Essay Abstract

I explore the potential of quantum physics to establish the existence of a domain of physical reality that transcends human experience. Such a transempirical domain is suggested by phenomena, which involve the superposition states of microphysical objects and the virtual states of atoms and molecules. Superposition states are real because they can manifest themselves in empirical phenomena, such as Single-Particle Interference, but they are transempirical, because observation destroys them. Virtual states are real because they can control empirical phenomena, such as spectroscopic transitions, but they are transempirical, because they are empty. In addition to being transempirical, the hidden domain of reality appears to be transmaterial and transpersonal. The appearance, in an empirical science, of a transempirical reality is of great significance and it is seen to engage physics in issues which have traditionally been outside of its domain.

Author Bio

Lothar Schäfer; PhD in Chemistry, University of Munich, 1965. Currently Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Numerous publications in Electron Diffraction, Applied Quantum Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, combined ab initio-experimental studies of molecular structures. In the 1980s, he directed a team which developed the first real-time electron diffraction instrument, enabling Time-Resolved Electron Diffraction studies of laser-excited molecules (J. Phys. Chem., 98 (1994) 8673). First quantum chemical geometry determinations of peptides, predicting structural trends in proteins a decade before they were observed experimentally (J. Phys. Chem., 99 (1995) 10521).

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  • Post #2

"but they are transempirical, because observation destroys them." Double quantum eraser experiments. Deterministic collapse of a double slit pattern is undone by discarding information about the entities' passage. If the observation has "destroyed" something, why are its effects undone by forgetting the destruction was performed? Assuredly an observable resulting from quantum superposition collapse remains that same observable afterward when nobody is looking, right? Tell us how to reinflate the superposition from determined observables.

Explain the causality of double quantum eraser experiments given your thesis. Consider the quantum Zeno effect and Hund's Paradox with virtual states. As a chemist, do you really believe that a rigid polycyclic chiral molecule like (1S,2S)-bicyclo[2.2.l]hept-5-en-2-one, norbornenone, will spontaneously racemize in hard vacuum? If passed through a small shiny box with 2054.118 ohms dissipation? Tell us how a quantum superposition can rationalize a (1S,2R) or (1R,2S) superposition in additon to the classical (1R,2R) optical antipode.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/hund.htm

If is silly in glass it is silly on paper. In vitro veritas!

In response to the comment signed "Uncle Al": I appreciate very much your criticism, whoever you may be, because it is a wonderful prompt to rephrase what I am trying to say and perhaps say it better.

What I am trying to say is what Werner Heisenberg expressed (loc. cit. 1962, 54) in this way: "The observation itself changes the probability function discontinuously; it selects of all possible events the actual one that has taken place. ... Therefore, the transition from the 'possible' to the 'actual' takes place during the act of observation." I take this statement to mean that, during a measurement act, a transition between two different modalities of being takes place, from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality. Thus, in the act of observation a state of potentiality ceases to exist. Since this is a necessary condition of all observations of potentiality states, it follows that such states are transempirical.

In the Double-Slit Single-Particle Interference experiments, specifically, we have to distinguish between the acts of observation or measurement, and the acts of labeling. A measurement act - that is, the act which leads to the actual appearance of a particle on a detector - is an irreversible interaction of a microphysical potentiality state with a macroscopic object or the environment. In contrast, the attachment of labels is not necessarily irreversible since labels can be erased.

Consider, for further clarification, the state of a single electron in a Double-Slit experiment immediately prior to its detection by a position sensitive detector, say a photodiode array. In this state the position of the electron across the detector does not have an actual value, but many potential values. I can describe this state somewhat figuratively by saying that a multiplicity of non-zero probabilities of being observed in different channels of the diode array is superimposed in it. More precisely, avoiding the term of superposition, I can use Villars' terminology and say that the electron is a "potentiality wave", that is, "a wave of potential observation interactions" (loc. cit. 1987, 148). When the measurement act is actually performed, one of the potential observation interactions contained in the potentiality wave becomes the actual one, i.e., the particle appears in a specific channel, and the potentiality state has ceased to exist. If it is felt that it is too casual to describe this event by saying that the observation has "destroyed" this state, I do not have to insist on this term. But, it is obvious, what is meant by it: during the act of observation a state of potentiality is terminated. When a state is terminated in the very act which is needed to observe it, it must be a transempirical state.

Please note, too, that the state of the electron immediately prior to detection in Double-Slit experiments can be of two types: it can define, as it were, an informed probability distribution; that is, the experiment was performed in such a way that it contains which-way information. Or the probability distribution is uninformed; that is, no which-way information is available. But it does not matter how the experiment was performed! In any case, observing a particle in one of the channels of the diode array means that a state of potentiality has ceased to exist, because the observation necessarily involves a transition from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality. These considerations show that Double-Slit experiments reveal a hidden order in two ways: 1) in the random appearance of single impacts on the detector; and 2) in the buildup of an interference pattern, if coherence is not excluded by the mode of the experiment.

Many other questions, suggestions, and details, which are per se very interesting, are listed in this response, but are irrelevant for my argument. Remember what the intent of my paper is: I want to explore whether the quantum phenomena can lead us to the notion of a domain of reality that transcends our experience. If one single instance can be found: that will settle the case. If not, we must conclude that the answer to my question is negative.

I like very much your essay. It makes a solid plea for the underlying reality and the reason for our disregard of it in our human, instrumental and conceptual (materialistic) limitations. I consider your essay as a serious must introduction and complement to my own. I like your transition from actuality to potentiality.

Notes:

1- Nature squeezes existence in various ways, each constraint being represented by a quantum number. If we are the ones putting on the squeeze on nature, nature will exhibit also a temporary quantization in response. The double slit experiment is such an experimental constraint creating a temporary quantization of one property. Direction is the property here that is being constrained which results in the quantization of "direction".

2- I agree that our experience is but our interaction with things. .. and the corruption you mention as caused by instruments is also effected by our own mind that is also an instrument. Science is empirical and it allows us to do all sort of marvelous things without knowing what we are really doing. This is because it examines the universe as a black box; poke and see the results. The behavior of the box is everything, but the actual existence of a content is ignored.

3- Once you agree to item 2 above, transempirical is not part of physical reality( by definition) It is "metaphysical", a word that is still seen as "scandalous"...

4- In Quantum Mechanics we have made a trade for empirical reasons.

A higher probability of finding an object in one place in a specific amount of time is a direct ontological equivalent to this object actually spending more time on average in this place than anywhere else. For this longer stay to happen, the time rate -For this object- must be slower in that place.

Marcel,

(Hi! To Uncle Al... a long time critique)

9 days later

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  • Post #5

Dear Dr. Lothar

Observer is consistent part of science.

Question is: Who is the observer ?

I see self-observation and self-experience of the observer as a fundamental research of physics.

yours amrit

eternity is now

11 days later

Dear Lothar Schäfer,

As the quantum physics itself is transitional between continuum mechanics and quantum chemistry, any phenomenological variation in continuum mechanics is introspective to quantum chemistry with new principles and in the emerging new physics there are expectations on restructuring the atomic analogy evolved form Bohr model.

In a Coherent-cyclic cluster-matter universe model, as all matters of the universe are in dynamics, the existence of stationary state is not applicable and the state vector expression by wave function may be representational for event location rather than structural location as there is cyclic action of energy-mass transfer with the elements of matter matrix when there is cyclic wave propagation through matter matrix and this may be explainable in the phenomenology of Field-Ion Microscopy also.

The probable realism is by empirical rather than by transempirical phenomenon and the hidden variable is representational as energy-mass flux on transfer and may be expressional as symmetry transformation.

Though the definiteness and superposition exclude each other in quantum mechanics, they coexists in large structures, in that the embedded sub-structures are in a hierarchy of lattice with their coherent super-structures as the universe is a single structure of cluster-matter with embedded sub-cluster-matters and further sub-cluster-matters. In this context, the transempirical phenomenon in quantum mechanics that relates transmaterial probabilities in quantum chemistry described in this article is much consistent on quantum chemistry with quantum physics to explore physical reality, thanking you ..

With best wishes,

Jayakar

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