Sounding the Drums to Listen for Gravity’s Effect on Quantum Scales

John,

"So we see that we cannot attach any absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which, viewed from a system of co-ordinates, are simultaneous, can no longer be looked upon as simultaneous events when envisaged from a system which is in motion relatively to that system.

Einstein, 1905. My bold emphasis. Envisage: to form a mental picture of something...from Cambridge dictionary.

Looks like reference to vision to me and therefore the process by which vision can happen is relevant, and he is also talking about a mental picture or imagining of the event from the other state of motion. So this is about how things look/ are seen.

"Shannon did not really offer much help with quantum phase noise...." Perhaps, but as little as that help is, it is more than what the entire physics community has come up with.

"they are all ascribed to artifacts" Many, like Bell tests, can be ascribed to the misunderstanding of classical behaviors, that can best be understood via Shannon's Information Theory.

Rob McEachern

A good example of the problem I am talking about is the oft repeated statement that the so-called no-cloning theorem prohibits faithful, full copying of a quantum state's information content. But that statement is inconsistent, with the very definition of the word "information", as it is used within Shannon's Information Theory; information is, in essence, defined to be equal to that portion of a signal's message content, that can be perfectly copied.

Hence, if a wavefunction, representing a quantum state, cannot be perfectly cloned, it is precisely because much of it is devoid of any information. And that is exactly the problem with all Bell tests. They have spent half a century puzzling over why they observe strange correlations, when they unwittingly keep attempting to measure, something that is not even there; it is not "hidden", it is nonexistent.

Rob McEachern

Look back, where did you start? It only seems logical that the place-moment 'here' that we experience is no different than a place moment 'there' even if we are not there to experience it. And that is similar in vernacular to what AE was saying using common experience verbage of 'viewed' and 'envision'. But you cannot support a formal argument by a misinterpretation of any sort that leads you to say that 'Relativity does not take account of that'. Because in Einstein's day, while much less was known about the physiology of eyesight, what we might know today, whether classical or quantum in chemical behavior, is all dependent on the electromagnetic theory of James Maxwell! and when AE repeatedly stated that SR is based on that, you have to argue qualification of conclusions you might reach from an indefinite proposition; ie: 'information'. Isn't that your thesis? The Quality and Quantity of information? Big chore Georgina! Big chore! But its the task you set for yourself, and you are the one whom must qualify projecting 'perceptual awareness' into the field where physics is based on observed behavior which are categories of properties and characteristics parameterized independent of an indefinite proposition of 'information'. Not all is as it seems, and that is the impetus of logical rules and argument. 'Information' has become the most abused colloquialism of the electronic revolution. Like Lenny Bruce said, 'Say it so many times and it becomes meaningless'. It's tough out there! If you tackle something like SR, its not the final word but you dare not short it. jrc

Dear Robert H McEachern,

This is not a social club where friendly members can trade anecdotes. This site has been set up to try to find the answer to the question of what reality am. Now please answer my question: Which came first, visible Natural reality, or humanly contrived abstract information about the behavior of invisible atoms?

Only Nature could have produced the simplest visible physical condition obtainable. The real Universe consists of one single unified visible infinite surface occurring in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.. There have never been any invisible atoms. There has never been any invisible space. Infinity is immeasurable.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

That's nice, Rob.

However, a wave function is a probability measure -- a mathematical artifact -- it can never completely represent a quantum state. After all, even the word "quantum" implies a whole of something.

So assuming locality, spacetime, causality and Einstein separability -- a hidden variable must be real, i.e., physical.

Special relativity speaks to local causality (by the limit on c), leaving spacetime and separability as candidates for a hidden variable. Since separability is also a mathematical artifact, spacetime -- just as Einstein said -- is "physically real ... having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."

How does one measure the real? -- by recording a click, flash, or similar experiment artifact. What imprint does spacetime leave?

Tom and Robert,

I appreciate that very strict adherence to application is a good and necessary thing, and ambiguity is the result of violation of that. But that also means that some things are deducable without direct appeal to 'information' in that the information required is in the aggregate of mathematical knowledge. Seperability may go to quantum states, but go to any mathematics archive and find me a distribution theorem which unambiguously accounts for a finite quantity of any hypothetical 'medium' in the confines of a finite spherical volume where that distribution varies from zero point center to the boundary (which implies: density) in accord with inverse square law. Any such, would clearly establish Einstein (light second) seperability. jrc

Tom,

Only the absolute square of the wavefunction corresponds to a probability. A function and its absolute square do not have the same information content.

"not influenced by physical conditions"? Is it not distorted by physical masses within it? Is that not an influence?

Rob McEachern

"Only the absolute square of the wavefunction corresponds to a probability. A function and its absolute square do not have the same information content."

Why not? A line of any length has the same number of points as a square of any size.

Okay -- I do know what you're getting at and I agree with your take on Information Theory. I always have. I cannot see IT, however, as other than a subset of a dynamic theory -- because I view time as identical to information. I think there is some link between time dilation and information compression.

"not influenced by physical conditions"? Is it not distorted by physical masses within it? Is that not an influence?

I wrote a paper on dynamic spacetime recently. https://www.researchgate.net/project/Chasing-the-source-of-gravity-down-a-black-hole-and-back/update/5974d7474cde26e1c1d0fc6f ("Dynamic spacetime imposes matter wave continuity.")

Tom,

The wavefunction is complex. It consists of two real functions, usually called the real function and the imaginary function. But the absolute square is only a single real function.

The issue is not the number of points, but the number of independent points, required to reconstruct a curve. "A line of any length" is determined entirely by just its two end-points. But other curves require more points to specify and thus more information. Information has nothing to do with time. It is purely a mathematical concept: the specification of the number of independent points and the number of independent, significant bits per point, required to perfectly reconstruct an arbitrary curve, in which the definition of what is meant by "perfect" is very specific and rather unusual. It means if you recover the information content of both the original curve and the reconstructed curve, they will be identical, with no bit errors anywhere. In other words, a copy of a copy of a copy... is just as good as the original. What is unusual about this, is that the copy and the original need not appear to be identical at all, as one might naively expect. Noise and distortion may cause them to be non-identical, continuous functions. But the digital bit-streams extracted from them, by a process that knows the correct extraction procedure (think of error detection and correction) will nevertheless be identical in spite of their differences in appearance.

This casts what it means to be "identical" particles, in a rather different light, than that which is familiar to the physics community.

Rob McEachern

John, you wrote" It only seems logical that the place-moment 'here' that we experience is no different than a place moment 'there' even if we are not there to experience it." You are using your common sense and Einstein's relativity itself shows that it isn't applicable; because of non simultaneity of events for different reference frames, the 'place-moment' can be experienced differently.

My argument is not based on eyesight. It applies equally to electronic sensors. The kernel is transmission and receipt of EM radiation.

Space-time is the generated location of the product. The source is not in space-time along with the product. The train measured from a distance is not a material train. Nothing in space-time is a material object. (Analogies -the computer console is not inside the game being played: The book being read is not inside the story. )

It was perhaps unfair of me to compare the young generations preoccupation with information with older generations 'obliviousness'to it but I saw a similarity in thinking that the products of information are THE reality.

John, it was "seriously, check your six' that you said. I unintentionally paraphrased earlier. Its been bothering me, as you might have noticed from my earlier mention. Did you just mean check the background facts I'm arguing with -IE if talking about on the electrodynamics of moving bodies checking that what I'm saying is consistent with it? Its a military term used in combat as a warning and so I'm not sure how it was being used in our conversation.

Georgia,

Not just checking background facts, that's a continual process in learning and it changes any originating understanding anyway. But I find it helpful to also do the 'reality check' reavaluation of where did I get off on this or that track and am I making sense enough that it would make any to others. It is in my mind that I'm doing the abstraction, and I'm the only one paying it any attention. So the trick in communicating ideas is to play to the audience. Peter Galison co-edited a collection of essays on Scientific Authorship which I ordered hoping it would be helpful in the Publish or Perish atmosphere these days, and it was none of that, but very rewarding in how we got to this stage. One great impact was that there is no such thing as 'a perfect reader'.

I did mean to get your attention to that. Because if you Publish, you then must defend. And even if you don't, there are elements of comprehension that do not require direct information but only observation and subjecting that to analysis. Recalling ~ the eye receiving sensory data, or something to that effect; was incorrect in that the receptors only react photo-voltaically and that's not the data. The data enters from analysis, and that's mind not matter. And then you tell others that They fail to differentiate object from information.

Relax, regroup. That's life. :-) jrc

Wow...this is quite a pig pile...

But no one addresses the fundamental issue of source.

Is a photon of information a determinate of a single source as Einstein proposed or is a photon a mixed superposition of sources that only have probabilities?

John, I do appreciate the advice. I should be more careful to check that I have not said something that can be picked out as incorrect. I find that happens sometimes because I'm thinking about something in a different way from the reader. (And I don't always get it right because I am human.) I have tried very hard to find the right words that will resonate with an audience but will also convey the meaning I intend. I have also made an effort to be more succinct.

For a very long time I avoided using "information' because I know it has different meanings to different people and disciples. That means it can be deemed incorrect if my usage differs from the readers usage of the word. Nevertheless I do think that potential sensory data is a kind of information and I have attempted to put an argument to justify that opinion. My prior term of preference ,"potential sensory data, designates that it has the potential to lead to the production of sensory data. I have maybe become complacent with that term and not used it in full on occasion. I was not sure people knew what I meant by 'potential sensory data'or thought it anything to do with physics but was more confident the idea of information would be understood and considered relevant. I think it might be best to use 'potential sensory data' exclusively and just not participate in the is it or isn't it information debate. It is a semantic side issue.

I have developed a number terms for parts of the explanatory framework and offered alternatives to try to find what works best for others; what conveys an idea best so that it is grasped. Its very hard with so little feedback to go on. Georgina

James,

"No experiments have ever been performed on either space or time."

Only true enough as you have written; 'space or time'.

Spacetime however is another thing. And it is routinely and essentially involved in practical experiments of the technological kind. Gravitational anomaly detection in geophysical research comes immediately to mind. Your smart phone with GPS - in 1977 when the first satellite was launched, engineers were skeptical enough of their SR and GR calculations that the time signal was broadcast in the raw to earth for 20 days before the relativistic correction mechanism onboard was activated. According to the theories which establish spacetime in reality; the SR delay due to velocity was an astounding 7 millionths of a second per day, and at an orbital of 11,000 miles the GR advance was a whopping 45 millionths of a second per day. The corrections add up to 38 millionths = 38,000 billionths of a second per day! and for GPS to function with any accuracy the time sync with earth time had to be kept within a 50 billionths of a second/day. Without correction for the spacetime effects, the satellite's own inertial frame would have faithfully followed its time keeping and the positional tracking on earth would have skewed about six mile every day!

Also launched in autumn 1977 were the Voyager spacecraft (that's 40 years ago) and both are powered by a radio-isotopic heat generating thermopile. The Pu238 modules are designed on an earth based time register with a nominal safe margin working life of about 14 and a half years predicted on the 88 year half life. If that unexpected longevity of providing nominal power were a consequence of the "clock" of the satellite inertial domain speeding up it would have exhausted its decay rate. It is due to the spacetime field changing as the spacecraft continued towards the edge of the solar domain, and the 'speed of time' increasing, that kept the material inertial domain's constant time rate continually advancing ahead of the earth based projected power demand.

Stranger than fiction. jrc

'different people and disciples'

Georgina,

That's a good one. :-) And the rest is clear enough. jrc

Ha, that was a typo honestly John. "Disciplines!" I was talking about being careful with my words too. How ironic. Still, I did say I am human. There's the proof.

I've decided spellchecker can have half of the blame for that mistake.