Thanks to Steve Agnew for suggesting that we open a forum topic based on a recent interview with Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg, by Tom Siegfried in Science News.

From the article:

One reason Weinberg thinks there's a need for a new chapter in the quantum story is that those who think everything is fine with quantum mechanics take different sides in the debates about it.

"It's a bad sign in particular that those physicists who are happy about quantum mechanics, and see nothing wrong with it, don't agree with each other about what it means," Weinberg says.

What do you think? Just because physicists disagree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, does that mean we have the whole thing wrong?

It could be cool if Professor Weinberg came here on FQXi to explain his ideas with us.He is relevant.The article is very interesting.

The most telling sentence in that excellent article is, "So far a compelling theory that succeeds in generalizing quantum mechanics does not exist."

The generalization that Weinberg seeks will be an information-first theory: Quantum mechanics emerges out of a deeper informational theory (it from bit). "It's not really a good idea to hold new physical theories too strictly up to some preexisting philosophical standard," says Weinberg, and presently that standard is the insistence that bits come from its. This is the preexisting philosophical standard we need to get over. I have a book coming out in a couple of weeks, The Simplest-Case Scenario, that argues this and proposes a direction to move forward.

Weinberg clearly wants to preserve realism: something has to be "going on" without any observer, and there has to be an objective "out there" where it's happening. I don't think progress is possible while holding fast to those requirements.

    Weinberg makes a very good point. If quantum is so great, why do so many very smart people argue endlessly about what it means? Philosophy is a discourse that never ends since philosophy involves asking questions that really have no answers. This seems to suggest that quantum philosophy asks questions that have no answers.

    Some quantum questions do not have answers and that is the rub. Why can we ever ask questions that we cannot then answer? Relativity asks and answers all questions up until the limits of the classical event horizon, but quantum questions persist even beyond the event horizon.

    We live in a largely classical and a very causal reality where things happen because of local causes. Quantum phase messes with that classical causal reality since entanglement makes is seem like a cause can be a long distance from an effect. Since classical reality does not include quantum phase, it should not be surprising that there is no classical analog for entanglement.

    What remains surprising is that very smart people continue to argue about the quantum nature of reality. My feeling is that classical matter spectra of a causal reality work great for many predictions of action. Classical matter spectra do not have phase, but quantum spectra do have phase. A matter spectrum with phase can show entanglement and a source can therefore exist as a superposition of spectra.

    Until there is an acceptable story about our classical matter spectra that includes quantum phase, arguments will continue...

    Jim, the difficulty is that we can not directly have knowledge of what is happening without forming a relationship with it, that relationship defines how it will be described; and not without utilizing apparatus or observer sensory system that affects the outcomes that are identified as the external reality, but are not.

    While it is true that the measurements can not exist without the measurement process, seeming to come into existence upon measurement, it doesn't mean there is no pre-measurement reality.(Though that will be different because it is prior to the provocation causing the response that is taken as the measurement.) Reclaiming an independent non relative material reality dispels the grandfather paradox that is present, when only the relationship of observer to information is considered.

    I've seen many hopeful discussions about ideas for reclaiming, rescuing, restoring "physical" or "material" reality. And I don't see any progress towards that goal after almost 100 years. Nor do I see any meaningful new definitions of "material" or "physical" - and without those definitions, maybe the lack of progress isn't surprising.

    Jim,

    What is wrong with general definitions of material? Things like the matter, or substance, or things with chemical composition. I often qualify it with made of atoms, or fermion particles. Material thigs are also actualisations, things within Object reality.

    I have talked about 'physical on the 'rescuiing reality' page

    "There's always a third possibility," Weinberg said, "that's there's something else entirely, that we're going to have a revolution in science which is as much of a break with the past as quantum mechanics is a break from classical physics. That's a possibility. It may be that a paper from a graduate student tomorrow morning will lay it out. By definition I don't know what that would be."

    Well, FQXi have tried to invite him/her in during the last 10 years without any success. That isn't incomprehensible, because you do not only need that really smart graduate student, there must also be clever scientists to recognise the extraordinary of the contents of his/her paper. Because a revolution in physics is not possible with the help of modern phenomenological physics, the foundations cannot be the same. Moreover, most clever scientists are very busy to promote themselves during their career, so they are not interested in awkward papers that are compelling their grandeur. So I feel sorry for that imaginary graduate student. He/she will face a very frustrated live: "Please, read my paper! Please, read it!" Nobody will take attention.

    Georgina

    Defining 'matter' as structures of particles is fine, but what about the particles themselves?

    I'm not a scientist, but my layman's understanding is that the attempt to decompose reality to the lowest possible level has revealed a fundamental granularity that isn't particles, just observed facts about particles; and a fact might be about one particle, or a group, in the case of entanglement. We get an observed position of one particle, an observed momentum of another, an observed spin of 2 that are widely separated. So we can no longer talk about consistent entities called particles, only these separate observations. What does 'material' mean in this context? Should we continue to look for a yet deeper decomposition that somehow restores a comforting sense of a 'material' world? I feel comfortable accepting that reality is literally made up of facts, as strange as that initially seemed.

    Hello Georgina, Mr Hugues,

    Georgina is right you know Mr Hugues, the matter is quantifiable.We have the mendeleev table and the standard model giving properties to this matter.The matter or substance or the mass are the same thing, it is quantifiable.It is the meaning of a matter,it is quantifiable and has properties.Now what is a particle?

    There are several models ,the strings, the points,....sphères in my model of spherisation.The mass and matter are the same ,they are quantifiable simply.Let's take for example a molecul composed by atoms like an amino acid(guanin,cytosin,thymin or adenin)they have a number of H C N O and like H C N O is quantified with the mendeleev table, so we can calculate all mass.A mineral,an animal or a vegetal ,all in fact gas, liquid, solid, plasme...all these matters are always quantifiable because we know the number of atoms.Your mass in kg is this add of all your atoms simply.All mass is in this logic.If we find what are the particles and if we go more far in the quantum scales,we shall have always a correlation with this mass.If the particles are strings or sphères, they are quantifiable.

    Best Regards

    Marcus Meijer, I agree totally.

    My outsider's perception is that within physics the 'realists' are now grabbing most of the attention, based on hopeful assurances that some new theory "restoring realism" is right around the corner. And who wants to oppose something called "realism"? We all want to be seen as realistic, to be in touch with reality. Framing the issue as being between "realism" and "idealism" takes advantage of the emotional baggage those words carry. It's also all too easy to dismiss an idea as "New Age nonsense", delivered with a patronizing smile.

    These are political tactics that are only impeding progress.

    4 months later

    Do the people at online resume writing think we appreciate this kind of smarmy, sneaky, advertising hijacking a discussion forum. I certainly will not be using their services.I 'm fed up with the number of people doing this kind of advertising thing.

    a month later

    Thanks Zeeya and Steve Agnew for introducing Weinberg's excellent article for discussion.

    Recently Gerard 't Hooft published a book proving Quantum Mechanics can emerge from Cellular Automata (CA). He has bitterly complained of his peers ignoring his efforts here is his forum about this .

    I found his ideas greatly encouraging, as my own rudimentary model for reconstructing physics from new first principles is essentially a CA, albeit with qubits for cells. Beautiful Universe Model

    However for any brilliant graduate student to have half a chance to convince the mainstream (seemingly a multi-billion dollar empire with hundreds of thousands of physicists trodding the path from unquestioned verities) of his new ideas, a lot of backtracking has to be made. We have to check once more whether the most successful theories today are built on flimsy even wrong assumptions, leading to the hodge-podge and dead-ends of today. Here is my current fqxi essay tracing the trouble to an unwitting Einstein and suggesting the steps needed to be taken to clear the old and prepare for the new. I and many others much more qualified than me have been saying this for years; I am glad the Nobelist big-wigs of physics are now starting to speak out even half-hesitantly as they are doing.

    Vladimir ( still hopeful in old age!)

    a month later

    Dear friends,

    Let's return to Zeeya first's post, asking "Just because physicists disagree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, does that mean we have the whole thing wrong? ".

    My answer is NO! Physicists disagree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, because, as Feynman said, no one know WHAT REALY THE MECHANISM (of quantum mechanics) IS? Then what followed is that we are facing with the crazy problem such as wave function of what, how electron particle could manifest wave property, etc. Of course this does not mean that it has no physical mechanism; quantum mechanics is physics - not magic!

    The reason behind THE NO MECHANISM (of quantum mechanics) was fist seems come from Einstein's idea of light wave propagation using NO medium acting as the mechanism, and then was amplified by Feynman which said that light is a self-sustained wave that could propagate via mutual creation between electric and magnetic wave; but the problem is that both the waves are in phase then CANNOT do so because it will violate the principle of causality!

    Of course I know that the Michelson - Morley experiment's result was conventionally interpreted that there is no such thing as the aether; anyway it is not an obvious one, so it is better to prove by using a more clear cut - simple scientific experiment with magnetic field energy of the two solenoids in the paper attached.

    Armed with a physical mechanism for the Schrödinger wave equation, then what we got is a more complete quantum mechanics; and which could explain how the wave collapse work, quantum entanglement is possible or not, etc.

    Sincerely,

    Nimit Th.

    click here.

    Dear friends,

    In my early post, I said that we could see detail of "simple scientific experiment with magnetic field energy of the two solenoids in the paper attached." Anyway it is just an introduction, so here I have attached the detail file below.

    Sincerely,

    Nimit Th.

    attached file

    5 months later

    Hi folks. I just joined. I study mathematical patterning in electronic and nuclear shell systems, and have for nearly a decade. There seems to be a pervasive Pascal Triangle motivation for much of it, due to the fact that the quantum harmonic oscillator always delivers numbers of stable states whose values come from Pascal Triangle diagonals- which diagonal depends only on the dimensionality of the system.

    So consider the harmonic oscillator shell model for spherical nuclei. The magic numbers are 2,8,20,40,70,112,168..., which turn out to be exactly, and only, doubled tetrahedral numbers from a term-doubled Pascal Triangle. Doubling comes from spin-opposition, so we're counting pairs of nucleons. The shell sizes are all doubled triangular numbers:

    1s=2

    1p=6

    1d2s=12

    1f2p=20

    1g2d3s=30

    1h2f3p=42

    1i2g3d4s=56

    1j2h3f4p=72

    It also turns out that for ellipsoidally deformed harmonic oscillator nuclei, the numarator and denominator of the oscillator ratio, which detail the polar and equatorial extents of the matter wave, determine how these doubled triangular number intervals work between magics. The oscillator ratio (OR) can stand in for the usually chosen deformation parameters (beta, delta, epsilon).

    The sphere, as default ellipsoid, has OR 1:1. It has ONE copy of each doubled triangular number interval between each magic, and each doubled triangular number interval is used only once to generate magics. But for a prolate nucleus of OR 2:1, each interval is used TWICE, generating a magic each time, thus 2,2,6,6,12,12,20,20.... resulting in new magics 2,4,10,16,28,40,60,80... which match published lists. For OR 3:1, each interval is used THRICE, and so on. The numerator MULTIPLIES the use of each doubled triangular number interval.

    For oblate nuclei, the denominator of the OR DIVIDES the system. So for an OR of 1:2, there is one doubled triangular number interval between EVERY SECOND magic, and for 1:3 between every THIRD, and so forth. The only exceptions occur at the beginnings of magic sequences, when the series haven't yet accumulated the denominator's worth of magics. In such cases the magics are themselves doubled triangular numbers.

    It also turns out that total shell energy, under the simple harmonic oscillator model, is conserved over deformation. As each component of the shells varies its energy over deformation, this means that they are all coordinating their relative energies in some manner.

    The more realistic model of shell structure incorporating spin-orbit couplings shifts the spherical magic numbers, by monotonically increasing amounts, due to so-called 'intruder' levels adding their nucleons to the harmonic oscillator shells. The new magics become 2,*6,14,28,50,82,126,184... Interestingly the sizes of the intruders are coordinated such that they increase the size of the harmonic oscillator shells (already doubled triangular numbers) to the very next higher doubled triangular numbers. Thus 1g9/2(10 nucleons) adds to 1f2p(20) to give total 30. And 1h11/2 (12) adds to 1g2d3s (30) to give 42. And so on.

    Moreover, the depths of insertion of intruders are also doubled triangular numbers- 1g9/2 is 2 nucleons deep into the previous shell, 1h11/2 is 6, 1i13/2 is 12, 1j15/2 is 20, at least for neutrons. There is some ambiguity for protons, with 20 found when 12 is expected, as if the system were anticipating the trend somehow (and because the shell structure allows it).

    It also looks like conservation of total shell energies also work under the spin-orbit model.

    You won't find any of this described in professional papers and books. I guess everyone already just understands it all tacitly.

    The electronic system (in terms of the periodic system) also shows Pascal Triangle motivation. Organized so that orbital introduction is the primary structural motif, rather than chemical behavior, has the s-block on the RIGHT after the p-block. It places He with the other s2 elements. This is the Left-Step Periodic Table described by the elderly French polymath Charles Janet in 1928, following upon then new-fangled quantum mechanics. The organization ends periods not with noble gases, but with all the s2 elements. It seems to have escaped most workers that every other atomic number of the s2 column are tetahedral numbers (4,20,56,*120), in fact, every other tetrahedral numbers. And all the intermediate atomic numbers are the arithmetic means of the flanking tetrahedrals (so 'triads' as discovered by Dobereiner in the early 19th century). This allows the periodic system to be rationalized as a tetahedron of close-packed spheres, each representing one element. Rhombi (which contain square numbers of spheres, just like 'duals' of same-length periods), may be 'skewed' to tetrahedral dihedral angle, and then stacked like Russian dolls, leading to ever larger tetrahedra. And if the skew rhombi are bisected, one may tesselate the tetrahedral surface allowing complete continuity of Mendeleev's line (the numerical sequence of atomic numbers). There are no other simple geometrical models which can maintain such continuity- yet for the tetrahedral model there are *8* variants that work. Researchers have found similar Pascal Triangle motivation for harmonic oscillator models of hemipsherical atomic clusters, so the applicability could be substantially larger than even outlined above.

      Well hello, Jess.

      Nice to see some serious work presented on introduction. Ignore the inevitable nay sayers, they come out from under their bridges when scientific method is demonstrated in studious efforts. You have opened a new door for me, I'll have to read up some on Pascal. But it sounds to me that you have researched quite well, the questions that arise in theoretical representations of atomic structure and molecular arrangement.

      Tetrahedra have interesting orientations when representing polarity. I personally like Octahedral representational schemes, passing a plane midway and parallel to any two opposites faces results in a Hexagon as most commonly found in molecular arrangements. Also constructing radii as additional axii through midpoints of the eight sides gives 14 potential dimensional orientations, which might be satisfying to String Theorists.

      I thought it important that you can state that total shell energy is conserved over deformation in the simple harmonic oscillation model, as this would relate well with topological modeling of any unitary field definition of particulate matter. Too much emphasis is often given to the methodical difference between Quantum and Classical paradigms, when both are commonly incorporated in most areas if real research. And both seem to be embraced by your studies of mathematical patterning. Good Luck in finding kindred spirits, some do come here. I have been shying away for some time as there seems to be an army of irrelevant posters spewing blueline links of questionable origin and potential viral pedigree ever since Google implemented system wide reCAPTCHA protocols that over-rode the previous FQXi sub-routine. best jrc