Lorentz Jr

Sans parler du chien To Say Nothing of the Dog Connie Willis

Well, he did invent the flat horizontal surface. So, .... 🤔

Can you summarize that one? It seems like a narrow topic for a whole book. I lost interest halfway through the preface. FTR introduces the whole circus of non-scientific and/or non-realist physics for non-physicists. EUR is a less skeptical introduction to modern physics at about the same level as FTR. NEW focuses on string theory and is very critical. Woit also has a blog with the same name. LIM is similar to NEW, with a focus on the tendency toward wild theoretical speculation in the absence of new experimental data. TTWP covers all of the above, and I found the speculative section toward the end especially fascinating, but the middle section gets very technical about string theory.

Books about the deterioration of scientific principles and other issues in modern physics, in order of increasing difficulty: Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality Lee Smolin, Einstein's Unfinished Revolution Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost In Math Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics

How about getting back to the danger of political propaganda, which is equally relevant to this thread and an equally serious matter?

It's the lattes. Robust young profession people are obviously succumbing to the poisons in caffeinated and dairy-enhanced beverages. Studies are required to isolate the interaction between coffee and cow products that is undeniably so toxic to human life. [/BS] 😏

Ugh. Quanta Magazine goes even further. https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/

At 1:00:50: I would imagine "they" probably means fields.

So am I. It's probably nonsense though. It can't even account for changes in state. This is the depressing part. It's almost like "we're living in a simulation" is the only explanation that fits the data. If spatially distributed quantum entities really exist, my first thought would be that space itself is an illusion, because I can't imagine how else they could be implemented. Speaking of jello, Angelo Bassi is doing interesting work. He looks for high-frequency EM noise left over from objective particle collapses. He says “You should remove the word ‘particle’ from your vocabulary,” and says quanta are like "gelatinous blobs that can spread out in space, split and recombine", or like octopuses that shrink when they're touched and then expand again. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/magazine/angelo-bassi-quantum-mechanic.html That's a separate issue. Waves don't exactly "exist" the way solid objects do, but they can certainly continue to propagate when nobody's looking at them. Well, Max Planck thought of it as a quantum phenomenon, and that seems reasonable to me. I'm not trying to imply that QFT is needed to explain every quantum phenomenon. I'm just trying to minimize the looniness of my ideas by using existing theory as much as possible. Okay, that's fine. There's a video where Sean Carroll says something to that effect about conversations among professional physicists, even though you hear the phrase "point particle" a lot in other contexts. And string theorists seem to take their stringy and braney "particles" or "objects" or whatever you want to call them pretty seriously. I should have written "equivalent", meaning the same amount of energy. I thought you were getting at how I would handle the photoelectric effect when there's enough total energy but not in a single photon. Anyway, as I was saying to Sensei, I think I get your point now about dealing with interactions with random amounts of energy. I'm going to give up on my original idea and see what I can salvage from it. I'll try. Thanks for helping. 🙂

Thanks. I don't have an answer to that, so maybe I need to back away from the whole "no entities" thing. I still have this idea that a "particle detection" is where wave energy gets squeezed into a small space, and I don't see any point in calling that a "particle", and I don't see why there has to be any kind of point particle (or stringy or braney particle) between interactions. I would rather give up on particles than believe they can be in two places at once. So that leaves the idea of these mysterious, wavy little "quanta" that overlap each other in space and yet somehow remain separate "things". It's very strange.

I'm assuming you mean the energy of N photons, where hf < 1eV and Nhf = 2eV? I was saying earlier, there would have to be a localized form of energy that mediates interactions, so fields wouldn't interact with each other directly. hf would have to be the quantization of interactions between the EM field and the intermediary. Please don't be mad at me. I know this all probably sounds hokey and ignorant, but I'm really not trolling. I just don't like a lot of things in modern physics, and I'm trying to make sense of them as well as I can.

Interaction of whatever electrons are (or whatever the system is made of, or whatever its thermal energy is made of) with whatever radiation is made of. I don't understand what part of that is so complicated. I'm assuming it doesn't just happen by magic. (a) Thermal energy disappears from the system and radiation appears in the space around it, (b) I assume there must be some kind of process that makes that happen, and (c) I'm suggesting that maybe the process itself is quantized. Particles are entities by definition, and I'm suggesting that maybe matter isn't made of particles or entities of any kind at all. In other words, I'm saying that maybe there is no "they". Maybe matter is just ordinary, unquantized waves, and the particle side of the wave-particle duality is an illusion created by quantized interactions between waves in ordinary, unquantized fields. Is that consistent enough? Maybe we should take a break. I know this is the Speculations area, but I really don't want things to get too hostile. 😶

Particles are entities.

Or maybe let go the idea that they're entities. They could be mere phenomena.

And can we speak of any entity as being truly "elementary"? 😵 It's a strange, strange world. Anyway, I'm impressed by a lot of what I've read by Lee Smolin, and he's convinced that there's a serious misconception buried deep in the heart of quantum mechanics. Physicists love to make a big deal out of giving up cherished misconceptions when they disagree with experiments, but it seems to me that their noble ideals may hide a darker fact, that they're clinging to a misconception that they cherish even more than traditional scientific principles -- namely, the classical ontology of matter as "solid objects" and the vacuum as a "substanceless void" that those objects travel through. So, from a scientific point of view, they've thrown out the baby and kept the dirty bathwater. Maybe that's why they're having so much trouble unifying quantum mechanics with gravity. I see thermal energy in the object, and then I see that energy being emitted by the object in the form of radiation. So, I'm not sure how you think that can happen without some kind of interaction.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. ????? Quantization has to be accepted. But quantization of what? Quanta I'm not so sure about.

No, the goalposts were always there. Because I'm a realist and I don't like the idea of things magically transmogrifying into other things. Yes. I'm not interested in any other context. I mean the notion that quantization is an intrinsic property of matter and energy. Planck invented the concept of quantization in connection with a type of interaction that produces radiation, and I would like to know why theorists seem to exclusively associate the quantization with the radiation itself rather than (possibly) the interaction that produced it.

"All" of the evidence, except for phenomena that are characterized by uncertain locations and are described by wave functions. Two sharp concentrations of detections on the far screen, along lines from the source to the two slits between the source and the screen. That would be evidence of particles existing between interactions, but it's not what actually happens. Right, but that's only on a macroscopic scale. It doesn't rule out wave packets that stay localized because they keep interacting with the fluid. Diffraction and other wave phenomena obviously suggest the existence of waves, and I'm suggesting that interactions themselves can be explained without the idea of particles. So I don't understand why the particle model of matter is so historically tenacious.

Why are all the theories of quantum mechanics formulated in terms of particles? I don't see any conclusive evidence for their existence. They seem like an artifact of classical thinking. Tiny little "objects" that no one can see. Even quantum field theory is based on a similar idea, that fields are inherently quantized, that quanta are "entities" of some kind, which requires "probability waves", with not even an attempt to explain more deeply what they might be based on. Max Planck started the quantum revolution with his theory of black-body radiation, and the whole physics community took that to mean that electromagnetic waves are quantized. But black-body radiation isn't just electromagnetic waves, it's the generation of electromagnetic waves. An interaction between the electron field (or whatever the system is made of) and the electromagnetic field. Why can't that be the source of quantization? Choosing the target field as the reason for quantization seems arbitrary when the quantization is always associated with an interaction. If matter and energy are continuous fields with quantized interactions, there's no need for mysteries like the "wave-particle duality", and maybe there would be a way to eliminate the infinities in the calculations of quantum field theory. Fields would still be effectively quantized, sort of, but only indirectly, through their interactions. The only complication I can think of is that I'm not sure how direct interactions could be quantized, since each interaction would have to involve two quantization coefficients. So there would probably have to be something like a form of energy that mediates interactions. Not a field, exactly. Something localized. What we call "particle detections" would be localized interactions with the field(s) of detectors, and what we call "virtual particles" would be failed interactions, where the energy goes back to the field it came from. A particle traveling through space would be an ordinary wave packet in its field. A particle making a track through a bubble chamber would be a wave packet that keeps getting localized repeatedly through interactions with the fluid. Is there any evidence for particles independent of their interactions? Any data that requires fields to be quantized when they're not being measured?

Entropy is defined statistically. It's just a matter of probabilities. If there's only one way for matter to be perfectly ordered and there are a bazillion ways for it to be disordered gunk, perfectly ordered matter will eventually transition to a gunk state, because every state is possible. Once the matter is in a gunk state, the probability of going back to the ordered state is 1 divided by a bazillion, which is vanishingly small. The gunk will keep transitioning back and forth among the various gunk states, so it will effectively be disordered gunk forever.

Every object is subject to its own inertia, both linear and rotational. If you jump across to the other side of the space station without changing your rotational motion (assuming there's room to do that), you'll land on your face, because your rotation will only be enough for the angle the station turns through over the duration of the jump, not the longer angle between your starting point and your landing point. So getting up might tend to make you dizzy. If the station is small enough, the up-and-down motion of jogging might subject you to a noticeable rotational force every time one of your feet lands on the floor. I guess it's a question of whether that would feel unpleasant, or whether you can land and then push off on each foot without too much of a rotational jolt. It might not be so bad, but that's a question of physiology. A rotating space station is like a merry-go-round. I think Gian has a point, although he may have exaggerated it.

This entire sentence is utter nonsense. Nothing about relativity allows instantaneous interactions. Nothing about relativity says anything about particles having to be "similar" in any way. Every light cone is defined by either an event or some other specified point in spacetime, and no light cone that isn't defined by an interaction involving one of the particles in question (which would be necessary for them to be "in the same light cone") can be relevant to their mutual interactions. If two particles "interact instantaneously", that means whatever changes occur to the particles are outside of each other's light cones.

Yeah, I would like to see documented evidence of this. Seasickness and airsickness are caused by repeated back-and-forth accelerations, linear and/or rotational, which are in turn caused by interactions with the surrounding water or air. But that wouldn't be an issue on a smoothly rotating space station. Maybe if someone starts jogging around the station, but even then, the person will already be rotating along with the station, and that's a constant of the motion. So, to paraphrase what exchemist said, I think it would only happen if the tube is "tall" enough (radially) for the person to jump "up" (inward, toward the center of the wheel), because then the person would be at an angle when they land on the outer "floor" of the wheel again. EDIT: There is a force from jogging or otherwise moving around the wheel (2m omega v'), but it would just make the person feel heavier. Dizziness would have to come from the up-and-down motion of jogging, sitting down and standing up, etc., or the acceleration (partially rotational) of speeding up and slowing down.

Quantum mechanics says nothing about that. Only specific interpretations of QM say anything more. EDIT: Or, alternatively, amplitudes (squared) are just probability densities of measurement outcomes. The theory itself doesn't say anything about whether wave functions are "physical", or even what that would mean.

Quantum mechanics says nothing about reality beyond probabilities of measurement outcomes. Only specific interpretations of QM say anything more.