What happens to a particle after it stops being observed?

[MigL]

And your suggestion would be wrong, tar. There would be an interference pattern and it is verified experimentally.

 

You seem to be grasping at any straw which will support your classic beliefs and pre-conceptions.

As Philip K. Dick once said...

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is still there"

 

No matter what you choose to believe, tar, the experimental results are still there. And as Strange has explained, the mathematical models predict these results, as a matter of fact, R. Feynman uses the same example as Strange does, in his Lectures.

 

So I hope you're giving up and re-considering, because I certainly am trying to explain it.

[tar]

Strange,

 

But the meaning of these things is understandable, and I understand them and do not take them as exclusions of each other.

 

You cannot explain a frequency at a specific time, so you look at it over a period of time.

You cannot explain a motion as one position, so you look at it over a period of time.

 

My feeling is that if you are forced into a situation that makes no sense, you are looking at some portion of it, in the wrong way, because

"Reality is that which, when you imagine it is making no sense, is still there fitting itself exactly"

 

I am reluctant to accept anything that makes no sense. I turn the thing around and around and around until I see how it fits, because I know it has to fit. That is my main axiom. It has to fit. It has to make sense in more than one way, to be true.

 

And I know that everything I think about is model of a real and actual thing, that fits together flawlessly. If my ideas don't fit together, that is my fault, not reality's. Reality already fits together, long before I was born.

 

So if you tell me you cannot sing a C note for less than one wavelength, I would agree. But if you tell me it has to be infinite in duration to be a C note, I would tell you I just sang one, and it took a second and a half. I know just when it started and just when it ended...from my listening point. Now, comes the switch of perspective that fouls up any equation. Whose ears are you talking about? A very sensitive ear in Chicago will not hear my C note for over an hour.

 

So, for the purposes of this thread. Does the compression and rarefaction of the air between here and Chicago, exist right now, when I have already sensed it, and the ear in Chicago has not yet?

 

I am reminded of a time when I was 13 when I had heard that the light of a match on a new moon (given oxygen) could be seen by the unaided eye on a dark night on Earth. I held a match to the sky, as a "hello" to the universe. That was 47 years ago, so the light of that match is "still on its way" to a potential observer. It has gone out, in all directions included in the half of the universe that the Earth was facing that night. There is an actual area of space, a half sperical shell, 47 lys from here, with a thickness of how ever many light seconds I held the match, that has the photons from that match, traveling in it. There has to be, because the universe fits together, flawlessly.

 

Regards, TAR

 

MigL,

 

I will reconsider, when you offer a sensible explanation.

 

Regards, TAR

I would even predict that if there is a big mirror out in that direction, facing Earth's area, 23 and half light years from here, if you looked, now, at that mirror, you would see the Earth with the light of a match shining from Lake Arapaho in Sparta NJ.

If you would have looked a minute ago, I would not have lit the thing yet. If you look in a minute, it would already be out.

 

This way of looking at reality, is sensible. It has to make sense, all the time, every time. continually in all ways you can look at it.

[MigL]

Your 'C' note is produced by the vibrations of muscles in you throat, and there is absolutely no way that a single frequency is produced since those muscles have to accelerate to the required frequency and then decelerate.

As for the rest of your narrative, I don't see how it relates to our discussion.

The experiments have real results. That is reality. Just because reality doesn't make 'sense' to you doesn't mean reality is wrong.

YOU are wrong !.

 

Choose to believe sound scientific arguments, or choose to hang on to your pre-conceived notions or beliefs. I and others have provided examples of the nature of quantum reality, you ignore them because 'they don't make sense to you'.

I wish you luck trying to understand and come to grips with the math and the reality of QM

Edited September 23, 2014 by MigL

[Strange]

But the meaning of these things is understandable, and I understand them ....

 

You say that and then insist it must be wrong based on "gut feel". Sorry, but if I have to decide between quantitative theory supported by measurement (AKA reality) versus "gut feel" (AKA imagination/delusions) then I will always choose theory and measurement. But maybe that is because I am an engineer who has to get things done and make them work. Feelings and intuitions are of no use in our business and I would refuse to have someone with an attitude like yours on any project.

 

 

My feeling is that if you are forced into a situation that makes no sense, you are looking at some portion of it, in the wrong way

 

My "feeling" is that this means you do not understand (despite your claims to understand).

 

 

I am reluctant to accept anything that makes no sense.

 

That is good. But you need to understand where the problem lies. You cannot address this problem by making up your own ideas or denying well-tested science. You can only address the problem by doing the hard work of understanding.

 

You continue to take the lazy route of saying: "it doesn't make sense to me so it must be wrong".

 

What you should be saying is: "it doesn't make sense to me so I have some seriously hard work to do in order to understand it"

 

But maybe a compromise is: "it doesn't make sense to me but I am too lazy to do anything so I will just have to shut up and accept it"

 

While you stick to your current attitude you will continue to attract harsh criticism. But it is your choice.

 

 

This way of looking at reality, is sensible.

 

Maybe to you. It seems like a long string of irrelevant anecdotes with no scientific value.

[tar]

Strange,

 

I was not saying Quantum physics was wrong because it makes no sense to me. It does make sense to me. What I am suggesting is wrong, is that Feynman suggested that the universe works in ways that we have no analogy for, and nobody as of yet has made sense of it. I do not agree that we can not fathom the way it works. I am looking for a way to understand based on all the facts and all the math, and all the things we know to be the case and to not be the case.

 

Not every physicist agrees with every other physicist's interpretations. I am not saying I am a physicist, no where close, but I have thought about the things physicists think about.

 

I have read, back in the 90s when I took an interest in relativity and QED. Relativity and Common Sense, a New Approach to Einstein, by Hemann Bondi. I have read the physical principles of the quantum theory by Werner Heisenberg. I have read Richard P. Feynman's QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I have read QED and the Men who Made it"Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga. I have read How is Qantum Field Theory Possible? by Sunny Y. Auyang. I have read The Principles of Quantum Mechanics by P.A.M Dirac. I have read J.S.Bell's Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics. I have read them all from cover to cover. I didn't get the math, but I read every formula and tried to see what it was saying. I have some idea of what we know, and what we figure, and what the math was saying and what it was not saying. I suppose I should, for now, shut up and read them again, but, I already know I have my own synthesis of the ideas, and there were parts where I just didn't think the math forced the thing people where suggesting the math forced, and I saw some different ways to look at the same group of facts that made more sense to me, than the way it was being looked at. Not in general but in specific areas, going after specific considerations.

 

I maybe should not work in your lab, on your projects, but maybe I would be OK. My attitude is not that I can not accept things that work, but that I look outside the box for solutions. I was a top level trouble shooter for 15 years in the office equipment industry, I am used to making thing work and working directly with the engineers. Currently I am a software tester and learning the trade, being only 2 years into it. But I am good at finding and describing bugs and stating how the thing should be, to fit the requirements. I think your assessment of me as someone you would not want to work with, because you have to make things work, and I don't know how to accomplish that, is completely mistaken.

 

Regards, TAR

From J.S. Bell, Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (Collected papers on quantum philosopy),

Cambridge University Press, 1993, paperback, page 55. from a section entitled 3. Quantum mechanics is not locally causal.

 

"But could it not be that quantum mecanics is a fragment of a more complete theory, in which there are other ways of using the given beables, or in which there are additional beables - hitherto "hidden" beables? And could it not be that this more complete theory has local causality? Quantum mechanical predictions would then apply not to given values of all the beables, but to some probabiltiy distribution over them, in whcih the beables recognized as relevant by quantum mechanis are held fixed. We will investigate this question, and answer it in the negative."

 

...

 

Page 61 at the end of a section entitled 7. Messages.

" So if the ordinary quantum field theory is embedded in this way in a theory of beables, it implies that faster than light signaling is not possible. In this human sense relativistic quantum mechanics is locally causal."

Edited September 24, 2014 by tar

[tar]

By the way, my anecdote about saying hello to the universe with the match, is directly related to the thread question. It is more than a philosophy or interpretation question that the consideration of the photons from that match raises. It is a direct question. Do those photons exist, 47 years after they were seen by me?

 

Absolutely. They have no where else, but outward, to go. Many have been absorbed and reemitted, but some of those particles still exist, in the exact locations in that shell 47 lys from here, where they should be...traveling outward from the point where they were emitted at the speed of light. We know both their momentum and their position, and that is 47 years from when my eyes and brain observed them.

[physica]

Not every physicist agrees with every other physicist's interpretations. I am not saying I am a physicist, no where close, but I have thought about the things physicists think about.

This statement is fairly useless. So what if you've thought about something. Exams show us every year that there are people out there who think about stuff and still don't understand it.

 

 

I was a top level trouble shooter for 15 years in the office equipment industry, I am used to making thing work and working directly with the engineers. Currently I am a software tester and learning the trade, being only 2 years into it. But I am good at finding and describing bugs and stating how the thing should be, to fit the requirements. I think your assessment of me as someone you would not want to work with, because you have to make things work, and I don't know how to accomplish that, is completely mistaken.

This isn't relevant. I know phd electrical engineers and phd computer scientists who openly admit that they don't understand quantum physics.

 

I've pointed this out before, you have the amazing ability to waffle on and write 500 words on a point that could be made in 50. Also you're over confident at comprehending things. The way that you write gives the impression that you think that life experience and anecdotal tales gives you the wisdom to understand philosophy and quantum physics.

 

I'm sitting exams at the end of this academic year in quantum wave theory and I don't know how I'd comprehend it without maths. What quantum mechanics does is incorporate probability with mechanics. You need a firm grounding of these two, then concepts like observing a particle and Schrodinger's cat won't seem so mystical.

 

You continue to take the lazy route of saying: "it doesn't make sense to me so it must be wrong".

This is a long standing problem he did this with Zeno's paradox a while ago.

Edited September 25, 2014 by physica