Time and Quantum - Musings about the Quantized Nature of Becoming by Chi Ming Hung

As pointed out in Prof.Hestenes' essay, there seems to be now first experimental evidence for some kind of fermionic process occurring at the Compton frequency inside the electron, as suggested also by our toy model. For details of the experiment, see the following reference:

M. Gouanère et. al. (2008), A Search for the de Broglie Particle Internal Clock by Means of

Electron Channeling, Foundations of Physics 38: 659-664.

Dear Chi Ming:

(A note to others: This conversation started in the forum of Julian Barbour's essay.)

We seem to agree, at least, that the concept of time is useful, which is the primary issue.

From your most recent comments and your essay, it also seems clear that what you are asserting is not a "paradox", but rather unscientific practice. Science is based on reproducible observation and you are claiming that scientists are adopting an interpretation of smooth time evolution, without observational evidence. This is a point worth exploring, but it does not involve a paradox.

I think that your essay is a very worthy effort. What I think you are doing, though, is creating your own interpretation of quantum mechanics. To wit, you say, "But we can generalize this and postulate that indeed ALL forms of energies can be interpreted this way, even those that aren't usually associated with QM." This may be the most sensible interpretation; I don't know, since I am not familiar with all interpretations. It is a great accomplishment to construct a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, and I applaud your effort; but there are assumptions in your interpretation, just as in the others.

You have asked me to give you evidence that time is continuous; but I don't have to do this, to support the position I have taken thus far, which is agnostic. I have not said that you are wrong; I have only said that you should provide observational evidence, before I say you are right.

But now, let me give you two reasons to believe that there is time, both between measurements and wave-function collapses, and also between the moments dictated by the frequencies of your 1-particle systems (at least in light of the issues you have raised so far). First, I can make a measurement any time I choose; you have not said that there is some minimum time interval, like the Planck time, that restricts my choice (the moon is always there, whenever we choose to look at it). Second, if I have two systems, at some start time, and I choose to measure one and then the other, there is a time for the first measurement, between the start time and the second measurement. Adding more systems, I can subdivide time into smaller and smaller increments. In an infinite universe, I can make delta t arbitrarily small, as the number of systems goes to infinity (note that I can do this with a countable infinity), unless you *assume* that only measurements by sentient beings collapse wave functions and that there are only a finite number of sentient beings. Similarly, between any adjacent moments of your 1-particle system, I can go out into the universe and find a system with a moment in between. Iterating, I can again make delta t arbitrarily small. Indeed, since you have not even asserted a minimum time interval, I don't see that discontinuous time follows from your model. And even if you were to assert, for example, the Planck time as a minimum increment for moments of a 1-particle system, your model does not preclude another system from having interpolated moments.

Finally, you stated, "The development of 20th century physics has taught us that what's not directly observable should not be treated as real. Such is the case for the ether..." (Did you notice, from my essay, that I am an Ether theorist?) It is true that many take this point of view, but I don't agree with it. For example, the twin paradox, of Special Relativity, is a true paradox, contrary to what is almost universally believed. Most have been convinced that it is not a paradox, because they think that there are no observational consequences. But, can you tell me which of the twins is older, after they part but before either makes a turnaround acceleration? If you believe in Special Relativity, you cannot; but, if you believe in the modern Ether theory, often called the "Lorentz-Poincaré Ether Theory" (LPET), you can. Moreover, in my essay, I discuss situations in which the paradox would become observable, eliminating Special Relativity as a viable theory. And, in fact, I have put forward a practical experiment to observe the ether of LPET, which is the state of rest, only with respect to which light travels, with the same speed, in all directions. My assertions are most falsifiable, unlike those in any other essay I have read in this forum.

Take care,

Ken.

Dear Dr. Hung,

1. You posed very deep and important questions:

a. Frequency of what?

b. Becoming of what?

But your answer ``Energy is the Frequency of Becoming" seems to me a little bit extra-universal. Indeed: if you have some stable particle like electron (your example) then the frequency of ``mass process" nu= mc^2/h is rather ``frequency of being". What do you think? I absolutely sure that quantum particles are some processes.

I try to find answer on similar questions in the framework of model of N-level quantum system, see my essay ``Morphogenesis and dynamics of quantum state". Frequencies Omega^{alpha} take the place of non-Abelian gauge field shaping ``filed shell" of generalized coherent state.

2. You have postulated ``that all becoming (i.e. physical changes) of any system must be quantum in nature, ...". What it technically means? I assumed that there are some elementary quantum motions with quantized action (see, P. Leifer, Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie, {bf 32}, (1) 25 (2007)). However quantum dynamics of superposition state is assumed to be smooth in $CP(N-1)$.

3. Probabilistic transition from NOW_N to NOW_{N+1}? The state of world? Are these really theoretically accessible? I see that you agree that even ``realistic case of N-particle system is more complicated because...". Furthermore, even the notion of single relativistic particle is contradictable.

The end of questions. Good luck! Peter

P.S. The ``Lorentz-transformed snapshots of Becoming" I used for embedding quantum dynamics into dynamical space-time (P. Leifer, arXiv:0808.3172v1 [physics.gen-ph]). I called this process ``attachment of Lorentz frame" to quantum dynamics in $CP(N-1)$.

Ken,

Thanks for your comments about my essay.

You're correct that what I'm trying to achieve is no less than a new interpretation of QM, where the unobservable continuous temporal evolutions of wave functions and other things in an unobservable Time continuum are ultimately to be eliminated in favor of Physics at the observable discrete moments of Becoming/Being. It's an ambitious project, and I've barely started...

Your question about the existence of temporal moments between those postulated in my model is a very good question. The answer I believe lies in the fact that when we introduce another system into the one-particle system in my model, we must use a model for N-particle systems (N > 1). This is much more complicated but in the simplest case with negligible interaction between the systems, the combined system consists roughly of the sum of the processes for the separate systems. More generally the combined system will correspond to a new set of temporal moments, more dense than the original systems (because of the higher energy of the combined system), and with the particular measurement you have in mind located at some moment of the COMBINED system.

While I do not postulate a minimum time interval (such as the Planck time) between any two temporal moments in my model, in actuality there may very well be such a minimum time interval. e.g. if the total energy (E) of the universe is finite, then the time interval corresponding to h/E will effectively be the minimum time interval in our universe. The existence of such a minimum time interval or maximum energy will have significant implications for both quantum field theory and general relativity, because it'll mean an effective cut-off in both theories which will very possibly cure the infinities/singularities plaguing both theories...

I'll comment on the twin paradox and your ether theory a bit later in your essay's forum...

Dear Chi Ming:

Upon further thought, I believe that your interpretation could contain two possible sub-interpretations. Perhaps you could call one Weak and the other Strong. The Weak could be agnostic about continuous time, while the Strong asserts its nonexistence.

For the Strong to be valid, you must have a minimum time interval/max energy; otherwise, you would have arbitrarily short time periods, making the idea of no time between moments vacuous (note that a minimum time interval is necessary, but not sufficient).

I look forward to your thoughts on my essay.

Take care,

Ken.

Peter,

Thanks for your comments, and sorry for the late reply. It's been a busy weekend...

As I mentioned in the essay, this is work in progress and my ideas are still at the infancy stage, and so I'm unable to give all the specifics, for now.

In particular I haven't quite pinned down the mathematical description best suited to my ideas. I guess my favored approach to physics is the top-down one where one first gets a general overview of the landscape of physical ideas before deciding which mathematical descriptions are best suited to substantiate the physical ideas. To me, the physical ideas must come first, and then comes the mathematics, never the other way round (like in modern string theory). And the mathematics should only be as sophisticated as the physical ideas demand, never more (again, string theory).

With this in mind, I'll try to answer your questions as best I can...

I suppose I was a bit ambiguous in my essay about the distinction between "Being" and "Becoming". What I called "snapshots" or "moments" of Becoming are probably more like snapshots or moments of Being. I guess I chose to use "Becoming" instead of "Being" because I wanted to emphasize that the model I'm suggesting is a quantized theory of Becoming, not just of Being.

As for the questions of "Beings of what?" and "Becomings of what?", I honestly don't know, as I admitted in my essay. All I can say is that whatever the underlying processes may be, they should be discrete and should occur at a temporal frequency equal to the Compton frequency of the particle in question, as measured in the rest frame of the particle. So these processes are most likely not the ones postulated by David Hestenes, e.g., because his zitterbewegung model of the electron assumes continuous classical-like trajectories for the electron. The processes I have in mind are probably more like cellular automata in nature...

When I postulated "that all becomings (i.e. physical changes) of any system must be quantum in nature", what I meant was simply the idea that all state changes that happen between two adjacent moments of Becoming (or Being) happen abruptly and all at once, without any gradual transition from one state to the next (because that's physically unobservable). Though I do suspect that something like the Schwinger Action Principle may be appropriate for describing the transition between adjacent moments of Becoming/Being, I haven't worked out all the details...

And you're correct that in the case of multi-particle systems, the world state at the moment of Becoming/Being NOW_N becomes rather complicated, but for now I just assume that the world state at NOW_N can be described the same way that a state is described in Quantum Field Theory at a specific time, namely as a state vector in the Fock space of the particular system at the particular time (or more generally at a particular space-like hypersurface, like in the Schwinger-Tomonaga formalism). The probabilistic transition from NOW_N to NOW_{N+1} can then be described by e.g. the Schwinger Action Principle.

I suppose the notion of a single relativistic particle is problematic only when one tries to localize the particle in space-time e.g. using the Newton-Wigner localization. I have no need to postulate such localizations in my model.

I'll try to read your papers and see whether I have any constructive comments to make...

Good Luck to you too! :)

Dear Dr. Hung,

I absolutely agree about priority of physics over mathematics. But you gave the interesting opposite example: the primitive and wrong physical idea of strings leads to very sophisticated mathematics.

What you really mean for ``underlying process"? Is it your ``mass process" with nu= mc^2/h? What is the ``cellular automata"?

I think that your approach to state changes ``happened abruptly" is dangerous. The argument that the transition is textbf{unobservable} is weak from the philosophical point of view (do you remember the discussion of Einstein and Heisenberg?). This agnostic point of view closes a way to understand dynamics of transition. What is ``observable"? Observable by whom? I assumed that discrete quantum states (like states of quantum oscillator with integer action or half-integer actions |n hbar>) may combine coherent superposition which smoothly evolve... Similar idea of discrete action is discussed by M. Stuckey and M. Silberstein (Time, Space and Matter in Relational Blockworld....). The measurement (or observation) in my version is replaced by invariant relations between local dynamical variables...see my essay.

It is correct that space-time localization of relativistic quantum particle is problematic

(Newton-Wigner Hegerfeldt). This is the reason why state space has a priority (there the ``localization" is possible) but in any case, should be something like soliton-like solution describing particles as we see in cosmic rays. In may case it is realized in the dynamical space-time (DST).

Good luck! Peter

Sorry, in the last sentence should be ``In my case...".

Dear Dr. Hung,

You wrote in your essay (p. 8): "So Time has the topology of a linearly ordered discrete set, isomorphic to the set of integers."

And in your posting from Dec. 3, 2008 @ 01:44 GMT, you expressed your belief that ".. we can define change as simply the discrete transition from the state at one instant to the state at the next instant, WITHOUT ANYTHING HAPPENING IN BETWEEN."

Do you know the nature of continuum, namely, how many points are there on a straight line in Euclidean space? (cf. Kurt Gödel, "What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?", American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 54, No. 9, November 1947, pp. 515-525).

I believe the puzzle of these "points" can be explained with Thompson's lamp paradox: Imagine a lamp that is turned 'on' at some instant labeled with 0 , and is left 'on' for 1 min, then turned 'off' for 0.5 min, then 'on' for 0.25 min, etc., ad infinitum. Do we have a limit? Obviously yes: 2 min. Fine, but what is the state of the lamp in the instant/point labeled with '2 min'? UNdecidable?

Just some musings, prompted by your statement with capital letters.

Regards,

Dimi Chakalov

Peter,

I think you mistook my meaning when I used string theory as a prime example of how the "math over physics" approach can go terribly wrong. I think we're in agreement here :)

As for the processes underlying the generalized E=hnu law I mentioned in the essay, I honestly don't know what they might turn out to be. All I'm postulating is that e.g. for a "particle" of mass m, the process corresponding to it should occur at a temporal frequency equal to that of the Compton frequency for the particle, as measured in the rest frame of the particle. For a fermion, this underlying process may be something like zitterbewegung or the Feynman zig-zag that I mentioned in my essay, but I don't believe it'll be anything like what David Hestenes is postulating because his model uses continuous classical trajectories for the electron, which is not compatible with the discrete moments of Becoming/Being I'm advocating.

The processes I'm thinking of are akin to cellular automata in the sense that both involve discete evolution of states in time, but that's where the similarity ends.

Whatever the underlying process may be, I'm glad that the first experimental evidence may have been found for it (see my comment above).

I agree with you that what should be called "observable" and "unobservable" in physics is a rather tricky question with no universally accepted answers. But in the case of Quantum Mechanics at least, it seems natural to call what's being observed during quantum measurements (quantum jumps) as being observable, while anything in between as being unobservable. The whole point of my thesis is that QM can and should be re-formulated so that emphasis is given to what actually occurs during measurements, and not to what is supposed to happen in the supposed time continuum in between measurements.

While I agree that the time continuum is of significant practical value as a mathematical device for correlating the states of a quantum system at different stages of its evolution, we should not treat the time continuum as something physical simply because it's mathematically convenient, especially when this convenient mathematical assumption has been shown to be paradoxical when describing quantum measurements...

As for the arena in which the state of a system should be defined at each moment of Becoming/Being, I haven't pinned it down yet, but in general it'll probably be something like the usual Fock space in QFT, which is probably similar to the "state space" you referred to, so it seems we're not in disagreement here...

Dimi,

Thank you for your comments.

I'm not sure whether you're objecting to my use of the word "continuum" (which has the usual mathematical meaning of a set isomorphic to the set of real numbers), or whether you're objecting to my postulate that the set of physical moments of Becoming/Being of any system is isomorphic to the set of integers, not the continuum as defined above.

Assuming you're objecting to the latter, I think I understand your argument which is similar to Zeno's. But in order for your argument to hold, you actually need to assume a physical time continuum (or at least a dense set) from the start! The property of denseness for a linearly-ordered set (i.e. between any two elements we can find another element in between the two) does not apply to the set of integers, and thus not to the set of physical moments of Becoming/Being I'm postulating.

One can argue that physically one can always make an additional observation in between any other two observations in time, but as I mentioned in my answer to Ken (Dec. 6, 2008 @ 02:40 GMT), we then need to consider the combined system and the physical moments of Becoming/Being that belongs to the combined system, which together should contain all the measurements in question.

Dear Chi,

Thank you for your prompt reply from Dec. 11, 2008 @ 01:07 GMT.

You wrote: "But in order for your argument to hold, you actually need to assume a physical time continuum (or at least a dense set) from the start!"

I don't need to assume any additional properties of the continuum, apart from those identified by Kurt Gödel -- please read his 1947 article. I only object to your belief that ".. we can define change as simply the discrete transition from the state at one instant to the state at the next instant, WITHOUT ANYTHING HAPPENING IN BETWEEN."

Nothing can go "in between" two adjacent points, and nothing can verify the state of the Thompson lamp at the point labeled with '2'. Perhaps you may wish to think of it as superposition of |on> + |off> , which of course will produce even more musings.

Regards,

Dimi

Dimi,

I checked the Gödel paper you mentioned, but it's about Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis (CH), which is a fascinating topic to me, but has nothing to do with my essay, because I rejected physical Time as a continuum from the beginning!

In fact, the mathematical complexity of the continuum (as exemplified by the CH) is one of the reasons I rejected it as a model of physical Time...

Chi,

You confessed that "... the mathematical complexity of the continuum (as exemplified by the CH) is one of the reasons I rejected it as a model of physical Time..."

It is quite unusual for a descendant of Confucius and a staff member in the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stony Brook, New York, to treat theoretical physics like a supermarket from which one can choose to purchase only the food needed for a particular meal, and ignore everything else.

Please correct your attitude, and convey my best regards to Albert Einstein Professor Chen Ning Yang.

Sincerely,

D. Chakalov

Dimi,

My opinions are my own, and they don't represent the views of the YITP or anybody else.

As for your criticism of me choosing concepts based on my personal tastes, I suggest this is more the norm than the exception in theoretical physics. When approaching a subject as speculative as the one we're discussing here, I chose concepts and ideas based on my own educated guesses just like any other physicist would. After all, there's no empirical evidence to suggest whether physical Time is a continuum or not, so we're all free to propose our own models, which is what I'm doing here. All I'm suggesting is my own toy model of Time and Becoming, nothing more.

The ones who try to impose their views on others are the ones who need to have their attitudes corrected.

Chi,

You wrote: "As for your criticism of me choosing concepts based on my personal tastes, ... "

Correction: I cannot agree with your systematic neglect of particular facts which run against your ideas. If you treat physics as a hobby, you should at least acknowledge that your hobby may be easily spoiled by some well-known facts, such as those explained in my previous postings.

If you respect theoretical physics, please correct your attitude.

If you treat it as a hobby, don't bother to even reply.

Dimi,

You have your opinions, and I respect that (even though you don't seem to want to reciprocate), I just happen not to agree with you. If that offends you, too bad...

Dear Dr. Chi Ming Hung,

I like the idea of frequency being more fundamental that energy. Although my approach of QM is complementary, being based rather on smoothness than discontinuity, I find your explorations into discreteness very interesting (I don't see them incompatible at all since, as perhaps your work in progress will show, there may be an equivalence). Again, although I feel comfortable in the block world, I consider nice your idea of using indeterminism as an "escape" to a presentist view. If you will succeed in eliminating the GR singularities and the QFT infinities by using the discrete approach, this will be a big leap forward.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Flowing with a Frozen River

Cristi,

Thank you for your comments about my essay.

Good Luck to you too!