Perhaps it would be more productive to encourage the use of Gregg shorthand instead of texting. Text-speak is little more than teenager fad, whereas shorthand can actually be a valuable skill in many real world occupations.
> someday, all stars will be judged not be mass, but by the content of their cores
The content of a star's core is determined by its mass. Every star starts out with nothing but hydrogen and has to manufacture everything else. Larger stars burn hotter and can fuse heavier atoms. Some stars explode, spew out stellar matter, and become smaller stars, but this is really their own damn fault. So mass really is the main factor by which stars ought to be segregated. If you think it unfair, build your own universe.
These bacteria are enriching uranium in a clear violation of the nuclear proliferation treaty! (At least, the way we interpret it) They say they are just using it for energy production, but we know they really are doing it to make a bomb! Quick, send some carriers there and let's bomb them into stone age before these dangerous terrorists destroy us all!
Most people are bad at math because they lack the logical mindset it requires. It is a character trait, if you will. When choosing your friends, you are likely to choose people who possess character traits similar to your own, and if your character traits are particularly suited to math, then you will find a far smaller pool of people from which to choose friends. This lack of socialization opportunities is likely to make you less happy. It's not you, it's them.
This research will no doubt make women ask "Do I look stupid?" instead of "Do I look fat?", with identical consequences. On the other hand, perhaps we'll soon have teenage girls who are obsessed with their IQ, which would be a good thing indeed.
> Negativity and positivity are merely two qualities of an assertion
Not so. A statement "some crows are black", is a positive assertion, and is simple to prove by exhibiting a black crow. A statement "white crows do not exist" is a negative assertion and can not be proven absolutely. It can be disproven by exhibiting a white crow, but no amount of searching can give you the absolute knowledge that there isn't a white crow hiding someplace you haven't been yet. Likewise, it is simple to disprove "Iran has no nuclear weapons" by discovering a nuclear weapon in Iran, but it is impossible to prove the statement conclusively; there can always be some place where a nuke could be hidden. Even if you could comb the entire country, square foot by square foot, sealing off each section with armed guards after inspection, you would not be able to completely rule out a nuke buried somewhere underground, or a nuke held in trust outside the country, or some other such possibility.
> As for me, I'm a little skeptical that Iran's nuclear bomb factory is for "peaceful" purposes.
Why is that? Iran would benefit greatly from not having a nuclear weapon. As I have pointed out above, it is easy to disprove that "Iran has no nuclear weapons" by exhibiting one that exists. If US goes to war with Iran and finds no nuclear weapons, much like what happened in Iraq and its fictional WMDs, all the other countries will turn against the US. If a nuclear weapon is found, the world opinion will turn against Iran instead. Considering that it is quite likely that the US is planning a war with Iran, possibly even before the election (!), this would be a rather bad time to develop a nuclear weapon.
The process for HEU production differs from LEU production in scope rather than technique, and it would indeed be relatively simple to convert one to the other. The point is that such a conversion should be postponed in the present political climate. Iran does not need a nuclear weapon to fight the US; recent history has demonstrated that lightly armed guerillas are a much more effective force against the US military. A nuclear explosion would necessarily anger the world, and it is far better to let the US make them.
> I believe they think that their President's announced intention of > genocide against the nation of Israel is a "peaceful" act too.
Oh, please! Of course Iran wants Israel destroyed. And a nuclear weapon would indeed help them do it. Unfortunately, Iran has to also consider what would happen after it nukes Israel. The prospect of retaliation is just too strong. And no, Iran would not benefit much from deterrence effects of a nuke either; Israel is not as aggressive toward it. Deterrence from the US, which may be the only practical reason to have a nuke, is not all that practical either. US ground forces are far more effectively attacked by insurgents, and their nearness makes it just as simple (and not nearly as provoking to the world) to use conventional artillery.
Funny how the dialog managed to submit the comment just before rebooting... Seriously, enough with the NO CARRIER jokes already. That behaviour has not been seen since the BBSes died.
> Iran has not addressed the long outstanding verification issues or provided the > necessary transparency to remove uncertainties associated with some of its activities.
It is not possible to prove a negative. No matter what Iran does, there will always be "uncertainties" simply because logic dictates that it must be so.
> Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities; nor has Iran acted in > accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol.
Neither of which is required under the terms of the NPT. Iran did implement Additional protocol, for a time, until it became obvious that the US didn't care. Rights to enrichment are explicitly guaranteed to all signatories of the NPT, and were in fact the major reason why the treaty was signed in the first place. By denying Iran its treaty rights, the US is invalidating the treaty.
> It is this subterfuge and lack of transparency that caused the UN Security > Council to pass Resolution 1696 back in July of this year.
Hardly. US lobbying caused the UN to pass that resolution. We really want to bomb them, but we need time to prepare, so diplomacy is being pursued as a delaying tactic, possibly leading to an excuse. This is the same thing that happened with Iraq and WMDs, but people have short memories.
> This action was taken by the Security Council after traces of highly enriched uranium were found in Iran,
Which IAEA later proved to be a residue leftover from Pakistan's enrichment activities. The contaminated centrifuge was purchased from Pakistan (which, incidentally, is not an NPT signatory, really does have nuclear weapons, and is not very friendly toward us either).
> If Iran's program truely is peaceful, then they have absolutely no > business producing highly enriched uranium.
Then why is Israel allowed to produce HEU? Or India? Or any other country? The NPT guarantees to all signatories the right to enrichment, don't forget this! Without the NPT, no country would have any business telling other countries what to do at all.
A small refrigerator will cost you under $100 (at least, here in the US it does), and will keep your server as cold as you want. As a bonus, it will also chill your beer.
Iran: we don't have nukes! US: Sure you do. Iran: we'll let inspectors come in and inspect our sites. US: We don't care. Iran: inspectors report no HEU found. US: So what? You're hiding it. Iran: we'll let tourists visit our nuclear sites; we'll prove there is nothing to hide! US: Sure, you are still hiding it. Iran: we just want uranium to generate electricity. US: You're lying! You're making a bomb! Iran: *sigh* I wish we were North Korea... US: Aha! You admit it! You're evil! Take this! *boom*
This leads to the question of whether a company should continue to be allowed to claim a trademark word that everyone on the planet uses for something entirely unrelated to that company or its product.
We all know that when you get lots of people together, the result is less intelligence than the sum of individual intelligences, not more. It is called "groupthink". It is why meetings never result in anything useful. It is why every collectively designed standard is a piece of garbage. Decisions require a decider, period. If the decider is intelligent, you get good decisions. If the decider is stupid, you get stupid decisions. If the decider is the president, well... I'll pass on that one. The point is, there is no such thing as a "collective intelligence"; group members hinder each other, not help, due to each individual following his own agenda.
> I want to put it delicately, but this sort of comment merely shows that you do > not yet understand QM sufficiently to add to the debate.
You are entirely correct. I do not claim to have a deep understanding of QM. I have tried to gain one, but it is difficult to do without knowing what to read. For example, that introductory QM text I mentioned certainly was not helpful; in most cases it simply states the results, and while I appreciate that the derivations may be rather dense and involved for an introductory text, it is extremely off-putting to me when it starts spouting unsupported statements that the laws of physics do not hold at atomic scale. I am simply not going to accept this without complete justification, but every book I have read so far on the subject assumes otherwise. There is no discussion on where quantization comes from or what causes it, there is no justification of the uncertainty principle, and very little attention is paid to stating exactly what is assumed and what is derived. Perhaps if I were to seek a physics degree, some of it might be explained in class, but I rather doubt that.
> be careful you are not attracted to alternative theories (e.g. Mills) just because they `feel right`. > For understanding the fundamentals of QM, and trying seriously to punch holes in it, a cursory > understanding of non-relativistic QM is woefully inadequate.
I ought to make it clear that I am not particularly interested in "punching holes" in QM. I do not dislike it just because it "doesn't feel right", although that is certainly a factor. I dislike it because it is utterly useless to me. The reason I was looking at QM at all is to be able to do molecular simulations, stuff like predicting bond energies, electronegativity, and pKa. QM is absolutely incapable of solving these problems. Modern molecular simulators can use QM only with a whole slew of approximations, and even then no exact result can be obtained. It is for this reason that I believe we ought to ditch QM and all its nonsense and just start from scratch, without any assumptions of quantization. We need a theory that works for large systems and gives exact results, and QM will never be capable of either.
> As for the uncertainty principle... if things are decribed by waves, it is inescapable. > See the Bandwidth Theorem. For the case of a wave, this just says that the shorter a > wave in time, the less well known it's frequency.
It is only inescapable as a constraint of measurement. That is not the point I dispute. Even if a 1kHz wave only exists for 1ms, it still has a frequency, it is just difficult to measure. Again I would point out that just because we are not aware of a method for an exact measurement of conjugate variables, does not mean it does not exist. To assume the latter is a mind projection fallacy, just like intelligent design. When people then proceed to make a theory based on the uncertainty principle as a natural phenomenon, how can I help but look upon them with the same disdain I feel for creationists? When they proceed to say that I would be "enlightened" if I spent a decade poring through their dense maths looking for invalid assumptions, how can I help comparing this to the Christian claim that I would likewise be enlightened if I accepted God as my saviour and joined a monastery to devote my life to study of theology? If QM is indeed valid, it ought to be explainable, and ought to be explained instead of preached; yet, preaching is how QM is usually taught. Forgive me if I decide to pass on it and seek enlightement elsewhere.
> Spin cannot be derived from the Schrodinger equation alone, but it emerges naturally > in the relativistic theory; there are far fewer ad hoc additions to QM than you suggest.
I am not aware of any relativistic QM theory. In fact, I believe that to be one of the things most actively sought in modern physics.
> You may want to look at the derivation of the black body spectrum as evidence of > photons. It _seems_ impossible to reproduce observations without quantising the light.
Light emission by excited electrons is necessarily quantized for the same reasons absorption is quantized. I am not very sure myself about the details of the emission process, but it seems that there would be some time for the orbital to "play" with energy before it commits to emission. I'd like to see a simulation of EM field during emission in 3D; then I could be more coherent. There are some interesting implications regarding radiation of accelerating charges that would be directly applicable to electron orbits. Mills postulates that accelerating charges must be "synchronous with the speed of light", whatever that means.
> Quantum Mechanics does explain the orbitals of electrons in atoms. > Very well, in fact. Bohr's first stab at a model has been outdated
Bohr does not derive quantization of energy levels; he postulates it. I'm reading this from "Introductory Quantum Mechanics" 4th Ed. by Liboff, page 40. There were further assumptions of quantizations; the Plank hypothesis and the de Broglie hypothesis. The official postulates of quantum mechanics already assume quantization. Postulate I states that every operator must satisfy the eigenvalue equation on the wavefunction (p68). The linear momentum operator is then defined as -ihDel on the next page. The energy hamiltonian is then defined as -hbar2/2mDel2 + V(r), also a clearly quantized entity.
> orbitals are generally calculated using the Schrodinger equation
Of course they are. With the above assumptions, how can you not come up with a quantized result? The operator definitions appear to me to be empirical in nature, just as the original blackbody radiation formulas were. If you curvefit accurately enough you'll eventually get something close to reality. But while this does indeed give you the correct results, as any good curve fitting ought to, it gives no explanation why only those particular eigenvalues are "allowed" or what happens if you try to put a wave on a "forbidden" energy level.
> Schrodinger equation (where THAT comes from is another matter!)
Shrodinger equation comes from the combination of a classical wave equation Del2f=-k2f with the de Broglie hypothesis of k = 2piP/h = 2pimv/h. Then Del2f = -4pi2m2v2/h2(f). Total energy of a particle is E=mv2/2 + V (V is potential energy), rearranged to mv2=2(E - V), which gives the Shrodinger equation when inserted in the wave equation. Observe how quantization arises by assuming the de Broglie relation. From this point on you will never get a result that contradicts it. (The derivation I am quoting is from "The Meaning of Quantum Theory" by Jim Baggott, p22). Also, in Postulate IV of QM, the time-independent Shrodinger equation Hf(r)=Ef(r) defines energy levels to be discrete eigenvalues.
> Things like spin and such are included, and the results agree with experiment.
No, spin is most specifically not included. It is artificially introduced from empirical evidence through Pauli spin operator matrices. [Lieboff, p512] There is no way to derive spin from the Shrodinger's equation alone. Mills claims to have been able to do this, by imposing the nonradiation condition and orbitsphere geometry.
> There are lots of alternative theories to QM, usually proposed by people with no formal training in the field.
If so many people think your view of the world is wrong, shouldn't you at least offer some justification for it? Truth, of course, does not depend on the number of people who believe in it, but if people keep calling you a liar it is wise to at least check your assumptions. In the case of QM, all I see is totally unnecessary assumptions of energy quantization and nonreality. Is it any wonder I fail to become converted to the evil f
I forgot to comment on Bell's theorem and hidden variables, so here it is:
> As for the system being in some state, but the only uncertainty being our > knowledge of it: this is the so called `hidden-variable' class of theories.
No it isn't. Hidden variable theories assert that QM needs some parameter in its equations in order to dispel uncertainty in the results. I am asserting that QM is misinterpreting the measurements it already makes, so the "new" variables I am proposing are the ones it already has, but doesn't use properly. Hidden variable theories also assert that QM is valid but incomplete, whereas I am asserting that QM is not valid (although it may give correct results if properly used, just as astrology can often give proper description of a man's personality), or, in other words, does not give the correct picture of reality. Because hidden variable theories retain the salient points of QM, they can potentially be proven to be equivalent to QM. The Aspect experiment seems to have settled the point, although there is much controversy on the subject still ongoing.
> Einstein favoured this, I believe, but he wasn't around to see the Bell inequalities proposed and measured.
Now let's talk about Bell's inequalities. The very first thing one ought to notice about them is that they concern discrete entities. Here again we come against the quantization of photons, which I have discussed in the other post. A theory where light is not quantized has no relevance to Bell's inequalities and vice versa. In fact, I hold Aspect experiments as a definitive proof that light is a wave, not a particle. If you look at Aspect's setup, you'll see that it counts coincidences of polarization, rather than individual photons themselves. If you assume that photons are particles and that each one must choose a specific path, then Bell's inequalities hold, and the experiment would have validated them. Instead, the results indicate that QM's predictions are valid. QM treats the whole system as a single wavefunction of superimposed states. This is equivalent to viewing all the light coming through it as one wave. Because a wave does not choose, but rather takes all the paths, coincidence counts will be higher than predicted by the particle approach.
There is an old example of a professor and his socks given for illustration of Bell's inequalities. If a professor's sock does not survive by washing technique A, then it can not be tested with the more rigorous washing technique B. The sock is assumed to either survive or be destroyed, just as a photon is assumed to either pass through a polarization filter or not. But because photon is a wave, it always passes through the filter, just not necessarily at the energy level of "photon". With the socks, it would be like sowing several half-destroyed socks together for test B. Bell's inequalities result from the particle approach. QM uses a wave approach but lies to itself about it. The Aspect experiments clearly demonstrate that photons are waves because the recombined half-photons become whole socks and make it to the second washing.
Observe also, how treating photons as continuous waves explains the delayed path choice weirdness, where a photon suddenly "knows" that one path is unavailable before you yourself make the choice to make it so. Look at it from the perspective of quantized absorption and everything becomes clear.
More about QM's treatment. In QM the photons are treated as a probability wave, which superimpose on the detector and collapse into more measurements than there ought to be. If you look at light as continuous, what does a particular value of its probability wave signify? If you have a path where a photon is with a probability of 0.3 and a path where a photon is with a probability of 0.7, what is the probability of a photon in the combined path? 0.3 + 0.7 = 1.0. This strongly suggests that the probability values are simply intensity values for the
> It isn't so neat for amplitude and phase. Firstly, they are not conjugate variables > (like position and momentum), so measurement of one does not imply the other is disturbed.
How do you measure phase without disturbing amplitude? Amplitude would be an energy measurement while phase would be a time-domain measurement. Time and energy are conjugate variables. I admit that the limitation on measurement of phase and amplitude is not as clear to me, but it seems like another facet of the same.
> Unfortunately this does not correspond to duplicating the photon. Consider the > photoelectric effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect This is > a good rugged experimental demonstration that light interacts in the discret > lumps we call photons;
I understand you to be making an argument here that photons can not be copied by the splitter because they are discrete entities and each goes either one way or the other. Right?
> If you're able to resolve the double slit experiment and the photoelectric > effect without invoking superpositions, I'd be very interested to hear.
I'm glad you asked. The photoelectric effect demonstrates that the light absorption interaction is quantized, and I certainly agree with that. The point to be made here is that this quantization does not have to be explained by quantizing the photon; it can be equally well explained by quantizing the absorption. The result is equivalent, since both cases result in a quantum of light being absorbed. The reality is not equivalent, since aside from the photoelectric effect I have not seen any experiment giving evidence that photons are such particles.
My alternative explanation is that light is continuous in energy and no such thing as a "photon" exists. Atomic absorption is quantized because of discrete energy levels available to the electron. Atomic energy levels are discrete because the electron forms a standing wave around the nucleus and those waves are only stable at specific integer frequencies.
The process of absorption occurs as follows. The electron orbit by itself (orbital size of ~0.1nm) is too small a target to absorb a light wavelength (400-700nm), for the same reason that you need a long antenna to listen to the radio. A frequency of 100MHz has wavelength of 3m and can not be heard if your antenna is only a millimeter in size, which is the same proportion as between light and electrons. The electron orbit, being an oscillating wave, generates and electromagnetic near-field (which does not radiate, but rather acts like energy storage) which couples to the incoming light wave and starts "sucking" energy out of it if the light wave can resonate with the near field. See this newsgroup thread and this article with some specific calculations.
When the light frequency is resonant with the electron frequency the nearfield "antenna" gains energy, increases in amplitude, and proceeds to suck in even more energy as the effective receiver size increases. During this process the electron is in an unstable orbit, where the standing wave doesn't exactly "line up" and so keeps going up to and falling back from it, resulting in an equilibrium of energy transfer between the nearfield and the electron. You might thin
> You can't make a perfect copy of an individual quantum (i.e. one photon). If you > have an lot of quanta (i.e. loads of identical photons coming out of a laser)
Those photons would be perfect copies of one another, wouldn't they? Ok, so the laser can't produce identical polarization, but it certainly can produce identical phase and amplitude; that's what a laser beam is all about. Splitting a beam does not disturb those parameters and they can be separately measured, as was done in the experiment. A measurement of the left beam would produce the same result as the measurement of the right beam, so you can measure in one and know in the other. Phase and amplitude of a wave may be considered its equivalents of position and momentum, so doing this disproves the uncertainty principle by example.
> In the case of a photon, you'd probably (in principle) use a polarisation-sensitive > beam-splitter and two detectors, one on each output from the beam-splitter. The photon's > polarisation isn't just disturbed - the photon is absorbed and hence destroyed when it > hits the detector and is measured.
When it hits the detector, not when it passes through the splitter. If all the photons in the beam have the same parameters (like phase and amplitude), each beam coming out of the splitter will still have those same parameters. That's making a copy. Yes, each photon is destroyed at the detector, but you will have more photons in the other arm with the same parameters that you will now know without having measured them.
> If (as would be the general case) it was in some superposition of both states, > we'd still only measure either one state or the other, with the appropriate > probability; you'd need lots of states to work out what this probability was.
That's typical QM thinking. I would categorically deny that anything can be in "superposition"; in the real universe that's called a contradiction. A thing can't be both white and black at the same time. The reason QM gives you such contradiction is that it works with probabilities and interprets them incorrectly. A probability is not a state of the universe, it is a measurement of your knowledge. When a photon is in superposition of two states, it really means that you do not know which state it is in. You might say that it is 60% probable it is in state A and 40% probable that it is in state B, which means that you think A is somewhat more likely result than B. It does not mean that the universe does not know the state. To believe otherwise is called the mind projection fallacy. See this book (review) for more information; I highly recommend it to anyone working with probability.
> This isn't just a technical problem. A device which amplifies some signal from > an individual quantum necessarily introduces noise, as do all amplifiers.
This is a technical problem. There is no theoretical reason (aside from the uncertainty principle, which I reject) that an amplifier must introduce noise. Just because you have not yet found a way to build a perfectly clean amplifier does not mean that it can not exist. This is the same sort of thinking that leads to "intelligent design" arguments.
> Through the process of amplification, the quantum superposition is changed to a plain > old classical probability, and the cat is either dead OR alive before we open the box > - no observer required! (This tending towards a classical probability from a quantum > one has a sound mathematical backing in the ugly but effective density matrix treatment.)
And that is yet another reason to get rid of QM: it has a tendency to do the math and ignore what the math really means. When you do that you may get a valid result, but you will never know why you got it because you do not know what you did. Another Niels Bohr legacy of considering reality as being of no importance. Be
I said he was proven right in this case. He was wrong about some things, like the photoelectric effect, where he quantized the wrong side.
> Niels Bohr is evil (?!)
I am making a value judgement based on information available to me about the events leading to the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Because I view the latter as the greatest poison of modern physics due to its denial of objective reality (see nonlocality, "spooky actions at a distance", sporadic infinities that appear in equations if they are not used in some unexplained manner, etc.) and the cause of our continuing inability to calculate things on the atomic level, like molecular orbital energies. To hinder knowledge is to hinder progress of life, which is what passes for evil in my book. Since Niels Bohr was the chief perpetrator of that particular line of thought, I rightly classify him as evil.
> and your talking about one true faith of objective reality?
Existence exists! That is the essential faith of the existential philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, if you do not believe that existence exists, and the corollary of it being a logical existence, then you are denying life.
> At no point do they create a copy of the original state.
What do you think a laser does? When Niels Bohr was first told about the laser, he proclaimed that it couldn't work, because lased atoms and photons have the same exact quantum state. When a working laser was shown to him, he stopped talking.
If you read the article, you'll discover that the experimenters created a cloud of cesium atoms all in the same quantum state (other than position, presumably). Then they shone a laser beam through the cloud, which entangled the photons to the atoms (that is, the photons assumed a state that is a function of the atoms' state), putting the photons in the same quantum state also. Then the beam was split and measured.
> If you could do this, you could create yet another copy until you had as > many as was necessary to measure whatever property you liked as accurately as you liked
Evidently you can, as the experiment demonstrates. This was my point.
> Unfortunately, the best you can do is measure one of the atoms (or whatever) in > the entangled pair and apply an operation to the other to make it exactly like the first.
How is this not copying?
> Please don't just dismiss this. Cleverer people than you or me have been fighting with this for years.
And rightly so. You ought to start wondering why nobody is listening. If people were willing to consider alternatives to quantum mechanics, we might have had a GUT by now. As things are now, nobody is even trying, except crackpots like Randall Mills.
> Um...no. Uncertainty has been experimentally verified repeatedly.
You can't verify uncertainty. That is, there is no experiment that can prove that you can't ever know something.
> If you would like to educate yourself a little on the topic, see this wikipedia entry on EPR paradox.
The EPR paradox, or more specifically, the Aspect experiment, which verified that QM correctly predicted the result of the Bell inequality, does not mean what you think it means. The way I see it, the Aspect experiment simply demonstrates that photons are waves, not particles. Bell inequality assumes that photons are particles (or at least, discrete quanta of energy), and therefore fails to arrive at the correct result via classical calculations. Because photons are waves, or, more accurately, there is no such thing as a photon, they can be smeared over any possible number of locales. When path selection is performed in the Aspect experiment, the photon does not actually take only one path. It takes all the available paths. When you block one of the paths (they used some sort of ultrasonic switch to disrupt the signal), less of the wave arrives at the detector. Because the energy is absorbed only as quanta (due to there being a discrete number of wave nodes around an atom), the detector fails to detect this half-a-wave.
Not that the photoelectric effect, the very thing that started this whole quantum nonsense, can just as easily, and far more sanely be explained by quantized absorption. It isn't the photons that are quantized, only the slots where they must enter. Einstein went into the opposite direction and destroyed physics.
> Your statement about the "present unsightly state of the science of physics" is laughable > at best. Just because the properties and interactions of particles in the quantum realm > are often counter-intuitive and alien to our everyday experience does not mean that QM is wrong.
QM states that the laws of physics do not hold at atomic scales. In my world that makes it wrong.
Practically, QM has been the biggest problem physics has. It is QM's fault that there still isn't a way to accurately calculate any parameters of multi-atom systems. Molecular simulations only work on approximations. All the grand unified theories fail to unify the forces of nature because they try to find a quantized solution, where the real world is continuous (yes, atomic energy levels are quantized, but that is so because they are standing waves which can only be stable at discrete frequencies)
> It doesn't mean that QM is 100% correct either, but the predictions are more > accurate and useful than an EPR-based model of the quantum realm.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Just because QM sometimes gives correct results (and there is much massaging required to get them), doesn't mean it describes the way reality is. Niels Bohr's view was that reality is irrelevant and that we should only be concerned with what works. That is precisely the view that I find utterly revolting, for denial of reality is the denial of life itself.
> Besides, where in the cosmic law books is it written that the functioning of > the universe has to be "sightly" or even comprehensible to us?
Because a contradiction can not exist, anything that exists must be logical; logic being the art of non-contradictory identification. If the universe is logical, it is necessarily comprehensible because logic is how we comprehend. If the universe is not logical, it does not exist. If the universe does not exists, then you don't exist either, so you might as well abandon any attempt at living.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it would be more productive to encourage the use of Gregg shorthand instead of texting. Text-speak is little more than teenager fad, whereas shorthand can actually be a valuable skill in many real world occupations.
When I was a kid, we called this being a snitch, and it was the easiest and surest way to make people hate you.
> Get pissed off at your favorite ridiculously demanding platformer, and get in shape while doing it!
I would love to play Prince of Persia for real... Now that is a game to get in shape with!
> someday, all stars will be judged not be mass, but by the content of their cores
The content of a star's core is determined by its mass. Every star starts out with nothing but hydrogen and has to manufacture everything else. Larger stars burn hotter and can fuse heavier atoms. Some stars explode, spew out stellar matter, and become smaller stars, but this is really their own damn fault. So mass really is the main factor by which stars ought to be segregated. If you think it unfair, build your own universe.
Or, if you use C++, you might like uSTL.
I am sure you already have an impressive amount, after decades of savings and all...
These bacteria are enriching uranium in a clear violation of the nuclear proliferation treaty! (At least, the way we interpret it) They say they are just using it for energy production, but we know they really are doing it to make a bomb! Quick, send some carriers there and let's bomb them into stone age before these dangerous terrorists destroy us all!
Most people are bad at math because they lack the logical mindset it requires. It is a character trait, if you will. When choosing your friends, you are likely to choose people who possess character traits similar to your own, and if your character traits are particularly suited to math, then you will find a far smaller pool of people from which to choose friends. This lack of socialization opportunities is likely to make you less happy. It's not you, it's them.
This research will no doubt make women ask "Do I look stupid?" instead of "Do I look fat?", with identical consequences. On the other hand, perhaps we'll soon have teenage girls who are obsessed with their IQ, which would be a good thing indeed.
> Negativity and positivity are merely two qualities of an assertion
Not so. A statement "some crows are black", is a positive assertion, and is simple to prove by exhibiting a black crow. A statement "white crows do not exist" is a negative assertion and can not be proven absolutely. It can be disproven by exhibiting a white crow, but no amount of searching can give you the absolute knowledge that there isn't a white crow hiding someplace you haven't been yet. Likewise, it is simple to disprove "Iran has no nuclear weapons" by discovering a nuclear weapon in Iran, but it is impossible to prove the statement conclusively; there can always be some place where a nuke could be hidden. Even if you could comb the entire country, square foot by square foot, sealing off each section with armed guards after inspection, you would not be able to completely rule out a nuke buried somewhere underground, or a nuke held in trust outside the country, or some other such possibility.
> As for me, I'm a little skeptical that Iran's nuclear bomb factory is for "peaceful" purposes.
Why is that? Iran would benefit greatly from not having a nuclear weapon. As I have pointed out above, it is easy to disprove that "Iran has no nuclear weapons" by exhibiting one that exists. If US goes to war with Iran and finds no nuclear weapons, much like what happened in Iraq and its fictional WMDs, all the other countries will turn against the US. If a nuclear weapon is found, the world opinion will turn against Iran instead. Considering that it is quite likely that the US is planning a war with Iran, possibly even before the election (!), this would be a rather bad time to develop a nuclear weapon.
The process for HEU production differs from LEU production in scope rather than technique, and it would indeed be relatively simple to convert one to the other. The point is that such a conversion should be postponed in the present political climate. Iran does not need a nuclear weapon to fight the US; recent history has demonstrated that lightly armed guerillas are a much more effective force against the US military. A nuclear explosion would necessarily anger the world, and it is far better to let the US make them.
> I believe they think that their President's announced intention of
> genocide against the nation of Israel is a "peaceful" act too.
Oh, please! Of course Iran wants Israel destroyed. And a nuclear weapon would indeed help them do it. Unfortunately, Iran has to also consider what would happen after it nukes Israel. The prospect of retaliation is just too strong. And no, Iran would not benefit much from deterrence effects of a nuke either; Israel is not as aggressive toward it. Deterrence from the US, which may be the only practical reason to have a nuke, is not all that practical either. US ground forces are far more effectively attacked by insurgents, and their nearness makes it just as simple (and not nearly as provoking to the world) to use conventional artillery.
Funny how the dialog managed to submit the comment just before rebooting... Seriously, enough with the NO CARRIER jokes already. That behaviour has not been seen since the BBSes died.
> Iran has not addressed the long outstanding verification issues or provided the
> necessary transparency to remove uncertainties associated with some of its activities.
It is not possible to prove a negative. No matter what Iran does, there will always be "uncertainties" simply because logic dictates that it must be so.
> Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities; nor has Iran acted in
> accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol.
Neither of which is required under the terms of the NPT. Iran did implement Additional protocol, for a time, until it became obvious that the US didn't care. Rights to enrichment are explicitly guaranteed to all signatories of the NPT, and were in fact the major reason why the treaty was signed in the first place. By denying Iran its treaty rights, the US is invalidating the treaty.
> It is this subterfuge and lack of transparency that caused the UN Security
> Council to pass Resolution 1696 back in July of this year.
Hardly. US lobbying caused the UN to pass that resolution. We really want to bomb them, but we need time to prepare, so diplomacy is being pursued as a delaying tactic, possibly leading to an excuse. This is the same thing that happened with Iraq and WMDs, but people have short memories.
> This action was taken by the Security Council after traces of highly enriched uranium were found in Iran,
Which IAEA later proved to be a residue leftover from Pakistan's enrichment activities. The contaminated centrifuge was purchased from Pakistan (which, incidentally, is not an NPT signatory, really does have nuclear weapons, and is not very friendly toward us either).
> If Iran's program truely is peaceful, then they have absolutely no
> business producing highly enriched uranium.
Then why is Israel allowed to produce HEU? Or India? Or any other country? The NPT guarantees to all signatories the right to enrichment, don't forget this! Without the NPT, no country would have any business telling other countries what to do at all.
A small refrigerator will cost you under $100 (at least, here in the US it does), and will keep your server as cold as you want. As a bonus, it will also chill your beer.
Iran: we don't have nukes!
US: Sure you do.
Iran: we'll let inspectors come in and inspect our sites.
US: We don't care.
Iran: inspectors report no HEU found.
US: So what? You're hiding it.
Iran: we'll let tourists visit our nuclear sites; we'll prove there is nothing to hide!
US: Sure, you are still hiding it.
Iran: we just want uranium to generate electricity.
US: You're lying! You're making a bomb!
Iran: *sigh* I wish we were North Korea...
US: Aha! You admit it! You're evil! Take this! *boom*
This leads to the question of whether a company should continue to be allowed to claim a trademark word that everyone on the planet uses for something entirely unrelated to that company or its product.
We all know that when you get lots of people together, the result is less intelligence than the sum of individual intelligences, not more. It is called "groupthink". It is why meetings never result in anything useful. It is why every collectively designed standard is a piece of garbage. Decisions require a decider, period. If the decider is intelligent, you get good decisions. If the decider is stupid, you get stupid decisions. If the decider is the president, well... I'll pass on that one. The point is, there is no such thing as a "collective intelligence"; group members hinder each other, not help, due to each individual following his own agenda.
> I want to put it delicately, but this sort of comment merely shows that you do
> not yet understand QM sufficiently to add to the debate.
You are entirely correct. I do not claim to have a deep understanding of QM. I have tried to gain one, but it is difficult to do without knowing what to read. For example, that introductory QM text I mentioned certainly was not helpful; in most cases it simply states the results, and while I appreciate that the derivations may be rather dense and involved for an introductory text, it is extremely off-putting to me when it starts spouting unsupported statements that the laws of physics do not hold at atomic scale. I am simply not going to accept this without complete justification, but every book I have read so far on the subject assumes otherwise. There is no discussion on where quantization comes from or what causes it, there is no justification of the uncertainty principle, and very little attention is paid to stating exactly what is assumed and what is derived. Perhaps if I were to seek a physics degree, some of it might be explained in class, but I rather doubt that.
> be careful you are not attracted to alternative theories (e.g. Mills) just because they `feel right`.
> For understanding the fundamentals of QM, and trying seriously to punch holes in it, a cursory
> understanding of non-relativistic QM is woefully inadequate.
I ought to make it clear that I am not particularly interested in "punching holes" in QM. I do not dislike it just because it "doesn't feel right", although that is certainly a factor. I dislike it because it is utterly useless to me. The reason I was looking at QM at all is to be able to do molecular simulations, stuff like predicting bond energies, electronegativity, and pKa. QM is absolutely incapable of solving these problems. Modern molecular simulators can use QM only with a whole slew of approximations, and even then no exact result can be obtained. It is for this reason that I believe we ought to ditch QM and all its nonsense and just start from scratch, without any assumptions of quantization. We need a theory that works for large systems and gives exact results, and QM will never be capable of either.
> As for the uncertainty principle... if things are decribed by waves, it is inescapable.
> See the Bandwidth Theorem. For the case of a wave, this just says that the shorter a
> wave in time, the less well known it's frequency.
It is only inescapable as a constraint of measurement. That is not the point I dispute. Even if a 1kHz wave only exists for 1ms, it still has a frequency, it is just difficult to measure. Again I would point out that just because we are not aware of a method for an exact measurement of conjugate variables, does not mean it does not exist. To assume the latter is a mind projection fallacy, just like intelligent design. When people then proceed to make a theory based on the uncertainty principle as a natural phenomenon, how can I help but look upon them with the same disdain I feel for creationists? When they proceed to say that I would be "enlightened" if I spent a decade poring through their dense maths looking for invalid assumptions, how can I help comparing this to the Christian claim that I would likewise be enlightened if I accepted God as my saviour and joined a monastery to devote my life to study of theology? If QM is indeed valid, it ought to be explainable, and ought to be explained instead of preached; yet, preaching is how QM is usually taught. Forgive me if I decide to pass on it and seek enlightement elsewhere.
> Spin cannot be derived from the Schrodinger equation alone, but it emerges naturally
> in the relativistic theory; there are far fewer ad hoc additions to QM than you suggest.
I am not aware of any relativistic QM theory. In fact, I believe that to be one of the things most actively sought in modern physics.
> Quantisation emerges - it isn't postulated.
Then where is the com
> You may want to look at the derivation of the black body spectrum as evidence of
> photons. It _seems_ impossible to reproduce observations without quantising the light.
Light emission by excited electrons is necessarily quantized for the same reasons absorption is quantized. I am not very sure myself about the details of the emission process, but it seems that there would be some time for the orbital to "play" with energy before it commits to emission. I'd like to see a simulation of EM field during emission in 3D; then I could be more coherent. There are some interesting implications regarding radiation of accelerating charges that would be directly applicable to electron orbits. Mills postulates that accelerating charges must be "synchronous with the speed of light", whatever that means.
> Quantum Mechanics does explain the orbitals of electrons in atoms.
> Very well, in fact. Bohr's first stab at a model has been outdated
Bohr does not derive quantization of energy levels; he postulates it. I'm reading this from "Introductory Quantum Mechanics" 4th Ed. by Liboff, page 40. There were further assumptions of quantizations; the Plank hypothesis and the de Broglie hypothesis. The official postulates of quantum mechanics already assume quantization. Postulate I states that every operator must satisfy the eigenvalue equation on the wavefunction (p68). The linear momentum operator is then defined as -ihDel on the next page. The energy hamiltonian is then defined as -hbar2/2mDel2 + V(r), also a clearly quantized entity.
> orbitals are generally calculated using the Schrodinger equation
Of course they are. With the above assumptions, how can you not come up with a quantized result? The operator definitions appear to me to be empirical in nature, just as the original blackbody radiation formulas were. If you curvefit accurately enough you'll eventually get something close to reality. But while this does indeed give you the correct results, as any good curve fitting ought to, it gives no explanation why only those particular eigenvalues are "allowed" or what happens if you try to put a wave on a "forbidden" energy level.
> Schrodinger equation (where THAT comes from is another matter!)
Shrodinger equation comes from the combination of a classical wave equation Del2f=-k2f with the de Broglie hypothesis of k = 2piP/h = 2pimv/h. Then Del2f = -4pi2m2v2/h2(f). Total energy of a particle is E=mv2/2 + V (V is potential energy), rearranged to mv2=2(E - V), which gives the Shrodinger equation when inserted in the wave equation. Observe how quantization arises by assuming the de Broglie relation. From this point on you will never get a result that contradicts it. (The derivation I am quoting is from "The Meaning of Quantum Theory" by Jim Baggott, p22). Also, in Postulate IV of QM, the time-independent Shrodinger equation Hf(r)=Ef(r) defines energy levels to be discrete eigenvalues.
> Things like spin and such are included, and the results agree with experiment.
No, spin is most specifically not included. It is artificially introduced from empirical evidence through Pauli spin operator matrices. [Lieboff, p512] There is no way to derive spin from the Shrodinger's equation alone. Mills claims to have been able to do this, by imposing the nonradiation condition and orbitsphere geometry.
> There are lots of alternative theories to QM, usually proposed by people with no formal training in the field.
If so many people think your view of the world is wrong, shouldn't you at least offer some justification for it? Truth, of course, does not depend on the number of people who believe in it, but if people keep calling you a liar it is wise to at least check your assumptions. In the case of QM, all I see is totally unnecessary assumptions of energy quantization and nonreality. Is it any wonder I fail to become converted to the evil f
I forgot to comment on Bell's theorem and hidden variables, so here it is:
> As for the system being in some state, but the only uncertainty being our
> knowledge of it: this is the so called `hidden-variable' class of theories.
No it isn't. Hidden variable theories assert that QM needs some parameter in its equations in order to dispel uncertainty in the results. I am asserting that QM is misinterpreting the measurements it already makes, so the "new" variables I am proposing are the ones it already has, but doesn't use properly. Hidden variable theories also assert that QM is valid but incomplete, whereas I am asserting that QM is not valid (although it may give correct results if properly used, just as astrology can often give proper description of a man's personality), or, in other words, does not give the correct picture of reality. Because hidden variable theories retain the salient points of QM, they can potentially be proven to be equivalent to QM. The Aspect experiment seems to have settled the point, although there is much controversy on the subject still ongoing.
> Einstein favoured this, I believe, but he wasn't around to see the Bell inequalities proposed and measured.
Now let's talk about Bell's inequalities. The very first thing one ought to notice about them is that they concern discrete entities. Here again we come against the quantization of photons, which I have discussed in the other post. A theory where light is not quantized has no relevance to Bell's inequalities and vice versa. In fact, I hold Aspect experiments as a definitive proof that light is a wave, not a particle. If you look at Aspect's setup, you'll see that it counts coincidences of polarization, rather than individual photons themselves. If you assume that photons are particles and that each one must choose a specific path, then Bell's inequalities hold, and the experiment would have validated them. Instead, the results indicate that QM's predictions are valid. QM treats the whole system as a single wavefunction of superimposed states. This is equivalent to viewing all the light coming through it as one wave. Because a wave does not choose, but rather takes all the paths, coincidence counts will be higher than predicted by the particle approach.
There is an old example of a professor and his socks given for illustration of Bell's inequalities. If a professor's sock does not survive by washing technique A, then it can not be tested with the more rigorous washing technique B. The sock is assumed to either survive or be destroyed, just as a photon is assumed to either pass through a polarization filter or not. But because photon is a wave, it always passes through the filter, just not necessarily at the energy level of "photon". With the socks, it would be like sowing several half-destroyed socks together for test B. Bell's inequalities result from the particle approach. QM uses a wave approach but lies to itself about it. The Aspect experiments clearly demonstrate that photons are waves because the recombined half-photons become whole socks and make it to the second washing.
Observe also, how treating photons as continuous waves explains the delayed path choice weirdness, where a photon suddenly "knows" that one path is unavailable before you yourself make the choice to make it so. Look at it from the perspective of quantized absorption and everything becomes clear.
More about QM's treatment. In QM the photons are treated as a probability wave, which superimpose on the detector and collapse into more measurements than there ought to be. If you look at light as continuous, what does a particular value of its probability wave signify? If you have a path where a photon is with a probability of 0.3 and a path where a photon is with a probability of 0.7, what is the probability of a photon in the combined path? 0.3 + 0.7 = 1.0. This strongly suggests that the probability values are simply intensity values for the
> It isn't so neat for amplitude and phase. Firstly, they are not conjugate variables
> (like position and momentum), so measurement of one does not imply the other is disturbed.
How do you measure phase without disturbing amplitude? Amplitude would be an energy measurement while phase would be a time-domain measurement. Time and energy are conjugate variables. I admit that the limitation on measurement of phase and amplitude is not as clear to me, but it seems like another facet of the same.
> Unfortunately this does not correspond to duplicating the photon. Consider the
> photoelectric effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect This is
> a good rugged experimental demonstration that light interacts in the discret
> lumps we call photons;
I understand you to be making an argument here that photons can not be copied by the splitter because they are discrete entities and each goes either one way or the other. Right?
> If you're able to resolve the double slit experiment and the photoelectric
> effect without invoking superpositions, I'd be very interested to hear.
I'm glad you asked. The photoelectric effect demonstrates that the light absorption interaction is quantized, and I certainly agree with that. The point to be made here is that this quantization does not have to be explained by quantizing the photon; it can be equally well explained by quantizing the absorption. The result is equivalent, since both cases result in a quantum of light being absorbed. The reality is not equivalent, since aside from the photoelectric effect I have not seen any experiment giving evidence that photons are such particles.
My alternative explanation is that light is continuous in energy and no such thing as a "photon" exists. Atomic absorption is quantized because of discrete energy levels available to the electron. Atomic energy levels are discrete because the electron forms a standing wave around the nucleus and those waves are only stable at specific integer frequencies.
The process of absorption occurs as follows. The electron orbit by itself (orbital size of ~0.1nm) is too small a target to absorb a light wavelength (400-700nm), for the same reason that you need a long antenna to listen to the radio. A frequency of 100MHz has wavelength of 3m and can not be heard if your antenna is only a millimeter in size, which is the same proportion as between light and electrons. The electron orbit, being an oscillating wave, generates and electromagnetic near-field (which does not radiate, but rather acts like energy storage) which couples to the incoming light wave and starts "sucking" energy out of it if the light wave can resonate with the near field. See this newsgroup thread and this article with some specific calculations.
When the light frequency is resonant with the electron frequency the nearfield "antenna" gains energy, increases in amplitude, and proceeds to suck in even more energy as the effective receiver size increases. During this process the electron is in an unstable orbit, where the standing wave doesn't exactly "line up" and so keeps going up to and falling back from it, resulting in an equilibrium of energy transfer between the nearfield and the electron. You might thin
Don't forget the famous poem Near a Raven, which is my favorite encoding 740 digits of pi.
> You can't make a perfect copy of an individual quantum (i.e. one photon). If you
> have an lot of quanta (i.e. loads of identical photons coming out of a laser)
Those photons would be perfect copies of one another, wouldn't they? Ok, so the laser can't produce identical polarization, but it certainly can produce identical phase and amplitude; that's what a laser beam is all about. Splitting a beam does not disturb those parameters and they can be separately measured, as was done in the experiment. A measurement of the left beam would produce the same result as the measurement of the right beam, so you can measure in one and know in the other. Phase and amplitude of a wave may be considered its equivalents of position and momentum, so doing this disproves the uncertainty principle by example.
> In the case of a photon, you'd probably (in principle) use a polarisation-sensitive
> beam-splitter and two detectors, one on each output from the beam-splitter. The photon's
> polarisation isn't just disturbed - the photon is absorbed and hence destroyed when it
> hits the detector and is measured.
When it hits the detector, not when it passes through the splitter. If all the photons in the beam have the same parameters (like phase and amplitude), each beam coming out of the splitter will still have those same parameters. That's making a copy. Yes, each photon is destroyed at the detector, but you will have more photons in the other arm with the same parameters that you will now know without having measured them.
> If (as would be the general case) it was in some superposition of both states,
> we'd still only measure either one state or the other, with the appropriate
> probability; you'd need lots of states to work out what this probability was.
That's typical QM thinking. I would categorically deny that anything can be in "superposition"; in the real universe that's called a contradiction. A thing can't be both white and black at the same time. The reason QM gives you such contradiction is that it works with probabilities and interprets them incorrectly. A probability is not a state of the universe, it is a measurement of your knowledge. When a photon is in superposition of two states, it really means that you do not know which state it is in. You might say that it is 60% probable it is in state A and 40% probable that it is in state B, which means that you think A is somewhat more likely result than B. It does not mean that the universe does not know the state. To believe otherwise is called the mind projection fallacy. See this book (review) for more information; I highly recommend it to anyone working with probability.
> This isn't just a technical problem. A device which amplifies some signal from
> an individual quantum necessarily introduces noise, as do all amplifiers.
This is a technical problem. There is no theoretical reason (aside from the uncertainty principle, which I reject) that an amplifier must introduce noise. Just because you have not yet found a way to build a perfectly clean amplifier does not mean that it can not exist. This is the same sort of thinking that leads to "intelligent design" arguments.
> Through the process of amplification, the quantum superposition is changed to a plain
> old classical probability, and the cat is either dead OR alive before we open the box
> - no observer required! (This tending towards a classical probability from a quantum
> one has a sound mathematical backing in the ugly but effective density matrix treatment.)
And that is yet another reason to get rid of QM: it has a tendency to do the math and ignore what the math really means. When you do that you may get a valid result, but you will never know why you got it because you do not know what you did. Another Niels Bohr legacy of considering reality as being of no importance. Be
> Einstein is always right,
I said he was proven right in this case. He was wrong about some things, like the photoelectric effect, where he quantized the wrong side.
> Niels Bohr is evil (?!)
I am making a value judgement based on information available to me about the events leading to the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Because I view the latter as the greatest poison of modern physics due to its denial of objective reality (see nonlocality, "spooky actions at a distance", sporadic infinities that appear in equations if they are not used in some unexplained manner, etc.) and the cause of our continuing inability to calculate things on the atomic level, like molecular orbital energies. To hinder knowledge is to hinder progress of life, which is what passes for evil in my book. Since Niels Bohr was the chief perpetrator of that particular line of thought, I rightly classify him as evil.
> and your talking about one true faith of objective reality?
Existence exists! That is the essential faith of the existential philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, if you do not believe that existence exists, and the corollary of it being a logical existence, then you are denying life.
> At no point do they create a copy of the original state.
What do you think a laser does? When Niels Bohr was first told about the laser, he proclaimed that it couldn't work, because lased atoms and photons have the same exact quantum state. When a working laser was shown to him, he stopped talking.
If you read the article, you'll discover that the experimenters created a cloud of cesium atoms all in the same quantum state (other than position, presumably). Then they shone a laser beam through the cloud, which entangled the photons to the atoms (that is, the photons assumed a state that is a function of the atoms' state), putting the photons in the same quantum state also. Then the beam was split and measured.
> If you could do this, you could create yet another copy until you had as
> many as was necessary to measure whatever property you liked as accurately as you liked
Evidently you can, as the experiment demonstrates. This was my point.
> Unfortunately, the best you can do is measure one of the atoms (or whatever) in
> the entangled pair and apply an operation to the other to make it exactly like the first.
How is this not copying?
> Please don't just dismiss this. Cleverer people than you or me have been fighting with this for years.
And rightly so. You ought to start wondering why nobody is listening. If people were willing to consider alternatives to quantum mechanics, we might have had a GUT by now. As things are now, nobody is even trying, except crackpots like Randall Mills.
> Um...no. Uncertainty has been experimentally verified repeatedly.
You can't verify uncertainty. That is, there is no experiment that can prove that you can't ever know something.
> If you would like to educate yourself a little on the topic, see this wikipedia entry on EPR paradox.
The EPR paradox, or more specifically, the Aspect experiment, which verified that QM correctly predicted the result of the Bell inequality, does not mean what you think it means. The way I see it, the Aspect experiment simply demonstrates that photons are waves, not particles. Bell inequality assumes that photons are particles (or at least, discrete quanta of energy), and therefore fails to arrive at the correct result via classical calculations. Because photons are waves, or, more accurately, there is no such thing as a photon, they can be smeared over any possible number of locales. When path selection is performed in the Aspect experiment, the photon does not actually take only one path. It takes all the available paths. When you block one of the paths (they used some sort of ultrasonic switch to disrupt the signal), less of the wave arrives at the detector. Because the energy is absorbed only as quanta (due to there being a discrete number of wave nodes around an atom), the detector fails to detect this half-a-wave.
Not that the photoelectric effect, the very thing that started this whole quantum nonsense, can just as easily, and far more sanely be explained by quantized absorption. It isn't the photons that are quantized, only the slots where they must enter. Einstein went into the opposite direction and destroyed physics.
> Your statement about the "present unsightly state of the science of physics" is laughable
> at best. Just because the properties and interactions of particles in the quantum realm
> are often counter-intuitive and alien to our everyday experience does not mean that QM is wrong.
QM states that the laws of physics do not hold at atomic scales. In my world that makes it wrong.
Practically, QM has been the biggest problem physics has. It is QM's fault that there still isn't a way to accurately calculate any parameters of multi-atom systems. Molecular simulations only work on approximations. All the grand unified theories fail to unify the forces of nature because they try to find a quantized solution, where the real world is continuous (yes, atomic energy levels are quantized, but that is so because they are standing waves which can only be stable at discrete frequencies)
> It doesn't mean that QM is 100% correct either, but the predictions are more
> accurate and useful than an EPR-based model of the quantum realm.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Just because QM sometimes gives correct results (and there is much massaging required to get them), doesn't mean it describes the way reality is. Niels Bohr's view was that reality is irrelevant and that we should only be concerned with what works. That is precisely the view that I find utterly revolting, for denial of reality is the denial of life itself.
> Besides, where in the cosmic law books is it written that the functioning of
> the universe has to be "sightly" or even comprehensible to us?
Because a contradiction can not exist, anything that exists must be logical; logic being the art of non-contradictory identification. If the universe is logical, it is necessarily comprehensible because logic is how we comprehend. If the universe is not logical, it does not exist. If the universe does not exists, then you don't exist either, so you might as well abandon any attempt at living.