Alan,
I am amused regarding your interpretation of amateur and professional. I guess everything is perspective. I was thinking of YOU as the pro and myself as the amateur. I also consider Dr. Gibbs and Dr. Klingman to be professionals. I suspect that I get more out of these interactions than you guys:-)
Best Regards and Good Luck,
Gary Simpson
Alan,
A brilliant analysis, well presented. I see it's flushed out some Lord Kelvin believers; "physics is all sorted so we can stop thinking." They clearly have. I still see the problem as how to speed intellectual evolution. Certainly pictures not just numbers should resonate.
To that end I've built dynamic physical models, very much on our common these, and just posted a short video; http://youtu.be/KPsCp_S4cUs
I suspect if the complete solution is presented well in the right medium we may succeed. Shifting the paradigm may be impossible, but I conceived a plan 40 years ago to place everything around the paradigm in a new inertial rest frame which evolves (sneaks) away from the old beliefs leaving them behind! It will take a team, and it seems you're key (planned departure 2020). I suggest that may finally be just 'crazy enough' for Neils Bohr!
I have no compunction applying top marks to your essay but do suggest neither of our pictures is yet quite complete. I hope you may find additional value and insight in some aspects of a recent co-authored paper recently rejected which reproduces QM's predictions in full with a quasi-classical model, identifying the specific false assumptions.
https://www.academia.edu/9216615/Quasi-classical_Entanglement_Superposition_and_Bell_Inequalities._v2
Please do also comment on the video and paper.
Excellent job, and hope your essay hits the top.
Peter
Alan, (I am really sorry about the length of this, but give it a chance)
I just opened your essay page this morning and it said different things from what I had expected.
(Not being a Physicist) It would be remiss of me to say technical things about your model. But perhaps I can comment on a theme that motivates (you can correct me here, if you wish) your essay. It is your claim that..."On the contrary, it is argued here that pictures of real objects moving in real space provide the proper basis for physics, and that mathematics merely provides quantitative models for calculating the dynamics of these objects..." (Btw, I did read the whole thing.)
As I went through various observations I could make regarding your main thesis, it became evident that those would be the same that I made yesterday on Ken Wharton's essay page. Being the author of it, I felt sanctioned to copy certain parts of it here.
"...perhaps physicists' intuition ought to be given greater weight... The reason for that is that in the absence of patterns, paradigms, structures, etc. that make sense to us and which we can manipulate in our minds, physics may become a (proverbial) victim of its own success.
Here is how it would work. Say that things get so esoteric that only computers can generate theories and proofs (by now you know where this is heading), and humans can no longer see why any of it makes sense, nor can they follow the proofs. Computers may propose new theories, but those will still have to be tested against the real world. Given that there can be a myriad of computer-generated theories, and that we will not know which ones to follow up on first, it will present us with various quandaries. Experiments take time, and may only get more expensive in the future. We will not be able to afford to test all of the new theories, nor be able to pick only viable ones for experimental confirmation.
Unless we come up with a ToE to program the computer with before switching to autopilot, we will become dependent on the computer to divine the correct theory solely from mathematics. I am extremely skeptical about any claims that "mathematics alone" can figure out the universe without checking with it (the universe), and I am not getting on an airplane without a human pilot sitting somewhere near the front.
I would also like to draw your attention to a part of Sophia Magnusdottir's essay. You may have already seen it. She proposes that an "analog" method might obviate the need for mathematics in at least parts of physics, perhaps even those not well matched to known mathematics. An example might be adiabatic "computing" already in use. This could certainly work in principle, but since you will still have to measure at least the relative "scale" between the two systems (one being the subject, and the second being the solver) to get the result or prediction you are after, it may not provide all the tools to do physics.
Your central point appears to be unassailable. For at least any foreseeable time horizon, mathematics will be indispensable for physics."
I think all readers would benefit from going to Ken Wharton's essay page (and, for that matter, to Sophia Magnusdottir's).
This next part is solely to follow up on your response to Ed Unverricht:
Alan M. Kadin replied on Mar. 8, 2015 @ 21:33 GMT: "...Within my picture, all spin-zero particles must be composites of two particles with opposite spin, similar to a meson which is a quark-antiquark pair. That would suggest that what has been detected experimentally may not be the desired Higgs Boson..."
Alan, you have some company in your contention that the putative Higgs Boson might not be what it is purported to be. Now, you may not want to be associated with some of them, but they deserve a second look. Already, on Wednesday, 04 July 2012 13:41 (European time), almost immediately after the big Higgs announcement, Peter J. Carroll (on www.specularium.org/component/k2/item/58-higgs-or-not) made this statement (among others): "This particle could well consist of a composite entity like a top-antitop meson rather than a truly new fundamental particle."
Now, I have to warn you, you will be turned off by Carroll's other interests - but you ought to look for the "diamond." Carroll has some interesting physics, and less interesting "magic."
Now, for a more comprehensive argument "against the Higgs" you ought to look up Eli Comay's webpage(s). At the very least, you might discover that he is really smart.
It is easy to label those with whom you disagree "cranks." Yes, some people's systems are internally inconsistent, and/or not based on reasonably established facts about the world. But if a model or theory is internally consistent and not convincingly contradicted by "facts" (which can keep changing), the most one could say is that he/she was wrong.
Calling proponents of coherent and consistent ideas cranks would be like calling Bohr a crank should his ideas be disproved or simply superseded in the future. Bohr was a serious scientist, and I am quite sure he was sincere in his quest to find the "truth" about our universe.
En
Dear En:
Thank you for your careful reading of my essay and your very extensive comments. I will read them more carefully and respond later. And thank you for the various pointers to related work.
I also noticed, perhaps coincidentally, that my Community Rating jumped up. Thank you, again.
One interesting aspect of physics is that "facts" as observed in experiments are actually strongly filtered through theories, something that most physicists do not really appreciate. For example, it is universally believed that diffraction experiments prove that neutrons and atoms are waves. But I've presented an alternative explanation compatible with particles. It is also widely believed that non-local quantum entanglement is an experimental fact, but all such observations are based on measurements of linearly polarized single photons, using detectors that cannot distinguish one from two simultaneous photons. The proper experiments could be done, but have not yet been reported.
I also proposed a 2-stage Stern-Gerlach measurement. This is presented in standard quantum textbooks as if the experiment was done many years ago, but it has never been done. Feynman in his Lectures on Physics (1963) admitted as much:
"Incidentally, no one has ever done all of the experiments we will describe in just this way, but we know what would happen from the laws of quantum mechanics, which are, of course, based on other similar experiments. "
It is not that these experiments are particularly difficult or expensive; rather, it is viewed as disreputable to question accepted wisdom, so no one even wants to try.
Finally, I note that virtually all of the interest and comments on my essay come from amateurs. As a rule, theoretical physicists refuse to engage in any way. I feel like I'm being shunned.
Alan
Alan,
Thank you for your reply.
In your comment (Alan M. Kadin replied on Mar. 17, 2015 @ 18:46 GMT), you mention that "...It is also widely believed that non-local quantum entanglement is an experimental fact,..."
In response to the above quoted comment, I am going to say something that is either ignored or "underappreciated" generally. Even if we were to assume that the Bell-EPR experiments found what the QM community says they found, nothing can get around the following: All that was ever observed experimentally were correlations. "Entanglement" was never observed and never will. Its "extrapolation" requires the a priori acceptance of the thing "they" are trying to prove in the first place (non-locality/non-realism of QM). Only if you already believe and take a priori as axiomatic that particles and photons have no attributes until being measured/detected could you come to the conclusion (as a consequence of said experiments) that the detection of one "branch" of a singlet pair determines the state of its other "branch."
There cannot (in principle) be experimental "proof" of entanglement (since no one knows what that even is, and if they think they do, let them propose the mechanism) unless we assume ahead of time that particles have no attributes while not being observed (and even then there is never an actual observation of entanglement, only inference). The claim "they" could be entitled to is that they are observing unexplained correlations, and "they are working on it."
I am not surprised that you are being shunned by your colleagues. One of the Directors of the NSF told me that every time he proposes funding for research that might "put in question" prevailing views, the Bell Mafia (his words) descends upon him, and he is discouraged (via moral suasion) from pursuing it. Due to a combination of historical and scientific evolution (meaning, its various developments, social or otherwise) over the last 90 years, the QM movement has built up such an imposing "edifice" that it is virtually impossible to dislodge it from its pre-eminent position. It is a historical anomaly.
Like it or not, this is a long-term project (but it is extremely important).
However, in the interim, regardless of the status of QM, there will still be the issue I raise in my comment. It has to do with the progress toward ever-more esoteric physics, and our inability to keep going in that direction. I wonder if you could put your mind on that as a subject in itself.
But if you would be so kind as to address the other parts of my comment (En Passant wrote on Mar. 17, 2015 @ 15:43 GMT) to the extent you deem appropriate, that too will be appreciated.
En
Dear Alan,
Thank you for very good essay. Reading was a pleasure as I agree practically with all your conclusions. Moreover I have proposals how to add details you expect in future.
The major part of mathematics is completely abstract in the sense that have nothing to do with physical reality. But I cite you: pictures should guide physics. Pictures are geometry, that is part of mathematics. The same here - not the entire geometry can be isomorphic to the reality like e.g. highly speculative 11-dimensional M-theories. So the question is what geometrical structures fit to the reality? As you point out, mathematical models were adopted prematurely in the development of quantum theory. That time there were no Thurston geometries. This is the geometrization conjecture, proved by Perelman in 2003. Having that, we need only an universal correspondence rule which links the geometrical structures with the empirical domain. That rule have to be a new paradigm. Then we are able to assign proper Thurston geometries to all fundamental interactions and matter. We can treat them as a space-like, totally geodesic submanifolds of our familiar 3+1 dimensional spacetime. To make the picture of submanifolds (3) alive we need time (+1). With time included we have got quantized wave packets.
This is my proposal on the basis for the quantization. I have called this concept Geometrical Universe Hypothesis referring to Tegmark's MUH. In this picture there is no indeterminacy, entanglement or decoherence. No Copenhagen interpretation. Apparently what I have described here is oversimplified, but you can find details in my essay.
I would appreciate your comments. Thank you.
You deserve the highest rating that you will see in a while.
Jacek
Dr. Kadin,
I wouldn't worry about being shunned if I were you. I'd worry about the think tank types patenting your work. Seriously, get some tech money in your corner, wave-particle duality is a glorified admission of failure. A friend of mine on a construction crew once (damn good crew) had grown up in a family of con artists, and one time we were talking and he said that "if you walk into a room and can't spot the mark, you are". And you're right, the Bell-Aspect experiments with the polarized sunglasses type filters and the trick bulb (?), yep, it's a trick bulb. Best of luck, jrc
Dear Alan,
For the modelling of a spin-zero particles, your idea of combining 2 spin 1/2 particles is certainly valid. I took a slightly different approach after spending considerable time looking at the ideas of physicists Helmholtz, Larmor and Rabi in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Although Larmor's ideas were dis-proven for massless particles (ie. photons) by the famous Michelson-Morley experiment to discover the ether, his ideas on massive particles (protons and neutrons) went on to form the basis for the mathematics behind Rabi FID decay times in modern medical MRI equipment.
The approach I advocate for modelling spin-zero particles starts with the Helmholtz decomposition of vortex spin, breaking it into its longitudinal and transverse components. The vortex with only transverse components of spin, ends up being the natural candidate for the Higgs Boson.
I have read your essay again and enjoyed it just as much, maybe someday we will have a chance to discuss pros and cons of the different models.
Best Regards, Ed
Dear Alan Kadin,
I have no interest related to Quantum Theory, but I see that you are in a serious way to approach this problem.
Your words are:
"In contrast, in my picture, deterministic causal equations apply at all levels - no boundary is present, and therefore no boundary problem".
The original table with concrete relationships at all levels (no boundary is present) is in my essay. Perhaps you could expand it to Quantum Theory. Critique of my concept is appreciated.
Regards,
Branko Zivlak
Dear Alan and readers of this post,
If you do not believe in quantum mechanics (and qubits), you will be alone soon
http://www.livescience.com/23820-nobel-prize-physics-haroche-wineland.html
For quantum information theory (information is physical) I recommend
"Quantum computation and quantum information' by M. Nielsen and I. Chuang (Cambridge Press, 2000): the so-called QIP "bible"
More on the foundations of QM in Peres' book:
Quantum theory: concepts and methods, Kluwer 1995
Also Bohr:
"If quantum mechanics hasn't shocked you, you haven't understood it yet"
Michel
Dear Gary,
However amusing it may seem, I would rather agree with Alan on the idea that "It is mostly amateurs talking to amateurs, and professionals to professionals". As you seem to have difficulties to distinguish between amateurs and professionals, my (still incomplete) work of classification of the essay authors of this contest may help you (though I did not care to distinguish between professionals and those amateurs whose views are not too far from them). Of course, "mostly" means that exceptions may happen too ;)
Dear Michel,
Please read my essay carefully before making statements like:
"If you do not believe in quantum mechanics (and qubits), you will be alone soon"
I am familiar with all of the works that you indicate, and yet I and a large number of physicists continue to question the foundations of quantum mechanics. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with quantum mechanics, going back to its origins.
Your attitude is an indication of the quasi-religious nature of quantum belief. No questioning is allowed, and skeptics are to be shunned.
This is not science, which should by its nature be skeptical. If you read my paper, you would see that I am proposing specific experiments that should clearly distinguish orthodox QM from my alternative realistic picture. Furthermore, I identify specific aspects in the mathematical Hilbert space formalism that may be in error.
I would like to receive serious comments and criticism about my essay, but sarcasm is not the same as a serious comment.
Alan
Dear Allan,
You can forget "believe" and replace by "accept". I don't understand what you are writing in your essay. About Bohmian mechanics, there are many well written criticisms, one of them here
http://motls.blogspot.fr/2013/07/bohmian-mechanics-ludicrous-caricature.html
We are in the quantum information age, with quantum cryptography already working, many quantum algorithms already experimentally proved, may be soon using teleportation in a quantum internet, NSA is involved in the building of a quantum computer.
It may be that QM may some day appear as a limiting case of a more general viewpoint but I would be surprised to learn that is wrong.
Best regards,
Michel
Michel,
I will keep this brief so as not to co-opt Alan's page for a slightly off-topic discussion.
Your comment betrays the sentiment (shared by a self-appointed cadre of "Illuminati" within FQXi) that people who question QM (or at least aspects of Quantum Theory) are somehow deluded. You should note that hardly anyone within FQXi questions Relativity (so it's not as if the skeptics were opposed to mainstream physics). And it's not that QM is counterintuitive (although that is another favorite distraction employed by the apologists).
Michel, I think you should accept that you are dealing with a sophisticated audience not composed of demagogues (they are willing to accept evidence, but are skeptical about at least some parts of QT). Telling a scientist that s/he will soon be "alone" in whatever pursuit they are engaged in is not the right way to go about things.
Look, you may well be right, and everything is just fine with QT (QM). But I, for one, think that this discussion is far from settled. Only the future will tell (god, I hate clichés).
But I know you are pretty open minded, and when I email you later to ask you some questions about math (to which you agreed on another essay page), I will explore your belief that information is physical.
Anyway, I was pleased (to see, as I read various essays and the comments that followed) that the FQXi community appreciates your ability to see the connections between various branches of math (with perhaps corresponding connections in Physics).
En.
P.S. I was actually replying to your first comment, but it applies here too. So I will just add a few lines to answer your current comment.
I think pointing at Motl's comments will not win you any favors here. He talks about Mr. Smolin's, Mr. Woit's and Mr. Sean Carroll's brains as cesspools (two of them are participants in this essay contest). I think you are misinformed about things in your 3rd paragraph, including the NSA. But I will take even that up via email if you wish.
In any case, none of these things matter. Only the right theory, backed by the right experiments.
To En Passant and Michel Planat:
Dear En,
Thank you for coming to my defense. I can see clearly that I am not alone.
Dear Michel,
First, what I have proposed is not Bohmian mechanics, as I state directly on the top of page 3 (but maybe you didn't get that far). So I don't think that Motl's ad hominem attacks on David Bohm (who is not around to defend himself) are relevant. My picture has NO POINT PARTICLES, only spin-quantized soliton-like waves which act in certain respects as particles.
Second, Bohm proposed his mechanics to show that a hidden-variables theory was possible, completely consistent with the results of standard QM, notwithstanding Von Neumann's proof that this was impossible. In contrast, I specifically state that my picture makes predictions that are different from those of standard QM, and I propose experiments that can distinguish them.
Third, you brought up the NSA, i.e., the US National Security Agency funding of research into quantum computing. In fact, the NSA in the past decade has been funneling enormous sums of money (probably totaling 10 figures) into QC on both the theoretical and experimental levels, and is responsible for most of the research funding in many laboratories. I am less familiar with the funding situation in the EU, but I would expect that it is similar with respect to the corresponding EU or national agency. In my essay, I question the entire basis for quantum computing. I have never received NSA-related research funding.
A general remark is that one can never prove a physical theory to be correct by any number of measurements, but one can prove it to be incorrect by a single verifiable measurement. So we should never stop doing experiments on QM, just because we have all been taught it is correct. And we should not believe in QM just because it is expressed in an abstract mathematical formalism - that too can be incorrect.
Alan
Jacek,
Thank you for your interest and your comments, and I will read your essay carefully.
Alan
Peter,
Thanks for your encouraging comments.
Your video and paper bring up interesting but unfamiliar material, so that I will have to study them more carefully before I can comment.
Alan
Dear Dr. Poirier:
I just came across your comment, which I missed because it was buried in someone else's comment.
You have a rather long comment (almost a rant), which basically asserts that I am a "crackpot".
You must find it quite confounding then, that my essay seems to have risen near the top of the Community Ratings.
If you had taken the time to read my essay more carefully without prejudice, you might have a different understanding.
I present a consistent realistic picture, which makes predictions that differ from standard QM in testable ways. For example, the two-stage Stern-Gerlach experiment is presented in standard quantum textbooks as if the experiment was done many years ago, but it has never been done. Feynman in his Lectures on Physics (1963) admitted as much:
"Incidentally, no one has ever done all of the experiments we will describe in just this way, but we know what would happen from the laws of quantum mechanics, which are, of course, based on other similar experiments. "
It is not that these experiments are particularly difficult or expensive; rather, it is viewed as disreputable to question accepted wisdom, so no one even wants to try.
Alan Kadin
Alan,
Your essay is at or near the top, in my opinion. (I have a few more to consider.)
I do have questions and a suggestion. I question why and how firmly you picture "some kind of big bang"? There may have been a big bang but I do not find any compelling evidence of such. And feel that efforts to support a big bang story are part of the distraction that yields the present patch work which is the standard theory of today. Also a suggestion as to the universal locked-in, self-organized, h-bar scale fields that are the essence of the vacuum; I will post a "picture" after your comment on my present essay entry here or you can see similar at my entry to the first FQXI Essay Contest on The Nature of Time.
Sherman Jenkins
Dear Alan,
There is indeed no indeterminacy in the motion of wave packet. As you mentioned The motion of a wave packet is completely deterministic, with both position and momentum being arbitrarily defined (no uncertainty principle!).A wave packet must be spread over at least about a wavelength, but the center of energy follows a definite trajectory. The standard textbook proof of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a mathematical identity about waves, and provides for uncertainty only if one assumes the orthodox statistical interpretation.
As you metioned : In the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation, the wave represents a statistical distribution of the locations of a point particle that is associated with the mass. In an alternative "pilot-wave" interpretation (suggested by de Broglie and refined by David Bohm), both particle and wave are real, and the wave guides the trajectory of the particle.
I have mentioned that even in Copenhagen's interpretation,statistical probability is nothing but the measure of observer's ignorance. The Indeterminacy,Uncertainty also stem from the same. Heisenberg Uncertainty principle inequality was derived directly from the mathematical framework itself.Schrodingers differential euqation describing the trajectory of so-called probabilistic wave functions is itself fundamentally deterministic! mathematics is indeed responsible for this quantum mechanics. The fact is the incompatible blind application of mathematical structures in the physical scenarios. There are certain laws of invariance behind mathematical and physical structures both. There should be match between their intrinsic characetristic otherwise it leads to wrong applications and result.Thats the case of orthodox Quantum mechanics.
Thats what my Mathematical Structure Hypothesis sates that mathematical structures and physical world both are creations of Vibrations.
Probability, Randomness, Complexity are the measure of human/observer's ignorance.
As you have written : If quantum mechanics provides the microscopic foundation for matter, where does classical mechanics come from? In the orthodox theory, the microscopic world is comprised of indeterminate, entangled superpositions, associated with quantum coherent states. The macroscopic classical world consists of realistic, deterministic trajectories without superposition or entanglement. The interface between these two domains is rather fuzzy. Classical physics is believed to come about via interaction of a given quantum system with a classical measurement apparatus, causing decoherence, i.e., loss of microscopic coherent degrees of freedom. Exactly how this occurs has never been made clear, and the logic seems rather circular; if everything is ultimately quantum, how is this classical apparatus initiated?
In contrast, in the realistic theory described here, there is no quantum-classical separation.
The big question before dealing with our above classical trajectoties on microscopic level is -what is Matter & how it is linked with observer's(human) Mind. What are micro and macro? They all are fundamentally linked with Russells' paradox geometry where A larger set can exist within smaller set B and vice versa. This is possible in a peculiar geometry where internal and external,micro ¯o are merely the geometrical effects. Mind and Matter are simple question of Vibrations. Mind at very low rate is Matter and Matter at high rate of Vibration is Mind.Please see my essay or the links attached here.
Anyway, what's take on what governs the structure of mathematical equations itself which are used in Quantum mechanics/physics,which causes these fundamental paradoxes issues.Richard Feynman once said that -The next great era of human awakening would come ,today we don't see the content of euqations.
Whats your take on the geometry of consciousness(paradox of self-consciousness) as David Bohm said that without peeping into this we can't understand quantum aspects e.g.bell's locality-at-distance?
Anyway you have written great essay.
Regards,
Pankaj ManiAttachment #1: MindBrain_MatterConsciousness.pdfAttachment #2: Swami_Vivekananda_on_universe_space_time.pdf