MAKING THINGS UNDERSTANDABLE by Aitor Elorza

Aitor Elorza

Essay Abstract

The impact of science on society does not concern only technology. It is also relevant with regard to the prevailing "mode of thought". It shapes how we see and interact with the world. In that respect, the message physicists convey to society is that it is not humanly possible to understand physics at microscopic level. Some also claim that since predictions are Ok, why bother? Somehow, we know how to handle instruments and can predict the outcome of experiments, but we don't understand why it works as it does: we know but we don't understand. In other fields of knowledge, having an accurate understanding of things is essential for progress. In physics, do we have to content ourselves with mastering the technology without understanding how the reality is? I review some of the quantum experiments, raising a number of questions and seeking new ideas to explain phenomena in a simplified way. I argue that it is possible to conceive new realist models worth exploring. Simple is frequently understood as macroscopically explainable. As classical physics, based on macroscopic assumptions, was unable to explain subatomic phenomena, simplicity was dropped in favour of other complex theories. It could be that the physical laws at microscopic level are understandable through a different type of simplicity from the macroscopic one, so that we can say: we don't know but we understand.

Author Bio

The author has a master's degree in mathematics. After a few years in the IT private sector, he has been working for a public institution.

Download Essay PDF File

Hasmukh Tank

Dear Elorza,

You will be delighted to read my attemt trying to make quantum mechanics understandable; posted on March 11; and titled: On the emergence of physical world from the ultimate reality. http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2001

You may also find it interesting my attempt to explain wave-particle-duality, posted at pre-print-server-site, in February 2014:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0153v3.pdf

You will also be delighted to read some of my earlier attempts, described in the attachment:Attachment #1: Reconciliatin_of_the_two_different_formulae_for_Relativistic_Increase_of_Energy_By_Hasmukh_Tank.pdf

Aitor Elorza

Dear Mr. Tank,

Thanks for your post.

If I have correctly understood, you suggest that on top of space and time, there exists another entity (ultimate reality) where particles (standing wave fluctuations) are generated. Is it not possible to assign to the space-time the properties of that entity? What is time or how is it created in your theory?

Aitor Elorza

Hasmukh Tank

Thank you, Dear Aitor Elorza,for your reply to my post, and the questions. What I currently think is:

The Ultimate Reality, is not only real-entity, but also aware of its own existence. It is all-pervading in space, and ever-present in time. Rather, 'space' and 'time' are in the Ultimate Reality.

Whereas space-time is actualy a term used by physicists. Space is objective reality, whereas 'time' is actually a 'subjective' perception. If we were not having any memory, then we can not perceive any 'time'. We percieve a ceaseless change through our eyes; and to describe this changing ecvironment, we use the term 'time'. We can measure a length with a foot-rule; whereas we have to select some cyclic process to difine 'time'. A clock does not 'measure' time, like a foot-rule; rateher it tells the time.

In the real physical world, there are three dimensions; and volume means length x width x depth. But in mathematics one can imagine four-dimensional space. Similarly, 'space-time' is a mathematical-object, whereas the Ultimate Reality is a real entity.

These are my tentative views at present.

Aitor Elorza

I think your model must be difficult to test experimentally.

I don't share your view that space is "objective reality" while time is only a "subjective perception". Different instruments are needed to measure space and time because they have different nature but in my view, both are equally real physical entities (subjectively perceived by our senses).

Aitor Elorza

Hasmukh Tank

Dear Elorza,

Please read this essay, it may change your views on 'time'; or your reply may change my views!

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Barbour_The_Nature_of_Time.pdf

Yours sincerely,

Hasmukh K. Tank

Aitor Elorza

Dear Mr. Tank,

Sorry for not responding sooner but it is difficult for me to find enough "time".

I have the impression that following similar reasonings to the one proposed by Mr. Barbour, other concepts, apart from time, could also be considered unnecessary. Moreover, I don't see how motion can be described without four independent coordinates.

To explain concepts in a simple way, I think it is better to try to draw them: in my model, space is created by a wave field emitted by particles and time is created by the rotation of the field. It is visual and may explain why the nature of space and time are very different.

Aitor Elorza

Hasmukh Tank

For your convinience, the following are the direct links to the articles:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0153v3.pdf

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0aGV1bHR

pbWF0ZXJlYWxpdHlzaXRlfGd4OjY5OWRjOTU1NWVhM2M3ODg

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0aGV1bHR

pbWF0ZXJlYWxpdHlzaXRlfGd4OjFmZDAzNmFkMjY2YTA1YjQ

Sincerely,

Hasmukh K. Tank

Alan Kadin

Mr. Elorza:

I agree with your intention to make fundamental physics more understandable. This runs counter to the prevailing belief that physics is paradoxical, and can only be understood via abstract mathematics. Further, I agree that a local realistic microscopic model is not only possible, but can be derived simply in a straightforward manner. In fact, I have already done so, and summarized these results in two previous FQXi essays: "The Rise and Fall of Wave-Particle Duality", and "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotation and Relative Time". Unfortunately, these received remarkably little attention.

The key in these analyses is NOT to discard established logical or physical principles to resolve the paradoxes, but rather to question the conventional assumptions behind the paradoxes. Let me take two examples discussed in your essay.

(1) Quantum diffraction effects are conventionally used to prove that de Broglie waves are universal, including neutrons, atoms, and even molecules. This analysis implicitly assumes that the screen is a classical object, but diffraction requires momentum transfer between the particle and the screen. Treating the screen as a quantum object shows that momentum transfer is quantized, thus reproducing the standard diffraction result regardless of the wave nature of the particle.

(2) Quantum entanglement derives from a mathematical construction involving products of vectors in abstract Hilbert space. There is no physical basis for this construction, which is intrinsically non-local. If we discard this construction, then separated particles have definite local quantum properties without the need for hidden variables. The EPR paradox disappears.

Alan Kadin

[deleted]

Dear Mr. Kadin,

Thanks for your reply. Your articles are very interesting.

If my understanding is correct, your model is a new interpretation of quantum mechanics where particles are rotating wave fields in a real space and local time. How are the space and the local time generated in this model?

Regarding EPR paradox, you suggest that experiments carried out so far are not sufficiently accurate because a missing "loophole" is not taken into account. I'm not convinced that this explains all of the experimental results. I assume that the experiments are correct and that something must be wrong in Bell's theorem. My suggestion is to replace the probability and the binary logic behind by a continuous fuzzy logic, best adapted to analyse phenomena occurring in a continuous space-time.

Regards,

Aitor Elorza

Joe Fisher

Dear Aitor Elorza,

I found your essay quite informative, and I do hope that it does well in the competition. You wrote in the abstract: "I review some of the quantum experiments, raising a number of questions and seeking new ideas to explain phenomena in a simplified way." I do not mean to be critical, but as I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay, Reality, Once, all information is abstract. All information has nothing to do with reality. Reality is simple, for instance; all real surfaces travel at the constant speed of light. All non-surfaces travel at an inconsistent speed that is less than the constant speed of light. Real identical states can never occur. As reality is pragmatically simple, it follows that all information is indubitably complex. Reality is simply unique, once. New, old, and indeterminable ideas, no matter how they are couched are demonstrably complex and unrealistic.

With respectful regards,

Joe Fisher

Aitor Elorza

Dear Mr. Fisher,

Thanks for your post.

I agree that each experiment, each particle or each measurement are unique. While at macroscopic level measurements may be idealized or rounded, at microscopic scale tiny differences may have a big impact.

This is maybe related to my suggestion that the logic used to analyse microscopic physical reality should be a continuous logic (where propositions are not absolutely true or absolutely false but trueness is approximate) instead of the macroscopic binary logic.

On the contrary, I don't agree that "All information has nothing to do with reality". Information is abstract but helps us to understand reality and make accurate predictions about it (accurate meaning 99%, not 100%). Both are deeply connected. If reality is simple, why the information we have about it should be complex?

Aitor Elorza

Hasmukh Tank

Thank you, Dear Aitor Elorza,for your reply to my post, and the questions. What I currently think is:

The Ultimate Reality, is not only real-entity, but also aware of its own existence. It is all-pervading in space, and ever-present in time. Rather, 'space' and 'time' are in the Ultimate Reality.

These are my tentative views at present.

John Hodge

You raise a number of interesting questions. I think I have a solution (perhaps better -the beginning of a solution).

"Intelligibility and simplicity are closely related." Agree. One of the fundamental principles I propose in my entry (section 2) is intelligibility requires that the model of a phenomenon be like a model we experience in our everyday life. For example, we can see waves after a rock is thrown in water. We could put slits in the water and witness interference and the waves driving a floating object (wood, etc.). But what is the rock in light experiments. (BTW you might like to look up Afshar's experiment .).

The development of my model to date is found in STOE correspondence to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

I follow Newton who speculated that light was a corpuscle that moved through a medium (ether, I call it plenum after Descartes). The keys are the capsule movement in the medium causes a wave (the rock), the waves travel faster than the corpuscle ("overtake" according to Newton), the wave then directs corpuscles. General relativity calls the meduin "space" or "gravitational ether". Matter curves space and space directs matter - sound familiar? SR or the Lorentz ether theory dictates no matter travels faster than light (photons). The plenum is not matter, like water is not rocks. The speed of the plenum wave can be a million time faster than matter. That explains quantum entanglement as a wave resonance effect. Measurement devices are matter. They require matter impacts.

"This is not, however, the observed fact: electrons orbit around the nucleus and

only in defined orbitals at some discrete distances." The photon's movement produces waves in the plenum. Like water waves, the plenum has peaks and valleys and tends to direct photons into the valley. This gives a digital appearance to the position of photons at any given time. Digital quantum mechanics results. With this in mind, what classical world observation can duplicate the idea of an atom. The walking drop experiment of Yves Couder and Emmanual Fort showed with the unaided eye interference and drops circling each other like electrons around an nucleus .

The STOE paper has links to other papers that discuss many other topics.

That someone wrote a paper along these lines is exciting.

Aitor Elorza

Dear Mr. Hodge,

Your model is interesting and suggests to me a number of questions.

Is it possible to draw it?

"Photon's movement produces waves in the plenum." Do electrons do the same? If so, does the different speed of photons and electrons have an impact on the waves they create?

If the speed of the plenum wave is much quicker than the speed of light, is it possible to design an experiment to test its effects?

Regards,

Aitor Elorza

Anselm Smidt

Ist das Teil der Lenkung die Zukunft der Menschheit?

Aitor Elorza

Dear Anselm,

If I understand correctly your question, I think that seeking for understandable solutions on the foundations of physics is important not only for physics but also to set an example for other areas of knowledge.

Regards,

Aitor Elorza

Vladimir Rogozhin

Dear Aitor,

You put a very important problem - understanding the foundations of physics, the basis of the scientific world. Your important conclusion:

«Simple explanations are more difficult to find than complex ones, because the latter may be adapted whatever is necessary to get the desired result, but at the expense of intelligibility. The solution is maybe simple; what is complex is to find it.»

Yes, the present crisis in basic science - a "crisis of understanding". Understand means "grab structure" ( G.Gutner Ontology mathematical discourse).

To more reliably steer the Future physicists and poets should be one picture of the Universe filled with the sense of the "LifeWorld" (E.Husserl). Physics fractured world and then "blew up" the Universe. And where did the "fundamental constants" and "laws of nature"?... Need to grasp this "simplicity of the complex ."

Closed science: «Shut up and calculate», Open Science: "understand and count fast".

Understanding the foundation of the Universe device is necessary not only to physicists, but lyricists:

"We do not see the world in detail-

Insignificant all and fractional.

Takes me sadness from all this .

Vvedensky Alexander (1930)

Physical picture of the world should be the same rich sense as world picture lyricists.

Unified picture of the world for physicists and lyricists - then management of the future of humanity more reliable, because there will be understanding.

I wish you good luck!

All the Best,

Vladimir

Vladimir Rogozhin

Vladimir, a look at the guitar (my favorite tool) - its image contains an absolute eidos Universe... "String theory" still demands the ontological justification ...

Aitor Elorza

Thanks Vladimir,

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. A. Einstein

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." Confucius

Aitor

Vladimir Rogozhin

Dear Aitor,

I beg your pardon! I wrote the wrong name ...

Very good quotes great thinkers! Thank you!

I wish you success in the contest and research!

Sincerely, Vladimir