Dear Mr. Schroeder,

Thank you for your interest and your question about spin, but I'm afraid that I can't follow it.

Spin is a form of angular momentum, and is generally associated with something rotating. In a circularly polarized electromagnetic wave, which is known to carry angular momentum (spin), the electrical field vector rotates as the wavefront moves forward, generating a helical waveform. Maybe this is what you are indicating, but there is no solid coil present.

I have extended this picture to other fundamental quantum fields with spin such as the electron, corresponding to an angular momentum distributed through a wave packet. See "The Rise and Fall of Wave-Particle Duality".

Note that these pictures of real rotating vector fields differ from the orthodox view of point particles with no rotation but with intrinsic spin associated with the point particle.

Alan Kadin

Alan,

From your reply to Scott above:

"It is clear that only a nonlinear equation can lead naturally to spin quantization, but I have not been able to find an equation with the right combination of properties. I would suggest looking into some kind of self-phase modulation, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Regarding my confidence in this approach, the unification of physics is a strong motivation. I find the missing link of a nonlinear equation much more plausible than quantum entanglement."

Please have a look at this suggestion:

Fritz Fröhner (1998). "Missing link between probability theory and quantum mechanics: the Riesz-Fejér theorem."

A link is provided in the Reference section of my essay:

More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss

I will welcome your comments on Fröhner in due course.

PS: I cite Fritz's work on the way to establishing the classical foundations of modern physics: from true local realism, through (what I call) the Laws of Malus, Bayes and Born, to Planck's constant, relativity, etc. I'll explain in more detail when I reply to your comment on my essay. [I will also post it as a comment below so you'll know that it is done.]

Gordon Watson

More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss

Alan, hoping to help, this is an edited carry-over from my answer to you at

More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss.

........................

Dear Alan,

1. Many thanks for this: "I agree with you that true local realism is at the heart of physics." For it's on this foundation that I hope we (with others) might build a productive collaboration [absent point-particles, nonlocality and unwarranted mysteries].

2. My thanks too for this: "And the mathematical structure of quantum entanglement is incompatible with local realism." But here I'm more cautious: my little qualifier "true" is missing, and I suspect we might presently differ re the nature of entanglement and its definition [see my essay, p.6]. However, given the quality of your own work, I very much look forward to discussing this -- confident that agreement is likely.

3. As for quantum computing: and the mainstream one-day starting to question the foundations of quantum mechanics? In that Bell's "theorem" didn't lead more to water, I doubt much else will lead them to a refreshing drink!

4. And you certainly got this right: "You might be interested in reading my essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics". I look forward to discussing prevalence waves, wavepackets, and physical waves where -- bypassing probability and all its confusions [eg, see Qbism] -- I have here used my preferred term. Thus I seek to understand objective prevalence waves [say, simple cos2 distributions] via a theory of prevalence amplitudes and wavepackets.

5. As for GR, I am still in the basement, cleaning up the more elementary foundations. But (at the risk of being misunderstood), I am bold enough to suggest that we can together strengthen your position, as follows:

5a. You say: "something close to classical physics should be restored, reunifying physics that was split in the early 20th century."

5b. I'm inclined to say, respecting its outstanding history: classical physics itself should be restored. Thus, for me:

(i) Planck's quantum of action is classical. As EPR made clear; see ¶3.1 in my essay: (iii) "The elements of physical reality ... must be found by an appeal to the results of experiments and measurements [the latter, in our terms, often better described as tests]."

(ii) Bohr's "disturbance insight" is classical. As per EPR above: Malus (c1810) taught us that classical light-beams are disturbed by interactions.

(iii) And so on: special relativity is classical; and from my essay, what I call the laws of Malus, Bayes and Born are classical; in short, true local realism is wholly classical.

(iv) What more might be required of classical mechanics and its modern developments?

6. You say: "QM should not be a general theory of nature, but rather a mechanism for creating discrete soliton-like wavepackets from otherwise classical continuous fields. These same quantum wavepackets have a characteristic frequency and wavelength that define local time and space, enabling GR without invoking an abstract curved spacetime."

I say: please see Fröhner; LINK via #17 in my References. The R-F theorem there says that periodic angular distributions entail discrete angular-momentum distributions, hence discrete outcomes of spin tests: the classical rules for linear and angular momentum holding, not just on average but case by case (as in EPRB). See also the spinor wavefunction in eqn (69).

With my thanks again; Gordon

................................................

Gordon Watson

More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss.

    Dear Alan M. Kadin

    Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

    My essay is titled

    "Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

    Thank you & kind regards

    Steven Andresen

    Dear Alan,

    Given that I already stated in our exchange on my blog where I stand on the likelihood that quantum mechanics will be overturned, let me point out some of the positive aspects of your paper that stood out to me:

    1. You made effective use of hyperlinks to help anyone who needs a refresher on a particular concept to attain it

    2. You made what appears to be the strongest case that could be made, given where your theory currently stands

    3. You pointed out honestly the gaps and where your theory needs to be developed further in order to challenge quantum mechanics. That speaks very much to your integrity.

    4. Your explanations are clear and crisp, and your writing is elegant

    5. You were careful to point out where and how your theory differs from the orthodox view

    A couple additional comments:

    a. Regarding your call for quantum entanglement experiments with superconducting technology-based photon detectors, you may wish to consider corresponding with some of the experimentalists in that field. I suspect that if you make a cogent case, Nicolas Gisin might be a good person to talk to about designing an experiment that can close the loophole you see.

    b. I understand the current dissatisfaction with quantum mechanics. It doesn't have any overarching principles that "seem intuitive" and the quantum correlations frankly don't seem to make sense if you take relativity at face value. In the second part of my series I will present (among many other unfamiliar ideas) both an overarching principle which has a tautological character (and therefore should be obvious) and a novel kind of mathematical object underlying the quantum state which shows that, as bizarre as it may sound to you at the moment, there is no contradiction between special relativity and the seemingly non-local phenomena (i.e. there is no influence of any kind traveling at v>c. At least, it seems, we agree on that). I would very much appreciate your thoughts once I finish and post the second paper.

    All the best,

    Armin

      Armin,

      Thank you for your detailed reading and comments. This is the kind of exchange that is particularly helpful.

      You said in your earlier comment (which I finally read, back on your page) that "the ship to go back to a classical or neoclassical theory has sailed." But you should note that my neoclassical synthesis incorporates GR in weak fields and the Schrodinger equation, which are precisely the aspects that have had clear verification. Something like this could have been introduced decades ago, but I can find nothing like it in the literature, perhaps because it is impossible to publish.

      Simplicity and unity are so important that the physics community needs to be very sure before discarding them. Unfortunately, this was not done in the 20th century. My neoclassical synthesis is clear and coherent, as you admit, and can be tested. My favorite test at this point is the 2-stage Stern Gerlach experiment, which everyone believes was already done.

      Regarding quantum computing, there are literally billions of dollars being invested in this technology, which is built on shaky foundations. I have spoken to active experimental researchers in the field, and to government funding agents, but they are all afraid of the theorists, who refuse to talk to me. But given the size of the investments, people will start to ask serious questions within a few years. Time will tell.

      I have been thinking about the foundations of quantum mechanics since my senior thesis at Princeton in 1973-74. I am now 65, and I hope to be still active when this is resolved.

      Incidentally, I have not yet rated your essay; there is still time before the Feb. 26 deadline.

      I noticed that someone else just rated my essay a '2'. I suspect that this is someone who objects to its criticism of orthodoxy, but I can't tell because there are no comments of that type.

      Best Wishes,

      Alan

      Alan,

      I was wondering if you have heard of Carver Meade? He has a system similar to yours;

      This was an interview from some years ago; http://worrydream.com/refs/Mead%20-%20American%20Spectator%20Interview.html

      "That has hung people up ever since the time of Clerk Maxwell, and it's the missing piece of intuition that we need to develop in young people. The electron isn't the disturbance of something else. It is its own thing. The electron is the thing that's wiggling, and the wave is the electron. It is its own medium. You don't need something for it to be in, because if you did it would be buffeted about and all messed up. So the only pure way to have a wave is for it to be its own medium. The electron isn't something that has a fixed physical shape. Waves propagate outwards, and they can be large or small. That's what waves do.

      So how big is an electron?

      It expands to fit the container it's in. That may be a positive charge that's attracting it--a hydrogen atom--or the walls of a conductor. A piece of wire is a container for electrons. They simply fill out the piece of wire. That's what all waves do. If you try to gather them into a smaller space, the energy level goes up. That's what these Copenhagen guys call the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. But there's nothing uncertain about it. It's just a property of waves. Confine them, and you have more wavelengths in a given space, and that means a higher frequency and higher energy. But a quantum wave also tends to go to the state of lowest energy, so it will expand as long as you let it. You can make an electron that's ten feet across, there's no problem with that. It's its own medium, right? And it gets to be less and less dense as you let it expand. People regularly do experiments with neutrons that are a foot across.

      A ten-foot electron! Amazing.

      It could be a mile. The electrons in my superconducting magnet are that long.

      A mile-long electron! That alters our picture of the world--most people's minds think about atoms as tiny solar systems.

      Right, that's what I was brought up on--this little grain of something. Now it's true that if you take a proton and you put it together with an electron, you get something that we call a hydrogen atom. But what that is, in fact, is a self-consistent solution of the two waves interacting with each other. They want to be close together because one's positive and the other is negative, and when they get closer that makes the energy lower. But if they get too close they wiggle too much and that makes the energy higher. So there's a place where they are just right, and that's what determines the size of the hydrogen atom. And that optimum is a self-consistent solution of the Schrodinger equation."

      An observation of my own is that I think we see time backwards. Since we experience reality as flashes of cognition, we think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future, which physics codifies as measures of duration, between events. The logical cause is change turning future to past, as tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.

      This makes time an effect, similar to temperature. Duration is simply the present, as events coalesce and dissolve.

      Time is asymmetric because action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.

      Different clocks can run at different rates because they are separate actions. A faster clock will use energy quicker, like an animal with higher metabolism will age quicker than one with a slower rate.

      This flow of events from future probability to present actuality and residual past goes to various other issues, such as determinism. As the occurrence of an event is the calculation of its input and pre-determination would be assuming the information of the input could be acquired prior to the energy carrying it.

      Alan,

      I have been trying to communicate with you via email. Your likedin is blocking me. I have a lot to discuss from spin and the rest of the NQP.

      Paul Schroeder

      pshrodr8@aol.com

      Dear Alan:

      Congratulations on your well-written paper and forwarding the concept of fundamental waves that can provide the basis for reunifying physics on all scales.

      You may be interested in my paper with wave/particle model of a photon -"What is Fundamental - Is C the Speed of Light". that describes the fundamental physics of antigravity missing from the widely-accepted mainstream physics and cosmology theories resolving their current inconsistencies and paradoxes. The missing physics depicts a spontaneous relativistic mass creation/dilation photon model that explains the yet unknown dark energy, inner workings of quantum mechanics, and bridges the gaps among relativity and Maxwell's theories. The model also provides field equations governing the spontaneous wave-particle complimentarity or mass-energy equivalence. The key significance or contribution of the proposed work is to enhance fundamental understanding of C, commonly known as the speed of light, and Cosmological Constant, commonly known as the dark energy.

      The paper not only provides comparisons against existing empirical observations but also forwards testable predictions for future falsification of the proposed model.

      I would like to invite you to read my paper and appreciate any feedback comments.

      Best Regards

      Avtar Singh

      Just a note Alan,

      I sent some comments, to the e-mail in your essay, which I hope you will read and appreciate. It deals with derivation of the product rule. If not received; I can try again.

      Regards,

      Jonathan

        You can e-mail me at...

        jonathan@jonathandickau.com

        Since it appears other folks have tried unsuccessfully to make contact off-forum; I imagine you may have to e-mail us, before it will recognize our addresses as familiar or allowed, Alan. But there will always be things worth saying, which you might want to hear, but are inappropriate for a public forum.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

        Dear Mr Kadin,

        You are welcome, thanks for sharing your ideas, it is relevant, I learn in the same time about these electron field, what are these électrons after all, Dirac help us lol :)

        best regards and good luck in this contest

        Alan,

        The best and the most clear essay I have read, which is a lot to say for a non-physicist. This is not to say I have a clear understanding of the neo-classical approach you outline, but it helps.

        The breakdown of fundamental concepts and the specificity of their meanings is quite clear and useful in our analysis of fundamental. Your history and sectional previews give clear guidance for a difficult subject. What is abstract, what is fundamental and what is constant are clear as you progress. You identify the character of important components of your argument.

        Helpful clarifications we amateurs don't always consider:

        Quantum mechanics should be viewed not as a general theory of nature, but rather as a mechanism to generate discrete particle behavior from continuous fundamental waves.

        Quantum entanglement provided the final rupture in the unified fabric of physics.

        Not sure about this: "Exotic effects of orthodox quantum theory such as superposition and entanglement are mathematical artifacts of linear theories forced to explain nonlinear physics." In my interest in Quantum Biology I noted: "the discovery of quantum coherence in warm, wet, turbulent systems such as plants and microbes has come as a huge shock to quantum physicists' Jim Al-Khalili in Life on the Edge and a Discovery Magazine article on quantum physics and microtubes. Fascinating subject in itself.

        Hope you get a chance to check out my essay -- more general than your impressive work which rates high.

        Jim Hoover

        Alan,

        I disagree with you, but in a good way. I mean, that while I am sympathetic with your premises, esp. "Nonlinear wave equations with soliton-like solutions", I don't agree entirely with the particle physics.

        At least one soliton wave solution is described in my essay.

        I liked your essay. I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

        Best,

        Tom

        Dear Alan

        I congratulate you on what you have accomplished so far. I highly appreciate your well-written essay in an effort to understand. It is so close to me.

        I'm sorry that I missed your work in 2017. It happened by accident, I did not like the phrase in your abstract, and I did not read any further, and now I reproach myself for short-sightedness.

        However, you asked for constructive criticism, not praise.

        Speaking about the reality and massiveness of solitonally similar quantum waves, including the de Broglie waves, you have not yet realized that these are the quantum vortices of the turbulence of the superfluid medium of the physical vacuum that minimize the resistance of a moving particle or body.

        These waves are designed for remote interaction with other bodies. The presence of these waves forms effect of the mass.

        The kinetic energy of the body is equal to the energy of the de Broglie waves, which form a potential well of stability in all fundamental interactions, and not only in strong interactions.

        Entanglement - is the only remote mechanism in the Universe for forming the force of interaction between the elements of matter, which is realized as a result of the interaction of the de Broglie toroidal gravitational waves at the common frequencies of the parametric resonance. This quantum mechanism of gravity is shown in a photo of phenomena observed in outer space (essay 2017) The reason of self-organization systems of matter is quantum parametric resonance and the formation of solitons https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2806.

        For example, a molecule is a state of entanglement (interaction) of atoms at common resonant frequencies of the de Broglie toroidal gravitational wave complex (including tachyon waves) belonging to different levels of matter.

        The result of the interaction of toroidal gravitational waves (fermions) can be determined by solving classical quantum parametric resonance equations, for example, using the Mathieu equations (as in radio engineering).

        The solutions of these equations can be represented as a Fourier series, which physically represents a set of really existing toroidal gravitational waves confused in a system of matter elements.

        I hope that my modest achievements can be information for reflection for you.

        Vladimir Fedorov

        https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3080

        Alan,

        I said above I'd read again and have. I'm afraid it's may have to be in the 7-10 bracket but better than the 1's I to keep getting hit with! A few points.

        Are you aware that after the final big (Chicago) experiment M&M concluded 'Ether'!! (Strictly Michelson Gore Pearson I recall) or at least a significant motion. Actually I've identified small asymmetries in most ALL interferometer experiments giving a slight delay between paths, so phase change (so fringe shifts) due to more glass crossings & reflections on one path. Nanoseconds count, and a 3 phase shift will look exactly like a 1 phase shift!

        Actually Stokes model is then supported by M&M ('near field' out to the ionosphere) as found by NASA antenna engineers. Lodge falsely falsified that with a major frame analysis error in his spinning glass disc experiment. Are you familiar with 'Kinetic Reverse refraction'? Anyway it's not fatal to your thesis but is to understanding and the ecliptic plane problem! You regain all you may have lost by dismissing 'space/time'!!

        Also I agree entanglement is an illusion. In fact if it's simply shared (anti) polar axes of a Poincase (4vector) sphere then classic QM emerges. From you first scan you said it's 'not clear and obvious' Indeed it isn't. It has 5 components and takes a careful read - otherwise it would have long been found!!

        It also agrees; "Quantum mechanics should be viewed not as a general theory of nature, but rather as a mechanism to generate discrete particle behavior from continuous fundamental waves." even considering field electrons as standing waves.

        Lastely exclusion; I find simply a rotation can only have one set of vectors. On interaction the wave 'collapses' and is re-emitted modulated, (or they annihilate!) Nuff for now but wish to chat further. I clarified a number of points for you in my response re mine above (14.1) I'm sure you'll find mine also a - 7-10 once understood!

        very best.

        Peter

        Alan, have you seen this -- http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319655925 -- ?

        "Quantum Theory from a Nonlinear Perspective: Riccati Equations in Fundamental Physics." Cheers; Gordon

        Hi Alan,

        Your conclusion: "Within this picture, time and space are defined by microscopic quantum waves, but space-time is an unnecessary abstraction, and entanglement does not exist on any scale."

        I favor alternative theories of physics also. I cannot address all of your essay, however, I have a peculiar view of Space-Time, that could advance your theory. Take a look at the essay "The Thing That is Space-time".

        It has:

        1. Nonlinear wave equations with soliton like solutions for the graviton.

        2. Local self interaction compatible with special relativity, because space-time is always a "local" ether.

        Thanks for not settling for inferior solutions,

        Don Limuti