Dear Jim,
if that would be the case, the Mach-Zehnder-Interferometer (without the second beam-splitter) should be able to detect both independently directed waveforms. But that's never the case. For every "particle" that goes through the first beam-splitter, there only one and just one detector clicks for each partitioned waveform.
Sincerely,
Stefan
Sorry - but my failure to be clear again. I didn't clearly explain that I've now modified my assertion to better fit the data: that for each emission of a single quantum wave packet a single wave is detected.
I still assert that it is two independently directed waves being partitioned from the initial emission by the grating. The two independent partitions interfere with each other, but the product of the two emergent waves collapse to be detected as a single photon.
As I understand, this fits the evidence since the single detected photon is not aligned with either slot, as is the case with a single slot experiment: it is statistically aligned with an apparently random position within an interference pattern that eventually emerges following a large number of individual quantum packet emissions.
In other words, you are correct that a single particle is produced by each quantum emission, but its detected location is produced by the interference of independently directed waves passing through the grating.
I think this best fits the evidence.
I hope I've now explained clearly. I really appreciate your patience!
Dear Neil,
as you surely know, some interpretations of QM take an analog and deterministically evolving wave function as a fact. For example DI or MWI. I pondered about wether those views are really a fact or not.
To "answer" the contest's question more definitely, one has to provide an experimentum crucis that could differenciate between a strictly analog model of reality and other (non-strictly) models. This task seems to be somewhat a variation of the halting problem, because if you can measure some values to - say - the 70 billionth decimal place, that's in no way a proof that nature acts in an infinitely precise manner or not. Even if the next 50 million decimal places are only zeros, you have no garantuee that after that there will again exlusively only follow further zeros and no other numbers.
If we define "information" as something that made a factual distinction in the past (due to measurement-outcomes or mere interactions of particles), then at least within our observable horizon of the universe there should have been produced only a finite amount of information - resulting in our present configuration of the observable horizon. Though "observable" means "factual", we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved, "counterfactual" information is preserved via an analog and deterministically evolving wave function, be it as many worlds or as other unobservable dimensions.
If the holographic principle is valid, the total information content of a region of space is finite. For our observable universe, this amount of information - due to the holographic principle and the calculations of Seth Lloyd and others - cannot exceed about 10123 factual information units (bits). So, if nature would be able to outdistance this number by a quantum computer's operation that leads to a factual, verifiable output (in my experiment via the factorization of large numbers into their prime components), this would indicate - at least - that the underlying wave function does operate in a counterfactual realm, a realm that cannot be associated with ordinary space and time.
But if nature wouldn't be able to outdistance the 10123 factual bit-flips, this would be - in my opinion - a strong hint for reconsidering a strictly analog and deterministic view of QM.
"Are those particles really used, and would our doing an experiment right now actually mesh with the potential capability of all those entities in principle?"
I really don't know if those particles would be really used in such an experiment, but if the claims of the finite information bound (or let's say, the finite computational capability) of our observable universe is valid (independent of how the universe computes or is interconnected in detail), there should indeed occur a breakdown of the "wave function" at some critical point of my proposed experiment.
Dear Stephan,
Please excuse me for omitting the proper salutation and signature in my previous message(s) - I'm a barbarian by nature.
Sincerely,
Jim
I assume it's a similar question to whether it can explain the YDS. In time I think it can. The double-slit experiment requires a modelling of the edge of the slit which is made of metal. This requires an initial modelling of the hydrogen atom, which is essentially a proton with an 'orbitting electron effect'. Until we get a simluation model of the hydrogen molecule, we can't model the more complicated elements or compounds. It's the same with so called fundamental particles, we have to take the precise modelling one step at a time. I hope you can give the spinning helix idea some thought. Imagine if Newton had announced it as the particle which must exert his unseen force of gravity! History would have been totally different. No Einstein talking about a 'fabric' of spacetime hundreds of years later for one! Kind regards, Alan
Dear Jim,
you are right, it seems that if the detected location is produced by the interference of independently directed waves passing through the grating.
But if we observe one of the two slits to look which slit a particle went through, the interference pattern doesn't build up, but only a pattern behind each of the slits that we know from single-slit experiments. So the two "waves" cannot be independent from each other. Otherwise there should be nonetheless a kind of interference pattern at the screen (though different from the interference pattern for the case that we don't measure a slit, but nonetheless interference between the two waves that you describe - towards their way to the screen).
How can you explain this with "real" waves?
Sincerely,
Stefan
Dear Stephan,
Sorry for being so dense, but I don't quite follow you: what is the experimental condition where one of the slits is monitored to determine which slit a 'particle' went through - how is that accomplished?
I see that quantum emission single slit experiments produce a distribution of detections behind the slit, as a single wave collapses to produce the particle detection.
As I understand, in the two slot experiment the waves must be independently directed or no interference pattern could be produced.
More directly, can you explain, for an individual quantum emission single slit experiment, how a localized particle could always find its way through the slit, when it would frequently be absorbed by the grating material? How does a localized quantum particle even propagate through spacetime except as a wave?
Thanks,
Jim
Dear Jim,
"what is the experimental condition where one of the slits is monitored to determine which slit a 'particle' went through - how is that accomplished?"
I don't know for sure, but i think some "properties" of a particle (be it magnetic spin, mass, charge or energy or whatever - you should read up on the experimental reports) interact with another particles properties (an atom or an experimental device).
"More directly, can you explain, for an individual quantum emission single slit experiment, how a localized particle could always find its way through the slit, when it would frequently be absorbed by the grating material?"
Obviously such a "particle" gets not absorbed by the grating material, otherwise it couldn't also hit the screen anymore.
"I see that quantum emission single slit experiments produce a distribution of detections behind the slit, as a single wave collapses to produce the particle detection."
I do neither believe in particles, nor do i believe in waves as the ontological basement of reality. I rather think that the answer to that puzzle can't be found within the framework of ordinary 3D-spacetime. Imagine an electron going through the double-slit experiment. If it would be separated into two independent waves, what happens with the electrons' charge, mass, energy, spin? We could measure it imidiately after it went through the slits, but we could also don't measure it, or measure it after it moved 100 meters. Why should an electrons' wave know that at some point of a screen "it" is detected and therefore the other valid points at this screen should register it with probability zero? The potential points on the screen to register such an electron could be far away from each other.
We could have a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer and send a single electron through it. Every arm of the interferometer is 1000 meters long. There's no second beam-splitter and the two arms do not cross one another but are 2000 meters away from each other. What happens with the wave that hits the detector which doesn't click? Why can we measure the electron's properties (charge, mass, energy) at the detectors which clicks? Are there only empty waves under way with only the description - information - about the electron's properties and such properties are only re-constructed in the moment of a measurement? If so, doesn't this mean that we have to redefine our concept of matter's properties in some way and also our definition about physical space? How can the one arm of the interferometer "know" that the other arm has registered the electron and therefore need not construct the electron's properties twice (it can only be detected at one detector, at one time). If we involve entanglement into the picture to explain those "spooky action at a distance", why should we therefore need physically extended waves to transport information through spacetime?
Sincerely,
Stefan
Dear Stephan,
Thanks for explaining. I'll have to stick with existing experimental evidence until better data becomes available. You did cause me to refine my assessment of that existing data - thank you very much!
Best wishes,
Jim
Dear Jim,
thank you too for your patience and for visiting my page.
Best wishes to you, too,
Stefan
Stefan,
Thanks for your reply. I'm familiar with Laws of Form. Perhaps you know of the related work by Lou Kauffman.
Regards,
Tom
Hi Stephan,
I enjoyed your essay, which I found very stimulating. I appreciated also the reference to Paul Davies' paper, about which I have some comments that you might find interesting, since it is closely related to the issues you are dealing with.
Key questions seem to be: How many 'bits' of information are there in the universe? And: Shall we interpret 'information' ontologically or epistemologically? It strikes me that, either way, information--if it is to be about something--must correspond to physical structure. Is there, then, a limit to how much structure (detail) can actually exist in the universe? Or is the limit simply on what we can know of this structure? I think these are very different questions, but easily confused.
Davies--like many others these days--proposes to explore the idea of information as fundamental, as occupying the "ontological basement". He contrasts this (ironically, I think) with a view that he characterizes as Platonist. But it strikes me that viewing information as ontologically fundamental is basically an idealist (if not outright Platonist) concept--unless we stick to the view of information as structure. But then, I am not sure on what basis it can be argued that reality has a finite structure. He attempts to do this on the basis of information as dealt with in the Bekenstein bound, and parallel arguments. But this is effectively information in an epistemological sense, which he, like others, assumes can be identified with information in an ontological sense. That seems to be an error. There may be ultimate structural limits; and there may be a correspondence between these and limits of what can be known. But neither should be assumed.
Yours sincerely, with best wishes,
Dan
Dear Dan,
thank you very much for your encouraging words.
You raise important questions and i'll try to adress them:
The platonist's view, at least as i understand it, is that all the abstract information is ontologically present in a platonic realm. It exists without references to time or space, it was, is and will be forever - unchanged. It is static.
The notion of information in the sense i use it, is, that information is not the same as structure. Information-processing (i rather name it "measurement-processes") leads to structure, in this sense information corresponds to that structure only once the structure is actually realized in the physical realm, but the information itself is neither a one-to-one translation of informational structures into physical structures nor is the information fixed in a platonic realm. The real context of that information could probably lie far outside our physical universe. We should not overlook that informational realms could be realms as real as your impression to see the colour "blue" - nonetheless without any information about how that qualia can be interpreted in physical terms(the precise emotional impression of seing blue, feeling it and knowing that it's absolutely real without being able to explain "what" is it that makes it so real - real as the impression "blue", not the underlying physical processes emitted by "blue" material).
My main concern in writing the essay was to offer at least a theoretically feasible way to discriminate between a strictly analog and deterministic evolution of the universe ("wave function") and the possibility that information only comes in finite units into our world (from where however). If a quantum computer could solve some tasks a classical computer could never do (due to a time- or energy-consuming cosmological limit), then we could reason that there is more structure beyond the classical world than the "digital computer"-picture assumed.
Yours sincerely,
Stefan
Thanks, Stephan
I would certainly agree that "there is more structure beyond the classical world than the 'digital computer'-picture assumed." I don't believe, however, that Platonic "informational realms" are required for there to exist human perception (the contents of consciousness). I do believe that physical structure is required. But this is probably not the main thrust of either of our intentions, and not something to debate.
Dan
Dear Stephan,
Your well written essay reminded me a lot of the many exchanges we had last summer over just this 'most beautiful experiment'! I couldn't let this opportunity go by without wishing you success with it.
Though our earlier exchanges dealt exclusively with my explanation of the double-slit experiment, my essay summarizes many other derivations that collectively can give you a much better idea of the coherent whole. You will find in this a consistent simple formulation of much of basic physics.
Fundamental to this is my mathematical derivation of Planck's Law showing that it is a mathematical tautology that describes the interaction of measurement. It says that if we know the amount of energy absorbed at a given temperature, then Planck's Formula determines the energy intensity. This I argue explains why the experimental blackbody spectrum is indistinguishable from that of Planck's Law.
Interestingly, and more to the point of our previous discussion, and of your essay, just yesterday I posted a result that I believe you will find very relevant to that discussion, and more. The mystery of the double-slit experiment is accounting for the corpuscular nature of light (photons). The "photon hypothesis" is Einstein's major accomplishment. The other of course being his Constant Speed of Light hypothesis that is the basis of SR.
I think the title of the paper I posted just yesterday will explain why this is so relevant to my explanation of the double-slit. If you recall, I had listed three principles that I claim explain the double-slit experiment:
1)Light propagates continuously as a wave, but interacts discretely
2)Before 'manifestation of energy' there is 'accumulation of energy'
3)The "photon" emitted is not the same as the "photon" detected
Now the drum rolls and the title of my paper that says it all ...
"If the speed of light is constant, then light is a wave"
This I demonstrate with a very simple and elegant mathematical proof. Thus, Einstein's CSL contradicts the Photon Hypothesis!
I look forward to your comments. Best wishes for a successful contest ...
Constantinos
Stefan,
You are right. The question is still open like the existence of a Supreme Being. But my bet is on analogue with some evidence from models and assumptions.
Enjoyed reading your essay, Stefan.
Jim
Sub: Possibility of manipulation in judging criteria - suggestions for improvement.
Sir,
We had filed a complaint to FQXi and Scienticfic American regarding Possibility of manipulation in judging criteria and giving some suggestions for improvement. Acopy of our letter is enclosed for your kind information.
"We are a non-professional and non-academic entrant to the Essay contest "Is Reality Digital or Analog". Our Essay under the same name was published on 29-12-2010. We were associated with Academic Administration as a part of our profession before retirement. From our experience, we were concerned about the problems and directions of current science. One example is the extended run and up-gradation given to LHC, (which was set up to finally prove that Standard Model and SUSY were wrong), even when Tevatron is closing down. Thus, after retirement, we were more focused on foundational works addressing, in one of its many facets, our understanding of the deep or "ultimate" nature of reality.
Specifically we were concerned about the blind acceptance of the so-called "established theories" due to the rush for immediate and easy recognition even on the face of contradictions raising questions on the very theories. One example is the questions being raised on the current theories of gravitation after the discovery of Pioneer anomaly. While most students know about MOND, they are not aware of the Pioneer anomaly. Most of the finalists of this contest have either not addressed or insufficiently addressed this question. We hold that gravity is a composite force that stabilizes. This way we can not only explain the Pioneer anomaly and the deflection of the Voyager space-craft, but also the Fly-by anomalies.
Similarly, we were concerned about the blind acceptance of some concepts, such as inertial mass increase, gravitational waves, Higg's boson, strings, extra-dimensions, etc. Some of these are either non-existent or wrongly explained. For example, we have given a different explanation for ten spatial dimensions. Similarly, we have explained the charge interactions differently from the Coulomb's law. We have defined time, space, number and infinity etc., differently and derived all out formulae from fundamental principles. There are much more, which we had discussed under various threads under different Essays. We are the only entrant who defined "reality" and all other technical terms precisely and strictly used this definition throughout our discussion.
Though our essay was on foundational concepts and we derived everything from fundamental principles, it was basically alternative physics. Moreover, we are not known in scientific circles because we did not publish our work earlier. Hence it is surprising that even we got a community rating of 3.0 and (12 ratings) and Public Rating of 2.5 (2 ratings). We have no complaints in this regard. However, we have serious reservations about the manner in which the finalists were chosen.
A set of thirty-five finalists (the "Finalists") have been chosen based on the essays with the top Community ratings that have each received at least ten ratings. The FQXi Members and approved Contest entrants rate the essays as "Community evaluators". Since many of the FQXi Members are also approved Contest entrants, this effectively makes the contestant as the judge for selection of the finalists. This process not only goes against the foundational goals of the Contest, but also leaves itself open for manipulation.
Most contestants are followers of what they call as "mainstream physics". Thus, they will not be open to encourage revolutionary new ideas because it goes against their personal beliefs either fully (like our essay) or partially (like many other essays that did not find place in the final list. One example is Ms Georgina Parry. There are many more.) The prime reason for such behavior is cultural bias and basic selfish instinct of human beings. Thus, truly foundational essays will be left out of the final list.
In support of the above, we give a few examples. While there are some really deserving contestants like Mr. Julian Barbour, who really deserve placement in the final listing, the same cannot be said for many others. Mr. Daniele Oriti, who tops the list of finalists, says that whether reality is digital or analog "refers, at least implicitly, to the 'ultimate' nature of reality, the fundamental layer." He admits that "I do not know what this could mean, nor I am at ease with thinking in these terms." Then how could he discuss the issue scientifically? Science is not about beliefs or suppositions. His entire essay exhibits his beliefs and suppositions that are far from scientific descriptions. He admits it when he talks about "speculative scenario". Yet, his essay has been rated as number one by the Community.
The correspondence between us and Mr. Efthimios Harokopos under his Essay and our comments under the various top ranking finalists show the same pattern. One example is Mr. Paul Halpern. We have raised some fundamental questions under the essay of Mr. Hector Zenil. If the answers to these questions are given, most of the finalists will be rejected. If the idea is to find out the answers to these questions, then also most of the finalists will be rejected.
The public that read and rated the essays are not just laymen, but intelligent persons following the developments of science. Their views cannot be ignored lightly. Mr. Daniele Oriti, who tops the list of finalists as per community rating, occupies 35th place in public rating. Mr, Tejinder Singth, who is 7th among the list of finalists as per community rating, occupies 25th place in public rating. If public rating is so erroneous, it should be abolished.
Secondly, the author and interested readers (including FQXi Members, other contest entrants, and the general public) are invited to discuss and comment on the essay. Here personal relationship and lobbying plays an important role. An analysis of the correspondence between various contestants will show that there was hectic lobbying for mutual rating. For example: Eckard Blumschein (Finalist Sl. No. 15) had written on Mar. 15, 2011 to Mr. Ian Durham (Finalist Sl. No. 3) "Since you did not yet answered my question you give me an excuse for not yet voting for you." There are many such examples of open lobbying. One of the first entrants visited most contestants and lobbied for reading his essay. Thus, not only he has received the highest number of posts under his Essay, but has emerged as one of top contenders.
The above statement gets further strengthened if we look at the voting pattern. More than 100 essays were submitted between Feb.1-15. Of these 21 out of 35 are the finalists. Of these the essays of 14 contestants were published in 5 days between Feb. 14-18. Is it a mere coincidence? For some contestants, maximum rating took place on the last day. For example, on the last date alone, Mr. Paul Halpern rose from 14th place to 5th place, Mr. Donatello Dolce rose from 35th place to 14th place, and Mr. Christian Stoica came into the top 35. All these cannot be coincidental.
Thirdly, no person is allowed to submit more than one essay to the Contest, regardless if he or she is entering individually or as part of a collaborative essay. Yet, we suspect that some have indulged in such activities. For example, we commented below the essay of one contestant on March 4. We got a reply from the next contestant the same day. The correspondence continued. The original contender has not replied to us. In fact he has only replied twice in 20 posts. This is surprising.
In view of the above, we request you to kindly review your judging process and forward all essays to an independent screening committee (to which no contestant or their relatives will be empanelled), who will reject the essays that are not up to the mark and select the other essays without any strict restriction on numbers to the final judges panel. This will eliminate the problems and possibilities discussed by us. This will also have the benefit of a two tier independent evaluation.
Our sole motive for writing this letter is to improve the quality of competition. Hence it should be viewed from the same light".
Regards,
Basudeba.
