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Einstein and Schrodinger's Quest for a Unified Theory led to a Titanic Clash
StartsWithABang writes When it comes to the very nature of quantum mechanics — about the inherent uncertainty and indeterminism to reality — it's one of the most difficult things to accept. Perhaps, you imagine, there's some underlying cause, some hidden reality beneath what's visible that actually is deterministic. After all, a cat can't simultaneously be dead and alive until someone looks can it? That's one of the problems that both Einstein and Schrödinger wrestled with during their lives. An investigation of that story, their work on that front, and their friendship that ensued as both pursued that same end is thoroughly investigated here by physicist Paul Halpern.
...because this headline seems to have been cut sh
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
A light cruiser that hit an iceberg in 1912?
Iceberg Incom
"After all, a cat can't simultaneously be dead and alive until someone looks can it?"
Why not? After all, falling trees make no noise when nobody's watching and bears also do not shit in the woods.
No, of course the cat can't be simultaneously alive and dead - that's Schrödinger's point.
I wish people would stop crapping on about that fucking cat when they have no idea what it means.
More hipster site spam from a serial hipster spam poster. Don't even need to read the summary, since it's all clickbait shoddily cooked up from other people's work anyway.
If you accept this universe is simply mathematical function, weirdnes goes away. Function, that is itself probably intersection of multiple functions, some of them being evaluated backwards of what we percieve as "time", therefore creating weird effects in our perceived direction of time. Actually, laws of physics in not all that interesting to me (beyond some level), because physics is going after "particles" and "forces" that happen to be in this function, describing this universe. There is infinite number of other configuration. Function y = sin(x) exists just like our universe, so does set of integer numbers or PI.
If "universe" is locally predictable in one direction (which becomes "axis of time"), then self-replicating features (life) can emerge. In the case of our universe, there is atomic/molecular level complex and yet locally perfectly predictable, that enabled (under "perfect circumstances"?) life forms. atomic/molecular level isolates low level quantum weirdness. After all, life doesn't care if this function is predictable at ALL levels, molecular level is enough, and it happens to be good for many other reasons. There is so many random things needed for universe to sustain life, that probably insignificantly small portion of functions has any self-replicating (living) features, let alone intelligent.
Why should I be surprised by weirdness of quantum world then? It never needed to be predictable in our direction of time.
839*929
Then have you heard of tau, which is 2pi? http://tauday.com/
5. And thus it is detected ALL THE TIME BY EVERYTHING AROUND IT, long before you put it through a diffraction grating, or whatever test you dream up.
Stop using the pop-sci version of things where it is about being "detected" or not, and it comes down to whether it interacts with things in specific ways. Turns out the fact it has a magnetic field, or even that the wavefunction has infinite extent, doesn't cause it to be "detected" and there are plenty of ways interactions that can happen without "detection," whether with things like the slits in a double slit experiment, or more explicitly involving magnetic fields like the Aharonov–Bohm effect.
It's not, I know its not, but without my glasses, I can no longer see the individual birds, only a cluster big enough to fire the nerve in my retina.
That description would be apt, except for the fact that some interactions will then cause all of the birds at other locations to instantly disappear, or to change into other states. If readers are curious, they can look for much longer rebuttals of this in response to many of your other posts, but it makes it look like you've only read about quantum mechanics from news outlets, and not an actual text book or class notes.
They can only be created and observed that way, so they must only exist that way.
Oh, maybe your the same AC that has been saying photons can only be created or seen by discrete processes of changing electron levels in atoms. That is flat out wrong, as there are several processes the photons can be created or detected by, some of which are continuous (e.g. scattering and bremsstrahlung).
I think the sun and planets go around the earth, I make an equation to explain the weird loop-the-loops that planets do.
Of course you can make an equation with "loop-the-loops" or epicycles, but the only way to get it to match observations would be an infinite series that ends up matching the actual paths they make around the sun. Just like any function can be broken down into components by Fourier transform or many other transforms, whether or not it makes sense to a given situation, but you still make the same predictions in the end with the full series.
But go ahead, keep reposting your BS, over the last couple years you've managed to get +5 before someone notices sometimes, or even get a few by without any replies if you post them to a story late enough.
Yes, you remember the half of the story that most people forget, but that is useless without the whole story.
The point of the Schrodiner's cat experiment was to be a reductio ad absurdum argument, except it turned out that quantum mechanics is quite absurd by comparison to most physics interacted with on a day-to-day basis. That doesn't mean the cat is not both dead and alive. It turns out that quantum mechanics does allow for macroscopic superposition of states that are suitably isolated
So yes, the cat can be both dead and alive, as long as quantum mechanics is still believed to an accurate prediction of how things work.
IANAP, but I'll give this one a bash.
Interactions with other stuff *IS* detection.
Detection/interaction is not the same as measurement (determination) of a quantum property, such as location, momentum, or spin. You can measure an electron's location with varying degrees of accuracy, if you so wish, and it's provably not a limit due to your measuring equipment. You can detect the presence of an electron without collapsing its spin to a definite state.
6. Thus your Quantum uncertainty theory can never work, the particle/photon/whatever's state MUST be determined BEFORE *you* detect it by its interactions with other matter.
Wrong. Not all interactions collapse the wave function, and that's one of the great mysteries still being explored.
This is false reasoning.
Your reasoning seems to amount to "bricks exist, and photons exist. You can have half a brick, therefore you can half a photon." That's just idiotic.
But I *can* make an equation that will predict the planets looping, and you observe them looping, ergo the planets and sun orbit around the earth?
Yes, you can. But it won't be long before someone comes up with a simpler one that better fits the observations, and that will oust your theory. (hint: it already happened)
Then there's the 'it matches my equations so it must be true'. I simply contrived a complex solution rather than give up on a bad idea.
Perhaps you should learn how science works. Science is never happy with a complex solution. In fact, in some ways science is the constant striving for a simpler solution.
if it fits you say "my theory works, I have proof", if it doesn't fit, you invent some extra tweak to your equation, this is a logical falsehood.
No it's not, because it's a continuous process. If it doesn't fit, sure, you tweak things. But you tweak them because they are necessary, not because you're being lazy.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Your photon has a magnetic field, and that influences the matter around it, depending on its wave function....And thus it is detected ALL THE TIME BY EVERYTHING AROUND IT
Sorry but that is just wrong. Photons do indeed contain an EM field but the photon is small in size. In addition the interactions are quantum in nature i.e. they either happen or they do not. You cannot use your simple, classical view of physics to assume that there is an EM field and so therefore there must be an interaction: the universe does not work like that.
Many of the high energy photons we produce in the ATLAS experiment at the LHC will travel through multiple layers of silicon before they interact in the calorimeter - not all of them though there is a chance for them to interact. If you passed them through a vacuum though the chance of them interacting with the remaining molecules would be tiny. Indeed if you assertion were right the LHC would not work because the protons in the beam would also be interacting with the beam gas all the time and the beam would rapidly dissipate.
People forget that. But that doesn't mean the model can't be useful as a conceptual framework or have predictive power if t conforms closely enough to actual data.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
What? The classical halting problem is based on a deterministic machine. For any given state, you can calculate the future state, at any specific time, by just running the machine it is built on. You might not be able to predict what the machine does in the infinite future, and you might not be able to determine what will happen with less complexity than just running the machine, but that doesn't contradict determinism. A deterministic universe doesn't require that someone from within be able to collect all of the necessary information and to perform enough computation to predict their experiment's future with certainty.
If I lock up Einstein, Schrodinger and Heisenberg in a room with a capsule of cyanide gas and a time release mechanism for the gas, would I be sent to jail? Or to the mental institution?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Einstein was both wrong and not wrong. Schrodinger was just gauche enough to evaluate the wave function.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
1. if detecting a particle *determines* its state vs *observes* it state, (the main point of conflict) then:
2. There is no perfect isolation, a vacuum is not perfect, and does not shield magnetic fields or other effects.
3. Interactions with other stuff *IS* detection. That other stuff does get influenced depending on the state of the particle. The magnetic field does influence the world around it.
4. Your photon has a magnetic field, and that influences the matter around it, depending on its wave function.
5. And thus it is detected ALL THE TIME BY EVERYTHING AROUND IT, long before you put it through a diffraction grating, or whatever test you dream up.
6. Thus your Quantum uncertainty theory can never work, the particle/photon/whatever's state MUST be determined BEFORE *you* detect it by its interactions with other matter.
Interesting argument, but I'm not sure that I agree on point 3. We've got a number of very subtle experiments that have tried to tease out exactly where the observer effect starts and ends. Bell's Theorem and EPR prove that no hidden variables exist, so these properties are not things that are stored and just discovered when we check - the behavior that's observed can only be explained if they "decide" what to be when we make a measurement.
Also, consider things like the quantum eraser, and delayed-choice quantum eraser - it seems like the universe is keeping track of what we are looking for and how, such that we can "detect" a particle, destroying the wave-nature and interference pattern, but then "erase" our knowledge of the detection, and see the wave-nature restored.
Finally, with your point about the bricks, you seem to be saying that maybe half-particles exist but we can't detect them because of limitations of our instruments - but discrete, quantum-mechanical behavior extends to far more than just particle counts and even positions. The Stern-Gerlach apparatus being a clear counterexample to your point. The behavior observed there doesn't depend on dealing with any particular number of particles - it just shows that particle spin is entirely quantized, since the particles passing through are deflected entirely one direction or another. We could readily detect particles which were deflected partially, according to continuous, classical behavior - if they existed.
Ultimately, you've got a good argument if all your suppositions are true, but we've got experiments that prove quantum uncertainty as well as anything has ever been proven. In the words of Feynman: "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
Schroedinger should have chosen a different animal than cats, you know, 9 lives and so.
This is a statement of your faith in QM. It is a religious statement not a factual one.
No actually it is a factual statement which has been tested to a precision better than one part in a trillion. In fact it is one of the most precisely tested scientific theories ever discovered. Have you tested you theory on how things work to that level of precision? Have you even figured out what the predictions of your theory are to that level? In fact have you ever done any experiment whatsoever which has agreed with your ideas and disagreed with QM? If not then I think it is extremely clear who is taking things on faith rather than scientific fact.
That field is not confined by a vacuum, it may be tiny but it is there, and thus the particle *IS* detected because it MUST have an influence depending on its spin.
Go and read - and understand - a book on quantum field theory and then we can talk. Fields are quantized which is why photons have a chance to pass through matter without any interaction. The more matter there is the smaller the chance but it is not zero as you suggest...and if you understood QFT, and QED in particular, you would be able to calculate the chance of the interaction via the various possible channels.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing current scientific understanding - indeed that is often how we make progress - but to do so you must understand the current thinking first and then show how it is wrong and/or do an experiment to show that it is wrong. You cannot just dream up some theory off the top of your head and expect anyone to take it seriously. Established scientific thinking has had a lot of effort spent on testing and confirming it. Anything which will replace it needs to have a similar amount of care and attention to detail spent on it.
Something can have influence, and the effects of that influence can be undetected. If an electron can exist with indeterminate spin, why can't the effects of its electromagnetic field be indeterminate?
Let's look at the two-slit experiment. If we try it in ordinary life with a machine gun, so we're putting things known to be particles through, the hit distribution is the sum of the distributions from each slit. If we try it in ordinary life by putting it in water and making waves through it, we get an interference pattern.
Now, let's try it with electrons. We send electrons through (the slits have to be smaller and closer together for this to work) and get an interference pattern. We send one electron at a time through the slits, and we still get an interference pattern, as if the electron were somehow passing through both slits at the same time. This seems odd, so we set up detectors to see which slot an electron goes through. We then see that each electron goes through only one slot, and the interference pattern disappears, being replaced by the machine-gun pattern.
This has been observationally verified many, many times. Would you care to explain where the interference pattern comes from, or how it's consistent with what you've been saying? If you can't, then you've got nothing.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If he misrepresents the explanation, what is a better representation?
The halting problem illustrates the underlying principle that is generalized by the thought experiment. If the universe were genuinely deterministic, then its current state is sufficient to predict a future state... except the thought experiment shows that the current state cannot ever be sufficient to predict a future state where any possible alleged-future state that might be predicted from the current state will always be wrong. Even if the predictor it were wrapped up in a neat little magical black box that didn't really care what was being done with its information, but simply blindly presented a prediction that was supposedly accurate based on the universe's current state, there is no possibility that it could ever be correct if it were ever utilized in this fashion, and since insufficient information exists to predict a future in this scenario, the universe apparently cannot be deterministic.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'