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TOPIC: Uncertainty Principle Determines Nonlocality [refresh]

Blogger Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 00:35 GMT
I’ve blogged in the past about how quantum mechanics isn’t as weird as it could be (See “Spookier than Quantum Mechanics?). Now there is new chapter to add to this story.

In 1935, Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen published their seminal paper aimed at proving that quantum mechanics is incomplete. Quantum mechanics prohibits the simultaneous measurement of certain properties like, for example, position and momentum. But is this due to the inherently clumsiness of us, macroscopic objects? Or is this uncertainty an inherent property of nature?

Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen thought that at its core nature is deterministic and to prove it they devised a clever thought experiment: have a quantum system that splits into two parts. For example have an unstable particle initially at rest split into two identical particles flying apart in opposite directions. Then measure the position on the left particle, and the momentum on the right particle. Because of momentum conservation, the left particle should have the opposite value of momentum, and since we can measure both position and momentum (on different systems) with arbitrary precision this would violate the uncertainty principle, making quantum mechanics an incomplete theory. On the other hand, taking the point of view that quantum mechanics is indeed a complete theory would imply an unpalatable “spooky action at a distance” where correlations between two spatially separated systems would occur in a way incompatible with any local classical description as shown by John Bell.

It turns out however, that this “spooky action at a distance”, or nonlocality is really how nature behaves, and this was experimentally settled by the Aspect experiment. But there is more: Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen had wanted to prove the uncertainty principle wrong because of “unphysical” nonlocality, but in a recent Science paper, Jonathan Oppenheim and Stephanie Wehner showed––in a bit of an ironic twist––that the “spooky action at a distance” is determined in part by the uncertainty principle.

Now, why is this important? Because as much as quantum mechanics is strange and predicts many counter-intuitive phenomena, it is not as strange as it could be allowed by the no-signaling condition of relativity. In other words, there could be stronger correlations then those predicted by quantum mechanics between the two measurements, while still obeying the condition that whatever I do “over here” does not send any signal “over there.” One example of this is the so-called Popescu-Rohrlich (PR) box, a hypothetical unphysical device able to achieve the maximum correlations between two spatially separated systems. So why is a PR box not allowed by nature? A physical implementation of a PR box would be a hacker’s dream come true because it would allow unrestricted eavesdropping on over-correlated data.

But how can one reason meaningfully over unphysical situations? To what degree do we have to create “simulated realities” and how confident can we be that the conclusions one reaches are not just the author’s fantasies? Fortunately there is a clear answer: Discuss quantum mechanics and hypothetical theories in the language of information and game theory. This approach provides a platform which is guaranteed to reduce itself to quantum and classical mechanics in the appropriate limits, and also generate meaningful conclusions to all other possible physical theories. Of course, when additional requirements of standard axiomatizations of quantum mechanics are imposed (like projective geometries of Jordan algebras, for example) this continuum of potential theories reduces itself to a handful of discrete possible cases. But casting quantum mechanics in the new framework can add new insights and clarifications for old puzzles.

So how do Oppenheim and Wehner go about proving that the uncertainty principle determines nonlocality? In a nutshell, it goes like this. First, the uncertainty principle is expressed as a Shannon entropy inequality and then as a Deutsch min-entropy inequality. Then the typical Alice-Bob pair is set to play an “XOR retrieval game” proving that any violation of the Tsirelson’s bound implies a violation of the min-entropic uncertainty relations (for details, please see Oppenheim and Wehner’s paper arXiv:1004.2507v1). Now let’s dig in and explain all this.

John Bell proved that any local deterministic theory should obey what are now called Bell inequalities. Quantum mechanics violates those inequalities and Tsirelson asked something more: What is the maximal possible amount of those violations? Any larger violation of Bell’s inequality over the Tsirelson bound up to the maximal PR box correlation would represent an even spookier theory of nature.

In an XOR game, Alice and Bob are in states “s” and “t” respectively, and they generate the answers “a” and “b” (a and b are zero or one). Winning the game is determined by the XOR of a and b = a+b mod 2. The players are allowed to choose any strategy they want to maximize the chance of winning, but they cannot communicate with one another during the actual game. Classically, the best chance of winning is 3/4, but using quantum mechanics the odds can be increased up to  1/2 + 1/(2sqrt(2)). The way of doing it is by Alice performing a measurement in a preferred “eigenstate basis” and this “steers” the state of Bob to a maximally certain state. Discovered by Schrödinger, “steerability” allows Alice to influence the outcome of Bob’s experiments in a non-trivial way and, still, it does not transmit any information.

Ultimately, the best chance of winning an XOR game is given by the interplay of steerability and uncertainty relations. Intuitively, the larger the uncertainty, the worst are the odds, but this flies in the face of the common quantum mechanics intuition because the best outcome in quantum mechanics achieving the Tsirelson bound occurs precisely when incompatible measurements are chosen. But this is only an artifact of the power of steerability. Quantum mechanics already achieves maximum steerability and going above the Tsirelson bound requires LESS uncertainty (a PR box would have perfect steerability and no uncertainty). Classically, any hidden variable theory would have no uncertainty, but its steerability would be limited to the trivial case.

At this point the following problem presents itself. Quaternionic quantum mechanics can go over the Tsirelson bound and this representation does not have less uncertainty than standard quantum mechanics over the complex numbers because its physical predictions are the same. Since steerability is already at maximum in complex quantum mechanics, this means that either the Tsirelson bound is dependent on the particular number system representation of quantum mechanics, or there is another parameter at play determining nonlocality. The question is open at this time.

Oppenheim and Wehner suggest another open problem: Clarify the relationship between uncertainty and complementarity because one can imagine theories with less degrees of complementarity than quantum mechanics but with the same degree of non-locality and uncertainty. Here complementarity measures the degree to which one measurement disturbs the next measurement.

Reasoning about hypothetical theories in an information theory and game approach opens the door to counter examples and new fruitful insights which could demystify the spooky part of quantum mechanics. Two thousand years ago, people held contests of large number multiplication using abacuses. To them, the fact that someday elementary school children would perform those multiplications with ease and faster than they could ever do it, looked spooky. All this was possible because of the transition from Roman to Arabic numerals. Maybe in the distant future the only thing spooky thing about quantum mechanics would be how spooky it looked to us with our “primitive” tools like Hilbert spaces and non-commutative observables. So let’s loosen up, play some games, and achieve a better intuition about nature:

“- Billy, your computer game time is up. Go upstairs and do your homework!”

“- But Mom, I AM doing my homework. I am developing a quantum mechanics intuition right now!”

(Cartoon from www.savagechickens.com)

this post has been edited by the author since its original submission

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James Putnam wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 01:13 GMT
"Maybe in the distant future the only thing spooky thing about quantum mechanics would be how spooky it looked to us with our “primitive” tools like Hilbert spaces and non-commutative observables."

I think this will be the outcome. I think the uncertainty priniciple is not about uncertainty except in the sense of the measurement interfering with the outcome and the point and time of interaction with the object during which the measurement is made. I think that neither of these has to do with uncertainty in nature.

James

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James Putnam replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 21:45 GMT
The universe operates and evolves in a coordinated manner because it is controlled. Control and uncertainty are mutually exclusive. There certainly can exist uncertainty insofar as our measurements and understanding are concerned. Our uncertainty is due to our inability to exercise full control from our perspective. However, the universe is never without full meaningful control or it would have become meaningless chaos.

I am not a physicist and perhaps their use of the word 'uncertainty', I know there are other words of choice, has some other theoretical meaning than my understanding of their use of the word. From what I have seen of its use, it appears to me that physicists embrace lack of control using the uncertainty principle as their justification. There can never be lack of control anywhere.

So, the macroscopic world moves forward generating and using meaning while the microscopic world descends into unconnected weirdness that requires bolstering by introducing theoretical (meaning added on thoughts about possible causes but not yet demonstrated properties) supports in order to make lack of control appear to maybe, perhaps, in some not yet understood way, actually be capable of leading to macroscopic control. Lack of meaning can never be converted into meaning.

James

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Jason Wolfe replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 21:17 GMT
Dear James,

Sorry, I have to disagree with you. You said,"Lack of meaning can never be converted into meaning."

For example,

באַטייַ
496;

is the ASCII form of the Yiddish word for, ... "meaning".

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James Putnam replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 22:51 GMT
Jason,

It is not clear to me where you see lack of meaning:

...is the ASCII form of the Yiddish word for, ... "meaning"."

James

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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 02:00 GMT
Dear Florin,

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 12:54 GMT
Thank you.

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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 03:17 GMT
Florin,

I think the issue involves what it is we mean by configuration space. A quantum wave function or its fields carry copies of configuration space with them, should we say little templates of the world. If the templates are identical for all states in superpositions or entanglements then everything should run smoothly according to our known rules. If not, then trouble mounts. This has relevance to problems where there is a geometric inequivalency of some sort. This occurs with noncommutative geometries, or where there are event horizons which set up different causal domains for an S-matrix that are frame dependent --- such as watching physics from outside a black hole, or by watching quantum evolution by falling into the black hole.

Different black hole configurations correspond to different entanglement configurations. The GHZ state |ψ> = |000> + |111> is a tripartite state which illustrates how nature is not realistic in a classical sense. In a 3 Q-bit system there can be bipartite entanglements between the bits A, B, C form the W state

A---B S_{ab}: (A)--(B), S_{BC}: (B)--(C): S_{AC}: (A)--(C)

~\~/

~C

which is a triangle with edgelinks that represent bipartite entanglements. So if A (Alice) makes a measurement there is still entanglement between B and C ( Bob and Charlie)

A~~B, S_{abc}

~\~/

~~*

~~|

~~C

meant to appear as a 3-way Y with ABC at the ends connected at the center demarked with the *, and ~ is a word editor spacer. The triangle consists of three edgelinks which are bipartite entanglement pairs in a 3 Q-bit system, and the S_{ABC} is a tri-partite entanglement entropy with

S_{ABC} = S_{A(BC)} - S_{AB} - S{AC}

A measurement by Alice leaves the separable states for ABC, with no information which Alice communicates by the measurement.

This maps to noncommutative geometry as well, though that is work in progress. The failure of the geometric operators AB – BA to close in a path amounts to different configurations of quantum bits. The Tsirelson bound is then determined by division algebra or the number system of the physics you are working in.

Cheers LC

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 12:53 GMT
Lawrence,

I did not quite get your post, but I agree that it seems very natural that the division algebra determines the corresponding Tsirelson bound. However, there is this paper: 0911.1761v1 which claims that a PR box can be realized in quaternionic QM (which I don't believe 100%), so that is why I state that the problem is open.

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Eckard replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 18:02 GMT
Lawrence,

"... illustrates how nature is not realistic in a classical sense." ???

Eckard

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 00:00 GMT
Florin,

I attach a file which is a compilation of the physics of multipartite entanglements. This is a compilation of what I have garnered from the literature. This covers the matter of black hole categories and varieties of entanglements. The two turn out to be equivalent. What is interesting is the NS5-brane describes a generating function that is an elementary form of path integral over all these categorical types. The step I have taken is to look at the Morse function and topology of this construction.

The Tsirelson bound probably does have a dependency on the division algebra. Baez & Huerta wrote a paper on SUSY and division algebras, which I found interesting to read. This paper illustrates the correspondence between Clifford algebras and division algebras. What I find interesting is that quantum mechanics has a complex valued structure to its dynamics, such as the classical flow z-dot = Ω∂_zH is converted from a pseudocomplex or symplectic structure to a complex valued dynamics --- the Schrodinger equation. Underneath this of course are a set of operators which do not commute. The operator structure then defines the complex dynamics. So there is an interesting structure of complex flows (dynamics) which are generated by noncommutative algebraic structures. We are now of course interested in noncommutative geometry as the dynamics. This is where I think there is this generating system of nonassociativity which generates noncommutative dynamics. Remember, gravitation is classically a noncommutative dynamical system. This is in contrast to other classical systems we quantize.

Eckard: Quantum mechanics removes certain notions we have about reality, where those notions in a sophisticated form are classical physics, but they also form our everyday sense of the world around us.

Cheers LC

attachments: 1_multipartite_entanglement__black_holes.doc

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Jason Wolfe wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 05:41 GMT
So if Alice performs an experiment in a "preferred basis", this will steer the state of Bob to a maximally certain state...

This vaguely sounds like "strategy". If Alice makes a mistake in the first move, then Bob has the advantage. Or is this completely different?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 20:35 GMT
The game is colaborative, not competitive. Alice and Bob are on the same team, and therefore it does not matter if Alice wins over Bob or the other way around.

If you want to make it competitive, introduce a second team: Charley and Dave who are free to choose their own strategy as well, and the team with the higehst number of wins, wins.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 09:56 GMT
Me I have chosen ....I don't use any strategy...I work simly because.

All is there ....to be or not to be...that is the question !

Steve

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Matt Leifer wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 10:39 GMT

"A physical implementation of a PR box would be a hacker’s dream come true because it would allow unrestricted eavesdropping on over-correlated data."

I am not sure what you mean by this. At least some variants of quantum key distribution have been proved secure without the assumption that quantum mechanics is true, i.e. security proofs hold for any theory within the framework discussed by Oppenheim and Wehner, so there wouldn't be any extra "hacking" ability. On the other hand, PR-boxes do have some information processing advantages over quantum theory, the most famous being van Dam's proof that they trivialize communication complexity, but I wouldn't call that "hacking".

"Quaternionic quantum mechanics can go over the Tsirelson bound and this representation does not have less uncertainty than standard quantum mechanics over the complex numbers because its physical predictions are the same."

I always thought that there was an ambiguity about how composite systems are to be described in quaternionic quantum theory because the noncommutative nature of the quaternions means that there is no tensor product structure that respects the nonsignaling property. Therefore, naive treatments of Bell-type experiments in quaternionic theories are not really analogous to Bell experiments in real or complex quantum theory and so I don't know what it means to say that the quaternionic theory violates the Tsirelson bound. On the other hand, quaternionic theory is definitely not included in Oppenheim and Wehner's framework, because it assumes nonsignaling.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 13:27 GMT
Matt,

On your first point, I was referring to Pawlowski's result: have a CD with 10MB of songs, each one 1MB and have a fixed transmission pipe of 1MB. With a PR box, one can download 1MB of data and I can pick any of the 10 songs I like and I don't have to download them all. Once in, I can access anything. Hence a hacker's paradise.

On your second point, quaternionic and real QM are tricky. In his 5 reasonable axioms, Hardy explains how real and quaternionic QM cannot make a genuine K=N^r theory (where N=degrees of freedom, and K=number of distinct questions one may ask the physical system). (in complex QM r=2 and in classical mechanics r=1). Using the superposition principle Hardy explains that for real QM K=N+N*(N-1)/2 and for quaternionic QM K=N+4*N*(N-1)/2.

However, enter exhibit number 2: Adler's monograph for quaternionic QM. The root cause of sqrt(-1) in complex QM is the 1-to-1 map between observables and generators, or between hermitean and anti-hermitean operators. For concrete physical problems, in real QM, , this mapping augments the missing N*(N-1)/2, and for quaternionic QM 2*N*(N-1)/2 are eliminated, and the same results as complex QM are obtained. Quaternionic QM has the extra problem on non-commutativity which gets solved by puting the numbers to the right of the ket and by solving for the right eigenvalue problems. The only things different in real and quaternionic QM are the actual concrete realization of the wavefunctions, but the predictions are identical with a bit of care.

I was mentioning to Lawrence 0911.1761v1, but I don't quite believe it because he takes only the naive approach (even his scalars ore on the left side of the kets) and the right way of treating it is as it is done in Adler's book.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 00:55 GMT
Florin,

I do think this idea presented in 0911.1761v1 is worth pursing with respect to the entanglement categories I wrote about in the notes I attach to the post above. I have not finished reading it, and I am a bit stuck on how one goes from the R_i matrices to the CHSH. I will look at this further. I still have yet to read the Oppenheim and Wehner supplementary material.

Cheers LC

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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 11:14 GMT
It seems physicists ritualistically say everything is both particles and waves, but because there is no aether, the wave aspect gets demoted to a statistical function and everything from light to inertia, photons to Higgs, is supposed to be some sort of particle.

Clearly this effect suggests otherwise.

If two points of measurement act as though they are both parts of a larger whole, then maybe they are and particles are definitely not the most accurate concept to describe them.

Since the concept of waves require a medium, maybe there should be another paradigm applied. Possibly an emission, or field, where the energy is being released as the quanta is the minimum atomic structure is willing to give up, expands/radiates outward and collapses back down as the minimum amount required to push the atom/electron to a higher energy.

I suspect interesting observations will keep emerging from the LHC and possibly many theories will have to be adjusted, if not scrapped.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/814
8525/How-the-universe-evolved-from-a-liquid.html

More baby steps into the unknown.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 11:23 GMT
This liquid is the ultim fractal,with a pure number and a pure finite serie.

The superincompressibility .............

Steve

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T H Ray replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 12:36 GMT
Yeah, what do those physicists know anyway, with all their beliefs and rituals and whatnot. They think that matter has both particle AND wave properties? Preposterous. They think wave propagation just "happens" in spacetime without a medium? Pinheads.

Tom

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John Merryman replied on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 15:46 GMT
Tom,

I'm not promoting aether. Just pointing out that while wave and particle concepts define the features we measure, they don't seem to adequately explain them. If they did, all these questions wouldn't keep popping up. We keep peeling away the layers and find what's underneath is still just another layer.

Save the condescension until they find the Higgs. If there is a particle for inertia, I'll reconsider a few ideas about inertia and space.

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Anonymous wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 17:03 GMT
nice to see your post, delving the article posted by me in the "spookier than quantum mechanics" blog topic.

thanks mr. florin

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Anonymous wrote on Nov. 26, 2010 @ 17:10 GMT
and

yet, have to be seen if can be cast in a nonlinear framework.....

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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 02:06 GMT
Florin,

At first I thought that Oppenheim and Wehner were attempting optimal obfuscation, but then you pointed out that they are transposing a quantum problem into a game theory framework. It seems that the key to what's going on is the following statement:

"...for any theory it would be Bob's best interest to perform measurements which are very compatible and have weak uncertainty relations..."

I interpret this to mean that if Alice is cooking up precise states of momentum, Bob is best not to be focusing on the most precise position measurements. Am I missing the point here?

They then go on to say that, if Bob is tuning his system for a certain type of measurement, that Alice can 'steer' the system to optimize Bob's results.

With respect to the 0.75 probability for classical vs. 0.85 probability for quantum mechanics, this appears to be due to the possible 'peaking' of the distribution of quantum eigenstates versus a more distributed spread over all possible classical states (a continuum). That is, Alice can send 'sharper' packets than would be the case classically. Again, am I missing the point?

Florin, thanks again for another excellent presentation, and your patience in answering all questions. I look forward to your response. I'm interested in this topic but it may require a few questions for me to get in sync.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 21:14 GMT
Edwin,

I don't quite follow your question. The game of Alice and Bob is collaborative, not competitive and it makes sense that they should go for compatible measurements; otherwise they are undermining their own chances of winning most of the time. But there is a particular QM strategy which allows them to maximize their chances of winning because of steering. Alice and Bob don't just simply go for arbitrary incompatible measurements: Alice is choosing to do a particular measurement which it turns out that yield the best chance of winning overall. The trick is in the collapse of the wave function upon measurement. Because of the clever measurement, Alice is collapsing the wavefunction to one of the two eingenvectors (she does not know which one) which can be used by Bob to get the best result overall. Therefore she "steers" the system to a very advantageous state for Bob.

If you would like a sports analogy, imagine an Olympics running race, say a 10km race, and two runners from the same country who trained together at a given speed. The weak runner, call him Alice, has very low chance of winning, but she takes the lead and sets the overall speed for everyone else, (and this is very advantageous to his partner Bob who trained at the same speed before). Bob does not have to deal with the hassle of maintaining the first place in the race, and close to the end, just as he practiced many times before in his home country, sprints and takes the lead winning the race. So Alice "collapses the wavefunction" of the whole group by imposing the desired dynamics and she steers Bob into the best place for him to score the win. Alice's and Bob's measurements are incompatible: Alice looses on purpose and Bob plays for winning. The agreed strategy works better then if both of them play for winning (compatible measurements with no steering) because in this case Bob has to defend his first position from attacks which can break his concentration.

So why would this analogy work? After all, runners in a race are classical objects. It does when the whole is bigger than the parts (just like in QM) and individual runners have a past history of competing against each other and of rivalry. Presumably, Bob is rivaled by many other runners, but Alice is not and that discourages the opponents overall to break her lead because they know she will mostly likely not win.

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John Merryman replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 21:38 GMT
Florin,

Maybe physicists should get out more. Alice is what is known as a rabbit.

The problem with the classical, academic view of time is that it is past tense. Like pages in a book, it goes from beginning to end and all the pieces are plotted out.

Out in the world where people plot strategy and the actual future is in question, time is not linear, but cumulative. The many threads are brought together to achieve the desired outcome.

The cause of time is these future possibilities coming to fruition and then receding into the past, as subsequent events replace prior ones. The effect of time is the sequential series we remember.

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John Merryman replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 21:52 GMT
Rabbit:- A horse which is entered in a race to insure a fast pace, but that doesn't last the distance.

http://www.suite101.com/content/understanding-horse-racing-t
erms-a14487

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PLATO wrote on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 19:13 GMT
Averaging and balancing gravity, inertia, fundamental and stabilized distance in/of space, and repulsion/attraction is key/central to quantum gravity and the unification of gravity and electromagnetism/light.

The question is: How are the various attributes (i.e., gravity, electromagnetism/light, inertia, feeling, energy, quantumstuff) of sensory experience centered, averaged, and balanced (and so they are all more the same in a balanced fashion) in order to achieve unification of/in physics?

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Anonymous replied on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 21:53 GMT
The real Plato would never spew forth such meaningless gibberish.

Plato said, "The question is: How are the various attributes (i.e., gravity, electromagnetism/light, inertia, feeling, energy, quantumstuff) of sensory experience centered, averaged, and balanced (and so they are all more the same in a balanced fashion) in order to achieve unification of/in physics? "

In other words, you don't understand a lick of physics, do you?

You would waste less space if you said, "I don't understand anything on this website."

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Kreegor wrote on Nov. 27, 2010 @ 22:17 GMT
For a paper on EPR-steering using game theory that is more accessible to a non-physicist (such as myself), read:

Dylan Saunders, Steve Jones, Howard Wiseman and Geoff Pryde, "Experimental EPR-Steering of Bell-local States", Nature Physics, Vol. 6, 845–849, 19 Sep. 2010.

Accompanying this paper is an entertaining PowerPoint presentation:

"Platonic Love at a Distance: the EPR paradox revisited".

Saunders et al. prove that EPR-steering "is a form of nonlocality strictly intermediate between Bell-nonlocality and entanglement" which they demonstrate experimentally by implementing different combinations of polarization measurements using axes based on Platonic solids.

(Interestingly, both Saunders et al. and Oppenheim and Wehner use the same Tangle-Entropy plane diagram [with axes shifted] developed by A.G. White, D.F.V. James, W.J. Munro, and P.G. Kwiat:

"Exploring Hilbert Space: accurate characterisation of quantum information", Phys. Rev. A, Vol. 65, Issue 1, 20 Aug. 2001.

The gradient from pure unentangled states to physically impossible maximally-entangled, maximally-mixed states blurs the boundary between quantum probability and classical determinism and thus poses a problem for the disengagement of worlds in the MWI.

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Edwin Eugene Klingman replied on Nov. 28, 2010 @ 03:23 GMT
Kreegor,

Thanks for the Saunders reference. I found this particularly interesting:

"...we can make states that are mixed and non-separable and yet do not violate a Bell's inequality--are these "truly" entangled? Distilling these states makes states that are more mixed and more entangled and so that they now violate a Bell's inequality-- was this entanglement really "hidden"?

"...states that do not violate Bell's inequality can be described by a hidden local variable model--suggesting that some entangled states are classical..."

It's my belief that hidden local variables are far from dead and that neglect of this possibility will not be beneficial.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 28, 2010 @ 14:03 GMT
Kreegor,

Thank you for the excellent references.

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Anonymous replied on Nov. 29, 2010 @ 13:24 GMT
The reference Kreegor sent, Dylan Saunders, Steve Jones, Howard Wiseman and Geoff Pryde, "Experimental EPR-Steering of Bell-local States", Nature Physics, Vol. 6, 845–849, 19 Sep. 2010. is interesting. This is an interesting presentation of steering quantum states and nonlocal entanglements. This points to the hierarchy from PR and no-signaling criteria to quantum nonlocality.

Cheers LC

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yoda jedi wrote on Nov. 28, 2010 @ 21:08 GMT
Kreegor,

Thanks for the Saunders reference. I found this particularly interesting:

"...we can make states that are mixed and non-separable and yet do not violate a Bell's inequality--are these "truly" entangled? Distilling these states makes states that are more mixed and more entangled and so that they now violate a Bell's inequality-- was this entanglement really "hidden"?

"...states that do not violate Bell's inequality can be described by a hidden local variable model--suggesting that some entangled states are classical..."

It's my belief that hidden local variables are far from dead and that neglect of this possibility will not be beneficial.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

----------------------

very interesting......

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Steve Dufourny wrote on Nov. 29, 2010 @ 18:48 GMT
Just a () on fqxi, important about the antithesis of rationalities.

Here is.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE WORDS OF THIS COMIC,LUBOS ABOUT Mr Penrose on his pseudo website of sciences, a website of pubs and stupidities yes.

Come here Lubos.

If Prof Penrose shall discuss with you, you shall be laughing in transparence.

We shall speak about your stupidities in total transtparence without any strategy.

A comic I repeat and Insist.

That becomes ironic.He doesn't respect the real scientists.It's a comic, a frustrated.

If this pseudo scientist is right, me I am Donald Duck coin coin,well

just to show where are the real roads ......

ROYAL SOCIETY oxford cambridge please ????

Steve

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 1, 2010 @ 16:38 GMT
Indeed Prof Penrose is skilling, Lubos no, a comic of strings community.

If you compare the works of Penrose and the works of Lubos, it's like if you compare an ocean and a water drop, or if you compare an actor and a comedian,or if you compare a note and a musical composition.

Or this or that.

Conclusion

Penrose a real searcher of truth

Lubos a comic stringly ironic.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Nov. 29, 2010 @ 19:59 GMT
Dear Georgina,

You are a compassionate and caring person. I can tell from how you spend time and are patient with others. That magician-clown from your link laughs in the face of people who he thinks are stupid, who believe the paranormal and in the interconnected nature of life.

Scientists pride themselves with their superior logic and reasoning skills. Logic is pure and perfect. These skeptics can find a million reasons why psychic phenomena is impossible; they will routinely throw out data points that disagree with their logical beliefs; but then fall silent when Bell's theorem undermines logic itself.

How are non-locality, quantum entanglement and steering so vastly different from sincere and skillful psychic phenomena?

Conversely, how many data points do I need to routinely throw out to disprove quantum steering?

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Georgina Parry replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 20:31 GMT
Jason,

You said "How are non-locality, quantum entanglement and steering so vastly different from sincere and skillful psychic phenomena?"

Jason that is a difficult question for me because I do not understand enough about quantum physics theory and don't understand the idea of steering at all. I also do not have personal experience of skillful physic phenomena.So what do I know?

I did have my fortune told by a gypsy, and it did come true, but I think it was a case of the "self fulfilling prophesy". Where a person them self makes the prediction come true by knowing what should happen or is expected. IMO Some psychics and mediums may be working as counselors within the scenario of a psychic reading.It may be beneficial helping to resolve problems or concerns within a caring social encounter that fits the client's belief system. Others are just competent con artists, and the apparent caring and concern are part of the act. Knowing how the shells and pea trick is done, why would I then believe a person doing the same trick but claiming it is in his case done by supernatural magic alone?

There is a connection between quantum physics and psychic phenomena and that is the incomplete information. Where there is incomplete information there is scope for being deceived by appearances alone.If you receive an answer to your question or find a meaningful message has been received and you do not know where it came from you may incorrectly assume psychic or supernatural transmission. What I think might be going on at the sub atomic scale to give the appearance of "supernatural" transmission of information is something I might use in my essay.

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 20:50 GMT
Dear Georgina,

G:"IMO Some psychics and mediums may be working as counselors within the scenario of a psychic reading."

Let's see now, astronomy came from astrology. Chemistry came from alchemy. Perhaps counseling came from psychic readings. Do you see a pattern? We yearn for magic, for control over our environment. I've met honorable and caring psychics; I've also met ego-driven psychics who pull you into their fantasy/delusion with a magnetic charisma. I've never met a conscious fraud or a clown; to be honest, I wanted to hurt that clown. You've got to understand something that nobody else can fathom. Skepticism is a strong part of the brain that won't go away. So what do I do? I infuse magic into something like quantum entanglement or space-time. Then, I let the skepticism do all the work. Of course I believe in the paranormal. I'm not stupid. I have to feed the skepticism; it eats magic; it eats joy and fun and pleasure. I have to keep it fed or it will feed on what gives me happiness. Amazingly, this monster skepticism converts my magic into fascinating little facets about the nature of the laws of physics.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 21:13 GMT
Georgina,

By the way, where do you think physics got the idea of creating equations that predict? Long ago, some psychic gleaned into the future. If it was inaccurate, the sitter got frustrated and developed his means to see into the future. Why do we study the properties of information? Because some unskilled psychic couldn't provide good valuable information.

Physics is the offspring of those who sought out magic. Fire looked like magic to the cavemen until someone figured out how to create it. Get the different parts of your mind to cooperate, and they will perform miraculous feats.

BTW, quasi-existent wave functions are a hint that the universe has a mysterious and magical side to it.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Nov. 29, 2010 @ 20:29 GMT
If phenomena like quantum entanglement and steering are real, then why wouldn't two billion years of evolutionary biology make use of them?

If you ignore me, then that is the same as throwing out data that you don't like.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 29, 2010 @ 22:37 GMT
Good question. Because living organisms are classical and not quantum objects. Quantum objects are too brittle to build up the required complexity of a living organism. See the trouble people are having to construct a quantum computer: interaction with the enviroment "decoheres" the quantum state and you end up with a "useless" classical device. So the answer is: decoherence.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 01:01 GMT
Dear Florin,

Thank you for your thoughts. So decoherence is the real problem. I'll have to think about it.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 02:29 GMT
In a funny way life does use entenglement --- maybe in an indirect way. The eigenstates which are stable against decoherence define the macroscopic world. I am referring to Zurek's einselection program. So in some sense biological systems are composites of elements which are stable or einselected.

Cheers LC

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James Putnam wrote on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 02:59 GMT
I expect that life uses everything that the universe is empirically, not necessarily theoretically, capable of otherwise there is no point to including anything that does not lead to life and the understanding that comes with life. There appears to be an attractiveness to pointlessness for theorists, but, the real universe sets the stage for putting its meaningful building blocks together so that intelligent life may one day comprehend the universe.

James

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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 22:39 GMT
Florin,

In a response elsewhere to Lawrence, I think you just answered the question I put to you above, when you said that you're not buying something because "It smells like local realism." I had asked whether local realism was to be considered 'off-limits' on this entanglement thread.

In my latest Physical Review Letters Vol 105, #17, 22 Oct 2010, there are two statements I'd like to ask you about:

In PRL 105, 170404 Ji et al, in "Loophole-Free Bell Test for Continuous Variable via Wave and Particle Correlations" they state:

"..no experiment ever closed both the locality and the detector-efficiency loopholes to conclusively rule out local hidden variable theories."

and in PRL 170501 Blume-Kohout et al, in "Entanglement Verification with Finite Data" state:

"A finite amount of data cannot conclusively demonstrate entanglement."

Now I don't think Phys Rev Lett is infallible, but I don't know where to go to look for higher guidance, so I'd like to ask why, if no finite amount of data can demonstrate entanglement, and the locality and detector-efficiency loopholes do not conclusively rule out local hidden variables, do you do so? Is it just personal preference, or do you know something that cancels the above?

I mean this with all respect, but I'm frustrated by an assumption that does not, on latest review, seem to be proven.

Thanks,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 23:22 GMT
Edwin,

Die hard hidden variable physicists still believe in their heart of hearts that QM is wrong and they demand those ridiculous "loophole free" experiments.

To state that the evidence that QM is correct is overwhelming, it is an understatement. By now most physicists have moved on from explaining away the weirdness of QM into trying to exploit it commercially.

I did not read those papers, but I suspect that their writers support QM and they only wanted to find better evidence for it. Finding loopholes and proving QM wrong is the same as squaring the circle, or constructing a machine which generates energy out of nothing (or proving that the Earth if flat, and that there is no "loophole free" proof that it is not flat because of the mountains and oceans).

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Edwin Eugene Klingman replied on Nov. 30, 2010 @ 23:51 GMT
Florin,

I support QM, but there are many interpretations of QM and they can't all be correct. I don't think you should equate argument over interpretations with rejection of QM. I believe that is a mistaken position.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 1, 2010 @ 00:16 GMT
Isn't what is being refuted is that point particles are fundamental?

If it walks like wholism, quacks like wholism and swims like wholism, doesn't that mean it's wholistic?

I don't think they will find a particle for inertia.

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Steve Dufourny wrote on Dec. 1, 2010 @ 12:36 GMT
If I learn here ,it's due to some people like you Florin, Jonathan,....in fact a real open minded is when any boundaries doesn't cause this rational evolution.

It's very important for the real synergies.

Now I must admit it's difficult to understand the economy for me.PERHAPS I forget some important parameters like familly capitals and the fear of all people at this moment of crisis.

In all case , the sciences must be rationals and the monney at this moment, I REPEAT OF CRISIS ,must be utilized with this said rationality for the well of humanity.

It's important this two parameters the globality and the locality seems ......

Steve

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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on Dec. 1, 2010 @ 16:23 GMT
Interpretations of quantum mechanics are correct to the extent they work within measured data. Interpretations are also overlays on quantum mechanics. We can work perfectly well with no interpretation. Further all interpretations have inconsistencies. Copenhagen demands we look at the world as a split personality between quantum and classical, Bohm’s interpretation requires us to think of there being a particle on an active channel, but this is ultimately nonlocal, many worlds can’t explain how it is we perceive a certain branch of the world and so forth. So we might at the end of it all say they are all equally false.

Cheers LC

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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 01:21 GMT
Florin,

Bayesian knowledge update is fine with me. Particles not existing as real particles until the 'collapse' --not so fine. As for math, I'm more the Heaviside type. I work the math and let the mathematicians worry about the things they worry about. I take it for granted that given bare minimum continuity conditions, a Fourier or Hilbert representation is going to work. And singularities are mathematical, not real. I believe that Feynman said you renormalize by substituting the actual mass when the answer goes to infinity.

As I've said earlier, the fact that no new particle physics has occurred for 40 years has ruined a lot of good physicists by causing them to become erstwhile mathematicians. But that's not my problem.

Thanks for answering my questions. No real surprises there. When we get to the point where we are agreeing and disagreeing with Lawrence at the same time, we've sort of talked it to death. Reality clearly has different meaning to different people, based on their interests, experiences, and mathematical background. All we've done in my opinion is prove Feynman right -- no one understands QM. I didn't expect we would resolve all issues here, but I was hoping to find less hard-nosed refusal to admit the possibility of a hidden variable approach as meaningful. -- It's never easy.

Jason,

I agree with many of your positions, but I don't think the universe is made out of wave functions. Nevertheless, you have interesting things to say, and I enjoy reading them.

Georgina

You and I haven't spoken much, but I've followed your ideas on consciousness and especially on time and we are not so far apart. If you are calling yourself a 'presentist' I would say I have strong presentist tendencies.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 09:48 GMT
Hi Edwin,

thank you its nice to know that my posts are sometimes read. I was not calling myself a presentist until I discovered that there was such a thing. Now I suppose I am one. Though it is still necessary to accept that there is space-time but only the experience of it rather than a concrete reality.

I applaud your strong presentist tendencies as I think that, given the problems; unanswerable questions, paradoxes and unbearable consequences that arise from an Eternalist philosophy Presentism is a far more reasonable option.

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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 01:22 GMT
Sorry - that last one hit the wrong thread.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 03:19 GMT
Florin and everyone,

Have you ever wondered about the meaning of

$\Psi^*\Psi$

Why does it take a congugate wave function times another wave function to get a probability? Because sometimes you can also have

$= (\Psi^_j*)(x\Psi_i)$

I think I know what it really means. Just as you have an emitter and observer in relativity, so too must you have an emitter and observer in quantum mechanics. This conjugate of Psi_j times Psi_i refers to the wave function connection between the two wave functions. Psi_i must be the observer because that is why you operate on; the observer wave function can be changed to observe location, momentum, etc. The observer wave function looks at the source wave function, and gives you a probability of what it sees.

I think quantum steering refers to a different point of view which would naturally give you more information about what it sees. For example, you get a better perspective of Psi_i with both (Psi_j*)(Psi_i) and (Psi_k*)(Psi_i) both looking at Psi_i.

In relativity, time dilation is about the time frame of the observer when he looks at the time frame of the emitter (proper time). I wold suggest that there is a wave function that spans the two inertial reference frames. The emitter and observer are related by \Delta T' = \gamma \Delta T

$\Delta T$

In summary, both quantum mechanics and relativity make use of emitter and an observer. Steering is the result of two observers observing the emitter, which gives a better perspective.

I hope this helps.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 04:31 GMT
Georgina,

You may have already discussed this, but let me throw this idea out there. What is Real and what is Observable are two different things. What is real includes all of the information crunching about conservation of spin, baryon number, etc., all of which occurs in complex space (real space+imaginary space). What is real is all of the quantum calculations and who knows what else that occurs very often hidden from view.

What is observable depends upon what you can observe when you bounce photons off of some quantum system. What is observable is what you can see with your eyes, sense with your five senses, or build a machine to detect.

Reality consists of a lot more then what is observable. What is observable is the tip of the iceberg. In a manner of speaking, we are mostly blind to reality, to what is real.

Everyone,

Is it possible to quantumly entangle multiple quantum "observers" to the same quantum system? In other words, if I have quantum system Psi_1, can I entangle, at the same time, Psi_2, Psi_3, Psi_4, ... to Psi_1?

If this kind of entanglement can be done, it might be possible to BEAT quantum mechanics with multiple observers.

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 05:47 GMT
Hi Jason,

I would have said it differently but I think you mean the same sort of thing thing. All of the properties and interactions of particles, or whatever they are, are unseen, real but unknown.

I agree with your second and third paragraphs, and I am so glad that we finally actually agree on this. Please hold tight to those thoughts, let them sink right in and consider the implications.

Yes, we interface with the "really real reality" but we do not experience it directly only through our interpretation of it. Because there is always a transmission time for the photon, what is observed is a delayed image reality, and because of variation in distance from source of the photons there is variation in amount of delay giving a present which is a composite representation with temporal distortion. (The same transmission delay issue is true for sound and chemical information.)

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 06:06 GMT
Georgina,

Do you see the connection between QM and GR? Emitter and observer. Or use whatever words you like. That is the common theme in physics. Between the emitter and observer is a wave function that transmits photons at the speed of light. If The wave function has a gravity potential across it, then time dilation occurs and is quantified by T' = gamma T. Do you see what I'm referring to?

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 09:16 GMT
Hi Jason,

You said "Between the emitter and observer is a wave function that transmits photons at the speed of light." This sounds like QM speak. I have said that the wave function is neither real in observed or unobserved reality imo but is a mathematical representation. So it does not transmit anything. (Though the transmission of the photon could be described as a wave, as its relative space distribution varies with change in absolute (ever changing ) distribution, which is like saying its observed spatial position varies over time..)Anyway I see that a wave function could be used in the description of what is happening.

You said "If The wave function has a gravity potential across it, then time dilation occurs...Yes gravity has an effect on the transmission of the photon interpreted as time dilation, imo.

You said ...and is quantified by T' = gamma T. Do you see what I'm referring to?" This sounds like maths speak. I assume T and T' are the different time values and gamma has something to do with/ is probability distribution but I am not a mathematician. I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean to me. Are you saying that the wave function or probability distribution between object at time T and detector produces the observed time T'?

Well whatever happens to the photons will effect what is formed from the interpretation of them, unless the influential interaction is accounted for in the processing of the information and removed.. I am not sure if the probability distribution is sufficient to describe all of the encounters a photon may have, I am not a mathematician. Presumably, since you suggest it, the probability distribution alters when something like a gravitational field is encountered and so would be represented in the mathematics. Over to you Jason. I am only fluent in English.

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 2, 2010 @ 12:37 GMT
Georgina

You say; "because of variation in distance from source of the photons there is variation in amount of delay giving a present which is a composite representation with temporal distortion."

But that's only half the story. I have a real present for you. You must consider the relative motion as well;

If you are on a bus, moving past your twin sister, standing, and you both watch a ball drop from the sky, you not only see it at different times, you see different motion. With respect to your inertial frame it will be falling at an angle, and probably moving towards or away from you, Doppler shifting the light compared to hers. She sees it fall vertically, perhaps with just a small fringe shift.

If you fire a laser pulse up the bus, you see it moving at c/n, she will look into the bus and see it at c/n + v. We are told SR says c/n + v is not possible, that is false. She only "see's it" at that in her subjective reality, it is not DOING that in concrete reality.

I've said many times, she only sees only an "apparent rate of change of position" from her inertial frame, and the signal with this information reaches her at 'c' (via some of Jasons waves, Doppler shifted to comply with the c/n of glass and then air).

The really good news is that when you return on the bus your age can now be the same as your twin!

From this it would seem that Heindrik Lorentz really only described Fresnel's exponential curve of energy input needed to accelerate a particle towards 'c' in it's (one of "infinitely many") local frame.

I hope this is not too confusing? Who was it that said, progressing science just needs tome for people to get used to new ideas. IMO the secret is to present it in a way that cannot just be rejected or ignored.

Peter

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 11:09 GMT
Peter,

you said "IMO the secret is to present it in a way that cannot just be rejected or ignored."

Peter I have tried.I have written far more and defended the ideas more than would ever have occurred if the ideas had by the remotest chance been accepted for a respectable scientific journal.It has taken a huge amount of time and patience and has prevented me from doing other things. I have listened to the objections and modified the language used in explanation and the terminology to take account of them.

You understood "not really real" but it is a backward step taken to express the meaning with forceful clarity, which I thought was necessary at that time. I have listened to the argument that only that which can be observed can be considered real, and that does fit with our experience of reality. So the biological representation or simulation does have to be considered real in its own way. Though it is only a representation or simulation. It is not the same as the original in essence, in detail, in accuracy, in completeness.. It is formed from distorted,selected, modified and processed data.

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to put forward a model to represent the objective reality but my discussion with John makes me realize that the idea has a number of shortcomings beyond the fact that an objective reality can not be known and a model of it can only be a simple model or representation.

Although it does away with the time dimension it still has a local space framework, through which matter and particles pass to reach the next frame and so on. Which may not be appropriate with no observer.It is imposing a viewpoint on the change which does not exist with no observer.Though it is closer to object reality than space-time.I do not think that the current impasse in finding a model that is entirely satisfactory negates the other arguments.In particular answering the questions, invalidating the paradoxes, correspondence and self consistency.

Its all in the public domain now for anyone and everyone to read, warts and all.

I'm tired.

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Peter Jackson replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 18:39 GMT
Georgina.

Uncertainty rules in principle, but certainty rules in reality. Take heart and stay determined because yours is the true reality.

;"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". You've had the nice bit of cake now you have just to keep going while the world slowly gets used to it. 'Certainty rules in reality' means that you must stay certain, because you are right, and eventually the message will get through. In reality uncertainty is invalid.

As you understand the present so well I have another present for you to demonstrate that. It shows that you, or even we, are far from alone. I just put it together from a forum today, from a nice chap called Atso who has a very good model that's using yet another route to the same reality. His terminology is slightly different, and he refers to each individuals own 'reality'.

"St. Augustine said that time is present-presence, past-presence, and future-presence. Only present-presence is eternal, non-objectifiable and real time, where the mind exists. The other times are scalar and objectifiable.

Eternal time is absolutely simultaneous with all moments of physical time, as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought. Or in other words, at its deeper level, reality is a sort of 'super hologram' in which the past, present, and future exist simultaneously, as for instance, David Bohm has proposed.

Because eternal time exists within physical time, time as a dynamical unity of physical and eternal must be a continuum. Hence, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not valid. Thus, the enigmatic questions of St. Augustine (354-430): 'How we can measure time, which is actual (real) only in the present, where there is no duration?' and of McTaggart's one: 'How can time change in time?' receive their novel answer.

All objectifiable belong to consciousness- spaces ('my'- etc.), where time is scalar t > 0.

From the same reason, that time dilation is objectifiable, it does not happen in real time T = 0 (now). It is a measurement of time duration, and as such scalar.

It sounds quite ethereal, if you'll forgive another play on words, but it means the same; Nature IS very simple and intuitive. Only our limited intelligence has held us back. Now you've seen the light you must keep exploring and stay strong.

For the first time this week I've had a paper not among the 99.7% immediately rejected by a top peer review journal! I put it down to the snow & ice in the UK stopping people getting into work. It's about your rainbow.

If we were intelligent aliens (assuming we're not) who decided we'd help human life along by getting us up to speed on some fundamental science, but without giving ourselves away, we'd never get published, and we'd be instantly assigned to the crackpottery. We'd have to prove that intelligence.

I really look forward to your essay.

Peter

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 03:28 GMT
BTW Everyone,

Up to five photons can be entangled together. So the question is: Can 4 photons be entangled to a single electron? It would be like 4 different observers. We're looking for a way to beat the Uncertainty Principle.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-05/rese
archers-entangle-five-photons-first-time

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 06:45 GMT
Peter/Georgina;

I need your help. I think I just experienced what the space-time continuum really is. It's one of those really intense epiphanies. I've explained the idea of a Time Dilation Thread. A photon travels along it and its frequency shifts because of the gravitational potential across the two ends, t' and t.

Here is a question. Why does time run faster with higher elevation? Is it because the gravity field gets weaker as you get further away from the earth's center? If that were so, then time dilation would be the result of the strength of gravity.

Or, is it because a photon that climbs to a higher altitude is climbing to a higher gravitational potential energy and is basically converting frequency energy into graviational potential energy. This would assume/require that time dilation is equivalent to redshift/blue shift.

But here is where it gets weird. What if we lived on a flat earth with a constant gravity of 10m/s^2 no matter how high a photon or laser climbed into the sky. It could climb for light years. Would there still be a gravitational time dilation? If there is, then time dilation is caused by a grvational potential energy.

If the time dilation threads are more like straight sticks, we can imagine them positioned everywhere around the sphere of the earth. The earth would look like a flux field where the gravity flux consists of all of these time dilation threads/sticks.

The gravity field gets weaker because the surface density of the gravity flux, depicted by the time dilation threads, gets less; fewer sticks/threads per square meter.

Anyway, now we're getting into space-time continuum stuff. The sticks also represent the photon waveguides. By this argument, photons really are the energised fibers/threads/wavefunctions out of which space-time is weaved.

Gotta go.

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 13:31 GMT
Jason.

"This would assume/require that time dilation is equivalent to redshift/blue shift."

Of all your comments IMO this one is the key to unlock the door to reality.

Sure time dilation depends on gravity, though I'd need to think more about how a photon 10m.ltyrs from a planet can gain and possess potential wrt that planet.

It also supports the notion that black holes are merely gravitational masses so large that light is red shifted out of the visible band. And indeed that they have Lagrangian points at the centre the same as all other centres of mass.

But let's get back to testing Christian Doppler's influence; We know light goes through ice at c/n for ice ok (lets say n = 1.3). We throw a large iceberg through space (if you find that too hard just call it an icy Comet). You're floating there observing as it comes past at 0.4c. I'm inside it with some instruments and a flask of coffee. You're measuring the light speed from two suns, one ahead of the iceberg and one behind. They are both 'c', and you record the frequency and wavelength.

I measure the same from inside the ice. I find the laws of physics DO work, it's doing c/n for ice. Or, if I'm in a void inside it, I find it is doing 'c'. the difference is; I find the light from the sun ahead is very blue shifted compared to your measurements, and the light from the one behind very red shifted. All quite intuitive, and matching absolutely all experiments and the postulates of SR yes?

You also left some bright digital clocks near the suns. I do the same with the light coming from the clocks, so I can read what they say. Now it's interesting! The blue shifted photons are arriving more frequently, and the clock is running faster! Similarly the red shifted light is arriving with lower frequency, so the clock appears to be running slower!

Don't panic. This is perfectly logical, and just time dilation due to relative motion. The transformation happens the moment it enters the new inertial frame.

It is purely because I'm in Georginas 'subjective' reality, wrt the clocks, moving differently to the real concrete object reality of each clock.

So there we have it. Time Dilation, Frame transformation, (Extra) Special Relativity, CSL, the whole thing, intuitively resolved. And, as Georgina said, when we get a bit cleverer and discover the truth we might be confused for a while. Unless it's easier to just deny it!

Best wishes

Peter

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 19:00 GMT
Time Dilation Thread can also account for the angle of the trajectory of light, of each photon. The Time Dilation Thread is (a) a wave function with a gravitational potential across it and (b) the path that one or many photons will travel. It can be taken as merely a mathematical convenience or as a quasi-existent object.

Since Time Dilation Threads are a form of wave function, Snell's law can be easily managed. A glass-vacuum interface is just a transition from tightly curled up wave functions (which increase path length) to straight wave functions (shortest path between two points).

BTW, you might need a little more than a flask of coffee.

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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 18:00 GMT
Lawrence,

I don't quite follow you on Zurek's circularity. His method of getting the Born rule is quite ingenious, and then he points out that the environment has to have enough entropic capacity. I don't see any circularity. What I don't agree is that the whole approach is misguided because it fails to explain non-local correlations in my opinion. It overall feels like explaining a Lorentz contraction by forces acting on objects.

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Anonymous wrote on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 21:10 GMT
Jason.

I took a big pot of coffee, unfortunately it seemed to crack when the results came in and matched the wrong predictions.

I think you just missed grabbing hold when we came past your locality this time round. Try this primer first; http://www.suppressedscience.net/physics.html

But be careful how you hold it, it's very common now but it's still pretty hot stuff for many.

Best wishes

Peter

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 21:22 GMT
Dear Peter,

If the physics isn't right then the machines that we engineer won't be right either. If the machines don't work, then quality cannot be assured. If quality is poor then sales drop. If sales drop then companies lose money. Therefore, the physics has to be right or companies can't make money. Follow the money.

BTW, my girlfriend won't let me use my Tom Tom until Christmas...

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 3, 2010 @ 21:26 GMT
Peter,

Just off the cuff, cold fusion is like trying to get energy out of a nucleus by drilling a hole in the dam (energy potential) that holds it back. Does that sound about right?

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 13:03 GMT
Impossible .....a cold fusion can't be a reality, that has no sense.

The fusion is a thermonuclear system where furthermore it exists codes of activation for all mass.

Thus only the coded particules can fuse like in our sun for example....PV=nRT and the codes of activation, TIME CODE....SPACE CODE....ROTATIONS CODES....EVOLUTION CODE.....THUS FOR A FUSION FIRST WE NEED THE CORRECT CODED PARTICULES OR WE MUST CORRECTLY CHECK THE PURE THERMODYNAMIC

Steve

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 4, 2010 @ 16:01 GMT
Florin

Intuition and QM may be universes apart, but is not unpalatability an issue of the observer not the system? I saw the empirical problem with Everits way of removing 4b (collapse) as the main one. But I take Braggs view, we need better ways of seeing things rather than more things to see. Can you falsify the following new viewpoint?;

The observer is even more a part of the system than Everit makes him. The term 'measure' is one we invented, but is really a quantification of something we remove from the whole system, which changes it. We put a detection system in front of a wave. If energetic enough a photon condenses and expends the energy producing a click, so the wave pattern is changed.

If we'd placed the detectors fractionally ahead or behind, the probability of a click at that moment would have changed completely. Change t or the position and the probability changes.

And superposition of states in analagous to wave superposition. I race a yacht at representative level, I've had an intimate understanding of the sea from childhood. I can read and anticipate changing waves because I understand each 'one' is a dynamic superposition of hundreds, as all scales and lengths. The compound wave I see 10m ahead or behind is not the wave that will hit the boat or pick it up. It will have changed with every instant. My job is to read and anticipate. And once it's interacted it's partly 'collapsed'. I heard and felt the energy being dissipated, and felt the spray on my face as it does the transition from it's own inertial frame to mine.

Behind the boat is flatter water, a different superposition, being re-charged by it's neighbours and the wind. I have measured it, by interacting and changing it.

With superposition, every so often (but with uncertainty) a rogue waves appears (traditionally every 7th wave, but far from being so) as two compatible frequencies join as one for a moment as they pass. And equally, with destructive interference, a local flat patch appears momentarily for me to accelerate the boat across.

And all this time we're being carried by the tidal stream, because the water I am in 'knows' through topology and entanglement with the whole body that the water level 10km west is lower so it moves in that direction.

Of course there are still many strange and interesting things about QM, but I feel it may eventually be possible to develop an intuitive feel for all nature.

Perhaps our palate just needs to get used to new flavours. Or do you feel intuition should really never be trusted?

Peter.

PS. Jason. I have no understanding of or intuition for cold fusion, except perhaps from harmonics, but I suspect it may well be possible.

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Kreegor wrote on Dec. 5, 2010 @ 04:40 GMT
Florin,

I've found your blog on how the uncertainty principle determines the bounds between non-locality and the classical world is very insightful.

In 2004, Kwiat and Englert used quantum erasing to test the replacement of entangled states by incoherent mixtures.

"Whenever the two paths [in a double-slit experiment] remain indistinguishable in principle, interference fringes will be well visible. If the paths become labeled, so that 'which-path' information becomes available, the fringes will disappear. However, an appropriate measurement that 'erases' the distinguishability may recover interference. Remarkably, this recovery is even possible in situations where there was no which-path information to erase!"

" ... It is certainly well known that if system A is entangled with system B, then tracing over system B leaves system A in a mixed or partially mixed state ... The reverse question is perhaps more profound, and potentially has very important physical and philosophical implications — if the system A is in a mixed state, is it necessarily the case that it is entangled with another system? Hiding behind this seemingly innocuous question is the much deeper issue of whether or not a classical world actually exists. For, if indeed quantum mechanics does describe every possible interaction between two systems — if quantum mechanics is 'the whole story' — then indeed one might believe that the universe is described by one humongous entangled state of all the constituent parts."

" ... We may never be able to tell whether the unrecoverable nature of the fringes is due to an actual irreversible transition to a classical mixture, or whether no such transition ever occurs but our measurement apparatuses nevertheless are not able to reverse the complicated string of interactions. Quantum Mechanics with its fundamental indeterminism sets the ultimate limits to how well we can make measurements."

Reference: Paul G. Kwiat and Berthold-Georg Englert, "Quantum Erasing The Nature Of Reality Or, Perhaps, The Reality Of Nature?"in Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity (John D. Barrow, Paul C. W. Davies, and Charles L. Harper, Jr., Editors, Cambridge University Press, 2004)

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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Dec. 5, 2010 @ 13:31 GMT
Peter and Kreegor,

I'll reply to your posts as soon as I have a bit of free time (hopefully by the end of today).

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John Merryman wrote on Dec. 5, 2010 @ 21:47 GMT
Jason,

Remember that according to Relativity, light is timeless. Clocks consist of atoms. Which have electrons spinning around the proton, vibrating, whatever, at close to the speed of light. If you accelerate an atom, which is comparable to what happens in a gravity field, its velocity, combined with its internal activity, still cannot have any parts of the atom exceeding the speed of light. So the atom has to slow down its internal "clock." As well as any actual clocks made of these atoms.

Rather than thinking of the clocks as traveling in different time trajectories, just consider that one has a faster "metabolic rate" than the other. Much like your comparison of different computers operating at different speeds. Time is a function of motion, not the basis for it.

Peter,

I agree with your observation that intuition is a fundamental mental process of aggregating far more information than can be consciously processed and physics spends way to much time trying to build linear models to replicate the cumulative processes our intuition is designed to analyze. Not to say either side of the brain works well in isolation from the other, but physics does ignore one side at its own peril.

My internet connection has been broken down this week and it's been a bit of a Godsend to actually have computer time to to write that essay and not be diverted by the irresistible flood of information at one's fingertips.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 18:09 GMT
John,

"Remember that according to Relativity, light is timeless."

What does that mean? It sounds more like poetry than physics. The hands on my clock go round and round every minute, every hour. Photons/Poynting vectors do the same thing. Since photons are always observed to travel at 2.998x10^8 meters per second, light defines both time and distance.

Matter and particles are a special and unique expression of localized light. It takes light (gamma rays) to create particles (anti-particles). Slower than light particles are amazing and are probably describable with a solid state crystal model. The wave functions make it possible for particles to travel slower than light.

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 18:51 GMT
Jason,

There is no internal motion in a photon, so it has no clock. Now if you are treating time as a fourth dimension, zero duration =zero distance. The photon has zero time dimension.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 19:34 GMT
John.

"There is no internal motion in a photon, so it has no clock. "

Huh? What gave you that idea? One second is defined as 9,192,631,770 cycles corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. The photon is a building block of space and time. When you have a lot of photons, you get an electromagnetic field with a Poynting vector whose electric and magnetic fields undulate so many times per second depending upon the light's frequency.

Photons are the clock. the sinusoidal rise and fall of the electric and magnetic fields define space and time.

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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 03:44 GMT
Peter,

I do think it is possible to develop an intuition about QM. But care must be exercised to avoid the “fool’s gold” classical intuition for QM. For me, the most interesting aspect of QM is in the area of superselection rules and the conditions which make the superposition disappear.

Intuition can be trusted under the right conditions. In any domain, an expert can answer most questions correctly right away, while an amateur may or may not be able to do that based on his intuition. There is no free lunch, and effort has to be invested first.

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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 04:21 GMT
Kreegor,

Thank you for your kind words, I am glad you enjoyed my post.

Thank you for the Kwiat and Englert paper, it was interesting. There are several things I want to discuss. First, I don’t like the introduction to mixed states the way it is done in standard QM introductory courses. There the entire book is devoted to the mechanics of solving Schrödinger’s equation for pure states, and in usually a small paragraph, one introduces the idea of a mixed states as a classical mixture of several pure states. Very misleading. A much better way is to introduce mixed states as a result of partial traces, and hiding parts of the degrees of freedom. Then one can easily notice that in general the decomposition of a mixed state in pure states is not unique. Also one can achieve a transition from a mixed state to a pure state by enlarging the system.

Now Kwiat and Englert asked the very relevant question: is this purification process always working? If yes, QM rules supreme and the classical world is an illusion. But the question was already answered in the negative by the work of Diederik Aerts who noticed that when two QM systems are not allowed to interact, there is no Hilbert space available for the two systems, and the time evolution is no longer unitary, but classical. It is regrettable that Kwiat and Englert were not aware of Aerts’ results.

Now all this is still work in progress, and the area of superselection rules when the superposition principle breaks is very interesting.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 23:59 GMT
Florin,

It is interesting you brought up superselectrion rules. This is closely related to the weak measurement physics. Two states |y> and |y'> are separated by a superselection rule if = 0. These states may define pre and post selected states. If there is a continuous parameter ε so that as ε - -> 0 then = 0 then there is a weak outcome for the observable O under weak measurement theory

O(w) = lim_{ε-->0}/

The superselection rule then means that not all Hermitian operators pertain to observables under all conditions, where different irreducible components of an operator are not in general observable --- except maybe under very special circumstances such as a weak measurement. This gets into the whole matter of how a Lagrangian can have a certain symmetry, but the vacuum at lower energy obstructs the transition or phase overlap between various states. The field, usually some gauge field is then restricted so there is no overlap by its interaction with the Higgs field. In effect the superposition of various states, say between a photon and the Z particle, has been taken up by an entanglement with the Higgs "condensate" field or its vacuum at low energy.

Cheers LC

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 04:52 GMT
Lawrence,

I don't quite get the link between weak measurements and superselection rules. You can get weak measurements even without superselection, all you need is approximately orthogonal in and out states. Can you please elaborate?

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Kreegor replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 04:59 GMT
Florin,

I see strange and colorful shapes and shadows below the surface and wonder how deeply I should dive.

Two questions:

1. You mentioned introducing mixed states as a result of partial traces. Would you point me in the direction of relevant research (not overly technical)?

2. Aerts lists 177 publications on his website. Can you recommend a good starting point?

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John Merryman wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 19:14 GMT
Florin,

Intuition is very much a part of the neural process. It is developed through experience. Peter's sailing abities, my riding, your knowledge of physics, are all collections of experience and knowledge which the mind accesses as what we would call intuition. If there is a flaw ingrained into that knowledge base, the result is, as with any process, junk in, junk out. With classical physics, there started to be anomalies that caused questions as to whether the underlaying knowledge base was corrupted.

The question now, with QM and Relativity, given many of the various concepts emerging from its processes, such as multiworlds, multiverses, etc. whether they amount to junk out and thus imply there might be flaws within the system, even if many of its other conclusions are valid. Remember classical physics had many valid answers, before it started to break down at the extremes, so why is it not possible the same problem could be causing some of these more far fetched ideas in modern physics?

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 19:37 GMT
John,

well said.

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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 19:51 GMT
John,

Each theory has its range of validity. I think that QM is not wrong, but incomplete (not in the sense of Einstein). What I see is a hierarchy of new physics as one climbs the energy scale (or alternatively looks at smaller distances): classical mechanics->superposition principle (standard QM)-> particle creation (Fock space)-> local gauge symmetry (standard model) -> string theory???

So the usual QM is already replaced by field theory and the Fock space (a more general theory which includes second quantization). The Fock space itself is not enough as Yang Mills theories impose local symmetries which give rise to the standard model. Yet again, standard model is incomplete as one looks up to supersymmetry and incorporating gravity. After gravity there is nothing more because increasing the energy is simply creating a black hole and no new physics can emerge after that.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 20:25 GMT
Florin,

Don't you think it's a little strange that atomic clocks count time more slowly under conditions of "proper acceleration"? Proper acceleration represents the g-force experienced which is different from changing velocity. Atomic clocks counts time more slowly in gravity fields, centrifuges and vehicular acceleration. In other words, the Equivalence Principle tells us that atomic clocks slow down in proper acceleration fields.

Doesn't that seem odd to you? Doesn't it also seem odd that time dilation, gravitational or otherwise, is perfectly joined with photon frequency?

If you think that Fock space and all of these other theories can lead to some new understanding of physics, then great. But this time dilation effect tells me that photons and wave functions are deeply interconnected with both quantum mechanics and space-time. From this, gravity has the effect of shifting photon frequency as conservation of energy says it must. I can't think of a simpler and more useful approach to unlocking the mystery of physics along with new technology.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 21:19 GMT
Jason,

No, I don't find them strange; it is a simple application of the equivalence principle which is very intuitive in itself. But adding relativity in QM does lead to Fock space as follows:

recall that in QM position and momentum are uncertain, and if you put a particle in very small box, the momentum uncertainty is very large which leads to a high enough energy uncertainty able to generate particle-anti-particle pairs. So now to proper analize this situation, one needs to separate the Hilbert space into a 0 particle state, 1-particle state, 2-particle state, etc. In other words, a Fock space.

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Jason Wolfe wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 21:29 GMT
Florin,

Are the solutions to a Fock space still complex exponentials?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 22:09 GMT
Short answer: yes. Longer answer: the math is trickier in second quantization; too hard to explain it here.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 21:58 GMT
Florin,

If space-time is made out of wave-functions, which fits with Occam’s razor very well, then time dilation can be the gravitational manifestation of wave functions which fits very well with the Equivalence Principle. Time dilation has a source/emitter time t and an observer t' across some arbitrary distance; that distance includes a gravitational potential energy which will automatically redshift or blueshfit photons that cross from the source/emitter to the observer. Time dilation threads are a gravitational form of wave functions. Wave functions are commonly known to emit and absorb photons. In fact, one could easily assume that photons are just energized wave functions.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 6, 2010 @ 22:31 GMT
If only it would be this easy... Quantizing space-time is the hardest problem physics is facing today (and there is no universally accepted solution yet)

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 00:06 GMT
Florin,

Epicycles lasted for 1500 years because no matter what the observation, another cycle could be devised to explain it. It's like an old computer program, in that it's always easier to just add another patch whenever a problem pops up, than it is to go back and tear the whole thing apart every time it doesn't work how you want it to. Eventually though, you have more patches than program and it really is time to start over again and use the lessons learned to do it better.

A simple question: Do you think all events exist out there on some fourth dimension of time and that eventually we will be able to discover how to bend the various dimensions around, create wormholes, devise more such dimensions and be able to travel in the time dimension, as we do in the spatial dimensions, or do you think it is the changing configuration of the energy/light/mass, which turns future possibilities into past circumstances?

Putting it more simply, do we travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does the rotation of the earth turn tomorrow into yesterday?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 04:52 GMT
John,

There is only one time direction and this is what separates nature from the abstract and timeless world of math. Allow more than one time dimension, (or wormholes and the like) and you start getting self-referencing paradoxes. This means that the events truth value is no longer universal, but becomes dependent on the context, just like in pure math: the math sentences depends on the particular axiomatic system. In the absence of time, the notion of existence is relative and meaningless. Time is what holds physical reality together.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 01:14 GMT
Florin,

You said:"If only it would be this easy... Quantizing space-time is the hardest problem physics is facing today (and there is no universally accepted solution yet)"

I used conservation of energy, invariance of the speed of light, and the equivalence principle to pick out a pattern of what is implementing the physics. Using that, it gives me a map that puts qm and GR in perspective.

Time dilation is like a giant hot pink flashing arrow that says: "Hey! Time dilation goes with redshift!"

Redshift goes with frequency shift.

Frequency goes with the energy of a photon.

If gravity fields have a gravitational potential, then they are perfectly suited to change the energy/frequency of a photon.

Equivalence Principle says that gravity and vehicular acceleration both induce time dilation; at least that's what I got out of it.

Basically, we're looking for a "something" that easily manifests photons and also induces time dilation. Wave functions are the closest match. Time Dilation Threads, my terminology, are wave function lines with two endpoints, one is t and the other is t'.

Using time dilation threads, I can quantify gravity flux lines and attempt to tackle the graviational constant of the universe, G.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 02:52 GMT
Jason,

Field theory is much harder than plain QM. Here one encounters infinite sums that do not converge for any practical experimental predictions. Several techniques called renormalization techniques were developed to deal with those infinties. But here is the rub: they do not work for quantizing space-time.

The root cause of renormalization problem of gravity is that zooming in at shorter and shorter distances (or going at higher and higher energies) will reach at some point enough energy to create a black hole and this destroys any convergence. The hard part is dealing with those infinities, and here for example string theory shines because one can actually obtain finite predictions (but other kinds of problems occur with string theory).

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James Putnam replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 03:16 GMT
Dr. Moldoveanu,

It has been several years already since I took a stand, at my website, on string theory and then moved on to other parts of theoretical physics. Too much moves to fast these days for this non-professional to keep up. Keeping this short, I wrote to the effect that string theory, by means of introducing strings, begins by smudging out singularities. I considered that 'smudging', meaning something like smearing a small chalk mark on a chalk board, to putting the fix in at the beginning to avoid the singularity problem. Do you think that the essence of what I wrote is wrong?

In other words, you appear to appreciate the ability of string theory to avoid the singularity problem. Would you say that string theory avoids the problem because it produces a solution or is it the case, as I wrote, that the fix was in right from the beginning? This message is not intended to be confrontational. It is a request for you to please offer your correction to what I have written.

James

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 04:43 GMT
James,

From 10,000 feet, the way string theory avoids singularities is by replacing the basic 3 point Feynman diagram with the so-called pants diagram which has no singular point anywhere. (and if before one minimizes the total length of the particle path, now one minimizes the area traced by closed or open strings.)

"Smudging" the singularities is a common technique in field theory where one uses a smearing function to convert the so-called distribution functions into genuine operators.

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John Merryman wrote on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 02:07 GMT
Jason,

"Hey! Time dilation goes with redshift!"

http://www.physorg.com/news190027752.html

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Jason Wolfe wrote on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 03:28 GMT
John,

Great monkey wrench. I'll have to think about it. Basically, when does time dilation depart from redshift? The photons still redshift, but the time dilation effect of gravity is missing. What if the gravity field is missing? Why would the gravity field be missing? What if the acretion disk is spinning around the supermassive black hole, and this is interfering with the gravity field. I'll have to think about this some more.

Florin,

Summing to infinity might be too many terms and is causing the problem. The highest frequency of a photon is a gamma ray which has a frequency of 5x10^22 Hz. What happens if you make the upper term equivalent to a gamma ray frequency? Yes, it might still be too low, but you can always use a higher (more terms) if you need to.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 05:12 GMT
John,

Thank you so much for the monkey wrench. I still don't know exactly why quasars Doppler shift photons, but don't experience time dilation. However, I had a thought. The highest frequency of light is 10^22 Hz. What is the lowest frequency of light? It's not -10^22Hz. Is it 1Hz? Is it 0.1Hz? Is it 0.0000001Hz? And if it were that low frequency, it wouldn't have any photon energy. However, enough of them might be able to change the frequency of photons passing through them. In other words, what if gravity is an incredibly low frequency photon? Perhaps 0.0000001 Hz. If that is true, then they're not photons anymore. They are more like "time beams". Long beams of light that cause time to speed up a little and slow down a little.

What is cool about "time beams" is that they are just another kind of photon, perhaps similar to a wave function which is a non energized photon anyway. I should get some Occam's razor applauce because now space-time is made out of photons with frequencies from 1Hz to 10^22Hz, but also, wave function looking incredibly low frequency photons that can behave like gravity.

What do you think?

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 11:59 GMT
Jason,

I think light and gravity are opposite sides of a grand cycle. Obviously mass falling into galaxies is radiated out, either as starlight, or the gamma rays and pulsars from the center. The question is the other side of the cycle. The further light travels, the more redshifted it becomes and eventually it all falls beyond the infrared range and I think the background radiation is actually this light from so far away that it's just black body radiation. Now, it has a cut off level of 3.7k. Why? Could there be a phase transition at that level, in which it essentially starts to "condense" out as a form of subatomic particle and start the process of collapse all over again, thus completing the cycle.

Of course a lot of light is absorbed by mass before it gets to this point, but this would be the extreme end of the range.

A further point about time: Any process of constant change, no matter how irregular, could be considered time. The problem would be describing it. Much like describing any random shape or activity is very mathematically difficult. What spacetime is trying to do is provide a regular cycle to what is not a fundamentally regular process. Change happens and there is no larger rhyme or reason, but there are regular patterns, such as the speed of light. The problem is that time is all change, not just the regular change.

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 17:53 GMT
John,

It's a riddle. How can photons (in the terahertz range and very short periods) from quasars be red-shifted, but observational periods of seconds, minutes, days or 28 years not be time dilated. It's a riddle. The answer, I think, points to ultra low frequency photons (.01Hz to 10^-24Hz) because ultra-low frequency photons will act like time dilation threads; such ultra-low frequency photons will be characterized by time dilation. Time dilation is a property of gravity.

Does this make sense.

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 19:42 GMT
Jason,

So basically they move slower? The point at which they acheive C is less, due to drag/interia/gravity?

Another thought which occurred to me about the smoothness of background radiation and an inflationary stage being used to explain it. This preliminary stage might be used to explain why all energy is relatively evenly distributed across the universe, but it wouldn't explain why this background radiation is currently so smooth, because if this layer of energy is primordial, than all the galaxies, stars super novas, pulsars, etcetc, would have condensed out of it and logically left it ragged, torn and generally scattered around. It would not be smooth due to a primordial stage, but much more likely the effect of some ongoing, vital process that would create a form of physical constant, or phase transition at this level. Such as that as radiation it is only stable up to this temperature and beyond that would start to form sub-atomic particles.

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 12:43 GMT
Florin.

Thank you. I see the dilemma as searching for the simplest Occam's razor unification solution in a sea of simplistic red herrings. (to make a fish pie of mixed metaphors!).

In my parallel profession (and also in yacht racing) we mistrust the term 'expert' as it normally betrays complacency and lack of vision. After 7 years training the most important thing we learn is how much there is still to learn. That does build good 'intuition' as you say, perhaps mainly memory 'pattern matching' from experience and wisdom, but to find the realities of nature we need to explore new territory - "Boldly go where no man..(how poor the new politically correct "no ONE" has gone before' sounds!) An explorer may use intuition in the Amazon forests, but how far can he trust it on a new planet? Will his college training and degrees be much use then? I believe ability to learn, understand and assimilate new things, vision and attitude of mind are still poorly taught and underrated.

Nature is one. Only we humans have 'divided' it into different areas of science, 'disciplines' and scales. To find how it really fits together and works surely we need far more than just 'experts' at each discipline.

Peter

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 7, 2010 @ 17:43 GMT
Hi Peter,

What do you think of the approach of describing space-time with ultra low photon frequencies in the mico-hertz, nano-hertz range. The idea is that when a typical photon (radio-waves through gamma rays) encounters a nano-hertz photon, the typical photon will experience time dilation, which is the true nature of gravity. This is about as Occam razor simple as your gonna get. Fourier series rules the universe from the ultrahigh 10^24Hz to the ultralow 10^-24 Hz. For a universe that places such emphasis on

$e^{i \pi}$

Can ultralow frequencies hold the answer?

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 12:11 GMT
Do you think it exists a project about the building of eternal space ship, the best form is the sphere,mainly the fields around, the rotations always...

Now it's possible to create an eternal space ship .Me personnally I am ok to go.

Because this Earth frankly hihihhi in fact Star trek is not so sciences fiction than that.In fact I think it's the future also the discovery of others planets and our Earth is like a big harmonious garden.

In fact the exterior of the space ship and thye fields, sphericals are essentials like shields, after it's ok if the intrinsic system is autarcic....VEGETAL MULTIPLICATION....Harmonious ecosystems.....autarcy ..CH4 IS THE FUTURE......composting .......LIGHT MASS ENERGY.

H2O recycling and purification and all is ok it's eternal for the discovery of our Universal sphere.

Steve

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Jason Wolfe wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 06:09 GMT
Florin,

I don't know if you took a look at my previous posts about nanohert photons acting like a time dilation field, and therefore, acting like a gravity field.

In response to your statement: "The root cause of renormalization problem of gravity is that zooming in at shorter and shorter distances (or going at higher and higher energies) will reach at some point enough energy to create a black hole and this destroys any convergence. "

If shorter and shorter wavelengths is leading to black holes, then that might be the wrong approach. What if you go to larger and larger wavelengths which give you smaller and smaller energies. Can you sum from 1Hz down to 1 nanohert? That won't give you black holes, but it might give you a time dilation field. If you get a time dilation field, then how is that so different from a gravity field?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 12:48 GMT
Jason,

What you describe is the infrared (IR) domain; what I am talking about is the ultraviolet (UV) range. IR is not the problem, as the energies one talks about there are miniscule because the energy is proportional with frequency. The infinities problem occurs when one is moving higher and higher in energy: the contribution from this domain overwhelms all the prior lower energy contributions summed together and you get a runaway effect. In the end all answers come back infinite meaning that the perturbation approach is meaningless.

Compare 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+...=2 with 1+1/2+1/3+1/4+... = infinity

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 13:20 GMT
Indeed we go towards a finite system due to the c limit and on the other side we see a fractal of waves for light towards a kind iof infinity but Dear Florin we must assume what this infinity is just due to a lack of perception and technologies.In fact it's not a real infinity.

The fractal of light has one sense indeed.Now the serie of fractalization is probably finite, important but finite.It's essential for the mass light polarization of evolution.

Indeed The total number of a system of photons of all ferquencies is not constant ....but not for PAULI HIHIHI .different frequences yes but all at c speed.....All that can be easily seen with properties of photon system.

It's the gravitation a.....thus the thermo also ....PV ...T ....AND THUS we see the mass which fractalizes the light and implies frequences.....The photons can be absorbed and emitted with these differece frequences all linked with GR QM and PURE THERMO....ROTATING SPINNING SPHERES AND SENSE OF POLARIZATION.........FERMI WILL AGREE NO .....g dv=8piV/c³ v²dv.....now we can correlate with BES aplied to photons at my knowledge of course and humbly.SIRTLING HELPING of course...........AND WE ARRIVE AFTER SOME STEPS WHICH I DON4T WRITE HERE .....at the Planck radiation equation. u=8pih/c³ v³/e(exp hv/kT-1)........it's always in 3D and purelly linked with the rotations of spheres and their pure volumes of evolution and polarization....if some others rational laws are inserted .....like "wien" and "Stef/Boltzm" equations.

That becomes very relevant for the fractlization of this light by this said GRAVITY.but in one sense and for the radiations absorpt and emmiss......

The PV and T ...MORE m and rotating spheres and their pure number ........show all proprotionalities.lIKE MASS AND T and P V ARE LINKED WE SEE WHY MASS IS THERMODYNAMICALLY FRACTALIZES IN ITS PURE WAVE LENGHTS.

That doesn't mean a fractalization of the number of spheres of a photon.It's TOTALLY DIFFERENT .

Regards

Steve

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 17:17 GMT
Florin,

F: "The infinities problem occurs when one is moving higher and higher in energy: the contribution from this domain overwhelms all the prior lower energy contributions summed together and you get a runaway effect. "

I don't live in a black hole and neither do you. Why would you count frequencies that you see?

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 17:19 GMT
I mean, why would you count frequencies that you Don't see?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 18:39 GMT
Jason,

Actually, we may well be living inside a black hole and not yet be aware of it as the radius is determined by the mass inside it. Also I don't see rainforest animals and still I count them when I want to see the rate of extinction by deforestation.

But those are comments beside the point. In the absence of a mathematically closed solution, physicists do perturbation theory starting with an easy solvable case and adding perturbative corrections. The problem for quantum gravity is that 1. we don't have any closed form solution, and 2. the perturbation approach which works very well for the other 3 forces, does not converge, meaning it is ill defined here. So it is back to the drawing board. Object to the perturbation approach? OK, but please feel free to come up with a working alternative. The burden of proof is on you to convince the physics community that you are right, not on the physics community to prove that you are wrong.

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 00:38 GMT
Hi Florin,

you said to Jason, "The burden of proof is on you to convince the physics community that you are right, not on the physics community to prove that you are wrong." I take that to apply to all of us.

What do the physics community require in terms of proof? Would allowing partial non determinism, free will, both causality and non simultaneity, rendering irrelevant the time paradoxes,corresponding with both Einstein and Newton's models, allowing finality of events, fitting with uncertainty and classical reality upon observation, linking biology and physics, having both A and B series of time (as Mc Taggart said was necessary in any complete model of time) be sufficient or does it still smell like a red herring? Is there something else, something specific, that must still be demonstrated? The solution to the ERP paradox perhaps or would even that be insufficient?

Will only an experiment suffice? Or is it possible to accumulate a sufficiently convincing body of evidence by showing the problems it solves, paradoxes it overcomes and that it still allows everything to be as it is observed to be, so still corresponds with foundational science ideas? I would like to concentrate on those important issues I am missing.

Please don't say that it is just philosophy and therefore irrelevant. An A series concept of time (philosophy) and a philosophical concept of a observed reality that is "really real" (and that which is not observed is unreal or quasi existent or supernatural) is integrated throughout physics.Perhaps it is the current generally accepted philosophy that needs re-examination, to see if it really is better than the solution offered.

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 19:48 GMT
Jason

I see what you are thinking. Check out that tree but my money's not on the answer being up it. There's some good (real) science around about resonant frequencies in relation to base frequencies. My paper currently under consideration explores this in terms of em wave 'octaves.' As I discussed before in both the R and UV there are absorption bands with local superluminal group velocity (n = 1>) viewed from certain frames. A gamma wave may indeed have some interaction with a radio wave at perfect harmonios resonance (possibly more like descant!) but this is essentially effect not cause.

You should perhaps consider dilation more carefully. The discrete field model demonstrates that dilation is actually equivalent to blue shift not red shift. It makes little odds as both are relevant, and contraction also becomes a simple frame transition analogue as already well described by the calculations of Christian Doppler.

There was a missing link that had relegated Doppler shift to a mere 'matter wave' phenomena, this is an actual quantum boundary mechanism for Doppler shift, related to harmonics and Stokes etc. Scattering. But it needs to be considered in terms of the, obviously accurate, world Georgina is trying to describe, not our current approximation, to be comprehended.

You seem to be skirting around the real body of medium described by the set of co-ordinates, a bit more like a swimming pool on a cruise ship than 3 lines in space joining points (what are lines and points anyway!?) You've dipped your toe to test the oscillations, but haven't yet dived in. You can't know what it's like till you get in and try it!

There are few there at present but it will get very busy soon so don't blame me if you don't try it now!

Peter

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 20:22 GMT
Peter,

I had wanted to say good luck with your rainbow paper and thank you for your encouragement.I lost the end of that thread where you had posted.I now need to also say thank you so much for so clearly demonstrating your support for the idea of an object reality co existing with experienced reality.I am encouraged.

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Jason Wolfe wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 21:31 GMT
Peter,

There was a time dilation equation that written in terms of the gravity field or acceleration field over a distance. It looks like T_D = \frac{t'}{t} = e^{\frac{gh}{c^2}}

$T_D = \frac{t$

The idea is that a time dilation equation is equivalent to a gravitational potential. When a photon passes through it, it is frequency shifted because both the time dilation equation and the photon are described with exponentials. I am noticing that the difference between time dilation and photons is that time dilation is a real component of an exponential, photons are the imaginary component. Together, they make up a complex exponential.

I'm still developing the idea; I hope you won't mind the incomprehensible chatter while I look for the important part.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 03:13 GMT
Florin,

While looking up quantum gravity, I cam across this description in wikipedia.

"The theory must be able to predict the outcome of situations where both quantum effects and strong-field gravity are important (at the Planck scale, unless large extra dimension conjectures are correct). "

Here is my approach. The building blocks of space-time are photons and wavefunctions. Gravity is caused by Time Dilation Threads, which are a form of wave functions. When photons move along the radius of a gravity field, they are moving up/down a time dilation thread (a gravity flux line). Time dilation changes the frequency as the photon traverses the time dilation thread. That change in frequency exactly equates to a change in gravitational potential.

In other words, photons gain or lose energy as they traverse the gravity flux line (a.k.a. Time Dilation Thread).

Photons (and wave functions) define space-time. If you're looking for space-time at the Planck scale, there's a good bet that there are no existing photons with that much energy.

Space-time does not exist at the Planck scale.

Has anyone ever detected a photon with more than 10^22 Hertz?

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 05:04 GMT
Jason,

Not to discourage you, but if you believe your approach is correct, you need to put it in a mathematical form. Then you need to perform computations which should 1. match existing results, and 2. answer new questions.

If you do not do the steps above, your approach will always gets dismissed as handwaving and as a narrative speculation.

On the 10^22 question, I am not an experimentalist and I don't know. However, I think the photon frequency can go all the way up to the inverse of Planck time.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 05:12 GMT
Florin,

If there were photons more energetic then gamma rays then wouldn't quarks and gluons take on a well defined mechanical quality? Instead, quarks/gluons/hadrons are just a bunch of waves bouncing off each other. If there really were photons more energetic than gamma rays, then elemental particles would be little planets floating around with definitive features on them. But we don't observe that.

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 06:39 GMT
Florin,

I don't think that photons with significantly more energy than gamma rays can exist. You said yourself, if the photon energy is too high, that little piece of space-time just collapses into a black hole. If G, the gravitational constant were smaller, you could get higher photon energy.

Anyway, I don't think we're gonna find Lilyput buried somewhere between two quarks.

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Georgina Parry wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 09:20 GMT
Florin,

thank you for taking the time to reply.

So it would seem this forum is a waste of physicists time, and a waste of everyone else's time too. (I had thought that perhaps it had actually been set up to find novel answers to those questions. How silly of me.) If thats the case I have better things to do with my time too.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 10:13 GMT
Georgina,

They may not like to admit it, but they need us to exercise (un)common sense with respect to these physics equations. Someone has to discuss these ideas and say "hey, ya' know, maybe the Many Worlds Interpretation, time travel, 26 spatial dimensions, universes inside of black holes, and photons with infinite frequency are just a little bit impractical, although very imaginative.

Actually, speaking of magic, I thought of a clever way to simulate magic with a physics approach. Create a box that can send and receive physical objects from a far away place by wrapping them in a c-c' 2D brane. On the inside is the space-time brane. On the outside is the c' superluminal space-time brane. Once wrapped, that object can pass through hyperspace without being noticed by observers in space-time.

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John Merryman replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 11:50 GMT
Georgina, Jason,

I think the professional physics community is insular enough that it isn't going to seriously consider questions from the outside. Their evolution seems larely a function of responding to experimental observation. It's certainly standard operating procedure for any reasonably secialized field. I for one have to respect that reality.

The issue here though, is that perspective can often be a function of distance from the subject in a way that those up close and personal don't have, while those at a distance don't see the details obvious to those much closer to the subject.

What seems to be gradual progress from one perspective can seem like they are painting themselves into a corner to those on the outside.

Time well be the ultimate judge and the result will be the breakthrough those on the inside expect, or the bubble popping as we seem to think.

This particular forum is a bit of a hiccup in the system, as it does have actual inside connection, which are not taken seriously. My suspician is that it was a feature in the original funding to have an open forum and since it hasn't been a great deal of trouble to maintain and our moderaters are willing to do so. If the larger community took this seriously, then they would attract a large audience and then those of us not particularly in the mainstream would likely get pushed out in one way or another. Catch 22.

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T H Ray wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 11:59 GMT
Georgina,

Why so harsh with Florin, when all that he's done -- by my reading -- is to give sound advice? The rules of science publishing are after all, well known: make novel predictions (or retrodictions in the cases of, e.g., evolutionary biology and string theory), propose experiments. Present a mathematical theory that incorporates the physical theory and result.

I assume that this is in part what you asked Florin to reply to:

"Will only an experiment suffice? Or is it possible to accumulate a sufficiently convincing body of evidence by showing the problems it solves, paradoxes it overcomes and that it still allows everything to be as it is observed to be, so still corresponds with foundational science ideas? I would like to concentrate on those important issues I am missing."

What you're missing is that drawing conclusions from a body of evidence -- however convincing -- is an inductive exercise. No scientific conclusion is based on evidence. It is based on theory supported (or falsified) by evidence. One does not induce a scientific conclusion.

To give an exaggerated example -- suppose I claim that the sun is Apollo driving his fiery chariot across the heavens. That claim "... still allows everything to be as it is observed to be ..." until someone asks me why we never see Apollo. So I have to come up with an explanation for Apollo's invisibility, which entails explanations of the nature of invisible forces, and so on. If I am successful, I will eventually get to the point where both Apollo and his chariot are superfluous. I will have explained celestial movement without recourse to assumptions of cause. The history of science is filled with examples that obviate such assumptions -- two of the more prominent are phlogiston and the luminiferous aether.

Among the posts in this forum, one is constantly subjected to claims of causation that in principle do not differ from Apollo, phlogiston or aether. They may not be wrong; they just aren't scientific. To scientists, this approach is a backward step.

"Please don't say that it is just philosophy and therefore irrelevant."

Relevant or not, it IS philosophy. The philosophy journals are replete with inductive conclusions of the type you present. Why not start there in your quest to publish? -- as the theoretical gaps are bridged, and superfluous assumptions pruned, perhaps there's a solid scientific, falsifiable, theory there that can be adapted to a mathematical model. (And FWIW in my personal opinion, to the extent that your ideas deal with brain mechanics, I think they have a fair chance.)

Tom

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 19:36 GMT
Tom,

I was not harsh with Florin, imo, I merely took what he said to mean it doesn't matter how much time you have spent explaining and defending your ideas, how reasonable, no one with any credibility pays attention to what is said on this blog site or any other forum.I am annoyed with myself for wasting so much time on a pointless endeavor, -developing the initial(inadequate)ideas and explanations publicly-, when I should have wasted it writing scientific papers that no one would want to publish.I am taking his advice as a member of FQXI who should know.

Mine is an interdisciplinary approach. It is not pure philosophy, it is not pure biology, it is not pure physics.It does not fall exclusively in any one of those domains, so no one discipline will look favorably upon it.

I am not trying to induce scientific conclusions but demonstrate that the foundational theory on which physics is built needs re examination. As by alteration of the foundational premise that past, present and future exist outside of subjective experience and observation is the full measure of reality, then the paradoxes and foundational questions can be answered. Not tinkering on the edges.Its not about what some imaginary particle is doing in a double digit dimension. Why are the foundational questions even asked if foundational answers are not wanted? (Rhetorical question to emphasize my annoyance.)

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 15, 2010 @ 21:32 GMT
Tom,

you said ...."No scientific conclusion is based on evidence. It is based on theory supported (or falsified) by evidence. One does not induce a scientific conclusion."

I assume by that you mean no conclusion is based on evidence -alone- without out interpretation within a scientific model or theory of some kind. No problem with that.

Tom, All,

Darwin certainly...

view entire post

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James Putnam replied on Dec. 15, 2010 @ 22:13 GMT
Georgina,

"...when the first organisms were able to perceive their environment through the input of data from photons. They then perceived objects distributed in both space and time. ..."

And here lies the the demise of mechanical ideology. How did any living thing make any sense out of photon data? Darwin recognized the problem and did not try to gloss over it. He understood that the limit of discussing evolution lies with answering the question of intelligence. Darwin had "...nothing to say about..." the origin of intelligence. That was an intelligent remark.

James

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 12:51 GMT
Georgina.

You deserve more support. Florin; Have you yet looked outside the box at the differences between original concrete reality and that perceived locally and differently at each point on the surface of light cones and in each inertial frame?

Many theoretical physicists seem to have heads too buried in the sands of imaginary detail and self centric views to logically analyse "..what nature HAS revealed to us." Which is of far more import. I think you are different to many and may be prepared to do so, (but the jury's still out!)

When we're shown a film crash, or 'crash test', from 5 different cameras, some in the car, each reality is different. If another camera took a close-up from a co-moving car beside the crash car it would see something different still, an innocent stationary car viciously attacked by a moving wall! On the evidence of that view, and film the wall would be convicted.

Interestingly we also find the cars length is contracted (blue shifted) and much inertial energy is expended when trying to enter the inertial frame of the wall. - but I digress.

The point is that all personal realities are different, to someone 1,862,000 miles away the crash happened 10 seconds later, and to someone moving away at 0.5c it happened in slow motion. The only 'real' reality was the concrete reality no one person can observe. But it could be calculated precisely if we know relative motion and the speed of light.

This is what Georgina has seen, (IMO) and it deserves not to be dismissed just because professional physicists must know better, increasing divisiveness.

I suggest our current poor approximation of reality may be less helped by wild unfalsifiable speculation and a 'closed community' attitude than by the more holistic and open approach of improving our conceptual and intellectual understanding of what we do see, and why (a la Bragg), even if some may write it off distainfully as merely philosophy so 'less important'.

Perhaps if we used more real evidence in developing our scientific theories they may be more falsifiable, and of some real value towards progress? Has anyone here tried to understand Georgina's important point, and critiqued scientifically?

Peter

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 12:55 GMT
Georgina.

You deserve more support. Florin; Have you yet looked outside the box at the differences between original concrete reality and that perceived locally and differently at each point on the surface of light cones and in each inertial frame?

Many theoretical physicists seem to have heads too buried in the sands of imaginary detail and self centric views to logically analyse "..what nature HAS revealed to us." Which is of far more import. I think you are different to many and may be prepared to do so, (but the jury's still out!)

When we're shown a film crash, or 'crash test', from 5 different cameras, some in the car, each reality is different. If another camera took a close-up from a co-moving car beside the crash car it would see something different still, an innocent stationary car viciously attacked by a moving wall! On the evidence of that view, and film the wall would be convicted.

Interestingly we also find the cars length is contracted (blue shifted) and much inertial energy is expended when trying to enter the inertial frame of the wall. - but I digress.

The point is that all personal realities are different, to someone 1,862,000 miles away the crash happened 10 seconds later, and to someone moving away at 0.5c it happened in slow motion. The only 'real' reality was the concrete reality no one person can observe. But it could be calculated precisely if we know relative motion and the speed of light.

This is what Georgina has seen, (IMO) and it deserves not to be dismissed just because professional physicists must know better, increasing divisiveness.

I suggest our current poor approximation of reality may be less helped by wild unfalsifiable speculation and a 'closed community' attitude than by the more holistic and open approach of improving our conceptual and intellectual understanding of what we do see, and why (a la Bragg), even if some may write it off distainfully as merely philosophy so 'less important'.

Perhaps if we used more real evidence in developing our scientific theories they may be more falsifiable, and of some real value towards progress? Has anyone here tried to understand Georgina's important point, and critiqued scientifically?

Peter

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Steve Dufourny wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 14:25 GMT
When I knew FQXi ,dear Georgina, I presented my theory .

I remember that you spoke about a hypersphere, could you elaborate a little please.

You know when we speak about sphere I love, thus it could be interesting to extrapolate a little this .

Steve

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T H Ray wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 14:43 GMT
Peter,

If Georgina's theory were really as you say, it would be dead in the water, because transformation operations in relativity theory already explain the effects you cite. These are classical, and well understood.

What she has actually said, however, is that brain wave activity is independent of particle activity external to one's perception of it. Therefore, there is something unique to biology that skews the measurement standards of conventional physics, which implies a hidden reality separate from what one models in perception, even though measurement agrees with physical theory.

Personally, I prefer the conventional view of a unified reality, consistent with J. Bronowski: "All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses." Quantum measurements are unitary.

The persistent claims here, that silence implies that one has neither heard nor understood, are not supported. It is just tiresome to have to give the same repeated reply to every repeated claim.

Tom

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 14:52 GMT
Like it's tiring to listen always so many irrationalities by a 'named' Rationalist.

In fact it's ironic to see pseudo-teachers ....

In all case sure Georgina is more global than you and see better the whole than you.

Steve

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Ray Munroe replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 15:32 GMT
I like Tom's point:

Personally, I prefer the conventional view of a unified reality, consistent with J. Bronowski: "All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses."

The point is that the underlying likeness IS HIDDEN. If these similarities were obvious, then Einstein and the following generation would have figured out everything (they were certainly intelligent enough!). This is why a true "rationalist" must look for the cracks in the foundations of physics/science.

Modern science has too many ad hoc phenomena, and too many paradoxes. IMHO, Modern science is SEMI-RATIONAL in its attempt to describe experiments (As a phenomenologist, I can tell you that there are data cuts (what to leave in? what to leave out?) and modeling of phenomena involved, so experiment is not as fundamental as we are lead to believe), but it is IRRATIONAL in the way that it accepts these paradoxical shortcomings, and makes up special ad hoc cases rather than search for true unity...

Steve - Please publish your ideas. If they are too large for an essay or research paper, then write a book. I self-published some of my ideas on Lulu.com. It was simple and inexpensive enough. I would be willing to proof-read your English and pay the minor publishing fees (I think its about US\$50 to buy an ISBN number and distribute it as a print-on-demand book on Amazon's website). You need serious feedback from more than a handful of scientists and science-enthusiasts on this blogsite to determine if your ideas really are fundamental, and to determine if your ideas really will survive the test of time. My opinion is that you have cornered yourself into 3-dimensions - time exists - don't ignore it (actually I think you hid it in your spin). But don't quit your dream based on my opinion...

Have Fun!

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Steve Dufourny replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 16:08 GMT
Ahahahaha that is that Mr The extradimensionalist of Las Vegas ahahah GO MAKE SURF I REPEAT .....ahaha a pure vanitious without foundamerntals .

PS my theory will rest, and people has already seen , you know the real scientists, not the others pseudos parts.

And of course your theories and them of friends ahahah let's me laugh ,let's me laugh.It's not theories that but pure sciences fiction essays.

ps 2 I don't need write books and others me (ALL IS SAID) , like in lulu and others no but we dream there my friend.If you are a rationalist , publish a book about that and after we shall discuss perhaps.

Ahahaha Ex and this and that .....ahahah it's difficult to stop laughing.

DON4T FORGET GO MAKE SURF AND YOU ARE SO ANGRY AGAINST ME ?PROBABLY DUE TO YOUR VANITY.Please see above you, you are christian I hope, because you have said me , Steve you are more young ....soccer ...but the usa is more strong,it's your words Ray but don't kill me I like life ahahah you can be a nice looser with your friends, in all case it's well tried, you know Ray all american doesn't think like you, it's a free country with this two extremums.Thus of course we shall see.

If you knew ,if you knew Ray, you think what , here it's transparent thus let's go, that begins only.

REVOLUTION SPHERIZATION

IRRATIONAL LIKE ALWAYS RAY LIKE ALWAYS .with this and that a dirac here a ,,, there, a z here, a y there, a x here, Who after hihihi

Dr Dr Dr ahahahalalalalal

In fact you are so comic with your friends so comics, but like you are a team and me I am alone, you shall drink a belgian beer during one of your strategy discussion, Verlinde is invited, Hooft,Susskind,lisi,lubos,you of course,after Doc, and also Th and Lawrence,...Florin I doubt but perhaps if Mr Witten and Mr Baez contact him,......hihihih very interesting all that, fortunally it exists real RATIONALISTS YOU KNOW THE ROYAL SOCIETY and others, but perhaps you don't know well the good books.

At my opinion, the system of education in USA is weak my friend, really,you give a bad image of your country Ray, really(it's perhaps the reason why it exists many intrinsic problems in your country.).Perhaps Ray before speaking so much about nothing, you can study really what are natural sciences.

Don't forget GO MAKE SURF AND publish on lulu and make conferences at Las Vegas .hihihih irriting thios belgian, irriting.

Steve

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Steve Dufourny wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 16:19 GMT
Infact ,with your friends, it lacks the essential for the understanding of physics, the universality and the rule of entropy inside mass.

How can you ponder corrects theories if you do not understand the whole.Even the relativity you do not understand .Incredible

Thus of course your details are falses also because you forget the essential unfortunally.

But you can evolve and study still.

Good luck.

Steve

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sTEVE dUFOURNY wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 17:48 GMT
WELL .....COMPLEMENATRITY AND UNCERTAINTY .

It exists sevreal uncertainty principles of course......momment...position....

Einstein and Bohr understood the meaning of the principle. "A state which only exists for a short time can not have a stable energy."

What I find very surprising is the interpretation of these uncertainties by people,

it could be well to extrapolate with the time energy relation uncertainty????

ΔE requires a time interval Δt > h / ΔE......BECAUSE THERE MY SPINNING ENTANGLED SPHERES ANSWER FOR MOMMENTUM AND OTHERS....the number of entanglement....mvV constant .....

WELL LET's laugh like Landau and its joke about time ....DR Cosmic Ray YOU ARE INVITED WITH YOUR FRIENDS FOR A DISCUSSION ABOUT OUR FOUNDAMENTALS and this time with the uncretainty.

I am going to show you A road..HIHIHIHI I LOVE THERMO..Landau for example..He ....superfluidity ...superconductivity....phonons and rotons ....after you take the wisdom and rationality of LONDON....FEYNMAN LANDAU ...TISZA ALSO..AND YOU SEE THE TIME CORRECTLY WITH ITS PURE DURATION....BEC HELPING OF COURSE.

WHERE ARE BIZARES THINGS ....NOWHERE....BECAUSE THE RATIONALITY EXISTS EVEN TOWARDS THE PlANCK SCALE.

The uncertainty they say and of course the decoherences of positions, mommentums.....and reversible time......where are we oh my god.But what do you do ?????

Indeed many confounds the effects on gravity on clocks with others things,

Frankly Borh has right ....he said that the probability distributions are fundamental and irreducible.aND THAT IT4S NOT UNCERTAIN

Steve

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PLATO replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 18:21 GMT
Steve is right about this: "Frankly Borh has right ....he said that the probability distributions are fundamental and irreducible.aND THAT IT4S NOT UNCERTAIN'.

The physicists here would rather deny reality than admit the facts. The uncertainty is a requirement of imagination and memory -- the narrow, shifting, and variable aspects of our interactive and fundamentally quantum mechanical nature.

Now, this is balanced with a highly ordered structure/form, of course, that balances and unifes gravity and electromagnetism, as I have shown.

The body is the source of unification theory in physics.

Bell's theorem: there is an underlying fabric of reality that is invisible and non-local. What of this?

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Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 18:33 GMT
I think what Tom and others are saying is that these new ideas need to be written up in mathematical format and submitted to a physics journal where they can be scrutinized more carefully by the qualified authorities in the field of physics.

While that standard might be difficult to reach, it is nevertheless the accepted standard.

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 20:41 GMT
Jason,

So physicists are incapable of comprehending the English language now. Philosophy and biology is OK in English because that is irrelevant (to the physicist) but physics must be in maths before it can be scrutinized.???

This is philosophy, biology and physics, not just physics. It is not a question of whether I can write sums to a professors satisfaction. Its more a question of whether he/she can realize the relevance, of a multidisciplinary reevaluation of the foundations of science, to physics. Can he/she get his/her head out of the space-time model and see that it is a representation of reality not concrete reality itself.

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 21:12 GMT
Georgina,

I wonder that myself. If you're gonna engineer something, then yes, the math is important. You need to be able to count newtons, amperes, meters, etc... But they haven't even begun to wonder: "how is the physics implemented?" That's what's important. Most of these physicists think that the laws of nature are implemented comes from a math equation; but nobody ever measured a minus sign.

It might sound a little monotonous now when I say that the physical universe is completely implemented with photons and wave functions. Everyone must wonder: "what are wave functions?"

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Dr. Cosmic Ray replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 21:21 GMT
Dear Georgina,

Don't shoot the messenger because you don't like the message.

As Jason correctly points out - Publishing in peer-review journals is the standard, and these publications are often full of mathematics. It doesn't hurt to convert your best idea into mathematics, tables, figures or whatever might help the reader better understand the concept (in addition to your best English description). Different people learn in dfferent ways, but professional physicists often have a bias towards at least calculus-level mathematics. Theorists may use more advanced mathematics.

In contrast, popular physics books often turn to the other extreme. They might mention E=mc^2 so that the reader draws an analogy with Einstein's ideas, but they fear that every equation will reduce the popularity (and/or readability)of the book by another 10%. Generally, these books are written by professional physicists who have proven themselves in peer-review journals, and know that they can drop the mathematical onslaught every once in a while.

Don't fight the inevitable. Do whatever you need to do to convince as many people possible that your idea might be valid. If you don't know the math, then collaborate with someone who does know the math.

Have Fun!

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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 19:10 GMT
Tom.

I entirely disagree that; "transformation operations in relativity theory already explain the effects you cite. These are classical, and well understood." The problem is all the anomalies and paradoxes Ray rightly refers to.

I was recently told by a retired lecturer friend that there was no point in a paper on chromatic dispersion and refraction as it was already 'fully explained, mathematically'. It confirmed a horrible suspicion I'd been trying not to believe, and the problem seems more rife than I could have imagined. Luckily I regained my faith from another, a professor who's trying to improve university physics education to allow teachers/lecturers to give better conceptual understanding, could confirm that lack of knowledge of the real mechanism for refraction of light was one of his greatest bugbears.

IMHO, believing we already have the final full answers to things is a common human trait, but possibly the most counter productive to advancement. We'd all be suicidal if we cared too much, But the intelligent ones among us are to prepared to accept and ignore anomalies, so bravo Cosmic Ray for admitting we don't really yet know what cosmic Rays are!

And Tom; Georgina's beautiful theory combined with the DFM can end up explaining the (M87 and 90+ other) superluminal gas jets, lensing anomalies and the SR paradoxes, but if nobody is prepared to examine it they will never discover how, or earn the right to judge. Do we believe that is how science is meant to work?

Peter

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T H Ray replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 19:30 GMT
We know what cosmic rays are, we're just not sure where they come from.

And I must reiterate -- data without a mathematical theory to incorporate it, is meaningless.

Tom

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Dr. Cosmic Ray replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 19:49 GMT
We know what cosmic rays are (relativistic ions), but we don't have good enough explainations for the "knee" in their energy spectrum, or for the highest energy cosmic rays. A proper TOE should help explain these phenomena such that they don't seem ad-hoc.

Have Fun!

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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 21:12 GMT
Peter,

thank you once again for your support. I think Florin is right. I need to do some really respectable writing and hope that I find qualified authorities who are open minded enough to read it. I won't find them here.

In the meantime the ideas are out in the public domain, published here, for others to examine should they wish to do so. Writing here has helped me to iron out some of my own misunderstanding and find better ways of wording the description of the ideas. So it was not a complete waste of time though a lot of time wasted non the less.

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