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Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#321

Post by okamiueru »

clankyclanker wrote: post #208
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

So, PBS Space Time did a video on this “fine tuned universe” theory and it, like all of their videos, is great. The concept seems to be that in an unbalanced universe, life couldn’t form, and we’d be incapable of having this conversation. So, either there are infinite universes and we exist as a result of being in the right one, or there’s one universe and we exist as a result of the one we’re in being right. Either…

I strongly dislike PBS Space Time, but I find it hard to explain why. I might also be just too dumb to get it. It's just the feeling of the goal not being the "listener gaining understanding", but rather "expressing how confusing and complicated it is".

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#322

Post by msla »

lisper wrote: post #298
msla wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here you're equivocating on the word faith. In your post, "faith" either means "accepting best current evidence and logic" or "believing that there's a supernatural explanation without any evidence whatsoever" and it can't rightly mean both, because those definitions are incompatible.

No. Recall the statement I was responding to: > it requires faith to assert that the universe did not have its origin from some intelligent supernatural being That is false. It does not require faith to assert this, any more than it requires faith to assert that the tooth fairy does not exist, simply because neither the tooth fairy nor ID have any supporting evidence. Actually, the tooth fairy does have some supporti…

I agree with you, which means I think we're talking at cross purposes and/or your replied to the wrong person.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#323

Post by andoando »

lying4fun wrote: post #227
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't "believe" too many things that can't be evidentiarily substantiated, but as silly of a thing to reference for this kind of discussion, I personally have the irrational, unscientific belief that this Simpsons opening is unironically the most accurate model of the Universe that we have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=cakta...

I’m going to entertain this literally because it’s fun: so we need to zoom out enough to find those big galaxy surrounding atoms which are actually universes, or conversely to zoom in more to find galaxies and a universe within atoms. But it seems that there’s either missing understanding how to cross that zoom in/out threshold or it’s impossible by the laws of physics to zoom so far to make a full circle, like it’s…

Yeah thats my thought too! What if there was a whole universe inside of an atom? Or on the other hand, we and everything we observe is just a single atom in a greater collection of atoms forming what is table to some other consciousness?

I know I probably sound like a complete goon, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

(I just watched the simpson video. haha, I thought I was being original)

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#324

Post by bowsamic »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #181
jiggawatts wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum mechanics is a religion with mathematics instead of just holy texts. Several studies have been done into whether practicing theoretical physicists using QM in their everyday work agree on the most basic tenets of the field. Spoiler: they disagree on every aspect while simultaneously assuming that their opinions are correct and that everyone else agrees with them. That’s how religions work, not how science doe…

All of the disagreements in QM are metaphysical: what is measurement, how does a wavefunction collapse, what is reality, etc. Everyone agrees on the math that leads to predictions (which have been matched by observation to an almost perfect degree). And I'd imagine that just about everyone also agrees that it's incredibly unintuitive. But the math works.

That’s not really true, there may be ways to experimentally distinguish between those disagreements

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#325

Post by radarsat1 »

megmogandog wrote: post #302
timeagain wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok here’s the problem. What hubris does it take to assume the fundamental constants could be changed? Just because they appear in math equations doesn’t mean they can be twiddled and tweaked like programming variables. We have no prior knowledge or justification to believe any constants have been “tuned”, because we have no justification in suggesting other possible values. We could just as easily say that life on ea…

I think I could've phrased my comment better. I'm not assuming the constants can be changed; axiomatically, they cannot, because they're fundamental constants of the universe. I'm also not assuming that some agent was around to do the tuning. In its basic form 'fine tuning' just means that if one of the values were even slightly different we wouldn't have anything like the universe we see today, including life. The v…

> if one of the values were even slightly different we wouldn't have anything like the universe we see today

This is a hallmark of a chaotic system. It's not impossible but the chances of sitting exactly on such an unstable point seems very low. It seems more likely that the constants are some optimum in a basin of attraction, a stable point in some higher order dynamic system.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#326

Post by electrondood »

> The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity

It's not an object at all. The reason quantum physics is so weird, is that our conceptual model of things existed ng as discrete objects no longer works. An "object" is like a conceptual convenience method on some region of spacetime.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#327

Post by dcow »

okamiueru wrote: post #321
clankyclanker wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, PBS Space Time did a video on this “fine tuned universe” theory and it, like all of their videos, is great. The concept seems to be that in an unbalanced universe, life couldn’t form, and we’d be incapable of having this conversation. So, either there are infinite universes and we exist as a result of being in the right one, or there’s one universe and we exist as a result of the one we’re in being right. Either…

I strongly dislike PBS Space Time, but I find it hard to explain why. I might also be just too dumb to get it. It's just the feeling of the goal not being the "listener gaining understanding", but rather "expressing how confusing and complicated it is".

It’s like a listicle that tells you every best coffee machine in 2024 is a valid purchase to the right kind of consumer when you’re looking for the best one.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#328

Post by bowsamic »

jiggawatts wrote: post #297
DonHopkins wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

I’m really confused here as a quantum physicist myself. Yes there is huge disagreement and yes it’s a problem, but also what is the alternative? It’s not like we can just give up on quantum mechanics because you personally have philosophical problems with it. My task is to reduce the fundamental quantum noise that we see in gravitational wave detectors after removing all the classical noise. How would it be constructive to just say “let’s pretend there is no quantum noise?”

To me it’s exciting that there is no clear interpretation for quantum mechanics, and it also nicely retroactively casts doubt on our interpretation for all previous theories: did classical mechanics just coincidentally present as deterministic? Etc. maybe you think questions about determinism are woo but I think that would be quite extreme

Honestly, I don’t see why it’s a problem that there are different interpretations of quantum mechanics

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#329

Post by cocoa19 »

okamiueru wrote: post #321
clankyclanker wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, PBS Space Time did a video on this “fine tuned universe” theory and it, like all of their videos, is great. The concept seems to be that in an unbalanced universe, life couldn’t form, and we’d be incapable of having this conversation. So, either there are infinite universes and we exist as a result of being in the right one, or there’s one universe and we exist as a result of the one we’re in being right. Either…

I strongly dislike PBS Space Time, but I find it hard to explain why. I might also be just too dumb to get it. It's just the feeling of the goal not being the "listener gaining understanding", but rather "expressing how confusing and complicated it is".

The channel is definitely not targeted for the lay person.

A counter example, Derek from Veritasium, he did a phd in physics education and it shows. Some of his videos are complex in content, but dumbed down so most people can understand.

I enjoy PBS space time and listening to Matt O’Dowd, but I understand at the most 20-40% of what is covered on the videos. It is frustrating because I like the topics being discussed.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#330

Post by seeknotfind »

hwillis wrote: post #205
seeknotfind wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many significant digits includes a level of self-consistency of the model, since we are assuming the model to some degree in order to measure it. Though in this case, it's not the calculations that are wrong, but the model, we hope is wrong. That is, a new perspective and a new way of thinking about things may reveal more. Of course, we are always fighting against the irreducible complexity camp. However, the fund…

> So many significant digits includes a level of self-consistency of the model No, that's incorrect. The specific measurement -the most accurate scientific prediction humans have ever made, the anomalous magnetic moment- is only to 1 in 10 trillion. The magnetic moment (think moment of inertia) is the ratio of force from the magnetic field to the mass of the electron. You put an electron into a magnetic field, and it…

For instance, there is disagreement on if time is quantized, and relatively says time is relative. So at the point we might reimagine the basis of our understanding, two independent measurements of Hz are incomparable. Whatever is out there for us to discover, I'm sure it'll take us all by surprise. I've no doubt you know way more about how we measure these things in practice than I do, but our scientific model and measurements are inextricably linked. This isn't a useful way to think for most practitioners, but it's the perspective that the next Newton or the next Einstein will need to consider. So, in rootier poster comment that this feels like a wrong calculation, I want to treasure that part of the perspective that seeks to reimagine the fundamentals.
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