Why Quantum?

Gordon Watson

Thanks Peter,

Critique follows re this:

"If magnet A is rotated; the particle deflects down. The particle at B then MUST go up. Therein is the problem. If magnet A is reversed at the last moment, how can B know without "spooky action at a distance"?

Or this:

"At identical angles we find opposite deflection (or 'particle spin'). At 'opposite' angles, we find identical deflection (spin) direction. But that gives the big issue; Reversing magnet A at the last moment DICTATES particle B's deflection/ spin state!"

Critique: IF magnet A is reversed at the last moment (or at any time) during this run so that it is antiparallel to magnet B, what makes you think that B has to know anything? It does not.

Experiment (a): If magnet A were left unchanged (ie, being parallel to magnet B), let the paired result be, SAY: [Alice = Up; Bob = Down].

Experiment (b): If (instead) magnet A had been rotated PI radians, to now be antiparallel to magnet B, the comparable paired result would be: [Alice = Down; Bob = Down].

That is: Alice's rotation of the magnet by PI radians reverses Alice's result. BUT it has NO influence whatsoever on Bob's result.

Reason: Let Z denote the EPRB experiment and let p(.|Z) denote a probability conditioned on Z. Then, surely by your own analysis:

Experiment (a): P(Alice = Up| Z, Bob = Down) = cos2(0/2) = 1.

Experiment (b): P(Alice = Down| Z, Bob = Down) = sin2(PI/2) = 1.

With best regards; Gordon

Akinbo Ojo

Yes, Gordon scrutinize Peter's proposal. I will not interfere but follow. I recall reading your essay on proof/ disproof of Bell's theorem sometime ago you are therefore in a position to criticize Peter and Joy Christian's work. You may also want to comment on Caroline Thompson's work.

Personally, because of my classical mind I don't see how turning a magnet upside down here, will make a measurement light years away to also turn upside down. No uncontroversial experiments seem to have borne out this spooky action at a distance. Also as I posted in string below, the "source" of this mystery relies and depends on accepting that the indivisibility of the photon is a fact. If this is not a fact, Quantum mystery evaporates.

So what do you make of "Statistically based analysis of multiple events can't distinguish pairs and uses the wrong assumption. In the DFM schema A can change setting and B is free to find either UP or DOWN entirely at random"?

Please note

Regards,

Akinbo

[deleted]

John,

Re space:

I'm convinced that, despite our everyday perceptions, space is not an "entity", its not even a container of things, because it possesses no measurable information in itself. Even a curvature of space is information. Information is required if something is to interact with or affect something else.

So I think that space must derive from a multi-particle information relationship involving all particles in the universe.

Cheers,

Lorraine

Lorraine Ford

Above post was from me

John Merryman

Tom,

The only thing we measure is redshift. The expansion of the universe is theory. Inflation is a patch on that theory, because it is unable to explain various features of the universe, such as why the background radiation is smooth, if it is the initial burst of energy from that "Big Bang."

What you are confusing is observation of redshift and theories to explain it.

The fact is that science is not God. It is an evolutionary dynamic of increasing knowledge, based on the entirely evolutionary process of trial and error. Occasionally, though, the professional institutions of science do not care to accept the possibility of error. The result is that small errors accumulate into large errors.

Loraine,

Keep in mind that neutrality and infinity are not measurable information, but can only be deduced from the inherent limits of what can be measured.

Regards,

John M

pjackson

Gordon,

It's QM's "quantum state reduction" not mine! which Einstein called 'spooky'. Say Alice finds 'UP' at parallel settings; Bob's 'identical superposed state' MUST then reduce to; DOWN (at opposite settings it must reduce to 'UP'). So what if they're parallel but Alice changes her mind and switches to anti-parallel 1ms before arrival ..but still finds UP? Bob, who WOULD have found 'DOWN' will now have to instantly change to 'UP'.!!

Of course it's false as it uses false assumptions. I agree your mathematical construct is logical, but it's just that, a construct, contradicting QM's assumptions without providing actual classical configurations and mechanisms to justify doing so. The QM 'sleepwalkers' won't even glance at it! As I said to you last year; the solution needs BOTH to even get a glance! Bell wrote; "this trivial model was the first one we thought of" but was right saying "it can't be done" with QM's assumptions, and; "Indeed the discussion was for long entirely concentrated on the points |a-b| = 0, Pi/2 and Pi." (Speakable... p.146).

What I've done is identify physically exactly what 'entanglement' is and described the physical process reproducing QM's predictions. Specifically; the precisely 'identical superposed states' all have both North and South 'poles' (both 'Chiralities'). In each case one side is 'led' by N and the other by S. However the N/S distribution is RANDOM! And the detectors can FLIP the 'direction' while conserving the x axis OAM, and ALSO transferring momentum with a cosine distribution subject to relative axis angles! (physically via non-linear helical ellipticity of polarity).

Akinbo; That means take a short 'slinky', fix the bottom and move the top laterally. (Elliptical polarity of light from space is ubiquitous). The more ellipticity the less intensity/momentum transfer.

I recall Einstein complaining about mathematicians not being on the same page, or was it not seeing past just the numbers on it to the 'reality'? I was sure you'd done so Gordon. Was I wrong?

Best wishes

Peter

Akinbo Ojo

Gordon, Peter

Please pardon me anytime I say anything on this topic that betrays my ignorance. I have not yet been fully baptized (or corrupted) by the Quantum world.

What is "quantum state reduction" and what experimental evidence supports that it is real?

pjackson

Akinbo,

Simply; 'Quantum state reduction' is the 'reduction' of 2 or more superposed Eigenstates to a single state on measurement ('wavefunction collapse') which in the EPR context is 'singlet pair spin state' reduction of particle B to a definite state via a 'measurement' of particle A. It cannot be rationalised without 'non-locality', which is quantum 'action at a distance' (itself apparently irrational).

The theory is based on entirely consistent and very precise findings and I believe is set on the mathematically foundations first created in 1865 by Oxford professor Charles Dodgson, which were also consistent with certain interpretations of SR and became the best selling book ever written by a mathematician.

The Mathematical foundations of SR and QM.

It takes years to be fully indoctrinated by QM and become an aficionado (or "sleepwalker" in Bells' words) so it's impossible to review all the evidence here. It's all on the web. In a nutshell Bell proved conclusively with maths and logic that what goes up must come down.

I effectively show that when viewed from the same observer orientation we may say that in Australia what goes down must also come up, so circumventing the 'no go' proof of his theorem by using a different starting assumption; spinning bodies have TWO poles, north AND south!

So called 'weak measurement' statistical analysis is then consigned to the other side of the wardrobe door because it's founded on the wrong starting assumptions and non 'joined-up' physics. But of course thousands of statistician and physicist followers of quantum scientology may instantaneously explode before even countenancing such heresy! If I turn up murdered you'll know why.

Best wishes

Peter

Thomas Ray

"What you are confusing is observation of redshift and theories to explain it."

No, John, I'm not the confused one.

Light travels in a straight line. That's why we can't see farther than the horizon. So we know that information about distance events sent from far away objects is within the geodesic domain of the cosmological horizon. And because light does follow a geodesic, which is a line as straight as it can be, we also know that the origin of the cosmological geodesic is any arbitrary point of four dimensional spacetime. Minkowski space.

So when we measure galactic redshift and see that every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy, it could only be because spacetime itself is expanding.

This is really basic physics, John.

"(Science) is an evolutionary dynamic of increasing knowledge, based on the entirely evolutionary process of trial and error."

Wrong again. Science is not technology. Nor is it philosophy. Science is a rationalist enterprise.

Stefan Weckbach

Peter, Gordon, Akinbo,

i think there's much confusion about Peter's model due to inproper denotation of some 'things' one wants to discuss with him.

For example, what is 'spin' in the Peter Jackson model? Has anyone of you guys understood this properly (or think to have understood this properly)?

Let me know and let's compare it to what Peter has to say about 'spin' in his model.

Stefan

Eckard Blumschein

Stefan,

You certainly know spirelli noodles and screws. The latter are usually right wound. If I understood Peter J correctly, he realized that the spirellis have a north pole and a south pole but not a clockwise or anti-clockwise orientation.

As a bloody layman I enjoy following Peter's nice idea and consider the pair of gamma particles/waves of a PET like two nuts moving away from each other by each spinning on a infinite to both sides spiral.

Their motion looks entangled until there is decoherence due to a disturbation. It depends on the perspective whether they are seen as having the same or different clockwise or anti-clockwise polarizations. The angles of rotation may or may not be added.

Eckard

Stefan Weckbach

Eckhard,

the question is: is your picture - and the other participants' pictures of 'spin' - more than a fata morgana triggered by some airy analogies?

If one considers this blog and the entire fqxi-community as a forum of serious persons who want to discuss what's real in physics and what isn't, we need to agree on proper definitions of the terms we use.

If we want to have a scientific discussion about Peters model of 'spin', we need a little bit more than the picture of a spirelli. A spirelli having a north pole and a south pole is nice, but what does this mean?

Until now, i have only obtained some foggy pictures, so the best thing to do is to ask Peter again directly, knowing in advance that he will again pull some foggy linguistic rabbits out of his head - if he will answer my question at all.

So, here is the first of my questions to Peter, some will follow after he managed to answer it:

1) You are speaking about north and south poles of a 'thing' (wave/particle) - what physical properties of that 'thing' do you define by the labels 'north' and 'south'? Please specify what each of them are in physical terms (charge, mass, frequency, wavelength etc. pp), what they do and how they change over time for the case that they are *not changed* by magnets, polarizers etc. pp.

I am sure (well, not really) that all of you have some airy answers to this question, but for now i am not interested in those answers, but only in what Peter as the author of the model answers. This simple first question on its own will lead - as i am sure - to a 'many words and many features' discussion of what is going on in Peters model concerning the behaviour of a single 'thing' in this model. His model and the behaviour of a single 'thing' will not be as simple as Peter pretends it to be. But let's see.

Stefan

Eckard Blumschein

Stefan,

The choice of the positive sign to the normal direction, e.g. from north to south, of an spinning area implies the positive sign of its clockwise or ant-clockwise rotation or vice versa. Photons are imagined to have a direction of propagation and therefore positive or negative sign of spin RELATIVE TO THAT DIRECTION. I guess this is what Peter meant.

In case of standing waves, the direction of propagation may degenerate into a phase relation.

Eckard

Stefan Weckbach

Eckhard,

"I guess this is what Peter meant."

Another opinion in the guessing game and an answer to some question i have not posed. Thanks Eckhard, but i want to check out what Peter meant, not what you are guessing. I hope you consider me obtaining an answer from Peter himself as a justifiable concern!

Stefan

Akinbo Ojo

Peter, Stefan, Gordon, Eckard et al.

Thanks Peter, perhaps you have the reason not to distract from Gordon's interesting discussion by opening a different thread in answer to my question, 'What is 'Quantum state reduction'? I appreciate your answer. Let me reply under this thread opened by Stefan. The little I know is that 'Quantum state reduction' magic started from the Two-Slit experiment interpretation of light being made of indivisible particles, so that even when only one particle is directed at two slits, since interference must happen it will pass through both at once because of its claimed indivisibility. However, if light is wave and not indivisible particle, there will be no leg for 'Quantum state reduction' to stand on and wave function collapse will disappear as well from reasonable discussions. I had earlier proposed that an autopsy be done on Schrodinger's cat to ascertain whether or not the time of death was when the box was opened (according to wave function collapse) or the cat had long since died and become smelly falsifying wave function collapse theory.

Same applies to Stefan's poser: "what is 'spin' in the Peter Jackson model?".

Spin was originated also because it is desired to make the photon indivisible so that when passing a polarization filter, instead of using the characteristic of transverse waves to determine the proportion that passes the filter, the property called 'spin' was invented and conferred on the photon so that the mathematics of probability is used to decide the proportion of light passing the filter. In summary, 'spin', 'quantum state reduction' and 'wave function collapse' belongs to the dictionary of those who believe that light is made of indivisible particles.

Regards,

Akinbo

pjackson

Akinbo,

Yes. Indivisibility is one false assumption, but it was mooted for good reasons which must be addressed (a photon is "either there or not" and has 'quantized state' jumps).

Quantum spin is more complex as the cases of non-integer spin states must be explained (i.e. it can take 2 full rotations to return to the start state).

I do address both of those above, including in my recent post to Georgina ref the orthogonal mirrors.

Strategically then; both those alternative options have been long and closely examined previously and not resolved, so a better job on them is needed.

Best wishes

Peter

Eckard Blumschein

Stefan,

Peter referred to my metaphor of a pair of nuts in PET which are moving away from each other and accordingly rotating CW and CCW, respectively, if seen from the perspective of the imagined bolt. Perhaps I did not understand him absolutely wrong. Since I am a bloody layman in QM, I have no clue whether this appealing to me refreshing plausible and very simple idea of Peter was possibly already falsified, ignored or simply overlooked.

Maybe, the finding by Stern/Gerlach was interpreted by those who preferred a speculative mathematical rather than the overlooked common sense explanation.

At that time, experts of EE like Dirac rejected negative frequencies but had no scruple to use Heaviside's trick of positive and negative elapsed time as a gospel.

Let me stress that I enjoyed using complex calculus for my lifetime. Nonetheless, I know that is in principle always required and possible to inverse transform the results from complex domain back into reality with two exceptions: ict and ih_bar. What about ict, I feel ashamed that it took me quite a while to find out that Michelson's results of 1881 in Potsdam and 1887 in Cleveland are quite easily plausible if one abandons the idea of a light-carrying medium.

Eckard,

don't search for Eckhard

Akinbo Ojo

Peter J,

"Yes. Indivisibility is one false assumption, but it was mooted for good reasons which must be addressed (a photon is "either there or not" and has 'quantized state' jumps)".

In my opinion, there can be no good reason for mooting a false assumption. It appears, apart from you most here take the indivisibility of the photon as sacrosanct in spite of the many troubles this has led to.

From the little I know, "either there or not" arises when at a half-silvered mirror in order to agree with the observation that half the light is detected at orthogonal detectors, it is claimed that rather than split in two, light passes as a whole half the time and reflected as a whole half the time without any way of knowing at any given incidence which of the two would happen. Hence the introduction of probability in quantum mechanics. If light is a wave (or even a divisible particle) there will be no need to use probability to explain what happens at a half-silvered mirror!

By 'quantized state' jumps you probably mean photo-electricity. Someone in the community has been proposing a loading theory that would not require quantized state jumps. He also carried out experiment to demonstrate this (see unquantum.net). The only other difficult evidence is Planck's observations on blackbody radiation to which I have not seen a reasonable explanation for the observed discreteness, except to say that a built-in assumption is that the 'field' is continuous and energy can be distributed in it without limit. But suppose the field is 'not continuous' and space is discrete, what then?

In summary, I stand to be corrected by any member of the community that 'photon indivisibility' as a fundamental postulate of Quantum Mechanics has insufficient experimental justification. On the contrary the paradoxes it leads to are evidence of its falsity.

Akinbo

Stefan Weckbach

Akinbo,

"If light is a wave (or even a divisible particle) there will be no need to use probability to explain what happens at a half-silvered mirror!"

I recently read a heap of "if....then" statements like this from guys which heavily mistake logical consistency for physical causality. Ever heard of the 'if-then' fallacy?

Akinbo, please go in the lab and predict every single outcome with the aid of your wave theory. You can't. And you are forearmed for this by another 'explanation' why it should be possible in theory, but unfortunately impossible practically. These 'explanations' will make rich use of the 'if-then' fallacy. I am sure you will find thousands of hidden variables that make it impossible for you to forecast even a single run of the experiment. Thousand claims that cannot be tested in principle, unless your wave theory does predict something that is in contradiction to the predictions of Standard QM and can be tested.

Your wording 'explanation' is ill defined as long as there is no correspnding theory that can unambiguously be tested experimentally. Even the claim or the fact of having such a theory in hand is worthless and meaningless (means only of intellectual interest for the private consumer) - until this theory is really tested in the lab and reproduced by other labs.

Stefan

pjackson

Akinbo,

Stefan's right. You question the foundations of physics! What kind of site do you think this is!? How can we teach physics consistently if we let people keep changing it! This 'trench' may look like a 'rut', but the fear is if we leave it without a ready-proven better one many may get lost.

Fact is the original 'good reasons' haven't yet been conclusively falsified. That must be done if you want a paradigm shift. The 'bar' is far higher than for the original assumptions as there's more for people to loose. The deeper the entrenchment the higher the bar becomes. There a great heap of cracked pots who tried to jump it alone and failed. Eric Reiter tried using the great Planck but eschewed support.

I applaud all serious attempts. A few thoughts may help; Consider a wave energy 'ground state' to be the meridian (half height) not 'base' line. All ABOVE that line then manifests (positive) and below does not. The 'line' of a spitter may fall anywhere longitudinally, so has a 50:50 chance of '+1'. However, to be consistent with the rest of optical science the manifestation is an instant 're-quantisation' so the NLS equation and Huygens construction of new expanding spherelets apply. As all 're-quantizations' are instantaneously 'photons' we also satisfy all the 'particle' evidence.

However having some 'apparently more consistent theory', and having a more consistent theory able to persuade a species quite happy with the one it's familiar with to abandon that and change, are entirely different things! There's the task!

But nature shows nothing is impossible. Best of luck.

Peter

Stefan Weckbach

"but the fear is if we leave it without a ready-proven better one many may get lost"

That's not a question of fear, but of sanity.

"Fact is the original 'good reasons' haven't yet been conclusively falsified"

For good reasons. If you want to falsify them, do it in the way i described to Akinbo.

"What kind of site do you think this is!? How can we teach physics consistently if we let people keep changing it!"

It's a site where people can discriminate between gedanken predictions and real data. If you think you can change physics or the teaching of physics only by gedanken predictions, then with good accordance to sanity one can say that you are on the wrong web site.

John Merryman

Tom,

"So when we measure galactic redshift and see that every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy, it could only be because spacetime itself is expanding."

Apparently this is difficult to grasp, but if they are actually moving away, then only space is expanding, because the time component remains constant, since it takes light longer to cross this increased distance.

"Wrong again. Science is not technology. Nor is it philosophy. Science is a rationalist enterprise."

Wow! Does that mean no scientific theory can ever be wrong?

Regards,

John M

Eckard Blumschein

Lorraine, Georgina,

When John M explained the flaw in Plato's world of ideas, I realized that not only just one model may correspond to many items or aspects of reality from which it has been abstracted but the same object can also be differently modeled. The Cartesian description of space is e.g. equivalent to spherical coordinates. Maybe the latter is a bit less obviously an arbitrary choice.

I infer from Michelson's null result that light waves in empty space behave different from waves within a medium. This enforces a quite unusual notion of space as mere distances and implies that it is unnecessary to rescue Maxwell's hypothesis of a light-carrying medium by means of Lorentz contraction and SR.

Couldn't this be a first step toward finding out what might be wrong with spacetime and SUSY?

Eckard

John Merryman

Eckard,

I think you might be the first person I actually convinced that space can be real, without being physical.

I better not hold my breath for it to go viral.

Regards,

John M

Steve Agnew

Yes, I know that you disagree. But the earth is moving and doppler shifts do occur relative to the CMB and the CMB dipole is a very reasonable explanation of earth's movement in the universe. And of course, that explanation is very widely accepted by the mainstream.

It is not clear why you want to complexify that rather simple explanation of the CMB dipole. After all, you can still argue about what the quadupole and octopole results mean since it is not clear what those terms mean.

Knowing that we are aligned with our destiny on noon Sept. 10th and with our origin on noon March 11th is a pleasing metaphor representing the universe.

Steve Agnew

I actually like thermodynamic analogies. In nonlinear minimization, the mantra is that experts give you the best local solutions to problems and in order to find a better solution to very difficult problems, you need to raise the temperature.

With sufficient temperature, you search a larger fraction of the phase space and so are able to find the best global solution. Then you slowly lower the temperature of the search and anneal the best global solution out of your phase space. These annealing algorithms are very popular in nonlinear equation problem solving, but I find their metaphor useful for any complex problem.

What we need to do is raise the temperature in order to sample more of the phase space and get out of the local minimum in which science is now trapped by its own experts. However, eventually we then need to anneal the better solution by lowering the temperature of the search.

That annealing a solution will need a metric, a usefulness of the theory. Otherwise science will be overwhelmed by the entropy of ideas...

Eckard Blumschein

John M,

Well, reality of space does not need a physical model in terms of a substance. Similarly, I see Einstein a bit correct when he suspected the Now something outside the realm of (his) science.

Incidentally, may I ask you to speak less metaphorical with those like me whose native language isn't English?

Eckard

John Merryman

Eckard,

There will always be language barriers when dealing with people coming from different backgrounds, cultural, regional and professional. The advantage is that they also bring different viewpoints and knowledge. This goes to the point I keep making about there being no one top down universal frame and that it is a bottom up process of endless interacting and evolving frames. Which means that relating one viewpoint to another requires some degree of compromise and fuzziness. It can be a bit like a double exposed photographic negative, with can be irritating to those who prefer clarity and precision, but someone with a more generalist point of view will overlook the details anyway, in order to see the broader view.

I also think this goes to the nature of thought and language as well, which is a distillation of form from the larger dynamic and thus much like the distillation of matter from energy. This creates an inherent bias toward seeing reality as physical objects, with their interactions as an effect, rather than the dynamic processes creating them. Nodes and networks require a dichotomy of viewpoints to really understand.

Regards,

John M

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