incoming particles are elementary or composite. Qualitatively, the pattern is the same in both cases. If I understand you right, if the incoming particles are electrons you use superposition to explain interference. But if these are composites, you use an explanation other than superposition. I wonder why this should be so, and what this different explanation is. All this is explained in your essay I think - I haven't grasped it though.

            Regards,

            Tejinder

              Tejinder,

              Thank you for reading my essay and for your questions.

              My essay last year dealt with wave-particle duality and quantum diffraction in more depth ("The Rise and Fall of Wave-Particle Duality" ). See also a paper from 2011, Waves, Particles, and Quantized Transitions: A New Realistic Model of the Microworld . Yes, it is generally believed that diffraction experiments with objects as large as buckyballs prove the existence of de Broglie waves for these objects. However, let me refer you to the published theoretical work of Prof. Van Vliet (Linear Momentum Quantization in Periodic Structures ), who pointed out that the screen that constitutes the slits must itself be considered a quantum object. Van Vliet showed using conventional quantum operators that any interaction involving momentum transfer between the incoming object and the slits requires a quantum transition subject to exactly the same constraints that one would obtain from a wave picture. So for example, neutron diffraction from a crystal does not prove that the neutron is a coherent de Broglie wave that extends over multiple lattice spacings. It could just as easily be a small bound particle on the fm scale, as indeed is obtained from nuclear scattering experiments.

              So what, then, actually proves that an electron is really a wave? A directional bond in a molecule (such as a p or d orbital) requires a superposition of electron waves rotating in opposite directions. But one never has states comprising superposition of rotations of molecules in both directions at the same time. (Molecular rotations are not excited inside a crystal.) That tells me that an electron is a wave, while a molecule is not.

              Note that this picture has NO point particles, in contrast to the Bohm-deBroglie pilot wave picture. But the quantum wave packet itself follows a quasi-classical trajectory, as derived directly from the quantum wave equation. No special decoherence is needed to recover classical physics, and there are no nonlocal influences.

              I am surprised that I have not been getting more questions about the major points of this year's essay: 1) General relativity may be simply derived from quantum waves, in a way that eliminates black holes, and (2) The generalized Quantum Hilbert Space Model, which gives rise to quantum entanglement and quantum computing, may be invalid.

              Yes, all this requires a radical re-thinking of physical pictures that have been well established for a century. But the very existence of this essay contest indicates that something is rotten in the state of physics.

              Alan

              The topic for this round of essays is broad; one could submit an essay on home repair and have a good argument that the essay was within topic. How can one have a point mass with angular momentum? Spin might not be the same as macroscopic angular momentum, but spin behaves like angular momentum. We have a possible answer - swirls instead of dots. In over-simplified terms, Wheeler's bits (or dots) are really wheels, the whole premise of "it from bit or bit from it" has started out on the wrong foot. This New Quantum Paradigm (NQP) model seems to solve the issue of locality where quantum mechanics and relativity seem to conflict.

              I like the idea going back to the fundamentals and this clear and breezy writing style gets the point across well. The author does a very good job at keeping this essay accessible to as many general science readers as possible. The first year of Physics is all one needs to keep up with the math.

              The problem with this model is that it is not relative. All rotating vectors are related by just the addition of a constant to some master clock. What is the motional frame and location of this master clock? This model uses absolute (not relative) time.

              Jeff Schmitz

                Dear Dr. Kadin -

                I find your ideas of great interest.

                The gist of your dissertation is that the inner space of quanta can be projected across the Cosmos: 'Time is not a dimension imposed from without; instead, it is a parameter for characterizing the local evolution of quantum fields.'

                This parameter then becomes extended across the Cosmos: 'Quantum mechanics describes physics on the microscopic level, and must provide the basis for macroscopic physics.'

                I agree with this, but like you I find that 'the transition from indeterministic microphysics to deterministic macrophysics has always been obscure.'

                Or, to put it another way - how do the quantum fields add up to a Cosmos?

                I deduce in my essay that the Cosmos must be divided into Zones - wherein only one Zone (the space-time continuum) exhibits the fixed speed of light with which we are familiar; this speed then varies (as you describe) - only it does so beyond this Zone, where the continuum unravels.

                I reach this conclusion by first showing how such sub-divisions occur within Particles, and then show how this allows quanta to aggregate into a Cosmos with which they correlate to produce all perceived phenomena.

                In your conclusion, you come down in favor of 'It to Bit' - but, without Zones within which parameters are less dimensional, the consistency between quanta and Cosmos you describe suggests rather strongly that we can know all of reality at some point.

                Can the mind ever be so perfectly contiguous with the field of observation? I say no: We have to consider evolution, which continually demonstrates that at any time there is a great deal we do not know - and that this must surely continue to be our condition, the alternative being an eventual 'perfect match' between Observer and Cosmos, which seems unlikely.

                I bring this up because the idea of a correlation between Bit and It arises - rather than the notion of simply choosing one over the other: I mean, of course, a correlation that maintains flux between Bit and It over the evolutionary time span. The contiguity of the human mind with the Cosmos always has certain limits.

                This ties in with my concept of Zones, and also means that we should beware of projecting space-time parameters on to quanta, and vice versa, without accounting for Zones of varying dimensionality, and for the continuous effects of evolution.

                For this reason among others I am emboldened to think that my essay might add some complementary elements to your paradigm.

                I have, of course, rated your essay - and very much look forward to hearing from you.

                All the best, Dr. Kadin!

                  Dear Alan,

                  I just read your essay and I have some serious questions:

                  1) Does the background vector field define a preferred rest frame?

                  Since your framework is explicitly relativistic, the answer would have to be be no, but then I have difficulty seeing how the frame in which the rotators are all at rest is not preferred over all others. Indeed I come away with the impression that in your framework, motion (other than that associated with the rotators) is an illusion and that everything is really at rest, but just "pops" in and out so to make it appear as if it is moving in space.

                  2) Do the rotators define a preferred plane orientation in space?

                  It seems that you would want the answer to be "no" for otherwise isotropy of space is broken with concomitant consequences for angular momentum conservation. But then I have a difficulty visualizing the rotator. Is the plane of the rotator relative to the observer? What if you have multiple observers observing an object from different angles? Do you have multiple rotators at the same location but rotating along different directions? This is very fuzzy to me.

                  3) What does the amplitude of the rotator signify?

                  I missed a physical interpretation of the rotator, and related to this question is whether it is possible to define a rotator density. Is this possible and if so, how does it relate to the amplitude?

                  4) How do you get the Born Rule out of the framework for elementary and composite particles such that it takes the differences in your framework into account?

                  You mentioned the Born Rule in your essay but then went right on to other aspects of QM, so that I am not at all clear how you get the Born Rule out of your framework.

                  5) Do the rotators only rotate in one direction?

                  As you know, from the Born rule one can deduce that the complex conjugate of the quantum state is physically on the same footing as the state itself. How do you account for that in your theory? Also, I am not sure on this but it seems to me that if you have two observers between whom the rotator field that describes a particle is located, they would have to give opposite descriptions of the rotational direction.

                  6) How does your framework account for contextuality?

                  If the spin values of elementary particles are already determined before a measurement, then this would seem to violate Kochen Specker, or the simpler analogues like the Mermin magic square. How do you avoid this?

                  7) Why should nature be characterized just in the way by the model you describe as opposed to some other?

                  I guess this is more of a metaphysical question, and I should admit that I have a philosophical prejudice that at bottom nature is fundamentally simple and intelligible to us. Your model may unify some aspects of nature that are currently not describable in a unified way, but frankly it seems no more intuitive or conceptually intelligible than quantum mechanics to me. The questions that come to my mind are: Why rotators? What are they made of? Why a particular frequency or amplitude that characterizes each (as opposed to a distribution)? Can an individual rotator be isolated?

                  There are also a few statements that I think will be regarded as controversial by some physicists:

                  "In the orthodox Copenhagen

                  interpretation, the quantum wave is instead a statistical distribution of point particles"

                  My understanding is that the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation only regards post-measurement states as point particles. If it is characterizable as a quantum wave, it is a pre-measurement state.

                  "Similar Hilbert space product states provide the basis for quantum entanglement, whereby a measurement on one particle in a pair of coupled particles immediately changes the physical state of the other particle"

                  I think that this statement is stronger than what has been experimentally shown, and though some physicists do believe that this is what entanglement amounts to, I think it is a misunderstanding.

                  All the experiments license us to claim is that if we perform a set of measurements on spacelike separated entangled states we will, after we bring the measurement results together, notice that they were correlated with each other.

                  The difference between your statement and mine is subtle but real. To see this consider just that in SR the time ordering for spacelike separated events is frame-dependent. Your statement can then only be true if there was an absolute frame in which one measurement event came before the other, or if retroactive causal effects are admitted, both highly dubious. But instead of thinking that this means that standard QM is wrong, I think it is better to just stick to what the experiment licenses us to claim: If A performs a measurement on a, she is only entitled to claim that if B makes a measurement on b, he will find a correlated result. This does not imply that A's measurement of a changed the state of b before B's measurement of b (your statement).

                  The difference is that B still needs to perform a measurement in order to establish the correlation whereas your statement implies that this is unnecessary. In my view, the necessity that B needs to make a measurement is quite consistent with the orthodox view that in essence, the observer "creates" the particle with a measurement. Before B makes a measurement *there is no particle* which subsumes the fact that there is no correlated particle.

                  Of course, this does not answer the question of how the correlations are enforced for spacelike separated events. This is regarded as an open question, but I'd like to mention that I just gave a talk on this where at least it seems to me that the framework on which I have been working on suggests a simple answer, and the talk slides (a quick read) are available online:

                  http://vixra.org/pdf/1306.0097v2.pdf

                  Lastly, allow me to state that I found your essay very clearly written. I think that answering the questions above will go a long way toward persuading others of the merits of your idea.

                  All the best,

                  Armin