Would it be a massive job to throw a little light on these areas [as simplistically as possible without totally destroying the content
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/wink.gif)
Moderator: Vraith
I started writing something...and it started showing signs of being monstrous and beyond my control. So I killed it in favor of just a couple things:peter wrote:I had not realised that Schrodingers wave equation had divided the scientific community to an extent where to this day, some eighty years after it's publication it is still a scource of division in our understanding of 'how the world works'. I read Michio Kaku's explanation of why this is so in The future of the Mind but am still alas, not clear as to what the beliefs of the respective camps are in respect of this division. Also, I believe the far reaches of theoretical physics are somewhat divided as to the correctness or otherwise of 'string theory' as an answer to the paradoxes created by quantum theory. Lastly I'm not 100% clear on what is meant by 'the Copenhagen Interpretation' - or indeed what alternative interpretations exist either [although I do believe that Nils Bhor was the architect of this 'interpretation in his lab in Copenhagen, hence it's name.
Would it be a massive job to throw a little light on these areas [as simplistically as possible without totally destroying the content] for me and also point out other places where there is significant disagreement as to the state of affairs at a fundamental level.
That's a big problem for any hypothesis offered in Science. Can the "String Idea" even be called a hypothesis as there is no way to test it?#1 Unfortunately: so far, no actual testable predictions [lately a few different hints/suggestions of performable tests have been proposed...not that we can perform NOW, I don't think, but that we will be able too sometime relatively soon].
SerScot wrote:Vraith,
That's a big problem for any hypothesis offered in Science. Can the "String Idea" even be called a hypothesis as there is no way to test it?#1 Unfortunately: so far, no actual testable predictions [lately a few different hints/suggestions of performable tests have been proposed...not that we can perform NOW, I don't think, but that we will be able too sometime relatively soon].
I suppose they could use the word "conjecture" until someone comes up with a way to test it, at which point it can revert to "hypothesis".SerScot wrote:That's a big problem for any hypothesis offered in Science. Can the "String Idea" even be called a hypothesis as there is no way to test it?
It's not our mathematics that is lacking. We understand the quantum world mathematically better than any other theory humans have ever devised. We've also proven it empirically to a greater degree of accuracy than any theory in history.Hashi Lebwohl wrote: I suppose they could use the word "conjecture" until someone comes up with a way to test it, at which point it can revert to "hypothesis".
In general, I concur with Copenhagen--at the quantum level there is no reality like we normally know it. Our mathematics and understanding are not yet sufficiently advanced to understand what is happening at that level but that is something which will change in the future. At some point, someone will make a breakthrough and we will understand what is really going on at the quantum level more completely and correctly; when that happens the scientific community will adjust its views accordingly and keep moving forward.
This is absolutely false:I don't think that when a waveform collapses and reality actualizes that it makes a difference to the universe as a whole--reality is localized.
Nick Herbert, in QUANTUM REALITY wrote: Bell himself managed to dvise such a proof which rejects all models of reality possessing the property of "locality." This proof has since become known as "Bell's theorem. It asserts that no local model of reality can underlie the quantum facts."
...Bell's result does not depend on the truth of quantum theory. The Clauser-Aspect experiements show that Bell's inequality is violated by the facts. This means that even if quantum theory should someday fail, its successor theory must likewise violate Bell's inequality when it comes to explaining the twin state. Physics theories are not eternal. When quantum theory joins the ranks of phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether in the physics junkyard, Bell's theorem will still be valid. Because it's based on facts, Bell's theorem is here to stay.
Sounds good to me.peter wrote: If I understand it, on the one hand, you have the situation where Schrodingers cat is in the live/dead smeary state that collapses into one or the other on the act of making an observation. On the other [the many worlds hypothesis] the cat already exists in both the live state in one universe and the dead state in another. Here the act of observing will occur at a 'bifurcation' in which the observer will follow either the path leading to an observation of a live cat, or a path leading to the observation of a dead cat. [However the 'or' in the above sentence is in reality an 'and'. ie since both Universes exist, both results occur, but in each case the observer is only aware of the one that occurs in the particular Universe he experiences].
Perhaps you're right about Schrodinger's reasonings. I think the same thing happened with Alan Turing's "Turing Test," it was originally proposed as a way to demonstrate just how hard the problem of AI is, and now people take it merely as a sufficient criterion to achieve AI or prove that you've achieved it. I think Einstein also proposed some thought experiments which were supposed to prove a reductio ad absurum on quantum mechanics, but then just ended up proving how absurd reality is, lending strength to quantum mechanics.peter wrote: Strange, I got the idea from the book [perhaps erroniously] that Schrodinger actually proposed the cat thought experiment because he wanted to show the deep water that quantum theory had navigated theoretical physics into, rather than as an explanation of what was really going on. BUT - another book I read once said that every time you turned on a tv, or a transistor radio, you verified the truth of quantum theory, since just about all of the technology that has found its way into our homes over the last three decades is a direct descendant of that quantum universe revealed in the theory and if it weren't true none of it would work. I like that.
What I mean by "localized" is this--if some particle physicists run an experiment and make an observation of a subatomic particle, then the observation causes a collapse of that particle's waveform into reality. Regardless of the results of that collapse it won't change what you chose to have for lunch and it won't cause any wobble in the Moon's orbit. In general, changes way over there (this is me pointing at some distant location) have no effect on what happens right here.Zarathustra wrote:This is absolutely false:I don't think that when a waveform collapses and reality actualizes that it makes a difference to the universe as a whole--reality is localized.
On the first: if you had the processing power, I'm pretty sure you could do launches/calculations as you suggest.peter wrote: [So in other words the sending of satellites would have to be possible by relativistic calculation as well as Newtonian].
Does the quantum-relativity mutual exclusivity not mean that both theories are incomplete rather than either having to be wrong?
Well...that SHOWS the problem, it doesn't disprove or answer it.Orlion wrote:. Saying a cat in a convoluted box experiment is both dead and alive until observed is like saying the top card of a shuffled deck is all 52 values of that deck until you flip it over to reveal as the seven of spades. It says more about our ability to observe then what is actually happening.
Glad you like the name...peter wrote:Of course you would never actually do the calculation that way V., but the point is surely that if the relativity 'paradigm' is going to surplant the Newtonian one it *has* to at least be able to do everything that that the surplanted paradigm could do - if it couldn't it would not be a replacement theory. [By the way discovered where your name came fron in the TC books the other night - love it!]
I thought the uncertainty was inherrent in the quantum system - ie that *no* instruments would ever be able to establish both position and momentum of [say] an electron no matter how good they were.
The second part of Orlion's post gets exactly to where I was going next - ie Are we suppused to take the live/dead [or indeed the two Universes] state as real at the macro level of the cat in the box, or was it just an illustration put in real size objects to help us understand what was happening to the electron down at the quantum level. If I'm getting it correct V., your follow up post goes for the second option.