Posted on 05/04/2006 12:02:17 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Very, very interesting point. But remember, Einstein lost only on the point that there are no deterministic locally hidden variables (according to the proof of Bell's Inequality). There very well could be globally hidden deterministic variables (i.e. ones that do not require local causality).
You won't be labeled a 'quack' for discussing these points - these are very interesting philosophical points, indeed. That globally hidden causal agents hide within (?outside?) the universe, however, remains a very untestable claim at this point in time, though, you must surely recognize. Science is unfortunately/fortunately constrained to what it can observe.
Part of the problem with physics is that there is a degree of orthodoxy.
Very true, but with good reason. 99.9% of new ideas that fall 'outside the fold' are just plain wrong - and there's no shortage of pseudogeniuses in the world who think they've found the next great scientific breakthrough - science operates on the provision that the 0.1% of wild new ideas that are indeed right will demonstrate their validity while swimming against the tide; in the meantime, theories that have a degree of demonstrably earned certitude retain their well-earned validity, and the new ideas (if valid) will 'toughen up' enough to withstand the stones cast at them (a pretty tough 'boot camp' for new hypotheses, but it's worked so far, and the theories that do indeed gain eventual acceptance have come out stronger as a result...)
Of course, some of us would say that they are already there inasmuch as they can't explain gravity. That doesn't seem to bother them though.
Quite the contrary; every particle/cosmological physicist I know regards gravity as the most bothersome, troublesome, and uncooperative entity in the universe. There's a whole field in physics dedicated to getting gravity to cooperate at a quantum level with the forces we better understand - physicists openly admit there's no complete theory of gravity. You can't just abandon what we do understand in pursuit of a new theory; otherwise, you'll have a theory that explains the new phenomenon, but doesn't fit with anything else - hence the quandary with gravity. There is testable progress being made, though, both experimentally and theoretically
Thought-provoking post you made, there.
Disclaimer: All percentages are estimates :-)
Does this seem weird to you, or is it just me?
Stephen Hawkings books are well written and easily understood by the layman.
Thanks for the steer, I'm running it down at Amazon. As my current grasp of physics is probably stuck around pre-Newtonian 1665, 1965 will be a big step up
I've been thinking about this a bit lately, and I have a counter-question. Does it lend the universe a more or less concrete existence to suppose that God doesn't play dice? If it's true, then I suggest that at no matter what level of resolution, stuff has to have parts. Does this seem like a more satisfactory state of affairs than that, at some level of resolution, there's a fundamental basis for stuff, even if it's a little probabilistically smeary? For my part, I'll take stochastics over infinite recursion any day, insofar as my sense of security in the actual existence of stuff goes.
"6 Easy Pieces" Feynman
I'll admit that the idea that particles are "probability" waves seems hokey to me. I suspect that the equations of quantum physics could just have easily been founded on the notion that they are elastic waves, with little or no change in the result, except interpretive. But physics would not entertain that idea because of its orthodoxy. It would have resurrected the notion of an elastic medium, like the ether, and physics had already banned that, and ostracized the 19th Century physicists who could not accept the notion that there is no ether. So that forced them to come up with some alternative that retained the wave idea, which by then had become undeniable. Fortunately, they came up with the probability wave idea, so it was unnecessary to re-examine their orthodoxy.
I have no doubt that our universe is cyclical. Everything within it is.
This is the quantim gravity - thermal expansion model, Puthoff, Sakharov, "Gravity as a zero point fluctuation force".
The observables are explained by Sima and Sukhenik in the Expansive Nondecelerative Universe (ENU) model.
Gravity as an observable is easily explained in these models, the presence of matter decreases the vacuum density, and creates a "well" of sorts, and the mass is pushed into the well.
Well, when I said that it doesn't seem to bother them, what I meant is that they are not willing to re-examine quantum theory just because of that huge hole in it. Because they get answers to a lot of questions, they assume that the theory is right. The fact that it can't explain something as fundamental, and experimentally undeniable as gravity, does not convince them that there is something fundamentally wrong with their theory.
Of course, I am not suggesting that they should simply throw out quantum theory because it can't explain gravity. They need some model to plug real world numbers into so that they can get real world results that can be used (for example) in designing a nuclear power plant, or in other applied sciences. On the other hand, it would be nice if they acknowledged that a theory that can't explain gravity must be fundamentally wrong, and that the reason they are using it is simply that it's the best thing they've got that will give them the numbers they need on a quantum level in applied science.
Personally, I don't think string theory is the answer either. To me, the most logical answer is the one they've already ruled out, i.e. that there is an elastic medium that serves as the host for waves, both radiation waves and particle waves. (See my prior post, #90). They won't entertain that idea because they've banned the idea of an ether. Of course, they could call it "spacetime" instead of the "ether." But it's just too close to treading on their orthodoxy.
It's ironic that Einstein was the one who proposed the idea that there is no ether. Probabilistic quantum theory was the natural result of that conclusion (see my prior post), and he spent years trying to debunk that as well, but since he had already bannished the ether, he could not offer up the most natural alternative to the probability wave idea.
The instability of matter is truly the least of our worries. It it ever manifests itself, we'll be gone in a puff, so there's literally no reason to be concerned.
Well, um, no; you have the cart before the horse. There are many quasi-physical interpretations of the equations of quantum physics, but none of them would remotely suggest that you can interpret "probability" waves away.
But physics would not entertain that idea because of its orthodoxy.
Again no--physics entertained more ideas about this than you can shake a stick at, and none them have been declared the winner. How can you characterize that as "orthodoxy"? Science wouldn't entertain elasticity because the fine-grain nature of the universe is, in fact, stochastic, not elastic. No technical interpretation that I can think of for the word "elastic" is remotely adequate to model the disappearance of electrons on one side of a diode junction, and the generation of electrons on the other.
It would have resurrected the notion of an elastic medium, like the ether, and physics had already banned that, and ostracized the 19th Century physicists who could not accept the notion that there is no ether. So that forced them to come up with some alternative that retained the wave idea, which by then had become undeniable. Fortunately, they came up with the probability wave idea, so it was unnecessary to re-examine their orthodoxy.
Science ain't the Hundred Years War. We don't have "orthodoxy", "bannings" or "ostrasizing" in the strong sense that your tone suggests, because at bottom, it ain't strife over political or theological territory, it's strife over how things actually work, and that's a grinding stone that isn't, in the end, subject to popular whim.
Except for tax liabilities, of course.
Sure, during the 19th Century, and even up to the 30s for a few of the 19th Century die-hards. But not lately. And that's a big thing because the notion that particles are waves did not arrive on the scene until de Broglie proposed it in the 20's. By then, the idea that light was a wave in an elastic medium had been "ruled out" by the Special Theory.
And one of the reasons why it had been ruled out was that it was very difficult to understand how this elastic medium could fill all the cracks and crevaces of the universe, even the spaces between atoms in a piece of glass. Maybe if the idea that particles are also waves in the same "medium" had come to the fore in the 19th Century, when these issues were still being seriously debated, history would have been different.
Of course, I understand that was not the only reason the ether was ruled out, but can you explain to me why it is not possible, for example, to explain the Michelson-Morely Experiment by hypothesizing an elastic field with a geometry consistent with the Special Theory (and more importantly, one having the ability to accomodate a wave form that travels consistently with the Special Theory)?
I'll grant you that there are certain things that come to mind for which I have no ready explanation that relies on the notion that particles are waves in an elastic field, but to merely chalk them up as the result of stochastic processes seems like a huge cop out to me. Might as well chalk it up to God, as the ancients did when they could not explain something.
The theoretical explanation of quantum tunneling is a good example. Sure, under the theory, there is a small likelihood that the particle will be found in the classically forbidden zone. But no one really has any proof that that is what's going on. It's just that no one has a different explanation. On the other hand, it might actually be that quantum tunneling is not a real phenomenon to begin with, at least as described.
In the case of alpha particle decay, you know that the particle is inside the nucleus, and then it is inexplicably outside the nucleus. You can't explain how it got there in any other way, so you chalk it up to randomness.
But maybe you're just missing part of the puzzle. Maybe, for example, there is an elastic field, but there is a minute level at which it is not continuous, sort of like a matrix of force lines. If you treated it as connected even at the finest level, then you might conclude that the strong force is acutally much stronger than it is at that level. Take the discontinuity into account, and you might find that the "forbidden region" is not actually forbidden afterall.
No technical interpretation that I can think of for the word "elastic" is remotely adequate to model the disappearance of electrons on one side of a diode junction, and the generation of electrons on the other.
Maybe not, but I don't think that we can pretend that all possible structures of a quantum field that might accomodate elastic waves have been exhausted, as modern physics likes to pretend. If there is a discontinuity at the finest level, then that might offer an explanation for the "graininess" of the universe on the quantum level. And such a discontinuity could take the form of many different geometries. I am sure that there are some that have not been considered. In fact, I am not even sure that any attempt has been made to model such a discontinuous field at all.
We have no quantum explanation of gravity, but the notion of an elastic quantum field would seem to lead naturally to such a theory, and is consistent with the General Theory. If matter is a wave displacement in an elastic field, then gravity is simply the displacement resulting from a superposition of those waves, and a resultant force that derives from that displacement. Why modern physics prefers to have an explanation for quantum tunneling instead of gravity, I cannot understand. You cannot deny that gravity exists. I think that quantum tunneling (at least as we understand it) is much more doubtful.
Get the book by Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time). The book is amazing ....not only in that it really expounds on a whole set of very interesting aspects and facets of the universe, but also in the manner in which it manages to convey subject material that should be brain-warping in a manner that is both INTERESTING and UNDERSTANDABLE. The guy should get an award just for that!
Yes. They will survive beyond the end of the universe.
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