Posted on 09/16/2013 1:40:34 PM PDT by neverdem
Physicists have spent a century puzzling over the paradoxes of quantum theory. Now a few of them are trying to reinvent it.
If the truth be told, few physicists have ever really felt comfortable with quantum theory. Having lived with it now for more than a century, they have managed to forge a good working relationship; physicists now routinely use the mathematics of quantum behaviour to make stunningly accurate calculations about molecular structure, high-energy particle collisions, semiconductor behaviour, spectral emissions and much more.
But the interactions tend to be strictly formal. As soon as researchers try to get behind the mask and ask what the mathematics mean, they run straight into a seemingly impenetrable wall of paradoxes. Can something really be a particle and a wave at the same time? Is Schrödinger's cat really both alive and dead? Is it true that even the gentlest conceivable measurement can somehow have an effect on particles halfway across the Universe?
Many physicists respond to this inner weirdness by retreating into the 'Copenhagen interpretation' articulated by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and their colleagues as they were putting quantum theory into its modern form in the 1920s. The interpretation says that the weirdness reflects fundamental limits on what can be known about the world, and just has to be accepted as the way things are — or, as famously phrased by physicist David Mermin of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, “shut up and calculate!”1
But there have always been some who are not content to shut up — who are determined to get behind the mask and fathom quantum theory's meaning. “What is it about this world that forces us to navigate it with the help of such an abstract entity?” wonders physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer of the University of Portland in Oregon...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
—Thank you.
That this Creation is so Consistent and Understandable
is enormously comforting to this poor soul
Logic and Reason are features of Man’s Mind
and are profound Gifts, to be used Prudently
It also infers that these are features of the Creator,
and this is even more comforting.
It does NOT infer that
Logic, Reason, Consistency, and Determinism
are Limiting Features of The Creator
Nor does it infer that our Understand of G-d
is limited by the Sciences
(Knowledge Revealed by Reason and Logic)
Rolling dice doesn’t diminish casuality. It just asserts that we are unable to predict it exactly, rather that the act of rolling dice creates new information.
When the differential equations are non-linear, chaotic, with sensitive dependence on initial condition, then accurate prediction of the future is not possible except in the most trivial sense (the temperature close to now will be similar to the temperature now).
That is, among other things, why global warming is bunk. No finite set of past temperature data sets is adequate to predict nontrivial future states BECAUSE the Navier Stokes equations are chaotic, non-linear, with sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Works for me...
Regards,
GtG
PS As an engineer, I do not need to know why it works, only that it does work,
but there is still that pesky itch to peek under the hood...
Mathematics definitely seem a part of God’s creation, which is one good reason for believing in Him.
Oooo... digging back into dimly remembered
non-linear differential equation classes in 1975...
Haven't used it much in the last 38 years,
but it was fun then
My favorite equation
how is it possible to have any relationship between the Ratio of the Circumference of a circle and the base of the natural logarithm, and come up with a unitary non zero value. It boggles my brain
Cells Reprogrammed in Living Mice
Biomarker May Predict Prostate Cancers Requiring Treatment
Low Estrogen May Play a Role in 'Male Menopause'
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Bill Clinton says, “What about a pair of doxies?”
The shocking thing about Euler is his papers filled scientific journals for 30 years after his death.
Wow.
The shocking thing about Euler is his papers filled scientific journals for 30 years after his death.
Wow.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.