Quantum monism
I’m not entirely sure that I understand this, but I’m entirely sure that it’s interesting:
Taking quantum mechanics seriously predicts a unique, single quantum reality underlying the multiverse. The homogeneity and the tiny temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background, which indicate that our observable universe can be traced back to a single quantum state, usually identified with the quantum field that fuels primordial inflation, support this view.
Moreover, this conclusion extends to other multiverse concepts such as different laws of physics in the various valleys of the “string theory landscape” or other “baby universes” popping up in eternal cosmological inflation. Since entanglement is universal, it doesn’t stop at the boundary of our cosmic patch. Whatever multiverse you have, when you adopt quantum monism they are all part of an integrated whole: There always is a more fundamental layer of reality underlying the many universes within the multiverse, and that layer is unique.
Seems that the title of your “Quantum Momism” post has been somewhat influenced by the previous post on “Pushy Parents”…
(On the other hand, considering the scope of the developing college-entrance scandal, maybe Quantum Momism is in fact a real phenomenon….)
Hey Neo.
You accidentally typed “Momism”, not Monism.
Also the link doesn’t work.
Bertrand Russell was a neutral monist …
Oops Meislin already caught it
I’m not entirely sure that I understand this
That’s because you are highly intelligent, not the sort of person who reads Sci Am.
but I’m entirely sure that it’s interesting
Oops.
Chuck. I suppose you are referring to the Scientific American article by Heinrich Pas. That’s all I could find at a glance.
Although Pas’ dreary determination to work in an opportunity to ‘subvert the pronoun’ of the observer [to the extent that the resulting construction was more awkward than if he had just omitted any genitive at all] I thought the article was of some interest.
The multiverse concept, to this point at least, seems to relate to an impulse in some philosophies to grant, or to even gleefully assert the ultimate un-intelligibility of reality and primacy of inexplicable so-called “brute facts”; which, are in principle taken to be inaccessible to reason and reasoning.
This, given a presumptive strictly naturalistic reality in which consciousness is classed as an epiphenomenon, then bleeds over into human and social realities; and, as one might expect, renders large swaths of human experience unamenable to the arbitration of (more than instrumental) reason and reasoning as well: there being no way to reason out a solution to wants and desires and conflicting wills, via some rationally discovered conformity to an ultimate system.
So although the article may not be great, it hits on a topic of current social relevance as well as intellectual interest.
As a physicist I can say that this is just another attempt to try and get around the basic problem facing physics at the moment: that General Relativity and QM are incompatible with each other, yet both are wildly successful descriptions of what is happening in nature. Both have important metaphysical implications as to the underlying nature of reality.
I could get a bit technical as to what I think the source of the incompatibility is, but suffice it to say that what we really need is a Newton or an Einstein to cut through the fog to the new physics. I suspect when that happens, as with most new paradigms, everyone will say, “why didn’t we see that before??”
“Nobody understands quantum mechanics” ~ Richard Feynman
Which gives license to any old cockamamie idea that can attract grant money. It’s not what you know but who you know.
So although the article may not be great, it hits on a topic of current social relevance as well as intellectual interest.
A google search turned up philosophical papers, it isn’t physics, it certainly doesn’t “save” physics, and adducing quantum mechanics (science!) in support of philosophy is an old rhetorical trick.
Physicsguy writes:
As you are a practicing (or even not) physicist, I am sure that If you had the time to expand on both points, most here would very much want to read what you have to say.
Up to you, but …
Read the Pas article, and although I’m neither a dummy nor a scientific illiterate, it seemed pretty unintelligible, just bafflegab.
I think that Neo’s selection of text to quote, emphasized her interest in the pure physics question, rather than the more philosophical, or better ‘reflective’ and implicative, intention of the piece.
I’d put this piece in the same broad domain – with no reference either positive or negative to comparative quality or tone – as the now famous article in which David Albert took up Lawrence Krauss’s assertion that he could explain how nothing led to something and pointed out that Krauss’s definition of “nothing” was neither the traditional philosophical definition, nor a state of nothingness, even granting Krauss’s own.
So, it’s about holding ideas up and critically considering their soundness and implications as best we can … that’s all.
The “saving the soul of physics” bit is just dramatizing what has become the question of what becomes of the traditional notion of a physics of laws and intelligibility, if large portions of physical reality and its operations are granted as unintelligible in principle and inaccessible.
DNW, yes I am a practicing physicist..well retiring in June, but I have all the degrees, BS , MS, PhD, and my specialty is ion-molecule collisions which involves excitations of quantum states.
Metaphysical implications: numerous books on this, but for QM the problem is that in order to get a value, ie measurement, that measurement has to be extracted from the wavefunction. In math terms, this is governed by an operator equation. In fact the Schrodinger equation is an operator equation in which the Hamiltonian is the operator for the total energy. The metaphysics comes in because at what step does the the wavefunction actually yield a number? For example, you want to measure an electric current, your meter has an operator that works on the electron wavefunction which gives a number on the meter, however the meter itself has a wavefunction that is operated on by a photon which then has a number that goes to your eye, but your eye has a wavefunction that is operated on by the nerve pulse…an so on. It’s called the Von Neumann chain. When does the chain terminate and you actually “know” it was 2 amps? QM seems to perhaps require “consciousness” to work.
GR Metaphysics: the 4d spacetime metric depends explicitly on the value of the mass-energy distribution. In other words no mass-energy, no spacetime. GR doesn’t posit spacetime to exist and then the mass-energy modifies it….instead spacetime exists because of mass-energy. So in the Big Bang, one needs mass-energy “before”, or at the same “time” in order to have time even exist.
QM GR…my take, and this is my opinion, is that in QM every physical system sets up what is called a Hilbert Space…really just a type of space for those who have taken Linear Algebra, with certain defining properties. The QM wavefunctions are the basis vectors of the system’s Hilbert space, ie they define the space. The HS can be any dimension. In the case of the energy levels in the hydrogen atom the space is infinite dimension. I suspect that the problem is that there are two spaces that overlap and interact: the Hilbert spaces of QM that necessarily also lie within the 4d spacetime with its basis vectors of x, y, z and t. We somehow have a “hybrid” space with two distinct sets of basis vectors that are somehow tangled up. Like I said someone better than me will have to solve this.
The think-pieces on quantum mechanics are really hard to reconcile with how quantum mechanics is actually practiced.
When you work as a physicist you don’t spend your time on metaphysics. You apply a set of mathematical methods that describe what’s likely to happen.
For example you can describe AC circuits mathematically using imaginary numbers. Pretty much no one sits up at night worrying about the metaphysics of it.
And there there are evanescent waves, which are electromagnetic waves described with imaginary numbers, used by every bar and coffee shop for those signs that light up the letters when you write on them with crayon. No one sits up at night worrying about the metaphysics of that. And it’s the identical math that bothers people about quantum mechanics and makes everyone nervous about what objective reality is.
My view has always been that math is a language used to describe reality and that the quantum-mechanical think pieces are essentially fallacy of reification.
Physics guy, you would post up just as I have to leave for a couple hours.
Nonetheless, on a quick read through: outstanding response.
I was particularly surprised by there being a name ” the Von Neumann chain”, for the chain of operator initiated observation events, which you have described in terms of mathematical functions, but which I am sure many have less rigorously or precisely ruminated upon by asking : “So what if a camera makes a recording as a particular time but no one looks?” Or, “What if an automaton intervenes or ‘decides’ according to some random scheme?” It just doesn’t seem to make sense that the world hangs suspended until someone opens the envelope and looks at the photograph, so to speak.
The third paragraph is especially interesting as well, and broaches a matter which I have never considered in the way we all have considered that damned cat in a box.
Frederick
Yeah, well, the issue of these conundrums has centered, I think, on whether we are looking at an ultimate reality beyond which there is no further explanation of point in trying to go, or at our own limited grasp of it according to current paradigms.
I think that most people would prefer to believe ( and I’m NOT talking acceptance of “the social construction of reality” theory here) that contradictions are merely apparent and that any antinomies are an artifact of an incomplete understanding of that which can in principle be eventually understood in a way which will dissolve the contradiction.
If action at a distance is “really” real, then we (or the general public and I) need an understanding of distance and action and particle, that implies something different than it meant when I was in school many years ago.
I would note that the wave function is *not* a physical object, it just allows you to calculate the probabilities of obtaining the various results of a measurement. In a sense, it tabulates your knowledge of the system. For systems where your knowledge is limited by not having made measurements, say an object in a thermal environment, density matrices are used instead. In any case, QM is all about making predictions as to experimental outcomes based on information obtained by measurements, together with a definition of what measurements are (beables in Heisenberg’s words). What is strange is that only the probabilities of the allowed measurement outcomes can be calculated. The probabilities are fundamental, at the base of the theory, they are the predictions, as opposed to classical physics where probabilities arise because of insufficient knowledge of the initial conditions.
Many decades ago I read some of Dirac’s early papers published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. It was fascinating to watch as he worked to invent the mathematics and understand the new physics, inventing terminology along the way, some of which has disappeared (q numbers). Von Neumann codified the accumulated wisdom from the mathematical side in, IIRC, 1929, I didn’t make it all the way through his book at the time. The basis of QM hasn’t changed much since, but QM doesn’t say what the universe *is*, that has to be discovered.
“So what if a camera makes a recording as a particular time but no one looks?” –DNW 2:18pm
I’ve wasted plenty of time studying QM, but it was never “my thing.” Your question, if I haven’t oversimplified it has a simple answer.
It’s not a human presence that has an impact or import for the quantum “system.” It is the actual photons impacting the objects or transiting the system, that then enter the camera lens and make the recording, that make the difference.
The electric fields, momentum transferred, or energy imparted by the photons make the system “observed” and the range of possible quantum states narrowed or determined.
> “So what if a camera makes a recording as a particular time but no one looks?”
A person who didn’t look has no reason to change their personal probabilities of the tree falling. A person who did look can update their probabilities. Different “realities”. However, I don’t know why the camera acts like an hermitian operator and would be happy if someone would explain it to me. I suspect themodynamics is involved.
EDIT: Probably because we are looking at an effect described by hemitian operators (energy, etc).
Frederick, thank you! I am not stupid; my SAT scores were very high in math, but higher still in verbal. I could do math; I am simply more interested in words. I married a Physics Guy with degrees in physics and EE (power systems). For nearly fifty years I have been telling him that I can’t comprehend working in a profession which actually uses imaginary numbers, and his reply has always been that imaginary power can kill me. I believe him, but I could never understand it, since imaginary numbers are, well, imaginary, right? Your description of this as a language which effectively models the phenomena, without worrying about the metaphysics, makes sense to me!
I’ve been a scifi fan for the last 58 years and am quite familiar with the philosophical aspects to the ‘theory’ of the multiverse.
All that we can say is that it might be so and it might not be so.
There is no proof of the multiverse’s existence, I gather that the math is at best controversial and until there is proof, the multiverse belongs in the purview of scifi, where the basic question is always; ‘what IF it were so?’
@Kate:Your description of this as a language which effectively models the phenomena, without worrying about the metaphysics, makes sense to me!
Thanks for the affirmation but you see I am in the minority.
One example is the “wave-particle” duality of which so much is made. All it comes down to is that trying to explain things solely in terms of one or the other is never going to describe everything they do.
If it bothers you it’s because how you are talking about it bothers you. The things, they are whatever they are, and we just don’t have good words. The math doesn’t care about your words or how you load them, so the math works just fine.
There’s lots of ways of talking about this that are less bothersome but they don’t generate as many clicks.
To me it’s rather analogous to mixing metaphors. How can the same city (Boston) be a plant (Beantown) AND contain sleeping babies (Cradle of Liberty). And then thinking somehow that implies babies must actually be beans.
I am reminded of Sokal
Strangely, so am I.
Taking quantum mechanics seriously predicts a unique, single quantum reality underlying the multiverse…
no, it doesn’t… sorry… not even close..
The homogeneity and the tiny temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background, which indicate that our observable universe can be traced back to a single quantum state, usually identified with the quantum field that fuels primordial inflation, support this view.
conveniently.. however, ya got em with the “usually identified with the quantum field that fuels primordial inflation” – and if you don’t know why, i am not going to get cut down to nothing for being able to answer this from when i was 11
but here is a clue.. it can NOT be traced back to a single quantum state..
but a single state is a multitude of states.. its one state and all states, its nothing and everything
the multiverse is no more infinite than our universe..
if ours is finite, the multiverse is finite
if ours has a beginning, it will have an end..
a donuts is a coffee cup is a worm is a human is a hula hoop is a…..
🙂 [curious how many get what i am saying there]
Moreover, this conclusion extends to other multiverse concepts such as different laws of physics in the various valleys of the “string theory landscape” or other “baby universes” popping up in eternal cosmological inflation.
there is no conclusion
there is only a premise
the rest flowers out from the premise as its rules are explored
change the premise, change the flower
much of what the left does starts as premises and what we experience is the flowering
which is why we don’t pay much attention to the tiny harmless premise…
Since entanglement is universal, it doesn’t stop at the boundary of our cosmic patch.
actually, we don’t know if its universal, and we don’t know if its temporal..
how would we? We havent gotten that far yet!!! not at all. and the multiverse is just another of those schools of thought in which there are many and all rely on which direction the unknown will take us..
i did some great work when i was young… it predicted circular (spiral) polarized light
it resolved the spooky distance stuff using space time cavitation which follows an inverse law\
[the higher the energy level the shorter the wavelength, etc.. not like anyone cares, and even fewer would understand it… ]
but who would care? we are not in Ramanujan era, we are in the era of the mediocre who would bury others to stand short themselves and feel tall. I even have a potential proof that fermat could have had, and not some really hard far out wave theory stuff as is now the winner..
[my solution was not trying to solve fermats last theorem, it was to figure out which theorem would have and could have been the one that was implied, cause obviously that one didnt have the future very esoteric math the modern one has] same with the high speed chip design… can go through genetic data orders of magnitude faster than they do now, and off the shelf parts… funny… geneticist even wrote a plos one paper (i dont work in a podunk place), but plos felt that electronics journal would be better, etc..
the last part of the text is silly, even more so when you can sing it
looking through a glass onion
the multiverse concept is not known, it has no basis and is as good as any other idea of what is beyond all the physics we are used to and more…
Just as Einstein WANTED a certain answer that would make things neat
so do these guys… and yes i read their papers and yes i understand that junk
which is why i am treated like i am retarded…
the physicists WANT to banish god, and the multiverse is a nice neat way of doing that, and casting the crazy anthropomorphic model away.
putting the esoterica and the super hard math that don’t prove anything here, its pretty easy to explain… there are a few itches in physics that have always bothered the more modern than the more past men and women… Just as the past people tried to cast things in terms of their belief systems not just in the lab, the moderns do that too, but they think cause its different than the past, they by virtue of being different have somehow cast away what cant be cast away, but only changed.. their modern view wants no God, for them, that is a childish concept of the past, even worse, for them, the anthropomorphic model must have come from that view, not that it is a view in parallel… So as they shrug off a deity model they believe (all knowing is belief), their science should have also shrugged off the anthropomorphic model…
BUT classically speaking, they need an answer, while their desire is to just ignore it and move on, their rules prohibit them, so in their bind, they desire to solve the problem of all the different qualities which if very very tiny amounts different, nothing would work… there would be no we.. there would be no Schrodinger equation, etc..
the multiverse is one way around that problem… there isnt one special universe with all the right values, there is an infinite universe with all the numbers being turned into permutations that can vary and so, all variations of universe exist in the multiverse..
but, how would someone INSIDE know? and there we get back to Einstein, and his desire to make it all neat… and so, he decided to say that god did not play dice, and the universe was deterministic to the bottom of its reality.. but, god DOES play dice, and that gives time an arrow too… and the universe is NOT deterministic at the bottom, but statistically probabilistic… ie. it uncomfortably starts connecting with the metaphysical..
in fact, technically einsteins first view of a deterministic universe to the bottom, would support the multiverse more than the multiverse idea supports what we know now…
hey.. I can also show that the model we use to think about genes and genetics is a horrid representation that doesnt even match the actual structure and landscape of what is in front of us… [no one cares either]
but einstein found out he was wrong.. and so, god does play dice…
however there are a few flys in the multiverse ointment, so its no salve for the academics
virtual particles… what a b!
while you could conceive a boom in nothing – because nothing oscillates with something
and something becomes nothing which booms to something again… because you can explain the energy problem – zero energy infinite potential..
and of course there is the problem of stacking.. are these universes side by side? infinite? 1, 2, 3 or how many dimensions? are they really just in a supposition of states occupying the same location? which energy of all has to add up to zero?
the boom, bust, one is actually a better solution as it gives the same results, but does not have to complicated things and ignore things to exist… from ashes to ashes return… it does what the multiverse does but linearly…
but before i go, time to hit them below the belt..
if physical concepts unravel the more you go back and the more energy in smaller place
and even time stops existing, as it too vary with mass…
how do they even know MATH exists outside our universe?
before you say of course it does, think about it…
ultimately all math starts with separation and creation of entities
but inside a condensate in supposition space, there is no separation
1 and 1 and 1 and 1 is 1
0 and 0 and 0 and 0 is 0
1 and 1 and 1 and 1 is 0
0 and 0 and 0 and 0 is 1
what i can think i cant write… but lets just say that math breaks down too
we dont think so because we use math and live in a universe of separate everything but one thing which shouldnt have separateness or (the can of worms goes pop in the face)
matter has separateness but only when HOT
cool it enough and it becomes a condensate
and energy in the form of light could be infinite in a single space
(as long as the ‘container’ contains and does not participate)
which is how you pack a universe into a singularity which can only be nothing in a infinite instant!
so, what is the math inside THAT?
after all, THAT is the universe before it got a lot cooler
and we are exploring that hot space with cool math
assuming that the math remains the same and only the values change…
because we cant conceive of how another math would work or its principals, though we could conceive a time or universe in which it would be required..
just remember that when they are talking like this they are pulling the numbers and imagining what would happen if reality could have those numbers pulled..
but what math governs things like infinite instants?
[ok.. when there is nothing, the VOID, how ‘long’ does it last? infinitely? yes… but how does nothing become something? in an infinity that cant be measured as there is no other anything, a something appears…
modern physicists have a big problem with an infinite nothing that has to become something in order for it to ‘exist’.. but they are in the same trap as the religious asking if god has a god, and if god made man, who made god, and if someone made god, who made that someone..
everything fit into a single something which in one one instant came into existence from lack of existence.. a finite something born in an infinite nothing…
🙂
that much we do know…
Frederick, my husband agreed with your statement, so we’re good here. 🙂
I was interested in the statement above that GR and QM each explain a lot but can’t be reconciled with each other. When the genius comes along who can do it, in a few years after that another conundrum will appear which no one can explain. I’m good with letting physicists fight it out. I have yet to hear of any physics which negates my faith, and there are high-level physicists who agree with me on that.
All of which leads us to Fred Stevens of Oshkosh and the “many minds” interpretation. Is there really a Fred Stevens? And if so, is he alive or dead? Maybe Mrs. Stevens knows, if there is a Mrs. Stevens.
The “many minds” is a multiverse, but unlike THE multiverse with its practically infinite number of universes it is a multiverse with a bit more than 6 billion instances. In other worlds, we all have our own private Idaho. Reality is when two or more minds agree on something.
What is truth?
GR and QM each explain a lot but can’t be reconciled with each other.
They can be reconciled, string theory reconciles them, for instance. But even within that context there are many, many possibilities, referred to as the landscape. String theory is a framework that physicists work in because GR is a generic property of string theory models at distances large relative to the Planck length. Physicists would like to find a particular model in that landscape that replicates what we are able to observe, the particle masses, for instance, but so far have no general principles that allows them to pick among the vast number of mathematical possibilities and settle on one, or maybe a few, that explain all the currently observable facts. Are there other possibilities for models? I am certainly not competent to have an opinion about such things. But I try to keep in touch with the general ideas of people much smarter than myself. As a historical note, there was also an “old” quantum theory that was explored from about 1913 (Bohr atom) to 1925, when it was replaced by the new quantum theory, and maybe things are like that.
It almost seems a shame to change “momism” to the correct “monism.” But in the interests of accuracy, I reluctantly complied.
@Kate:I was interested in the statement above that GR and QM each explain a lot but can’t be reconciled with each other.
It’s kind of like they are different limiting cases. These are not the only examples of well-tested and widely-accepted, incompatible theories, but they get the most clicks because you find them used together in cosmology.
I’ll give an example: neutral atoms attract each other at long distance and repel each other at short distance. You can’t solve the real equation that describes the behavior for every possible separation. To get the attraction, you make a set of limiting and simplifying assumptions that result in something that can be solved. To get the repulsion, you make an incompatible set of assumptions that results in a different solution. To handle intermediate distances, you take some of the one solution and some of the other even though they came from incompatible assumptions.
All this is within quantum theory, so what to make of it? Not much, because you’re just talking about mathematical methods of solution which are not necessarily implying anything real.
Quantum mechanics and special relativity were first combined to solve the same problems back in the 20s, but the “seams show” so to speak, they’re clearly duct-taped together.
But that doesn’t get clicks.
Taking quantum mechanics seriously
Well, there’s your problem, right there.
You’re taking maths, and then assuming it represents the real world. As noted above by others, that’s not the correct way to deal with the world.
Maths allows you to solve problems. It models the world. But that doesn’t mean that it is a direct one-to-one representation.
Neo – it’s a certainty (probability of 1) that none of the kids pushed into college by the Momism are going to be the ones who solve the problem of the Monism.
“Taking quantum mechanics seriously predicts a unique, single quantum reality underlying the multiverse. ”
With all due respect to Artfldgr, that’s kind of what the word “God” means.
Frederick on March 14, 2019 at 6:30 pm at 6:30 pm said:
… And then thinking somehow that implies babies must actually be beans.
* * *
That might explain a lot of what we see in politics these days.
Turtles, all the way down.
If we are living in a simulation as Elon Musk, Scott Adams, and all the folks associated with the Monroe Institute believe, we are going to find some hard to understand things as we move outside the common elements of the belief.
Frederick,
This is the money quote.
Now the math is beyond me, but the layman multi-verse or string theory speculations can still be fun.
Science doesn’t yet understand gravity, one of the key forces in our universe. Also really hard to scientifically work with, so not too many experiments (glad gravity waves were detected, we think).
We’re still a few geniuses away from explaining most of the metaphysics. And QM, GR, and gravity. I expect to be waiting for the rest of my life.
@Kate and @Frederick:
When it comes to wave-particle duality, I’m always fond of the “Jabberwocky” explanation, which I believe I first read in Gribbin’s “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat”:
Quanta aren’t particles (in the sense of being little lumps of solid stuff). They aren’t waves (in the sense of being pressure fluctuations in an existing medium).
They’re just their own thing. They are quanta. And quanta behave certain ways under certain circumstances, and other ways under other circumstances. Some times they’re feeling free-spirited and dance their wavy-dance. Other circumstances cause them to act more subdued, curled up in a pellet-like ball like a frightened roly-poly bug. And they’re intrinsically coy: They’ll let you know where they’re going, but only if you don’t know where they are at the moment; if you know where they are, they won’t tell you where they’re going.
Since “particle” is sometimes helpful, and sometimes misleading; and since “wave” is sometimes helpful, and sometimes misleading, the best approach is to use Jabberwocky.
A quantum is just a “slithy tove.” A single electron tove likes to gyre and gimbal in the wabe around a hydrogen nucleus. But an oxygen nucleus typically has eight slithy toves of the electron variety, which gyre and gimbal in its wabe.
The use of Jabberwocky helps us realize that we have no direct intuitive experience of things like quanta. They’re not lumps of stuff; they’re not waving media. They’re “slithy toves”: Things for which you have no ready-made internal picture or category. But when a slithy tove “gyres” it coincidentally acts according to mathematical patterns with a periodicity, much like a wave. Consequently you can predict its behavior using formulae originally created to describe waves of water. Likewise when it “gimbals” it coincidentally acts with angular momentum. Consequently you can predict its behavior using formulae originally created to describe rocks being thrown.
But it’s not a wave; it’s not a particle. It’s its own beast.
Unlike a few here, I am not a Physicist. Like most others here, I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to understand this stuff. Knowing I wasn’t going to ultimately devote the years of study it would take to truly understand Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and not even sure my tiny brain was capable even if I devoted the requisite time AND knowing that even people who did understand, like Dr. Richard Feynman, state it is not understandable… I came to the following analogy and I’d be curious to know if any of the experts here find it a valid approximation.
Ptolemy took thousands of years of Astronomical observations and came up with a geocentric system that could very accurately predict where any observable stellar object was at any time. It involved cycles and epicycles and eccentrics, equants and deferents. It was noticebaly off for a few objects (comets), fairly accurate for more and very accurate for the vast majority.
Copernicus came along and used logic and reasoning to postulate a heliocentric model. It made a great deal of sense, and was much simpler than Ptolemy’s wheels upon wheels upon wheels, but it was less accurate at predicting where a particular planet or moon would be at a specific point in time.
Then Kepler came along and through exhausting all other alternatives, applied elliptical, rather than circular orbits to Copernicus’ model and (most) everything fell into place. With ellipses rather than circular orbits Copernicus’ model was now far more accurate than Ptolemy’s! Most everything behaved as expected. The planets revolved about the Sun. The Sun, Moon and planets did not revolve around the Earth. But there were still some observable things the theory couldn’t predict.
Then Newton came along and defined the motive force that made all those bodies elliptically revolve about one another and showed it’s the same force that causes cannonballs, feathers and apples to head towards the Earth’s center and things got even more accurate. But there were still some observable things the theory couldn’t predict.
Then Einstein came along with his theory of Relativity and Time as a dimension and his equations were even more accurate.
Am I correct in thinking Quantum Mechanics is like Ptolemy vs. Copernicus? Quantum Mechanics is great at predicting where things are, were and will be, but is isn’t necessarily an accurate model of what is really going on? Just as an Astronomer after Copernicus but prior to Kepler, who wanted to know where Ganymede was going to be 572 days into the future was better off using Ptolemy’s model than Copernicus’, EVEN THOUGH Copernicus’ model was a more accurate, physical model of the system. (The Sun is at the center, not the Earth.)
Is it possible we are like that Astronomer between Copernicus and Kepler? Quantum Mechanics is like a Geocentric Universe with cycles and epicycles and deferents. It can predict where things will be, even though we may someday get a more accurate model (as with heliocentric and ellipses) (or Relativistic Physics vs. Newtonian) that more closely resembles reality?
R.C.
So a quark is a frumious bandersnatch?
> Rufus T. Firefly
Quantum mechanics is deeper than a model, it is a whole environment within which models are developed. It started as various kludges to classical mechanics and electrodynamics to explain certain phenomenon that could not be explained classically, but in 1925 it was completely reimagined, not only being used to solve problems, but also defining what it meant to measure and putting limits on what could be known. It is a different conception of what physics is about and essentially probabalistic. That is why older physicists had so much trouble adapting, it wasn’t just a new model, it was an entirely different view of the nature of reality. Chapter 1 section 1 of Dirac’s text gives a nice summary of the reasons for QM, indeed, most introductory texts begin with such a summary, it is a tradition.
I thought loop quantum gravity was supposed to fix all this. Back in 2004 SciAm told me that was the hot ticket.
https://www.slideshare.net/DolonPal/loop-quantum-gravity-by-scientific-american-magazine
With relativity and quantum mechanics I realized I couldn’t follow the real science and had to rely upon popularizations. With string/superstring/etc theories I realized I couldn’t follow the popularizations.
huxley,
I’ve actually had more luck with string theory than quantum mechanics. I’m not sure what that says about either one of us!
Thanks, Chuck. I think I understand what you mean, and I think I already knew that (I can never be too sure with Quantum Mechanics because it doesn’t take too long to get way beyond my level of knowledge), but it still is a model, right? I mean it may turn out to be THE model, but it’s still a model.
I think Ptolemy believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and his system of epicycles upon cycles was his best approximation at what the gears inside the clockwork really looked like. And, just like Quantum Mechanics, his model provided good, practical, usable results. It turns out there was a model that also produced good results AND more closely resembled the actual, physical reality of the solar system; the planets, asteroids and comets revolve about the Sun in elliptical orbits and the planets’ moons revolve about them in elliptical orbits that can be slightly altered by each other’s gravitational effects upon one another.
Like Ptolemy’s epicycles, and deferents, and cycles… the model had to be tweaked by men to fit the observable Universe. It’s not very Occam’s razor’ish. Quantum Mechanics and dark matter and dark energy remind me of that same approach.
Ptolemy’s sytem worked better than Copernicus’ but it was that klugey aspect of Ptolemy’s that drove people like Kepler to keep trying to make Copernicus’ heliocentric model work. With one modification no one had thought of prior (non-circular orbits), wham! Kepler unsheathed Occam’s razor and sliced through all that extraneous detritus.
I don’t expect a Universal theory of everything to be so simple a fool like me can understand it, but it sure looks like we are missing at least one, key, fundamental component of the model, similar to ellipses, and once found there could be a big change, like moving the Sun to the center and the Earth to the periphery.
There are some ginormous things we observe in the Universe, and at the atomic level, that no current model can explain. Matter appears to travel beyond the speed of light but our models say that is not possible. Only 4% of the Universe is made up of anything our current models can detect. 4%!! So, we make up terms like dark matter and dark energy to “explain” the rest. And, most importantly; our current Physics disallows something to come from nothing, yet something is here. Even if we are a dream in a Giant’s slumber, or code in a computer simulation played by an alien teen-ager, that Giant or teen-ager has to exist. There is something. Yet, the total amount of energy in a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed.
We have a model that cannot explain how any matter or energy was created, and it only allows us to work with 4% of the matter and energy in the observable Universe. It sure feels like epicycles and deferents, or Newtonian Physics trying to describe 4 dimensional space-time.
Thanks, Chuck. I think I understand what you mean, and I think I already knew that (I can never be too sure with Quantum Mechanics because it doesn’t take too long to get way beyond my level of knowledge), but it still is a model, right? I mean it may turn out to be THE model, but it’s still a model.
I think Ptolemy believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and his system of epicycles upon cycles was his best approximation at what the gears inside the clockwork really looked like. And, just like Quantum Mechanics, his model provided good, practical, usable results. It turns out there was a model that also produced good results AND more closely resembled the actual, physical reality of the solar system; the planets, asteroids and comets revolve about the Sun in elliptical orbits and the planets’ moons revolve about them in elliptical orbits that can be slightly altered by each other’s gravitational effects upon one another.
Like Ptolemy’s epicycles, and deferents, and cycles… the model had to be tweaked by men to fit the observable Universe. It’s not very Occam’s razor’ish. Quantum Mechanics and dark matter and dark energy remind me of that same approach.
Ptolemy’s sytem worked better than Copernicus’ but it was that klugey aspect of Ptolemy’s that drove people like Kepler to keep trying to make Copernicus’ heliocentric model work. With one modification no one had thought of prior (non-circular orbits), wham! Kepler unsheathed Occam’s razor and sliced through all that extraneous detritus.
I don’t expect a Universal theory of everything to be so simple a fool like me can understand it, but it sure looks like we are missing at least one, key, fundamental component of the model, similar to ellipses, and once found there could be a big change, like moving the Sun to the center and the Earth to the periphery.
There are some ginormous things we observe in the Universe, and at the atomic level, that no current model can explain. Matter appears to travel beyond the speed of light but our models say that is not possible. Only 4% of the Universe is made up of anything our current models can detect. 4%!! So, we make up terms like dark matter and dark energy to “explain” the rest. And, most importantly; our current Physics disallows something to come from nothing, yet something is here. Even if we are a dream in a Giant’s slumber, or code in a computer simulation played by an alien teen-ager, that Giant or teen-ager has to exist. There is something. Yet, the total amount of energy in a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed.
We have a model that cannot explain how any matter or energy was created, and it only allows us to work with 4% of the matter and energy in the observable Universe. It sure feels like epicycles and deferents, or Newtonian Physics trying to describe 4 dimensional space-time.
I’ve actually had more luck with string theory than quantum mechanics. I’m not sure what that says about either one of us!
Rufus T Firefly: I spent more time on QM and went over the Double-Slit experiment a whole lot. As Feynman said, once you get used to the Double-Slit, the QM paradoxes aren’t so bothersome. Also QM, however mysterious, enjoys vast experimental support.
String theory and its successors exist only in advanced mathematics. “Calabi–Yau manifolds” are a bit beyond my undergrad math chops. As I understand the situation, to experimentally test strings requires nearly unimaginable amounts of energy. Plus most string theories require extra dimensions beyond the regular 3+1 space-time we know and love.
I find it interesting, amusing actually, that Edward Witten, reputed to be the smartest living physicist, was impressed that string theory had predicted gravity! Boy, where would we be without string theory.
I asked Witten how he responded to the claims of critics that superstring theory is not testable and therefore is not really physics at all. Witten replied that the theory had predicted gravity. “Even though it is, properly speaking, a post-prediction, in the sense that the experiment was made before the theory, the fact that gravity is a consequence of string theory, to me, is one of the greatest theoretical insights ever.”
He acknowledged, even emphasized, that no one has truly fathomed the theory, and that it might be decades before it yielded a precise description of nature.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physics-titan-still-thinks-string-theory-is-on-the-right-track/
Chuck, thanks very much for the link to The Information Philosopher (Dirac). Looks like a good site. His discussion of Ayn Rand’s ethics is better than most that I’ve seen. (Greg Salmieri has quite a good 35-minute audio lecture on her work at
http://humstatic.uchicago.edu/philosophy/elucidations/Salmieri_AynRandsMoralPhilosophy.mp3 )
huxley,
Logic implies at some point it all HAS to be purely mathematics. Whether it’s the Planck’s constant, or some other barrier, there are physical limits. Beyond those it will have to be theories and the theory, or set of theories that explains all we observe, all the time, will, hopefully, also be a mathematical model that reflects what is really going on, as well as describing what is really going on.
“that explains all we observe, all the time, will, hopefully, also be a mathematical model that reflects what is really going on, as well as describing what is really going on.”
Oh, frabjous day! when that happens!
Rufus T. Firefly: Not sure of your point.
QM is expressed in mathematics. Hideki Yukawa predicted the existence of mesons based on the math in 1935. Twelve years later physicists caught physical evidence of mesons using super-long exposures on special photographic emulsions high up in mountains.
No one has caught strings in a physical experiment and they are not likely to in this century or maybe ever. Strings are the size of Planck’s constant and therefore absurdly tiny. As Brian Greene explains in this one-minute video, if you enlarged an atom to the size of the universe, that factor would only enlarge a string to the size of a tree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwvOEAwxomY
Rufus T. Firefly: Have you checked out Max Tegmark?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark
He’s a wild man! His theory, or one of them, is that the universe is nothing but mathematics. You and I are vast, complex mathematical objects existing within an even vaster mathematical object.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe
Mommy, I want to go home!
huxley,
Regarding your comment at 12:22, it seems we are making the same point.
I assume the “deeper reality” underlying the multiverse is a timeless realm without polarity and the various dualistic qualities of reality we are familiar with. The timeless realm appears to be what the world of time and phenomena sprang out of, and likely continues to exist as its basis.
There are hints of this in everyday life, especially in the form of concepts and math that describe our world, but which themselves have no mass. Nevertheless, those ideas may underlie and influence the existence of what they describe.
Moreover, an observer effect appears to influence matter at the quantum level without the use of a detectable force, similar to the lack of any detectable force in play for entangled particles (aka quantum entanglement).
Quantum mechanics is backed by experimental data and proof far beyond dark matter, dark energy, Einstein’s relativity, and Newton’s classical physics.
Not something classical physicists like to talk about, as it disfavors their careers and favors the new quantum physicists. People have known about quantum physics contradictions with classical mechanics since Albert Einstein. It has taken this long for the Old Guard to die off in 3 generations.
What classical physicists don’t like about quantum phenomenon is that it assumes that human consciousness and perception affects matter and energy. This is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle taken to the next level.
In other words, this would unify science with magic, spiritualism with matter, and be a whole lot of “crazy”.
I was interested in the statement above that GR and QM each explain a lot but can’t be reconciled with each other. When the genius comes along who can do it, in a few years after that another conundrum will appear which no one can explain.
That genius already came along. Nikola Tesla already demonstrated why General Relativity is wrong. GR doesn’t need to be reconciled, since when it is wrong, one can just throw it out.
When you work as a physicist you don’t spend your time on metaphysics. You apply a set of mathematical methods that describe what’s likely to happen.
Don’t ever ask a physicist why they can’t solve Newton’s Three Body problem. Their minds may just explode due to cognitive dissonance due to mathematical contradictions.
I suspect when that happens, as with most new paradigms, everyone will say, “why didn’t we see that before??”
No what they usually say is the same thing physicsg said to me: get an education so you can understand these things.
One cannot lead humanity on the vanguard of experimental data, by merely rehashing the theories of the previous generations but that is exactly what is indoctrinated and taught in Orthodox scientific consensus aka Education.
When general Education told Ohm to get an education because he didn’t understand what electricity was with his Ohm’s Law theories and math… this wasn’t because they peer reviewed his math and founding it lacking. The math checked out. If the math checks out and it is consistent with experimental data, then the theories of Educated Science would have to be wrong. Science is never wrong, even if you disbelieve it, so Ohm must be an ill educated crackpot, q e d.
Philosophy is philosophy, and physics is physics.
While asserting a philosophic dimension to physics enhances the realm of the former, this does nothing for the later, and worse.
The neutrino is a – historic – fudge to cover a book-keeping discrepancy. Energy-balance equations of our earliest reactors (and on) were noticed not-to-balance (still don’t).
Eggs and apples are quantized. If you don’t have access to the ‘thing’, Dozen and Neo’s shield become magic gods.
===
It’s an intellectual/cultural matter not intrinsic to the matter of physics, and the phenomena are not confined to physics.
It appears to emanate from mathematics, which is the Queen, but which neither spins nor toils, in & of itself. [Arabic authors, once Medieval Europe noticed they had preserved Classical books, engaged in advanced crypto-gab … and ‘making things hard’ for the reader has similarly arisen in numerous other cultures. What has happened in Western hard-sciences is neither unique nor new.]
Around 1980, my bother needed Top Gun math, as he prepared to abandon Archaeology and become an Air Force pilot. As I complained about the obtuseness of my math texts, he nodded & pronounced, “It’s the “I’ve got a secret” problem”.
I suspect that brother acquired this phrase from his professor(s). A person having a problem getting past the baffle-gab of math/physics texts can do themselves a huge favor, by excavating texts from up into the 1930s. The Gutenberg Books project is a handy source.
You can also see through the King’s Clothes, by coding ‘magic’ math – such as complex numbers or quantum book keeping – by programming little routines in BASIC etc. Trouble with the square root of negative one or atomic/molecular electron levels flees like the dew before the morning sun, with a few lines of distinctly sub-genius Code.
The Computer doesn’t speak baffle-gab … unless someone is putting words in its mouth.