Essay Abstract

The existence of quantum state prior to measurement is examined. Through the application of a thought experiment in Special Relativity an argument is made for the required indeterminacy of a quantum state before the measurement is made.

Author Bio

Mr Coleman is an analyst working at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, working off hours on a personal quantum realists unification theory. This new theory is based primarily on first principals of Thermodynamics and Special Relativity. He has an expressed interest in collaboration and sharing of ideas with any like minded quantum-realists centric experts in their field of study.

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Steven,

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

Hello Steve,

I read your essay several times, and that's saying something, and while I think it's well structured and cogent, and to the point, and worthy of my highest rating so far, I wonder whether you have ever sat back and contemplated the framework within which your ideas exist. The math is trying to describe relative space and relative time, yet itself relies on absolute space and absolute time for its consistency; without consistency math makes no sense whatsoever. If the alien clock tells time aboard ship, then I wonder which math it is using, it can't rely on absolute space and absolute time because they do not exist aboard a ship traveling at the speed of light. If math is a universal language, which fails at relativistic speeds, or singularity, we can justifiably say that a math based clock can't tell time within the quantum domain. I for one, do not relay on a math based clock in my essay, and while my essay is primarily philosophical, I would consider commenting on the quantum domain from within its context. If you have time to read my essay, please point out its contradictions, or ask a question.

Well Done! And good luck in the contest.

Zoran.

    Steve,

    It is an interesting and thought provoking attempt to clarify what does seem to be an intractable problem.

    While it's not the topic of my entry in this essay, I would like to offer what I think is a minor adjustment to our concept of time that seems to have some consequence as to how we consider this situation. One which does lead to the 2nd solution, so you might find it of some interest.

    I think the problem is that we experience time as a sequence of events and include it in our physical models as a unit of duration between events. I think we need to look at it from the other perspective, that change creates this sequence and it is not a progression from past to future, but change causing future to become past. To wit, the earth doesn't travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. In this view, time is not a fundamental part of some foundational math, but simply an effect of action, similar to temperature. One could say that time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. Duration is not a vector that transcends the point of the present, but is the state of the present between the occurrence of events.

    What this means physically is that there is no such thing as a point in time, since it would require freezing the very action causing it. It would be similar to a temperature of absolute zero. So one cannot actually separate a "particle" from its action. There is no "point" where it is just a particle.

    Now what does this mean in terms of measurement? The same principle applies to the "observer"/measuring device. You are not so much detecting another particle, as you are creating an event. While the particles/actions/energy go from one event to the next, they exist as what we call the present. It is the events which come into being and then recede into the past. Ie, what was possible became actual. In QM terms, we are not moving along an external timeline from an actualized past into a probabilistic future, but are simply letting the events occur, such that the probabilities collapse into the actualities. What was future became past.

    So while the laws governing the interactions are definitionally deterministic, the actual input into these events cannot be fully known prior to the event, as the lightcone is not complete prior to the event and even if information could travel faster than light, than so could input and the problem persists. So since effect necessarily requires cause, we can say those physical properties do exist, but there is no way to have definite knowledge of them prior to the event of measurement. Thus 2.

    As for the ship, light has no internal activity, since all energy was been converted to velocity, thus nothing can go faster, as there is no more energy to propel it faster. So, no action, no time. Of course the external motion of this light does constitute a clock, the constant of lightspeed.

    I do find the thought experiment a little silly though. If I'm sitting in front of the fire and I throw a log on it, does the clock of the wood go to zero, as it turns to light?

      Zoran,

      Thank you very much for your kind words of encouragement. I look forward to reading your paper as well.

      I knew that the concept of time (both in human experience and in the mathematical context) was going to be one of the hardest things to get ones mind wrapped around, but to address those specific issues directly, I would have had to stray from the subject matter that I was required to address, and thus the paper would certainly have been less to the point. Unfortunately under the rules of the essay I was not able to expand upon that, not only because of the size limitation, but also in that the answer gets directly into my personal theory, a topic of which is explicitly off limits to the essay contest. Suffice it to say that the very issues that you are now contemplating are actually all part of the answer to the many paradox if you think about it hard enough. It took me the better part of three months to work through the many can-of-worms issues that I saw coming out of this same thought experiment, but I finally became convinced that it all works out given the proper definition of time. I hope to address that and the absolutes you speak of in my future paper, should I ever find enough personal time to complete it.

      The math that you are speaking of is always from within the reference frame in which you are basing your analysis. Remember, time is relative, so things only need to 'add up' within their own reference frame. When looking across reference frames you will always find a paradox waiting. So be very careful what reference frame the things that you are comparing actually come from and things will always make a lot more sense.

      Steve.

      John,

      You are very astute with your analysis of time, so much so, that you partially described a core part of my theory paper that I have been working on for the last three years. There is quite a bit more to it than that, but from your description I can see that it might be interesting to compare notes sometime in the future after the contest is over. The part that you are missing, and may want to think about, is what is the structure of space-time itself, and how exactly time flows in that context given your model of discrete events.

      As for you statement on 'no internal activity' in the ship while operating at the speed of light, this makes perfect sense given that it would take zero time, in the pilots reference frame, to arrive at the destination. How could the pilot move around the cabin if they have zero time to do it in?

      Yes, the thought experiment might be silly, but if it got you to thinking then it still did the job. I decided that if the target audience was to be a popular science magazine I had better simplify and explain things for the people just picking up the magazine to learn. As for your fire log example, the log experiences no change in its local clock or its reference frame. Only the photons when leaving the log have their clock affected in any way.

      Thanks for the feedback.

      Steve.

      Dear Steve and John,

      Thank you for presenting your nice essay.

      Instead of just thought experiments...

      I Have a suggestion for you,Please try Dynamic Universe Model with some numerical values, give initial values of velocities, take gravitation into consideration( because you can not experiment in ISOLATION). complete your numerical experiment.

      later try changing values of masses and initial values of velocities....

      Calculate with different setups and compare your results, if you have done a physical experiment.

      I sincerely feel it is better to do experiment physically, or numerically instead of breaking your head on just logic. This way you will solve your problem faster.....

      ...............

      ...............

      I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

      I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

      Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

      Best

      =snp

      snp.gupta@gmail.com

      http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

      Pdf download:

      http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

      Part of abstract:

      - -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

      Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

      A

      Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

      ....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

      Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

      . . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

      B.

      Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

      Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

      C

      Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

      "Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

      Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

      1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

      2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

      3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

      4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

      D

      Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

      It from bit - where are bit come from?

      Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

      ....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

      Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

      E

      Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

      .....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

      I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

      Best

      =snp

      Your insights into relativity were very interesting. I particularly like the idea that the wave-particle structure of particles validates extending the dilations and contractions of time and space observed in Special Relativity to the particulate level.

      Thus, there are no absolute measurements.

      Perhaps it's even simpler to state that beings on different planets observing a particular cosmic phenomenon would all come up with a different measurement of it - and all of them would be valid.

      However, the larger question arises - how do these different information networks function? In this non-deterministic universe, how do any beings on any planet come to have objectivity - or any verifiable measurements at all?

      In other words, the information organisms derive from their interactions with the universe is contiguous with these observers over their evolutionary span: The Cosmos is non-deterministic, but it is not random - its creatures and entities are held in a correlation that produces varying measurements depending on location in space-time.

      What is this correlation of entities and observers?

      The answer to this question, I believe, reveals the nature of information - and of the Cosmos itself.

      I benefited from reading your essay, and rated it; I believe you will find mine (where I develop a Paradigm that deals with this question of correlation) to be a complementary work, and I hope to hear back from you soon. Thanks!

      Steve,

      I tend to see spacetime as a system of correlating measurements, rather than the actual mechanism many purport it to be. Remember that "historically" time is viewed as a singular flow, or narrative and yet we only detect it as motion, of which there are all sorts and speeds. So how does one go about coordinating all these motions to one universal flow? Consider how the calendar takes the lunar cycle of the month and just adds days here and there, to make twelve of them synonymous with the solar cycle of the year and how we add leap days and seconds to keep days matched to years.

      Now consider why I put the word historically in parentheses. This sequential ordering of events is foundational to our ability to comprehend reality, both as narrative and cause and effect logic.

      So what "spacetime" does, is to take the narrative thread and pull it apart, into a tapestry of events, were all these points of view do follow their own timeline, weaving back and forth around each other other and providing a mathematically accurate method for calculating the spatial and temporal relations. Does this mean "spacetime" is some physically real "fabric," that holds all these events on some eternal geometry? Or is that a supposition along the lines of giant cosmic gear wheels to explain why epicycles are mathematically effective?

      As I point out, if we simply ignore this sequential effect of time and just let actions exist in their own dynamic, then it isn't the present moving along a vector, but these events forming and dissolving. Which means they don't continue to exist in some suspended animation, but are fodder for what happens next. They recede into "the past." Different clocks run at different speeds because they are not reflective of some grand flow, but are measures of the particular actions. There is no need for that 4D geometry to supplant Newton's absolute flow. There is just a bunch of stuff happening and because it bounces around, it exchanges energy, which is thermodynamics and this tends to coordinate cycles. That is how it relates.

      So, if we demote time to an effect of action, what does that leave space? If it has no temporal dimension, then there is no dynamical structure to bend, stretch or bound. So it is just featureless void. This gives it two properties though. It is both infinite, since it is unbounded and it is absolute, as in the temperature of absolute zero, because it has no action and is inert. This inertia can be deduced from centrifugal force. What frame otherwise defines the spin of an object? I know it is unpopular to suggest space is anything other than a measure of distance, area and volume, but this is a way to measure its inertia. Say you are on an astroid in deep intergalactic space and are somewhat blind, such that you cannot see any potential references. Could you be able to detect whether it is spinning and how fast, with just a ball and string? What would it be spinning relative to, other than the natural inertia of space?

      So, if you are willing to go this far, space has these two properties, one stretching to eternity and the other frozen for eternity. This space is seemingly occupied by this dynamic property of mass/radiation. The mass seems pulled to a point, while the radiation projects out for as far as it can. So they seem to be motivated by, or at least reflective of these two properties of space.

      If this perspective seems like anything you would want to work with, I'm certainly not copyrighting it. For one thing, I am an amateur and no one takes me seriously, yet if they ever did, it could blow up monumentally. You think Copernicus and Galileo upset the world order, try telling this story driven world that narrative has it backwards? It would draw far more attention than I care to think about. Not to mention all the drama in the physics community if the basis of QM and GR are shown to have a very basic conceptual error.

      Now you may think I'm crazy, but we all are to some extent and this helps me make some sense of how things work. There is more, but this may be more than you care for.

      Very clear and easy to read, good work.

      I think, without he outcomes of a new experiment, that there are more cards to play, as you say, I'm determining which interpretation is strongest, that is which leads to the breakthrough to quantum gravity that we want.

      My essay claims that the state of matter pre-measurement are best thought of as Leibniz's monads and that measurement does not change the monads, or transform them into physical post-measurement matter, but rather measurements creates an entirely new matter in a new medium of information (such as the observers neural network).

      Hi Steve,

      It is interesting and fun to read your essay. I liked the provoking idea of zero distance and time by light-speed object. I have something similar, but with a different approach in which there is only one overall state or 'frame' for all observable reality, but the frame changes, giving the effect or perception of time, especially by time-conscious being and apparatus. In this 'frame by frame' model, there are rooms for both slower than light and light-speed entity to treat time as secondary or superficial.

      Hi John,

      Thanks to your essay and dialectic exchanges with Steve, I think I have greater clarity of the concept of time and the correlation to matter and light speed energy. I liked your short essay written and published in FQXi in 25 Aug 2008 and find resonance in them and the dialectic exchanges.

      In my essay, I didn't get to elaborate more on space and time and skimmed over it to discuss into the implications. In the dialectic exchanges I discussed abit more on it.

      Cheers,

      Hon Jia

      Thank you Hon Jia,

      That was a rather short and to the point effort from back in the day when I thought physics was actually about logic more than belief. My entry in the Questioning the Foundations contest from last year was essentially the same topic, but I tried to flesh it out some more, as well as tie in the psychological issues. It did come in about 50, out of about 350, so I've made some headway.

      I read your entry and will make a comment on your thread.

      • [deleted]

      • Post #15

      Please see my rebuttal in the comment section of your listing. In short, your experiment appears to be a from of a "delayed choice" experiment which by its very nature, and confirmed in experiment, should logically preclude that result. I'll keep reviewing it, because I am now curious why the math and first law of thermodynamics disagree.

      9 days later

      Mr. Coleman,

      It is the real Universe that is travelling at the real speed of light. Real light is actually the only stationary substance in the real Universe that is why real light does not have mass, temperature, or motion.

      Joe

        4 days later

        Your statement makes no sense with respect to the first law of thermodynamics. If the photon is what is stationary then you must be saying that the Universe is what is travelling at the speed of light, which would obviously take infinite energy to do so. Even a very light particle of near zero mass can never obtain that kind of speed much less the Universe as a whole. That is simply illogical.

        Dear Steve,

        I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments. I like your field of interest and more on it in due course.

        Regards and good luck in the contest,

        Sreenath BN.

        http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

        Hello Steve,

        That was a very interesting essay. Very readable. A question I have for you is whether something that you measure to exist can stop existing if you travel at speed of light, especially given differing viewpoints of the same event? Also can 1 change to 0 due to length contraction? Kindly see my essay and rate. Give me comments if you like it.

        Best regards,

        Akinbo

        Hello Steve,

        Lovely to see some relativity and having it handled so well in a relevant and intelligent way in this contest. Plenty of logic and good reasoning. The diagram was fantastic of the rocket and from start to finish the whole essay was interesting. Well done! Top marks from me - hopefully help in your ranking!

        My essay is a little different, but there is a journey, albeit into (and "back out") of a Black Hole, to examine how information can be observed and released. Then a little entropy comes into play and we seem to find the Fibonacci sequence. Please take a look if you get chance.

        Best wishes for the contest,

        Antony

          Steve,

          Just re-read your bio. I too am working on a unification theory, thus far only partly unifying the four forces, but also resolving the three paradoxes of cosmogony. I've related the masses of the proton, neutron and electron to 99.999988% of the theoretical value, and this keeps improving with more mass data from the likes of Cern.

          The theory also explains a cosine nature to spin.

          If any of this interests you - please let me know on my thread.

          Again - best wishes,

          Antony