How can you raise something to the power of i?

[D H]

Where does one exist in reality? Not one planet, one apple, one meter. Just one. How about pi? The square root of two?

 

Math is an incredibly power tool that we use to describe reality. That does not mean that it is reality. Saying that it is is confusing the map for the territory.

[ajb]

 

Well if "imaginary" in math doesn't actually mean "made up", then "real" shouldn't mean "it exists" either right?

I guess, is there some way to see where"i" exists in reality?

 

We will tie ourselves in knots trying to understand metaphysical existence and reality, so lets not.

 

What I can say is that the imaginary unit is fundamental in the formulation of quantum mechanics. Thus, in this sense complex numbers are "real". They form a key component of our understanding of nature.

[questionposter]

We will tie ourselves in knots trying to understand metaphysical existence and reality, so lets not.

 

What I can say is that the imaginary unit is fundamental in the formulation of quantum mechanics. Thus, in this sense complex numbers are "real". They form a key component of our understanding of nature.

 

Virtual particles use "complex" and "imaginary" numbers right?

So perhaps that when a virtual particle is not real, it contains only imaginary energy, so that when it does hit a particle it multiplies by some other "i" component of an atom to generate real results to be real (which is actually how it's worded on wikipedia), but that seems to suggest there is a different realm in which "imaginary" forces travel distance by, because if they aren't real, how do I travel real distance? I know complex planes exist, but I'm not even talking about a complex number, just imaginary numbers.

[questionposter]

We will tie ourselves in knots trying to understand metaphysical existence and reality, so lets not.

 

What I can say is that the imaginary unit is fundamental in the formulation of quantum mechanics. Thus, in this sense complex numbers are "real". They form a key component of our understanding of nature.

 

Virtual particles use "complex" and "imaginary" numbers right?

So perhaps that when a virtual particle is not real, it contains only imaginary energy so that a particle doesn't lose "real" energy, so that when it does hit a particle it multiplies by some other "i" component of a particle to generate real results (which is actually how it's worded on wikipedia when virtual particles make contact http://en.wikipedia....rtual_particles ), but that seems to suggest there is a different realm in which "imaginary" forces travel distance by, because if they aren't real, how do I travel real distance? I know complex planes exist, but I'm not even talking about a complex number, just imaginary numbers.

I don't know, I think there might be a way to explain how "i" ties in with reality, and I know that math is not reality itself, but it is still a measure of the patterns we see in reality.

 

 

In fact, let's for this topic just invent a whole new thing, called an imaginary plane where both axis are imaginary. If we graph sin(ix) in an imaginary plane, we would get a sine wave containing only imaginary values but varying co-efficients of "i" to generate an imaginary sine wave, and virtual particles use wave mechanics so we should technically be able to map out how a virtual particle acts as a wave and what happens when it hits an atom in an imaginary plane.

 

I know I'm leaning into the more "speculation" realm at this point, but perhaps if you graphed the wave mechanics of virtual particles with mass in an imaginary plane, the virtual particles with mass might stop existing when their values become "real numbers" which would explain their weird "semi-existent" properties as well as why they stop existing after a certain point.

 

Though I think there's probably already something like this though to explain why mass-virtual particles stop existing after a certain distance.

 

What I'm really just trying to do is see how "i" fits in with reality, because for some reason it keeps popping up in the fabric of existence.

Edited January 26, 2012 by questionposter

[ajb]

What I'm really just trying to do is see how "i" fits in with reality, because for some reason it keeps popping up in the fabric of existence.

 

You are right, complex numbers do appear frequently in our formulations of physical theories. But then so do plenty of other mathematical objects.

[Klaynos]

!

Moderator Note

Moving to speculations...

Real waves use complex numbers, classical wave mechanics, say electromagnetic waves as forumlated by Maxwell have wave equations for the form:

[math]X e^{i\omega t}[/math]