Posted on 08/18/2009 10:37:08 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Great article, thank you.
It’s not that the electron might be here or there, it’s that both locations make sense simultaneously, until the nature of the observation thereof chooses one over the other, making the other nonsensical and thus nonexistent.
Kinda like $1.00 in change could be 4 quarters or 10 dimes - both answers are correct, until something dictates the reality includes one dime or one quarter, which in turn dictates the reality of the rest of the coins accordingly.
QM tells us we’re asking the wrong questions.
His theory explains why the “probability” component of QM isn’t.
Sorta like how part of Algebra didn’t make any sense until someone came to grips with “square root of -1” - the answers are real numbers, but to reach them you have to go thru “imaginary numbers”. Likewise, to solve real-world physics you have to go thru the “imaginary space” of quantum mechanics.
Yes, the "reality" set is always static...until it changes and becomes the new reality.
However, in the "unreality" set...all "change" and all potential states exist. Since we are in the reality set, we can only see reality.
However, we can imagine unreality.
Sheesh. That's a boatload of conceptual thinking to digest over the next decade or so...
Beautifully stated! If the neat little box of reality begins to bulge and have hair-balls sticking out of it, just get a bigger box and stuff the whole thing into it. Works until it happens again...
You were correct!
He rejects superposition then says QM is incomplete. But offers no way to find out how to complete it, or if it can be supplanted.
We already knew that QM is talking about an infinite space/infinite dimensional model that has far more possibilities than the solutions that (might appear to) match the observables.
Some people call them eigenvalues. He calls them “invariant sets”.
You say potato...
I gathered that the reality portion was that which is static regardless of dimensionality or measurability (i.e. the atomic weight of X is Y). The unreality was that which is dynamic or incapable of accurate measure dependent upon the dimensionality or measurability.
...ok, now I’m confused.
Besides, this seems to be a rehash of the “hidden variable” theory.
I’d love to see this guy in the ring with J. S. Bell!!
Sooooooo does this mean the guy can tell me who’s gonna win the Super Bowl?
B4L8r
I think, therefore I am. Or not. ;^)
In my field, electrical engineering, when finding mathematical solutions, we would always end up with the real part and the imaginary part.
We would ignore the imaginary part as an unreal artifact.
I just can't agree. I believe that this paper points to a new way of understanding much. I have seen variants of this general postulation from the state space side which contains all possible outcomes from the beginning of time. The reality that we can observe and live in is the result of the collapse of this greater set of possibilities into actualities that we see as the flow of time.
This paper takes this general concept that has been around and more carefully defines it and relates it to the most vexing questions of "working" quantum mechanics and thus clears away the paradoxes and muddles that point to completely illogical conclusions from the view of standard reasoning, but are completely possible from a quantum mechanical stand point.
This theory explains why what is ... is.. and what is not is not, by proposing a set of possibilities that are, if you would, meant to be.
Now he may or may not be correct about this.. for ultimately this might lead to some sense of pre-destination, but as they state in the article, the system he proposes allows for intention, human interaction, other interaction to determine the state, like picking one chute rather than the other in a water park which points reality in that direction never to return to the same choice point again.
Bob Coeke of Oxford University states: "What makes this really interesting is that it gets away from the usual debates over multiple universes and hidden variables and so on. It suggests there might be an underlying physical geometry that physics has just missed, which is radical and very positive". He added that "Palmer manages to explain some quantum phenomena, but he hasn't yet derived the whole rigid structure of the theory. This is really necessary."
“Can fractals make sense of the quantum world?” by Mark Buchanan
What we have here is a swipe at an explanation and not the whole explanation, but it is sufficiently pleasing that it merits noting and when the whole is proposed, it is very likely that a prediction can be made that can be rejected that would not otherwise be obvious.
Stated very imprecisely, what you are describing is nothing more than the Feynman Path Integral Formulation. Not new.
Possibly, but I think not. The article states, "... the invariant set is in part characterized by the experiments that humans perform on it, which is to say that experimenters do indeed play a key role in defining states of physical reality."
This is a fancy way of putting the rather common-sense position that actions have consequences. Further, however, it lends a temporal aspect to reality -- "the invariant set" is not static per se, but rather unfolds as "observers" (however defined) interact with the existing invariant set.
The concept of predictability fits nicely into this structure: the fact of my deciding to do a thing, at a particular point in time, closes off other possible actions; the reduced set of actions will fall in the vicinity of a future "path," which gets wider with distance from the decision point.
Of course, none of this is particularly new -- it's been the plot of many a sci-fi novel -- but if Mr. Palmer has managed to formalize it in a useful way, that would indeed be new.
Unfortunately, if the "new theory" actually "gets away" from this -- which I seriously doubt it does -- it cannot possibly be correct. Belle's Theorem is not an argument: it is a rigorously correct mathematical result. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox is not a paradox at all: it is a description of what actually happens in our world. Claiming that the correlated spin of one particle doesn't really effect the other at a distance because this is simply "the reality" and the other possible correlated spin state is "not a reality" is tautological.
To take a simpler example: The behavior of sufficiently smooth functions on their boundaries completely determines their behavior throughout the volumes in which they are defined. This is a (admittedly imprecise statement of a) mathematical fact. Consequently we can describe our physics as happening throughout the volume of space-time, or, if we desire, we can consider that reality an illusion for something that is happening simply on the boundary of the universe with the same physical laws (suitably mathematically rephrased on that boundary). This has led to some silly articles about how we may be nothing more than "holographic projections of something that is happening on the edge of our universe." Well, actually, we are, and we are also happening inside the physical volume of the universe, because the two things are not different. The physics is not changed.
Back to the instant case: the fact that the cat lives sometimes and dies other times is not altered by this new interpretation. Unless the "new theory" can actually predict when the cat dies, the uncertainty principle, non-deterministic causality, and all the so-called "paradoxes" remain, and are not answered by hand waving arguments that in some cases the cat lives because that's the way it goes, and in some cases she dies because of the same "explanation."
Sorry, but it has the stench of the weak anthropic principle: either it's trivially true, or it's not science. I hope there is a lot more to this new "theory" than the article conveys.
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