Dear Ed,

Thank you for your kind remarks. I was able to follow your link to the 'animated physics' page. The page, as far as I can determine, is strictly about the photon test of Bell's theorem, so it's probably appropriate for me to remark again on this.

My essay of course concerns the Stern-Gerlach scattering of magnetic dipoles in an inhomogeneous field. I have developed the energy-exchange physics of the model and show that the initial angle theta that the spin makes with the field can both predict the individual results of measurement (quantum mechanics cannot do this) and these completely local results can, after the fact, be correlated with the paired remote results to yield the quantum correlation, -a.b, which, again, Bell claims to be impossible. The theta-dependent physics shows up in the distribution of scattering angles, so it is paramount that Bob and Alice's measurements include this physical 'amplitude' information.

Photon experiments are different in nature. The photons trigger a count and the count contains but obscures the corresponding initial value of the corresponding 'hidden variable'. I have not completely analyzed the photon problem as I understand the physics of Stern-Gerlach much better than the physics of photon experiments.

Although some argue this point, Bell discusses Stern-Gerlach and clearly had Stern-Gerlach in mind when he derived his theorem, and as I show, it is the Stern-Gerlach eigenvalue equation that led to his confusion. For practical reasons, most actual experiments have been photon-based, and these results match the quantum predictions (or at least exceed Bell's constrained model.)

All of the statements in the literature that I have seen are a variant of "no local model can match QM." Thus it is only necessary to show one local model that does match the QM correlation to disprove Bell's theorem, and, for the reasons I state above, I have chosen a local model of Stern-Gerlach.

My assumption, which I have not proved, is that if a local model of Stern-Gerlach produces the quantum mechanical correlations, then it is very likely that a local photon model will also violate Bell. But it is not necessary to show this to disprove Bell. My local model does this, and makes clear where Bell went wrong.

Thanks again for your response.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Sir,

If I'm not mistaken, this contest is not about Bell's theorem and quantum mechanics. You tried to disguise some of your ideas about quantum mechanics in a paper about Bell's theorem. You talk about things that this community is not required to know and you have not answered the main questions of this contest. Therefore, I think your paper is of no interest to general audience but only to your peers and I would like to ask you if you have send this for journal peer review and if it was published. Thank you for your effort.

    Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

    I truly appreciate your good words about my essay. However, I have a problem with your invitation to read your essay as follows:

    Before your comments my community rating was at 6.0 based on two votes. Afterwards, it dropped to 5.0 based on a single vote. This means that someone rate it at 3. There are two possibilities then

    (1) Either you rated my essay at 3 despite your good words, or

    (2) You did not rate my essay despite your good words.

    In either case, I will not read you essay and as a matter of fact I will refrain from judging other essays because such judgment cannot be objective anyway. I will read several essays but not rate.

    Thank you. I am not here to get a prize but just to participate and convey my thoughts. I know the process since last time I participated in 2011. My essay was first for two weeks and then in just a few days I got a series of low marks. It ended up in the 35 essays sent for review but to see how some people acted was quite disappointing. I just wish FQXi would use an independent panel of judges and pay no attention to ratings. I think they are smarter than that.

      Alex,

      I think you are completely mistaken that my essay is not on topic. In the first pages I address several FQXi questions that are answered by my essay. Further, FQXi stands for "fundamental questions", and there are few if any questions more fundamental than whether local causality exists, or not. I believe that my essay is exactly what Templeton hoped for when he funded FQXi.

      Your other point, that it is not for a "general audience", is somewhat more relevant. Scientific American also supports FQXi; they of course desire essays that can become articles in their magazine. My essay is too dense for most general audiences, but if you read the comments above you will find that the FQXi community finds it appropriate and relevant.

      I hope you did not waste too much of your time before discovering it was not your cup of tea.

      Sincerely,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Efthimios Harokopos,

      I saw your complaint about scoring on your thread before I commented on your essay, so I knew that you were already upset about scoring. What I had not realized was that you think you can, in general, correlate comments with voting behavior. It is upsetting when low scores are received for no apparent reason. During the first weeks of this contest I was the top paper with a 10 (every time I looked at it I reminded myself that there was nowhere to go but down) and then I received at least two 1s and a couple of 2s. I was of course not happy about this.

      There are no rules for how one "should vote". After several essay contests I have a voting strategy that I think is most effective. I typically wish to see all essays before I decide how they should be ranked. I think it is presumptuous for you to assume that my voting behavior should match your ideas of voting but if you are hostile over this point it's probably best you not read my essay.

      You have written an essay in an earlier contest, and you should therefore be aware that no one is happy with FQXi voting. There is always some vote trading going on and the best policy is not to discuss votes in comments and not to combine the timing of comments and votes to 'send messages'.

      Your implication that I would give high praise and low scores is unwarranted, and there is no basis for you even to suggest this. The fact is that I have not scored your essay, nor most essays, as I have my own policy or voting strategy. I think your complaint about voting is valid, but your assumptions about how I should vote are invalid and not appreciated.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

      I have enjoyed reading your comments on the various essays. I think your approach to voting that you outline in your exchange a good and wise one.

      I have also noticed that many of the essays seem at times to be treated unusually well, and some unusually poorly. Unfair voting impairs the standing of the contest and impairs the experience for participants who have made a sincere and time consuming effort, and should be spared tactical downgrades or extreme and unwarranted ratings.

      Perhaps, I thought, as a FQXi forum or question, the topic could be a self policing voting system for the essay contest. For example only, suppose at the 6 week mark and the 8 week mark, the voting essayist who is closest the average rating of all essays (that is, find the difference on each essay of the rating essayist from the average rating, and add up the differences) gets an extra 10 vote, and the one second closest an extra 9 or something like that. The idea would be to encourage and reward fair-minded appraisals as opposed to a strategic downgrade, and to discourage outlying ratings. The idea exploits the idea that the average of several ratings is often a more reliable indicator than any single vote.

      I suspect my suggestion has various flaws. I think it might be interesting to see what people come up with as rating systems that can circumvent some of the objections to the current system. The issue has been raised by some participants. You comment that 'no one is happy' with the current system. Perhaps collectively we might consider this not a philosophical problem about voting but an interesting problem relating to game theory or voting theory.

      With best wishes,

      Bob Shour

      Dear Bob Shour,

      Thank you very much for your kind remarks. I consider giving helpful feedback and voting separate issues. This issue never goes away, and there has been extensive discussion about voting problems after several of the contests closed. Many policies have been suggested, but no panacea has been found. An optimistic view is that 'the wisdom of crowds' will prevail, and that the shenanigans will average out, but who knows. At least as serious a problem, is that the judges often ignore top ranked essays that go against the party line, and the FQXi membership appears to take care of itself quite well thank you. Therefore, even if we could find a just and fair way to vote, it would just be overridden by the judges, all of whom are part of the establishment and see as part of their job protecting the establishment under the guise of "keeping FQXi from becoming a joke."

      FQXi offers a rare opportunity to tackle serious issues in a serious venue that is, for the most part, operated professionally and civilly and even enjoyably. Even more important it forms a permanent record of one's thoughts, theories, and comments. In addition the cross stimulation of ideas from very knowledgeable and creative people is worth its weight in gold. I would not keep coming back year after year if I did not think FQXi's good points far outweigh the bad points.

      Thank you again for your supportive comment.

      My very best wishes,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Hi Edwin,

      I agree very much that "we use our minds to connect math and physics" and that "math maps imposed on the physical territory form the substance of physics." You asked about process four in my essay Quantum Gravity and it precisely your quoted sentiment that I was hoping to capture with that process.

      My main feedback on your very interesting essay is that I was not convinced that "Bell showed a local model cannot produce the correlation -ab." Perhaps I did not fully appreciate your argument, can you explain? (Sorry if this was covered in your other comments, I see there are very many.) This is a non-standard statement of Bell's result that I have not heard before.

      I admit to being one of the people who say what you refer as Bell's constraints must be imposed. The lines in the SG experiment will either be up or down so it is natural to impose a binary eigenvalue map on the physical territory of the GS apparatus. How else could one describe a binary up/down result?

      Lastly I will point out that in my own study of Bell's result, I noticed an assumption that led to equation (1) which was not included in your list on page four. Namely, the assumption is that spin eigenvectors are orthogonal. I treat the case where they are not orthogonal in my paper On Bell's Inequality. My result agrees with your conclusion that Bell was wrong. However where you derive an error from the connection of the math to the experiment, I derive a trivial mathematical error that shows that Bell's inequality does always allow local hidden variables.

      Jonathan Tooker

        Hi Jonathan Tooker,

        You are correct that quite a bit of explanation is included in the above comments, but it takes a while to plow through them. The short version is that Stern-Gerlach is not measuring spin directly; it is measuring spin-dependent scattering from an inhomogeneous field. And the inhomogeneous field is not described by Pauli's simple eigenvalue equation, due to the non-zero and non-trivial gradient of the field that must be included in the Hamiltonian. Instead, depending on the specifics of the gradient, there is a continuum of eigenstates, not binary eigenstates.

        When the physics of the particle interactions are taken into account, the amplitude predicted by the local model can be correlated (in pairwise fashion) and the result (as shown on page 7) is the quantum correlation -a.b. Bell claims this is impossible, and the consensus today as evidenced by numerous statements in the physics literature is that "no local model can produce the quantum correlation". Bell assumes that the particle only precesses, but this is true only in a constant field, which yields null results and thus a logical contradiction. Bell apparently believes that he is measuring spin directly, and assumes spin can only have two possible results +/-1, thus he throws away the actual measurement data and replaces it with an abstraction, the +/-1 dichotomy. This prevents his constrained model from ever obtaining the correct correlation. In other words he is applying the wrong map, Pauli's (provisional) precession eigenvalue equation in a situation where it does not apply and it is likely that he is doing this because he is confusing the Pauli equation with the Dirac equation as I explain in the essay.

        Believing that there is a difference between what local models (as constrained by Bell) and quantum models can produce in terms of correlations, physicists have looked for an explanation for that difference. They have settled on entanglement as the explanation of the difference. If a local model can produce the correct correlation, as mine does, then there is no difference between the local and quantum correlations, and this would seem to have some significance for entanglement. And as quantum mechanics does not contain the initial spin, and cannot predict each local result, but only the correlation, then quantum mechanics is incomplete, in Einstein's sense. My model should be capable of being tested experimentally, and this issue decided.

        Thank you for your comments. I hope this short summary answers your questions and of course will be happy to try to answer any other question.

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear George Rajna,

        Thank you for your most gracious comment.

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Edwin,

        Thank you for your interesting approach of the Stern Gerlach problem described by J,Bell.

        In short I would describe his problem with the fact that there was no so called "smearing" of particle impacts on the screen observable which indicated that before entering the SG magnet, the particle magnetic moments had to be up or down. Right?

        I think I could give you a practical test description to prove that indeed most particles do enter up or down!! By a mechanism called "internal oven entanglement".

        Therefore you have to imagine that all particles in the silver oven are entangled and that the first SG entering particle(s) are the messenger particles to influence the total polarization of the oven.

        This could be checked by a new SG experiment with TWO opposing SG magnets, ( see image) and perhaps:

        See: http://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0015v1.pdf

        Figure 7,

        To solve the Q.M. problem described by J.S.Bell about the standard Stern Gerlach experiment.

        Experiment proposal to support the existence of a new kind of Entanglement, which should show up inside a double Stern Gerlach experiment with two S-G magnets with different orientation.

        The proposal for this experiment, is based on the hypothesis that all heated and vaporized

        silver atoms inside the silver oven are entangled as a whole and that magnetic measurement of

        one atom travelling outside the oven influences the magnetic polarity of all the other atoms in

        the oven.

        If the oven sends the silver atoms (by shutters) alternately to the two magnets, then the

        resulting impact pattern on both screens will show an additional BAR in the middle of the

        original impact pattern. (see figure 7)

        This could be the explanation for the fact that only up and down orientated atoms should enter

        into the S-G magnet to explain the "non smearing" effect on the screen.

        John S. Bell described his doubts about the Stern Gerlach experiment interpretation in his

        book: "Speakable and unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics on chapter 16 page 140-141.

        John Bell argued that there is no logic to be found behind the fact, that there is a so called

        "absence of smearing" of the particle impact pattern on the screen.Attachment #1: Stern_Gerlach_1.jpg

          Dear Leo Vuyk,

          I see that you have put some effort into studying Stern-Gerlach. I was somewhat surprised by your statement of 'no smearing' of particle impacts on the screen, as there appears to be visible 'smearing' on the iconic postcard that Stern-Gerlach sent to Bohr, and Messiah (a primary QM text at the time of Bell) describes "the appearance on the screen of a more or less spread out distribution of impacts..." indicating that the atoms are not all in the same initial condition and implying a statistical distribution.

          But I see you are referring to the lack of a continuous distribution with no separation. Please note that this is compatible with my model and can be explained with classical physics when energy-exchange between precession-mode energy and deflection-mode energy is taken into account.

          I do understand your suggestion, and I find it both interesting and well thought out, based on belief in entanglement as a fundamental phenomenon.

          My approach is not to deny entanglement as a starting proposition, but to explore Bell's conclusion that no local model can produce the QM correlation. I have presented a local model that does produce the QM correlations, unless Bell's constraints are imposed. This would seem to call Bell's constraints into question, and so I have analyzed the reason why he might have imposed such constraints. My essay offers an explanation, based on confusion of Dirac and Pauli eigenvalue equations, and assumptions of eigenvalue measurements. If this analysis is valid, then the rationale for entanglement is called into question.

          But if one assumes entanglement from the start, then I believe your analysis is reasonable. The good news is that we have proposed two experiments that should be able to settle the question. As the belief in non-locality is certainly one of the most major challenges to intuitive understanding of physics, it seems very important to perform these experimental tests. I am beginning efforts to have my experiment performed, and I hope you are doing the same.

          Thank you very much for reading, thinking, and commenting.

          Best,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Dear Ed,

          1. I refer to this comment of yours; cited 2 posts above:

          "I have employed a robot as a vehicle to eliminate bias and "baggage", while providing pattern recognition, learning algorithms (neural nets, self organizing maps, etc.) and have shown how counting, derived from logical physical structures, is essentially (along with simple arithmetic logic circuitry, silicon or biological) all that is required to go from raw measurement data to feature vectors of the quantum persuasion. "

          Is this a reference to the model that you used to construct the two graphs on p.7 of your essay?

          2. Am I correct in thinking that the second graph is a modification of the first graph (via the application of Bell constraints) and not a graph published from a new run of your model under Bell constraints and with new random inputs?

          3. Perhaps I'm missing something here, re #2; but I ask because the density of the data-points varies over the range of θ; being low at the extremities. Could this indicate some θ-based noise or bias in your model?

          4. In these graphs I take it that you here are using θ as the angle (a,b). Does your model allow a and b to be vectors in 3-space?

          Thanks, and best regards; Gordon

          DearEdwin,

          Thank you for your extensive answer.

          You wrote:

          I am beginning efforts to have my experiment performed, and I hope you are doing the same.

          I have no connection to university PhD experiments , but perhaps both experiments are perhaps interesting for such a student.

          Edwin -

          Thanks for the challenging article! I wonder what Bell would think. I like the map-territory analogy for math and physics - it highlights the difference between abstract proof (math) and empirical claim (physics). Yet it may tend to the platonist (as do I) in the sense that the map is real too.

          Thanks as well for reading my essay. Best of luck - George Gantz (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2381)

          I read your essay since long ago and I did not see it worth commenting earlier because it is pure nonsense. You claim to provide a possibility of something that was famously, clearly and rigorously proven impossible. If there was a consensus on this impossibility, it is not because physicists are idiots having fanciful beliefs that something cannot be done just because they did not have the idea how to do it (how ridiculous is this suspicion : in fact they are not idiots and they are well willing to find a possible explanation of something, when it is possible, and especially when it is as elementary simple as the kind of things you wrote), but because a rigorous proof of this impossibility was given and verified. You claim to show what is clearly impossible. Like claiming to have proven that 2+2=5 that can be funny but does not deserve attention. But in the content of your text you do not prove anything because you only put a small pack of words and formulas with no sense (your so-called "energy exchange theorem" that does not even say if it is for a local system or a system of 2 separate particles at different places, which the EPR paradox is about) and then you just boringly spend most of your text repeating like a parrot the claim that this senseless pack of words and formulas succeeded to do that impossible thing. Just making a nice graphic is not a proof of anything.

          I suspect a possible source of error of your reasoning, in case you sincerely mean something that has some minimum of coherence in your head (which is impossible to check), is that you did not make it clear how you define the convention of unit of correlation between spins. I cannot know it because you did not make it clear what is the unit you use.

          The fact of quantum physics, that might be written by the sentence "quantum correlation -a.b" is that for example if a and b have the same direction then there is 100% certainty to get observed results with opposite signs. Of course if you did not interpret it like this but only provide a correlation that varies, for example, in the interval [25%, 75%] of probability of being found the same sign, depending on the angle according to the law of dot product then your system respects Bell's inequalities and does not reproduce the results of quantum physics.

            Another possible source of nonsense of your article, and of your ignorance of the problem (that seems to be more precisely your ignorance of what the predictions of quantum physics actually are and how they break Bell's inequalities, so that of course you have no problem to classically reproduce some incorrect description that does not break the Bell's inequalities and in which you misinterpret what needs to be explained), is, if you did not even get what the terms of the observation are about: the fact that spin measurement results are only one binary digit of information, and nothing else such as any continuum of possible positions on a screen. If done well, the Stern-Gerlach experiment only has 2 spots on the screen (independent of the initial spin direction of the electron that entered), with no bridge between them. Because, when we measure a spin along a direction, there are only 2 possible values of the spin we can find along this direction: either +1/2 or -1/2 but nothing else, leading to either spot on the screen. Of course it is always possible to blur this fact by referring to pictures made during the prehistory of spin measurement experiments where the separation between both spots was not clear.

            For more explanations about the predictions of quantum physics: a basic list of examples of consequences of quantum physics that cannot be classically explained are given in my page on interpretations ("Description of a quantum correlation experiment" and links to similar descriptions written by others); to understand the formalism of quantum physics and how it can give such predictions in logically coherent manners (but escaping classical explanations), see my introduction to quantum physics. I find it so amazing to see most participants of this contest so deeply ignorant about quantum physics and its incompatibility with classical realism that they failed to detect earlier the total falsity of this article and gave it such good rates in average.

            Ed, further to my earlier questions (above): but now re Silvain's comments above.

            As you know, I've long maintained the view (and worked toward): "a correct theory of particle-device interactions" will deliver the correct results for EPRB ++ and breach the relevant Bell-inequalities. So Silvain could be a good sounding-board as we work toward that common goal -- given that not many others (so far) engage with the details.

            But NB: I believe some of Silvain's seeming passion might arise from your desire to keep the low hanging fruit for yourself at the moment; especially as you say you keep finding more things in your model. For this puts you at risk of giving the impression of making it up as you go -- the basis for my suggestion that you should put some corrected/expanded views at viXra.org ASAP -- in that I believe your method needs to be more clearly expressed. For example, with me using X for your x for clarity below:

            1. Using θ in several senses is confusing: so use α for (a,λ) and β for (b,λ')?

            2. Reason: Your key formula, eqn (4), appears to need rewriting (possibly with "X is proportional to "...? Otherwise, how does X become constant for a given angular input if it's related to a velocity? Though I'm sure we differ here.)

            3. Now your (4) yields X as positive only, and you've explained to me that the sign of X is in the direction of the velocity of deflection. So is it correct to presume that your model (from figure on p.6) is using variants of (4) with velocity-sign thrown in?

            4. Suggestion: Derive a new signed Xa based on α -- not θ -- and call it (4A); and a new signed Xb based on β -- not θ -- and call it (4B).

            5. Then the graph on top of p.7 correctly retains θ as you derive E(AB) from a straight-forward comparison of your new (4A) and (4B)?

            NB: If you use just the sign-X (in your terms, the sign of the velocity deflection) then that reproduces Bell's (1964: 196) failed "Illustration" -- given that the sign of your velocity change appears to depend only on the hemisphere of the lambda wrt the principal axis of their respective polarisers -- right? So I'd like to see a clearer focus on why your variable X does not need a Y if you are modelling the second figure on p.3 -- thereby avoiding the conversion of each X to sign-X?

            With apologies if some of my own confusions re your model are showing here; Gordon