@tomr,
tomr wrote:
On Possibility:
Quote:Sorry, but I must ask you where did I champion possibility "as something that speaks to alternative realities completely apart from the world we are in"? I am just asserting that possibility exists, that's all.
I was not specifically talking about what you wrote, but responding to your dialog when Fil Albuquerque said:
Quote:A possible Truth is not a Truth because possible does n´t mean it has/must occur, at least not in this Universe (maybe in a parallel Universe) but it just simply means it can eventually occur...
This made me think of the way some people have described alternative realities that were automatically assumed to be equally able to exist along side this universe without really considering the greatness of the problem of why and how this could possibly happen.
Quote:Sorry, but where did I ever mention randomness? And where did I champion possibility as randomness? I referred to certainty: certainties are always subject to doubt, that's what I said.
One of the particular alternate realities that came to mind described a totally random. This "possible" universe was being used hand in hand with the actual universe.
Quote:This is just a disguised form of determinism, by which the old Laplace demon would know everything that will happen if he just knew a complete state of that wonderful "universe" of yours. Quantum physics already found that uncertainty is not a consequence of our ignorance, but an inherently feature of nature itself. Are you saying that you know better than Heisenberg?
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that a particles position and momentum (velocity * mass) cannot be known at the same time.
In fact, this was just a preliminary form of today's HUP, which states that any attribute has another, conjugate attribute, and no matter how hard you try, the mutual measurement error of the two never falls below a certain natural limit. Position and momentum are just a particular case of such conjugate attributes.
tomr wrote:This principle can be seen when a particle is struck by a photon (also an electromagnetic wave or electromagnetic field). In that collision the photon will transfer its momentum to the particle by interaction between the electromagnetic field that is the photon and the electric field or electromagnetic field of the particle. Then through the exchange the electromagnetic field coming from the particle can be detected and seen because it is light.
An electromagnetic wave is composed of electric and magnetic fields that alternate in strength over time. This is why it is called a wave. But this wave always comes from a charged particle like an electron. The wave is the effect produced when an electron is accelerated. Electrons become accelerated when the electric or electromagnetic field of one interacts with the field of another electron or other charged particle. So by accelerating electrons we can produce light and this light, photons or electromagnetic waves, can strike another electron and that electron can be detected. Yet because of these laws of interaction of the electric and electromagnetic fields between particles we must always change its momentum or its position when detecting that electron. So there is no reason to take the fundamental nature of particles as indetermined. It is very easy to see that nothing in the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle gives us reason to make these interactions fundamentally statistical.
What you are describing is known as the "disturbance model" of quantum physics, which even today some physicists invoke trying to reconcile quantum physics with classical physics. Unfortunately, that model is just wrong, and no physicist working in the field of quantum physics itself invokes it, since s/he knows better. The source of the uncertainty when we measure conjugate attributes does not come from the "disturbance" one particle causes onto the other, hence introducing a measurement error: it comes from the nature of conjugate attributes itself, and is just enough to protect the wave/particle duality. One good example is the Airy Experiment: a hole through which light passes. This experiment is an example of a "perfect quantum measurement," one in which we get all the information there is to get about what is happening, without having any "disturbance" to blame uncertainty on. The math shows that the smaller the hole, the more the beam of light diffracts, hence the greater the sidewise momentum of a photon. The smaller the hole, the better you know the position of the photon when it passes through the hole, but the worse you know its sidewise momentum, since it spreads over an ever large area of probable impact with the phosphor screen ahead. The reason why it spreads is that it is a wave (of probability), and the reason why it crashes into the screen is that it is a particle. However, you cannot use the particle description until it crashes into the screen, and you can no longer use the wave description once it crashes.
tomr wrote:In addition to the basic interaction that happens between charged particles and fields, there is another often sited example that tries to explain away with detemined physical laws. The double slit experiment is one where two close together slits are cut into some thin material and light or electrons are made to pass through the two slits and then the positions of the light or electrons are detected over a time on a fluorescent screen. This experiment is often interpreted as showing proof that electrons, or any charged particle, behaves in an indeterminate way because they produce an interference pattern that would usually be thought to be made by something wave-like in nature. In addition, this pattern is thought to only be able to be made because electrons, or any charged particle, is interfering with itself through both slits at the same time. This is since the interference pattern still exists when only one electron at a time is passed through the slits.
Though I cannot explain precisely why this happens.
Regardless the explanation, the only possible description of what happens is that the electron is a wave of probability before hitting the screen, upon which it becomes a particle: this is the only description that fits the facts, by mathematically describing them.
tomr wrote:I take it to be a lack of understanding about the laws governing the electrons in the test or the application of the laws to the experiment. I would instead of giving up on a comprehensive understanding of how things work, say that because electrons produce electromagnetic waves and operate on laws of interaction between their fields so that as the electrons come in close contact with the electrons in the atoms of the material surrounding the slits that a pattern might be created as a result of these interactions. There is alot going on around a couple of slits in respect to the size and shear number of atomic and subatomic particles (Not to mention the unknown complexity of the makeup of individual atoms). So to take all the complexity involved in an experiment like this and reduce it to evidence of the statical nature of the quantum realm shows only a lack of the creative ability needed to resolve these phenomena into their underlying physical laws.
I see you are not quite familiar with that stuff, but I can save you a lot of time. Have you ever heard about EPR? EPR stands for the "Einstein-Podolsky-Ronsen" paradox, which haunted physicists for decades, until John Stuart Bell finally solved it. For that feat, John Bell became known as the man who "proved Einstein wrong." Bell put an end on any possibility of local realism, which is what you are still holding to. I suggest you read the book "Quantum Reality" by Nick Herbert, which explains Bell's theorem superbly, or just Google for it (the book is better). This theorem made possible to experimentally test reality for local realism, and there have been many such experiments since its formulation by Bell, all of them violating Bell's inequality.
tomr wrote:In response to your question do I know better than Heisenburg, if it is true Heisenburg interpreted his principle in the way you do, as evidence that fundamentally the universe is statistical in nature, then in this aspect I do know better than him. So did Einstein.
I am sorry to bring you bad news, but you don't know better than Heisenberg. And it does no good invoking Einstein to support you, since, as I already mentioned, John Bell put Einstein's objections to quantum physics (the EPR) to eternal rest with his theorem. Einstein was a classical guy, as most physicists remain even today: it is almost impossible to conceive of a physicist that does not hold to locality and realism as a priest holds to God. Unfortunately, local realism is gone: simple as that. No locally realist description of reality can account for the facts. Either we give up realism, or locality, or both. Read the book.
