Why Quantum?

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A DEMAND FOR AUTOPSY ON SCHRODINGER'S CAT

Niels Bohr and partners of the Copenhagen School will have us believe that all possible states co-exist before the act of measurement in order to maintain the position in which they have been boxed by holding on to their postulate. T o counter this Schrodinger formulated his famous paradox to show the absurdity. By the way Schrodinger and Einstein are said to believe in the same school that God does not play dice. To which Bohr stubbornly replied that we should not tell God what to do.

To Schrodinger's paradox, the Copenhagen partners reply that Schrodinger's cat exists in a superposition of dead and alive states and it is only when the experimenter opens the box that the cat's wave function collapses and the cat may then be found in a dead state.

To settle the argument, since modern science is now capable of using autopsy to determine the time of death, this should be tabled before the believers in the Copenhagen doctrine for resolution of this long standing dispute.

Note that autopsy may not even be required, but just to fulfill all righteousness. Leaving the cat in the box for weeks after the triggering event, may show a recently dead cat whose wave function has just collapsed or the skeleton of a long dead cat.

Am I missing something?

Akinbo

*Peter J, I will reply you tomorrow. Laptop battery dying and no electricity.

Absolutely correct, Anonymous. In the Joy Christian measurement framework, that invariable condition is the structure of the topology.

Yes Akinbo,

I think so. The cat might be a symptom. I prefer looking for Gleason in hidden assumptions that were made much earlier. The experiment by Franck and Hertz did already provide what made QM so successful: quantum energy levels. Bohr's model of the atom was also appealing. However, it was perhaps premature to take it as a fact and interpret the experiment by Stern and Gerlach accordingly.

Eckard

Peter,

What Thompson do you refer to?

Eckard

The fact that an electron can pass through both slits should tell you something. In the two slit experiment, if it is indeed impossible to tell which slit the electron when through, then it seems very likely that the electron is not a solid object like a marble. It seems more likely that the electron is wave-dependent phenomena.

The electron is not a hard marble, otherwise you would know which slit it went threw. If anything, it is a projection from the quantum wave. It is a non-solid phenomena. Maybe the electron is ethereral and ghostly?

Eckard.

J.J. Discoverer of electrons and their deflection including as 'cathode rays' (and the first mass spectroscopy) Not culpable for QM as such, but his analysis was also flawed (unless you like plum pudding).

Bohr's view was mainly responsible, though somewhat reasonable at the time in accepting our ignorance, it was misapplied and misinterpreted as the most brilliant viewpoint possible! (Bell strongly disagreed by the way).

Peter

Peter J and Eckard, (and Tom, the mathematician if you are listening)

Do you have objection to conducting autopsy on Schrodinger's cat to determine the time of death and collapse of its wave-function?

Do you believe in the quantum postulate of photon indivisibility? If so, do you agree on how a single photon is said to pass through a half-silvered mirror in quantum mechanics?

Peter,

Thanks. I advise you not to trust the Copenhagen proponents by claiming they are 'as trustworthy as any'. I am therefore happy you asked 'Mustn't it?' and put Aspect's claim of 'proof' in inverted commas. The devil will be in the detail of those experiments which is not within my reach. But I recall you once sent me a link to a C. Thompson paper which disagreed with Aspect's claimed experimental proof.

"The 'same room' is a problem due to small range harmonic resonance 'wave lock' effects well known in tomography etc...."

Why should the same room be such a problem for a quantum investigation? Why should A and B be light years apart? Is it easier to be entangled when light years apart or when in the same room? The logic does not sound right as with all propositions from Copenhagen. Again, why inventing all kinds of new ad hoc effects, like 'wave lock', etc when confronted with absurdity?

Akinbo

Peter,

I just googled and saw links to Caroline Thompson's works who is now late (died of cancer 2006). I think they will make an interesting read.

http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Caroline_Thompson

Akinbo

I tell you practitioners of physics that the Two Slit Diffraction experiment for electrons tells us that electrons cannot be hard spheres, and there is silence. I can hear the crickets chirping. What gives?

Akinbo,

Interesting that you would ask..."Why should the same room be such a problem for a quantum investigation. (and) Why should A and B be light years apart?"

Firstly I am in agreement on the divisibility of the Quantum, but completely aside from that your questions are pertinent to the topical theme of entropy as a variable of constant influence (a parameter) in physical processes treated as probabilities in both classical and quantum mechanics. Loschmidt argued that an army of Maxwell's Demons would eventually overcome the thermodynamic barrier against reversal of entropy without time reversal. But the 'marching column' turns out to be extraordinarily long. This is just a suggestion in your own ongoing inquiries, thanks again for the BIPM link. jrc

Peter,

I suspected that you meant JJ Thomson, the father of GP.

However, you wrote Thompson.

Following Akinbo's suggestion my biopsy did not yet find possible Gleason values of logical cancer in quantum mathematics of the 1914 experiment by Franck and G. Hertz that already discovered what is still most valuable: quantum energy levels.

The experiment by Stern and Gerlach 1921/22 related already to questionable theories by Larmor and by Sommerfeld, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-experiment/app5.html

Since I am mainly interested in the question whether or not a complex description is absolutely necessary, the experiments by Davisson and Germer in 1923/27 and by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit in 1925 were perhaps not decisive in this respect.

Can you further clarify?

Eckard

Eckard, I want to know if you support autopsy (also called post-mortem) examination on Schrodinger's cat to ascertain the time of death. You and Peter refuse to give a direct answer, Yes or No. You only said, "The cat might be a symptom", what does that mean?

By the way, I wish to doff my hat to the late brave lady, Caroline Thompson. I believe posterity will remember her kindly even if the establishment and journal referees didn't hear her out. I just read one of her papers, which I attach here because it throws much light on the subject, 'Why Quantum?', and contains links for further reading.

Regards, AkinboAttachment #1: Caroline_Thompson_RIP.pdf

It is particularly confusing when explanations of quantum action give macroscopic objects like people and cats the coherent attributes of microscopic matter. Coherent matter behaves so differently from incoherent matter that comparisons of hypothetical coherent macroscopic matter can be very confusing. The dephasing times for any macroscopic object like a cat are very short unless the objects are neutron stars or black holes.

Schrödinger's cat is truly a superposition of two states for some very short time following any quantum trigger and resultant action, which by the way is any action in the quantum universe. If Schrödinger's cat somehow remained coherent with the action, it could then presumably exist in the superposition that you describe until you opened the box.

However, the cat exchanges light and matter with the box and the cat's coherence times are very short as a result. Once the cat dephased from the quantum trigger, the state of the cat would no be longer a superposition and would exist as one state or another as knowable information. Opening the box then simply reveals information that was knowable and the wavefunction of the cat has long since collapsed from the subsequent dephasing actions after the quantum event.

No need to kill another cat...

Until science unites charge and gravity into a common quantum action for all objects, there will continue to be confusion and strong differences of opinion about the nature of quantum action and how it is different from gravity action. For example, given similar charge and gravity forces for a coherent object, quantum action allows interference effects due to superposition but gravity only allows ballistic collisions. We have an intuition and life experience with macroscopic matter and gravity action that is very difficult to reconcile with the reality of microscopic matter and quantum action.

I like the beamsplitter as a coherent device where 50% of the light goes one way and 50% goes the other way. Now, a single photon ends up detected along reflected path A or transmitted path B, but there are two interpretations.

The quantum interpretation is that the photon is on both paths equally and each single photon wave shows up at both A and B, but 50% of the time that photon disappears by destructive interference at both A and B correlated or coherent with appearance by constructive interference at both A or B. The action of the beamsplitter creates coherency between the two paths B or A, respectively.

Some kind of magic occurs at the beamsplitter that made 50% of photons disappear by destructive interference at both A and B, but what is really upsetting is seeing a photon along A does not then mean that it was only on path A.

The ballistic Cartesian interpretation is that 50% of photons are reflected to A and 50% are transmitted to B and although this answer is technically wrong, it is good enough for many applications. If all you need is a one-way mirror or a grayed window or sunglasses to block sunlight, you really do not need to know much about single photon coherence. Thus our ballistic Cartesian reality does work fairly well for most predictions of action, even for those quantum actions with quantum devices like sunglasses or beamsplitters or polarizers.

Steve,

"...truly a superposition of two states for some very short time..."

Thank-you very much for the two posts, that explanation was comprehensible for me. It is difficult for the naïve such as I to get a grasp on the conventions of accepted definition of terms devised in QM, and you defined coherence and decoherence in a way that demystifies the idea. It also presents spin in a realistic way, which classically I have long thought existential. I can't imagine energy not going every direction of least resistance, continually at once. The neutral charge (for want of a better word) of the neutron has been accessible to me as energy physically moving in all directions at a spherical boundary because that quantity of energy must prescribe a distribution of energy through density variation which results in an optimal energy:volume configuration that does not require the whole mass to rotate to resolve a disparity with the optimum of configuration through angular momentum. So far my math just hasn't discovered a 'why' for spikes along a gradient. I might have made a grade but I don't think its a passing mark. Thanks again, jrc

but can us grasp the character of nature ? i mean, we articulate concepts just that, apart we dont know the extension of "ALL" reality.

Yet another new alibi called dephasing time is being introduced. Nevertheless, Steve said , "... wavefunction of the cat has long since collapsed from the subsequent dephasing actions after the quantum event ", so need for an autopsy to ascertain actual time of death. Okay by me.

Then talking about beamsplitters and the quantum interpretation which results in magical and illogical behavior, what is wrong with the classical interpretation that is coherent and logical that has necessitated the need for a quantum interpretation to this problem which in turn has led to the invention of new mathematics to resolve the absurdities?

Eckard,

Simple things are complex to all who don't yet understand them. I find no complex description necessary.

Polarity of opposing signals shares one axis but is random in terms of clockwise and anticlockwise. The DFM identifies that an assumption that axes were also random in orientation was the error.

Uhlenbeck and Goudsmits 1925 finding of electron spin flip was critical and should have been applied to the case. Nobody did. Doing so is the 'holy grail' (pt.1) as it revises both QM and SR's interpretations to allow unification;

QM's because reversed DETECTOR electrons reverse the spin 'finding' (Bell agreed).

SR's because the re-emission is at c in each electrons frame. Simply apply all over.

And there is the simple foundational 'discrete field' dynamics model (DFM) which seems to house zero paradoxes and anomalies. Unfortunately pt.2 of the holy grain entails human minds steeped in different assumptions and interpretations studying and understanding the dynamics. That part seems rather more difficult any may still take some years. To me the assimilation rate has been surprisingly low. But there's plenty of time for falsification and to find the best description. Do give your view.

The latest optics work is exposing more consistencies, including the hierarchical and 'hyperfine' spin modes, Raman scattering, Schrödinger wavelets and the critical difference between the near far field terms (Maxwell's TZ), all referred to in the latest review of matter wave diffraction here;

http://online.qmags.com/PST0514?pg=33&mode=2#pg33&mode2

Best wishes

Peter

Akinbo & Pete,

What might be an impossibly brief span of time to human experience could be a walking pace to an electron dephasing to a different energy level. Steve's description of superposition of two states makes classical sense when you think (as both you agree) that there is no preferred reference point in space, and there is some of that in an atomic volume. Given that scenario QM might be realism if we dispose of the instantaneous assumption in the Bohr 'quantum leap'. In location A @ energy level a, the electron knows which orientation its own axis of rotation has assumed in relation to the angular momentum of the atomic mass. But during the leap moment, it can't decide what orientation its spin direction relates to other than another axial of itself. The motion of the energy condensing as its mass becomes decoherent during that phase instead of being dragged into alignment analogous to laminar flow by a differentiated axial of rotation. Once in location B @ energy level b, its rotational orientation is again reasserted by relation to the angular momentum of the atomic mass. jrc