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Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This answer to this is actually known and is a consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Here's a youtube video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAxzr6ihu8 Of course, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a mathematical description of observed behaviour so one could rightly argue that it doesn't really explain anything - it merely describes things.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle should probably be put the rest at this point. From the beginning it was more "capturing" our inability to move beyond the physics as we know it. It's like tying your shoe laces. I always found it fascinating how firmly most physicists believe in the equations someone came up with, just because it agree with measurements. I mean that's real nice and all, but just because something a…

That's how all of physics is constructed. Even things you may think are obvious, like Newton's 3 laws of motion, are only accepted because they agree with our measurements. How else should we determine their validity?

> There are literally infinite ways to create equations that satisfy measurements.

There really aren't. You seem to be thinking of something like in the movie The Number 23. But we're talking about equations, not numbers. Take Newton's Second Law (f = m • a). What equation can you write that expresses that relationship that can't be simplified to f = m • a?

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#62
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go with the Many-Worlds Interpretation, then trying to remove the randomness is nonsensical: the world just branches (in proportions as described by the Schrodinger equation), people on every branch have experience, and "randomness" is just what branch you find yourself on. The randomness of what branch you find yourself in is just like the randomness of what person you find yourself born as. All classical the…

On the contrary, it is still an open problem to rigorously derive the Born rule probabilities in MWI just from this perspective. Either way, the response will be equivalent to the Born rule: instead of positing that a measurement'outcome is proportional to the amplitude of the state, we posit that the number of branches in which an outcome happens is proportional to the amplitude of that outcome. Not sure why these a…

The Born rule is statistical distribution, and statistics is certainly computable in MWI. It's a matter of converting the wave function into distribution basis, where it will have the Born rule distribution with amplitude close to 1, which means that observations have the Born rule distribution in most cases.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This answer to this is actually known and is a consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Here's a youtube video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAxzr6ihu8 Of course, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a mathematical description of observed behaviour so one could rightly argue that it doesn't really explain anything - it merely describes things.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle should probably be put the rest at this point. From the beginning it was more "capturing" our inability to move beyond the physics as we know it. It's like tying your shoe laces. I always found it fascinating how firmly most physicists believe in the equations someone came up with, just because it agree with measurements. I mean that's real nice and all, but just because something a…

Our current models are only good until we find a better model that replaces them, one which can explain phenomena we observe , which the old model didn't.

So, yes, it's possible there is some physics "beyond" the one we know, and yes in order to go beyond what we know we have to consider the possibility that some of the stuff that lay at the foundation of the current physics is wrong (or, correct up to an approximation). And many working physicists are well aware of that fact and they do consider all the options on the table.

The problem is, you have to find something to replace it and it has to work.

Thinking about all crazy things is great. "Temporarily" throwing away some assumptions can be a productive thinking tool. The Heisenberg principle (like many other things) can be both something you want to keep and use as a foundation for other explorations, and it can be something you question. The field is made up of many people, not everybody should be working on the same thing on the same assumption; I think "putting ideas at rest at this point" should be relegated to old theories that have been fully superseded, and even then they can be still useful: even Newtonian mechanics can still be quite useful even if we know it falls short.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#64
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle should probably be put the rest at this point. From the beginning it was more "capturing" our inability to move beyond the physics as we know it. It's like tying your shoe laces. I always found it fascinating how firmly most physicists believe in the equations someone came up with, just because it agree with measurements. I mean that's real nice and all, but just because something a…

That's how all of physics is constructed. Even things you may think are obvious, like Newton's 3 laws of motion, are only accepted because they agree with our measurements. How else should we determine their validity? > There are literally infinite ways to create equations that satisfy measurements. There really aren't. You seem to be thinking of something like in the movie The Number 23. But we're talking about equa…

The uncertainty principles are inequalities, not equations. And that is something you can write with multiple forms.

As for equations, notice that many equations in Physics have a constant which turns a proportion to an equation. This is where you have leeway in constructing more or less arbitrary equations based on the variables you think are important enough to observe.

Coming to your example, Newton's f = ma equation is really f/m proportional to a. The units are chosen carefully to make the constant 1. This works under the assumption that mass is constant and acceleration is measured measured from a non accelerating frame of reference with non relativistic speeds. So, yes there are several other ways to write that equation.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace particles with fields in which particles are the result of excitation in the fields. Fields are the fundamental stuff of reality, and particles are emergent from field interactions.

Fields are continuous. E.g. electromagnetic field in the classic electrodynamics is continuous. But its waves, photons, show quantum, discrete properties — see the photo effect. It would be easy if there were some common grid, but it's not the case. You can make photons with whatever energy from a continuous spectrum, but photons of each frequency will carry its own quantum (Latin for "amount") of energy, in discrete…

It's called second quantization and is taught in the course of theoretical physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_quantization

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#66
Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around.

Plancks energy equation should be

E=htf

h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second.

This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f.

Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency.

When you realize plancks constant should be in Joules you will shortly realize that the fine structure constant actually has units of seconds.

Another neat thing is that light has mass: h/c^2 (ridiculously small). If it has mass then it should have net charge as well. This could explain why light curves without needing general relativity.

Coulombs law using permeability of free space instead of permittivity reveals that coulombs law is a long form of expressing E=mc^2

F * d = muc^2 q1q2/d

E = (h2alpha/e^2c)(q1*q2/d)c^2

Edit: formatting

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#67
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing we don't know yet. It's probably a good bet that we are going to discover that to rectify the complexities of QM, there is some assertion most people have fundamentally accepted and is quite uncomfortable to let go but is necessary to simplify the equations. I can't really guess what it's going to be though.

Have you ever actually looked at the Schrödinger equation? [1] It's pretty simple. If you've had freshman physics, you can learn enough to derive it in a matter of days or at most weeks. There's not a lot of room in there for the kind of thing you are suggesting. It's much more plausible that the uncomfortable human-centric thing we need to let go is the idea that our perceptions about macroscopic reality should be i…

What do you mean by "derive" the Schrödinger equation? As best as I know, there is no "derivation" beyond some analogy with the classical wave equation. It's an equation penned down by Schrödinger, motivated by the classical wave equation and insights from de broglie's theory.

I'd love to see a derivation if it exists.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#68
post #66

Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around. Plancks energy equation should be E=htf h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second. This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f. Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency.…

Do you have any references for this conjecture? It's an interesting idea, but I'd like to see any more work done exploring this line of thought.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#69
post #66

Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around. Plancks energy equation should be E=htf h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second. This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f. Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency.…

I lack the requisite amount of sleep to evaluate the truth of this post, but I did really enjoy the fact that this appears to be an unusual explanation of basic concepts that doesn't immediately devolve into mysticism.

Re: Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

#70
post #68
post #66

Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around. Plancks energy equation should be E=htf h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second. This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f. Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency.…

Do you have any references for this conjecture? It's an interesting idea, but I'd like to see any more work done exploring this line of thought.

I recommend reading the papers here https://forgottenphysics.com/

They're all short reads. There's one of them that goes into the history of E=hf and how Planck actually originally had E=htf but Boltzmann criticized him for it

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