Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
There is physical time, which is a local classical notion, given by light clocks (the classical aspect of the Quantum!) This is the “Ortzeit”, local time of Lorentz and Poincare’, central to Relativity.
Then there is neurological time, which is given by brain construction, and it is not very clear what the latter consists of, except surely Quantum Physics will be involved at the quantum entanglement level. (Because quantum entanglement and nonlocality is all over basic chemistry and biology.)
So the confrontation between mind and physical time, Sein und Zeit, to sound savant like Heidegger, may actually be the old connandrum of the Quantum… the contrast between classical particle (a photon going back and forth between mirrors) and the nonlocality of entanglement… the soul, the famous wave particle duality!
Biology has lots of quantum physics in plain sight (Albany H flowers, 2023.)
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Adulation for great thinkers is perfect, as long as proper attributions are given correctly enough to describe the logic of invention… Adulation can be used as a Trojan Horse for expanding knowledge and discovering the arcane laws of metathinking.
However, in the case of Einstein, and also other heroes of the Anglosphere, such as Newton, Darwin or Godel, or Watts, fake attributions have distorted the cognitive picture. Those five scientists made major discoveries, but they were very far from making all the discoveries attributed to them.
Lamarck (and Cuvier, and others) established scientifically the long-guessed evolution theory,(while competing fiercely about evolutionary mechanisms… both were right, probably)… two generations before Charles Darwin (who recognized, as newton did, hiis predecessors). No wonder: France was the land of Revolution and England was where the Anglican Church explicitly forbade the teaching of evolution.
Newton was an important brick in the wall of Classical Mechanics as he (more or less) demonstrated that the laws of mechanics plus Bouillaut/Bullialdus Formula for gravitational attraction were equivalent. But the mechanics and calculus revolution had started in Paris, under Buridan and his students (including the Oxford computational school…) three centuries earlier.
Godel is singled out in the debate on the Foundations of Mathematics… But there are at least a dozen of important names: Buridan, Oresme, Cardano, Descartes, Fermat, Leibnitz, Newton, Euler, Laplace, Cauchy, Cantor, Russell, Brouwer… and dozens of others, sometimes even more important as they were the true originators (in particular around Cardano). By insisting on Godel, one insists on a single aspect of mathematics, namely that math is made of never ending rabbit holes (I fix that with my ultrafinitude).
(t−vx/cc) is what Poincaré defined as local time in 1900. Not only Poincare discovered this, but he realized it meant that length contracted in the direction of motion (the contraction itself was a discovery made by the Irish physicist Fitzgerald (and Lorentz) to explain the Michelson-Morley experiment).
***
Local time theory was a reinterpretation and extendion by Poincare of Lorentz’s work on the spacetime transformations necessary to keep the equations of electromagnetism independent of uniformly moving frames. This work was published in 1895 by Lorentz when Einstein was still a child [1]. By 1905, when Einstein published his work on Relativity, all the equations had been published.
Local time theory was a rephrasing by Poincare of Hendrik Lorentz’s work on the spacetime transformations necessary to keep the equations of electromagnetism independent of uniformly moving frames. Published when Einstein was still a child. By 1905, when Einstein published his work on Relativity, all the equations had been published.
“Relativity” was Poincaré’s and so was E = mcc, which showed that light carried inertial mass (Cours a la Sorbonne, 1899).
Poincaré is the one who said first that the fact that the speed of light was everywhere measured to be the same (from Michelson and Morley experiment of 1887), and thus it was a physical law. Einstein read it in Science and Hypothesis (La science et l’hypothèse, published 1902, modified 1903, when Poincaré realized electromagnetism a la Maxwell was 100% true after French experimenters confirmed it following rumors to the contrary…).
The term “Relativity” was indeed used by Henri Poincaré even earlier than in his 1904 book titled “Science and Hypothesis” (French: “La Science et l’Hypothèse”) [2]. Poincaré himself said that Einstein’s work was a nice rephrasing of relativity (to be honest, it was a tidy exposition relative to what was before, but not as tidy as one can now do!)
Poincaré is the one who said first that the fact that the speed of light was everywhere measured to be the same (from Michelson and Morley experiment), and thus it was a physical law. Einstein read it in Science and Hypothesis.
Gravity waves in relativity were published by Poincaré in 1905.
The principle of relativity, according to which the laws of physical phenomena should be the same, whether for an observer fixed, or for an observer carried along in a uniform movement of translation; so that we have not and could not have any means of discerning whether or not we are carried along in such a motion.
— Henri Poincaré, 1904
Einstein and his friends (and collaborators, Besso, etc.) spent years studying Poincaré’s Relativity
***
Einstein was a genius at seeing the work of others and improving its presentation. This is not to be despised. He did this with Brownian motion, the quantum, Bose-Einstein statistics, and he recognized the importance of De Broglie’s work, and, according to Popper, of Popper’s contribution to the fact the quantum is nonlocal. Popper was a philosopher and Bose an Indian physicist who realized that photons like to gather.
The idea that force could be viewed as curvature in the appropriate space was revealed by Riemann in 1854 in his famous Habilitationsschrift. It has been hanging around ever since. It works well with gravity, but not so much with the other forces, because the quantum messes up with energy-momentum, the more localized it gets, thus the right side of the Einstein gravity equation: Curvature = Energy…
So what did Einstein really contribute personally? The idea that the Quantum of electromagnetic energy of Planck could be absorbed as a packet, explaining the photoelectric effect (Nobel work). Further work on viewing gravitation as a curvature of spacetime (with Hilbert and other friends). And paradoxically the nonlocality of quantum mechanics (which he demonstrated by trying to prove that the quantum was spooky at a distance).
Einstein presented clearly the postulates of relativity and light-speed invariance as foundations of Relativity (Einstein, 1905, §3). Einstein showed that the equation of a spherical lightwave in one frame, xx + yy + zz = cctt has the same form when x and t are Lorentz transformed (it is hard to believe that Poincaré, the world’s top mathematician didn’t know this…) A spherical wave propagating with the speed of light in one frame, Einstein remarked, is thereby another spherical wave propagating with the speed of light in a second inertial frame. As the British mathematical physicist Ebenezer Cunningham pointed out a two years later, form-invariance of the lightwave equation is all that is required for the derivation of the Lorentz transformation, along with a linearity constraint (Cunningham, 1907).
Einstein was a great physicist, but was not as much a revolutionary as legend had it. Einstein’s work was not as original as the local time theory (misattributed to Einstein). And, although Einstein was one of the founders of quantum theory, the original idea of the quantum came from Planck.
Ironically, nonlocality, which “spooked” Einstein, he said, may have been Einstein greatest original contribution…
Quantum Field Theory, which surfaced in the 1920s was deeply revolutionary in a way Einstein never was. Now of course, QFT had many genial contributors, starting with De Broglie (“everything is a wave”)… But then Einstein is the one who gave De Broglie his thesis, basically (the top PhD com of De Broglie threw its nads and asked Einstein to decide on what they called the De Broglie’s “circus”).
Einstein himself once was asked by a French literary genius why he never had a notebook to write his ideas down, and Albert replied (paraphrasing): because new ideas are so rare, I can’t forget them. Ideas are a bit like the theory of types of Russell: they come in many different types…
Civilization class ideas are very rare… And Einstein, after all, stumbled on nonlocality… so well, he fell flat on his face…
Patrice Ayme
***
[1]: Lorentz referred to as “Ortszeit” (Lorentz, 1895), and which Poincaré (1900a, 273), following Alfred Liénard, called “temps local”, or local time. In Poincaré’s mind, Lorentz’s local time took on an operational meaning, as the time read by a clock in uniform motion of velocity v with respect to the ether, synchronized by crossed light signals with other identical comoving clocks…
***
[2] Henri Poincaré, in his book, 1904:
The Principle of Relativity.—Let us pass to the principle of relativity: this not only is confirmed by daily experience, not only is it a necessary consequence of the hypothesis of central forces, but it is irresistibly imposed upon our good sense, and yet it also is assailed… Indeed, experiment has taken upon itself to ruin this interpretation of the principle of relativity; all attempts to measure the velocity of the earth in relation to the ether have led to negative results.
…experimental physics has been more faithful to the principle [of “RELATIVITY”] than mathematical physics; the theorists, in accord with their other general views, would not have spared it; but experiment has been stubborn in confirming it [the principle of relativity]. The means have been varied; finally Michelson pushed precision to its last limits; nothing came of it. It is precisely to explain this obstinacy [of nature]…
The most ingenious idea was that of local time. Imagine two observers who wish to adjust their timepieces by optical signals; they exchange signals… The watches adjusted in that way will not mark, therefore, the true time; they will mark what may be called the local time, so that one of them will be slower than the other. It matters little, since we have no means of perceiving it. All the phenomena which happen at A, for example, will be late, but all will be equally so, and the observer will not perceive it, since his watch is slow; so, as the principle of relativity requires, he will have no means of knowing whether he is at rest or in absolute motion.
Unhappily, that does not suffice, and complementary hypotheses are necessary; it is necessary to admit that bodies in motion undergo a uniform contraction in the sense of the motion. One of the diameters of the earth, for example, is shrunk by one two-hundred-millionth in consequence of our planet’s motion, while the other diameter retains its normal length.
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Abstract: That photons delocalize in flight was so obvious, Huyghens described them as waves four centuries ago. That’s reinforced both from the math of Quantum Mechanics, and traditional diffraction math. Let alone 2023 Quantum Entanglements of Pions. Time to erect bolder hypotheses to try to understand what’s really going on.
***
That a photon is received as a photon, a single localized energy-momentum jolt, or quantum, explains the photoelectric effect’s characteristics, so we should accept that localized impact. This was Einstein’s hypothesis, and because it explains the photoelectric effect, one should assume it to be true. Einstein deserved his Nobel… And indeed, since then many experiments, including those of Nobel Haroche, have dealt with the single photon impacting or influencing something… In a very localized way.
HOWEVER, localization on impact doesn’t mean that, in “flight” the photon, or any particle is localized as much [1]. It just means that the photon behaved as if it had… “collapsed”. Einstein assumed localization in flight, I call it Einstein’s error. Modern QFT has discreetly strayed away from Einstein, as the “particle” has become an excitable Quantum Field (hence nonlocal) subjected to renormalizing perturbation theory. Moreover, Basic Quantum Mechanics assumes delocalization, but then claims only the math delocalize, not the whatever-is-going-on physically, about which CIQ (Copenhagen Interpretation Quantum) can say nothing.
Yes, maybe CIQos can say nothing, but smarter minds can make hypotheses, and then try to find out if observed effects derive from these hypotheses… Details that normal Quantum mechanics does not predict, like Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
The evidence, from diffraction, is to the contrary of the gratuitous and unnecessary Einstein’s in-flight-localization hypothesis. Both from the grossest observations (namely deflection by a pinhole/slit) and from the way the mathematical treatment of said pinhole/slit works… Because those classical mathematics of diffraction work, indeed, but they assume DELOCALIZATION… to make the computation. So the computation’s result being correct, one feels inclined to believe that its mathematical axiom, delocalization, is also correct… as a physical axiom.
As seen below the usual classical computation for diffraction assumes re-emission, thus delocalization, all along the throat of the slit:
Patrice Ayme
[1] SQPR assumes that “particles” in flight don’t really exist (de facto, so does QFT). The “particles” instead are of type NL + L, where NL is the NonLinear part, and L the Linear part (corresponding to the amplitudes of traditional Quantum Mechanics). L guides NL during dispersion (outward momentum from the singularization/particle state… the opposite of collapse, when the momentum goes towards the singularity). A mathematical description may involve a wave acceleration proportional to its amplitude… So that L can become unstable and grow into a NL, after interacting with another L from another “particle”.
How localized is NL? The Quantum Eraser experiment of Kim and Al., in 1999, indicates that NL is somewhat localized, at least in its apparatus… But it’s very far from a particle. Moreover, as NL feeds L, so to speak, one expects NL to get ever more nonlocalized…
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
QUANTUM PHYSICS IS THE SIMPLEST ROOT OF CLASSICAL REALITY IMAGINABLE
Abstract: Quantum Mechanics is the simplest imaginable description of the world obtained by reducing all what is known from Classical Mechanics to its simplest parody. Simplest space, simplest math, simplest equations, etc. The organizing metaprinciple of QUANTUM PHYSICS IS Classical MECHANICS MADE AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE. We will focus on the simplest, two state systems.
***.
Simplicia: Physicists usually describe Quantum Mechanics as “weird”. You are the first one to claim Quantum Physics is NOT weird.
Tyranosopher : In his famous Lectures on Physics, Feynman describes Classical Mechanics as a “shadow” of Quantum Mechanics, or a mnemotechnical trick. Well, he was wrong, there is more to it than that. It took me many decades of deep study of the Quantum to find that in truth, arriving from the first approximation of Classical Mechanics, Quantum Physics is not philosophically weird, but the LOGICAL ROOT of Classical Mechanics. Let’s suppose you were God, and you wanted to devise the simplest barebone theory as a basis for Classical Mechanics… What would you find? Quantum Physics!
Simplicia: God is useful after all! What do you mean by barebone?
Tyranosopher: Logically barebone: the fewest and simplest axioms animated by the simplest logic. Take for example angular momentum. Classically, Angular Momentum can take any value in any direction: a classical massive object can rotate this way or the opposite, and more or less, along any axis, and can be measured again and again, ad vitam eternam: that’s a lot of freedom.
Simplicia: To make Angular Momentum barebone, if you were God, what would you do?
Tyranosopher: Instead of Angular Momentum having any value, you would decide, as God, that Angular Momentum could have JUST TWO VALUES: clockwise, or anti-clockwise. Then, instead of being able to point its axis in any direction, as God, you would decide ONE SINGLE direction is enough. And moreover, you measure it JUST ONCE. So barebone Angular Momentum takes only two values, and in only one direction, one time: and it turns out that this is the simplest version of Quantum Spin. When Quantum Spin is reduced to a two state system (automatically entangled).
And it is what the Stern Gerlach theorem reveals for silver atoms. Similarly for photons.
Simplicia: What do photons and silver atoms have in common?
Tyranosopher. Photon polarization and silver atoms are both two states’ systems. Apply the simplest mathematics to them, and you get the same mathematical, hence physical result. So they both exhibit nonlocality, entanglement, etc.
Simplicia: What are these “states”?
Tyranosopher: Quantum States are the outcomes of experiments with set-ups sensitive to Quantum effects. The presence of states is all very relative, or as Quantum Foundations theoreticians say, CONTEXTUAL. There is a theorem saying one cannot have non-contextuality.
Simplicia: Please elaborate.
Tyranosopher: Once again, suppose you are god, and you look at angular momentum or polarization. As I said, the simplest situation where something non-trivial happens is if you have built, or found, a device with two outcomes only: spin up, or spin down. Or polarization horizontal, or vertical. Each of these two distinct outcomes is called a state. Label these two distinct outcomes: I+> and I->. Then what’s the simplest non-trivial computational setup you can invent?
Simplicia: A vector space where I+> and I-> are the basis vectors?
Tyranosopher: Exactly. Let’s consider H, the complex vector space with basis I+> and I->.
Simplicia: Why complex?
Tyranosopher: Because you are God and you want to use the largest commutative field and that’s the complex numbers, called C. There all algebraic equations can be solved, with the help of the square root of (-1), called i. Turns out that this has all immediate deep physical meaning
Simplicia: Complex numbers, also called imaginary numbers, are natural?
Tyranosopher: Yes the number i corresponds to the rotation by pi/4, an angle of ninety degrees, around the origin in the plane.
Simplicia: What’s the connection of complex numbers and (i) with physics?
Tyranosopher: A photon is characterized by its momentum, which is a vector p which points in a direction, and has a frequency E. (hE, p) is the energy-momentum of the photon. It tells you where the photon is going and with how much energy. However, that does not characterize the photon fully. Experiments already conducted by the Vikings show that the photons have polarization.
Simplicia: The Vikings were physicists?
Tyranosopher: They navigated the North Atlantic, going from islands to islands, all the way to America. They needed to know where the sun was, say at noon, to know where the north was. The weather is often so cloud covered there, that one can’t say where the sun is, for weeks on end. Fortunately, the Vikings had stones which gave the direction of the sun. That’s because the atmosphere partially polarizes sunlight.
Simplicia: So the complex numbers characterize polarization?
Tyranosopher: A photon is made of an electric field paired to a perpendicular magnetic field, both perpendicular to momentum p. It’s enough to know where the electric field points to know the polarization. A complex number gives you polarization.
Simplicia: Why can’t a single real number give you that, like, you know, the angle?
Tyranosopher: Complex numbers give you more information. Let’s backtrack. God is trying to build the most powerful yet most complex mechanics possible. By considering complex numbers, you augment the power, but also the simplicity, because all algebraic equations, the ones with powers, are solvable. So, in an important way, C, the complex plane, is simpler than the real line R. Physically speaking it also turns out that quantum waves multiply, to make quantum amplitudes, which are probability waves, and probabilities multiply, but only as complex waves.
Simplicia: So let’s recapitulate. You reduce angular momentum to simply + or -, plus or minus… instead of a continuum of numbers. You also reduce the direction of angular momentum to a single one, the one along which you measure it. You then build a vector space with I+> and I-> as base vectors, and you simplify maximally by choosing complex numbers instead of real numbers.
Tyranosopher: Absolutely. Isn’t it funny that complex numbers are actually both simpler and more powerful than real numbers? Complex numbers live in a plane and contain in their description light itself!
Simplicia: Are you identifying the complex plane with light?
Tyranosopher: Take a complex plane P, brandish it in space, and pick up a (complex) number N in it. That represents all the information we have on a photon.
The perpendicular to P through its origin gives you the direction of the photon, the norm c of N gives you the frequency and the angle a of c gives you the polarization. So the information (P, c(exp ia)) gives you the photon fully. You can’t do that with real numbers
Simplicia: Photons are points in flying complex planes?
Tyranosopher: Yes, but we are not finished.
We have this complex vector space H = C (I+>, I->)… that means it has two basis vectors. Consider a vector v in that space. It has coordinates in function of I+> and I->; the square of the norms of those coordinates are real numbers. They express the probability of v being in state I+> versus in state I->.
Once again the guiding meta-principle here is the same: make it the simplest for getting a non-trivial result, depicting reality which is what we know, namely that any experiment will give either I+> or I->.
Then we introduce another ingredient: that light and matter behave in a wave-like fashion. So make the coordinates of v into waves depending upon space and time. Also, at the simplest, when v is operated upon, it will give another vector w. To go simplest again from v to w, one should use a linear operator.
Simplicia: Is that the famous “matrix mechanics”?
Tyranosopher: Exactly.
***
Simplicia: What of weird effects like tunneling, and Quantum Entanglement?
Tyranosopher: Tunneling comes from the wavy nature. It would require a bit more elaboration to explain as one needs to introduce energy and how it affects waves. Basically, not all of a sudden, hence (probability of presence) waves penetrate a bit, that’s tunneling.
Simplicia: And what about nonlocality?
Tyranosopher: The nonlocal nature of Quantum Entanglement is in plain sight. The simplest is two particles sharing the same two state spin system with total spin zero. :Choose an axis of measurement, call it Z. Then measuring gives the spin of the other particle along Z automatically even 4 lightyears away. But choosing Z was an act of will. So will acted 4 lightyears away.
Simplicia: Minds change the universe light years away?
Tyranosopher: Yes, indeed. Sub Quantum Physical Reality assumes that the propagation of that change is progressive.
Simplicia: What if the distances are too great?
Tyranosopher: Then entanglement fails, and, or Dark Matter and, or Dark Energy are created. That’s what I say.
Simplicia: Does spacetime make some sort of foam at the smallest scale?
Tyranosopher: It’s worse than that. It’s a topological foam, and it’s nonlocal. There again, as God, you would have been confronted with the following problem: how to describe the infinitesimally small?
Simplicia: By making the infinitesimally small ever smaller.
Tyranosopher: That was tried in biology. It was called the homunculus theory: a human being would start as a tiny reproduction of itself. In truth what happens is that bacteria divide, so they never get that small, and animals… more generally eukaryotes, start with molecular (DNA, RNA) and cellular formations which enter in a constructive dialogue with the environment (some of which is self-created). So basically sophisticated life doesn’t start as itself at all, but in a nonlocal way. Same thing for spacetime and particles.
Simplicia: Does Quantum Entanglement hold objects together?
Tyranosopher: It has been difficult to find when, where and how an object switches from Quantum behavior to Classical behavior. It is imaginable that Quantum Entanglement holds objects together. After all the more massive an object, the higher the probability that an entangled state will collapse. Collapse is the glue.
Simplicia: How so?
Tyranosopher: De Broglie associated a matter wave to every single massive object.
Simplicia: Are photons massive?
Tyranosopher: Yes they are, in the sense of inertial mass. Poincaré published and taught in 1899 that a photon has inertial mass m = E/cc. That’s coming straight out of electromagnetism. Photons of course have no rest mass, because they are never at rest. But they contribute to gravity as E/cc, from the axiom: inertial mass = gravitational mass (Einstein called that the “Principle of Equivalence”).
Simplicia: Let’s go back to matter waves.
Tyranosopher: An object of mass M has wavelength L = h/M, where h is Planck’s constant. A deep question is how that L is generated. Clearly L should be equal to a sum, what is called an integral in mathematics: Sum(m(i)), where m(i) are the zillions of zillions of particles constituting M: all the gluons, quarks, photons, electrons inside. However, the sum should be extended to entanglement itself. I mean what’s called the “particles” are actually the states. Most of the time Quantum systems are actually delocalized Quantum fields.
Simplicia: Are Quantum Entanglement and Delocalization the same?
Tyranosopher: No. QE is an example of delocalization. Sometimes
Simplicia: What happens to mass during these delocalizations?
Tyranosopher: Good question! The experience has not been made. Einstein postulated, in 1905, as an axiom that a photon was localized always… and this may have led him to the EPR thirty years later, and introducing the doubt of “spooky action at a distance”… He was a bit arguing with himself.
From the introduction section of Einstein’s March 1905 quantum paper “On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the emission and transformation of light”, Einstein states:
“According to the assumption to be contemplated here, when a light ray is spreading from a point, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever-increasing spaces, but consists of a finite number of “energy quanta” that are localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as a whole.“
This statement has been called the most revolutionary sentence written by a physicist of the twentieth century. However, it’s probably not completely true, and I have called it “Einstein’s Error“. First, Quantum Field Theory, and even QED, its predecessor, which Einstein tried, but failed to learn, has replaced “particles” by (delocalized) Quantum Fields: no more localized particles at a point. Moreover, and worse, if one believes the Quantum amplitudes that one computes with have some physical reality, as SQPR, Sub Quantum Physical Reality, believes, Einstein is not completely correct, and the difference is Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. Indeed, in SQPR, Sub Quantum Physical Reality, some mass-energy is spread out. Experimentation will have to decide, although the existence of DM and DE is massive proof enough for me. But this is all speculative, whereas deducing Quantum from Classical, as the maximal non-trivial abstraction from Classical, the original subject of this essay, is not.
Simplicia: Feynman often put philosophy is a bad light.
Tyranosopher: Feynman, like, Mach, Boltzman, Planck, Einstein, De Broglie, and all great physicists, was a philosopher. Dirac deduced his equation for the electron field according to the principle of abstraction from Classical Mechanics and simplicity. Dirac looked for the simplest Partial Differential Equation the square of which would be the relativistic mass-energy-momentum formula for an electron. That’s the Dirac equation! It produced correct quantum electrodynamics, spin and anti-matter! It was deducted according to the general machinery I advocate! So in a way the method I exhibited here to deduce Quantum Physics had already been used, at least in particular cases.
Simplicia: Is your own SQPR deducted similarly?
Tyranosopher: Yes, from classical obvious to fully abstracted and still obvious. Newton said, in a private letter, that it was madness to suppose that the gravitational interaction was instantaneous. A century later, Laplace filled in the idea, making gravitation into a field, and thus predicting gravitational waves. SQPR assumes that Quantum Entanglement, like Delocalization in general, is a field with finite speed: present Quantum Mechanics assumes that QE and nonlocality propagate at infinite speed. This finite speed assumption produces Dark Matter and Dark Energy quasi-instantaneously.
***
Conclusion: This is as it should be: after all, Classical Mechanics is the appearance, the first order approximation, and Quantum Physics what generates that appearance. One can deduce Quantum Physics from Classical Mechanics. One just has to expand the notion of “deduction” beyond what Feynman was familiar with. A love of wisdom helps with science, as it allows us to expand what logic means.
Patrice Ayme
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Abstract: Faster Than Light Particle Transfer? Not Possible According To Special Relativity. But Faster Than Light Communications? Some Day, Probably. Using Quantum Entanglement… Not Particle Transport.
TYRANOSOPHER: Folklore based on a vague reasoning of Einstein says Faster Than Light Communications are impossible (a variant supposedly breaks the universe… see below). Having read Einstein carefully, yours truly determined that Einstein’s reasoning was flimsy (Albert himself hints at that in his original paper).
Most of Special Relativity stays intact if Faster Than Light Communication, FTLC are possible. ALL the equations, and thus the verifying experiments of Special Relativity stay intact. (See towards the end answers to objections).
Simplicia: Many people will write you off because you wrote off Einstein. They won’t read any further.
Tyranosopher: OK, I will detail in another essay my objections to the packaging of Special Relativity which forbids FTLC with great details. Below is just a sketch.
Now about Einstein: he is not God. Actually, there is no God. When I was young and naive, I approved (all) of Einstein’s critiques of Quantum theory, a theory to which he crucially contributed as number two, Planck being number one. Planck said emission of radiation was in grains, quanta, and explained two facts this way. Einstein explained that supposing absorption of radiation also came in quanta explained the photoelectric effect. Planck condemned the latter, but Einstein was right. Then other physicists contributed. The next huge conceptual breakthrough was De Broglie’s matter waves. Then CIQ (Copenhagen Interpretation Quantum) arose with correct physics, admirable math, but a sick un-realistic metaphysics. De Broglie objected and rolled out a realistic model of fundamental physics. Einstein seconded De Broglie, but they were overwhelmed by the launch of QED by Dirac. Then all sorts of strange and marvellous high energy zoo, then QFT, etc.
Nevertheless, after exchanges with Karl Popper, Einstein wrote the EPR paper on nonlocality, in 1935… EPR criticized Quantum Physics and its nonlocality from the “realistic” point of view. I am also all for Sub Quantum Physical Reality (SQPR), but I have an axiom neither De Broglie nor Einstein had. Science progresses one axiom at a time…
However, as the decades passed, and I deepened my understanding, I realized that Einstein’s admirable work was not as revolutionary and crazy as needed.
Simplicia: The funny thing is that Einstein discovered nonlocality in the 1935 EPR paper. Which is one of the top ten papers in theoretical physics, and very hot today, as Quantum Computers use nonlocality.
Tyranosopher: Einstein was honest enough to not throw nonlocality out of the window. Maybe his conversation with the philosopher Karl Popper helped: Popper did contribute to the discovery of nonlocality. Einstein called nonlocality “spooky action at a distance”.
Simplicia: Now nonlocality is a proven experimental fact.
Tyranosopher: Yes the “SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE” which initially was a purely theoretical fact coming out of the axiomatics of Quantum Theory has been PROVEN over distances of many kilometers. One has to know the crucial difference of QUANTUM SPIN versus classical spin to see nonlocality clearly.
Chinese scientists have measured a minimum speed for this “spooky action at a distance”. I call it the QUANTUM INTERACTION, and assign to it a finite speed, TAU. This supplementary axiom contradicts Quantum Theory.
Instead, classical Twentieth Century Quantum Physics says that Quantum Entanglement proceeds at infinite speed.
So this supplementary axiom of propagating finite speed nonlocality should be experimentally testable. I claim the proof of a finite speed for the Quantum Interaction is all around us: Dark Matter and Dark Energy are the results of this experiment, conducted for free by the universe itself. Amen.
Simplicia: What do you mean that nonlocality has been proven? Your friend Ian Miller, who is a physical chemist, denies a proof was achieved.
***
Tyranosopher: I admire Ian, he is a renaissance man, but don’t understand his arguments in this particular case. There are countless variants and proofs under the label “Bell’s theorem” in a jungle of tweaked axiomatics. Ian uses the classical Noether’s theorem… which doesn’t apply to Quantum situations. For once I will use an authority argument. The Nobel was given to nonlocality in 2022, and should have been given at least two decades ago to Alain Aspect. That could have helped physics.
To understand the simplest quantifiable proof of nonlocality one has to know about Quantum Spin and what has been experimentally discovered. Quantum Spin does NOT behave like Classical Spin. Classical Spin can be measured in all directions simultaneously, but Quantum Spin can be measured in only one direction at a time, and that erases preceding measurement.
Building up on Einstein’s 1935 EPR, the simplest Quantum Entanglement which can be studied over a distance was elaborated by David Bohm in the 1950s and then studied in detail by a very small group of physicists, including CERN theoretical high energy physics head, John Bell, in the 1960s, to produce an experimentally testable inequality… which was given the Physics Nobel for 2022.
Simplicia: OK, many people have thought this instantaneous nonlocality could be used for Faster Than Light, FTL.
Tyranosopher: Maybe. But one has to distinguish FTL and FTL Communication. FTL for massive objects is impossible, except by transporting a space bubble, which is pure science fiction of the extravagant type.
However if SQPR is correct and TAU is finite, one should be able, theoretically speaking, to create energy imbalances at a distance, after an elaborate technological setup, and thus create FTLC channels.
***
QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT SEEMS TO PRODUCE FTLC:
Suppose we produce a state of total spin zero shared by two particles. (Particle streams, in practice.)
We keep one going in circles around Earth, and send the other to Proxima Centauri, 4 lightyears away.
Now say that, after 4 years, we measure the spin in the z direction in the Earth neighborhood, and we find |+>. Then we know that the other particle has spin |-> at Proxima.
So our measurement at Earth created a spin down at Proxima… Instantaneously.
Now, with particle streams and synchronized clocks one could easily transform this into an FTL Morse code….
Except for one Quantum difficulty: we do not know how to get a |+> state to start with. We have the same probability to create a |-> state…We can’t make a stream of I+> states to start with, so we can’t type our FTL Morse code to start with! It’s as if we told a cosmic monkey in another room to type, but he can’t select letters.
***
Hencethe impossibility of Faster Than Light Communications rests only upon claiming to know something we know nothing about: can one NEVER EVER prepare, and, or NEVER EVER select Quantum states before measuring them? In other words, do Quantum States have tails?
There is a so-called “Non Cloning” [of states] theorem…But the “proof” has a loophole (it depends upon assuming a unitary operator, thus denying there are quantum tails, exactly what it wants to prove) In truth, it’s an experimental problem: if what the prestigious French physicist Devoret at Yale and his collaborators is true, it has been possible to prepare some (contrived) Quantum states… but, SO FAR, it has not been possible to prepare Quantum states which happen to be ENTANGLED.
***
When some physicists pretend Faster Than Light Communications are impossible, they pontificate, because, in truth, we don’t know. And science doesn’t progress one pontifex at a time, but one correct intuition at a time. The intuitive case for FTLC is growing as the Quantum amazes us ever more.
***
What we know is that something we thought to be completely impossible, SWAPPING QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT, is not only possible, but now so amply demonstrated that it is central to various developing Quantum technologies.
***
SQPR assumes particles have complex structures, a linear part (the guiding wave) and a nonlinear part (the “particle”), the entire structure being unstable and prone to contracting at TAU, the collapse and entanglement speed.
***
However, Quantum Swapping shows that, somehow, one can have Quantum Interactions without collapse, namely the propagation of QE.
***
Thus it is starting to smell as if one could interact with a particle’s extended presence without inducing collapse, and then select the type we like…
***
Simplicia: Hence FTLC should be possible?
Tyranosopher: FTLC through Quantum Entanglement would not contradict Relativity, because it would not change anything to light clocks, or for the equation Force = d(mv/(1-vv/cc))/dt. There would be no mass transport.
***
It all smells as if FTLC will become possible. That does not mean that Faster Than Light matter transport should be possible. The latter is impossible without warp drives.
Simplicia: Wait, don’t go. It is well known that FTL Communication leads to the breakdown of causality, and thus, sheer madness. Consider the excellent video:
Tyranosopher: Yes, beautiful video. Minkowski spacetime diagrams. Einstein didn’t like them, he didn’t like either Minkowsky or “spacetime”. It was reciprocal: Minkowsky, who was Einstein’s physics professor at Zurich Polytechnic, ETA, called Albert a “lazy dog” and made sure he couldn’t get an academic appointment. Instead a friend got Einstein a job at the Patent Office in Bern.
Simplicia: Can we get to the point? You don’t like spacetime as a concept, so what?
Tyranosopher: Notice that they draw these spacetime diagrams all over the galaxy’s real space, in various places, and then they draw a contradiction.
Simplicia: Yes, so what?
Tyranosopher: Relativity was invented by Henri Poincaré to describe local effects. Basically local speed makes local time of the speeding object run slow. A fast traveling light clock goes slow when going along the direction of the speed, at the speed. From there after quite a bit of half hidden logic, plus Michelson Morley type experiments which showed the undetectability of speed within a ship cabin not looking outside (the original Galileo imagery), one deduced length also contracted, and so did the local time of the moving device.
Simplicia: Thanks for the two sentences recap of Relativity.
Tyranosopher: The slowing down of the local time was amply confirmed with fast particle like muons, and in a slightly different context, GPS computations crucially depend upon time contraction of the orbiting satellites.
Simplicia: And then? Why are spacetime diagrams bad?
Tyranosopher: Spacetime diagrams are tangent space objects. They are, at best, local approximations. Extending a spacetime diagram to Vega has degraded meaning. Einstein knew this, he mentioned somewhere that General Relativity violates the constancy of the speed of light. And that’s fairly obvious as light could be put in orbit around a black hole. Now the silly ones cry that time would be in orbit around said black hole, and bite its own tail, etc. Grandchildren would kill all their grandparents, etc. Silly stuff: they confuse local and global, although that’s the bedrock of differential geometry. Differential geometry is locally flat (aka “Euclidean”) and globally curved (or even twisted). But this is not even the worst…
Simplicia: How come this is all not well-known.
T: Long ago I gave a seminar along these lines at Stanford. Many of the best and brightest were in attendance, Hawking, Penrose, Yau, Susskind, etc. and not too happy from what I said. But my point about General Relativity making no sense without Quantum is viewed as trivially obvious nowadays.
Simplicia: So you are saying one can’t just rotate the spacetime axes of a moving spaceship and make deductions?
T: One can make deductions, but one can’t make deductions where local time of a moving ship becomes global time, as in the video I linked above. Earth can synchronize time with Vega, Henri Poincaré described how that can be done. But one can’t synchronize time with a moving spaceship (as those who claim to have demonstrated that FTLC breaks causality to).
If one sends an FTL message to a moving spaceship, it does not get it in our past. It gets it in our future. Our past and our future are local… to us, and… Vega, if we synchronized time with Vega. A really silly mistake.
Simplicia: Please stop insulting fellow intellectuals, or they are not going to be fellows anymore. And why did you link to a false video?
Tyranosopher: Right, let me rephrase this: it has been known since the onset of Relativity that at speed simultaneity is violated. So cause and effect can look inverted in a moving ship relative to what they are in a co-moving frame.That’s basic.The video misses the point, although it looks so reasonable, with great graphics.
Therefore, in the Special Theory of Relativity, causality can only be established and defined in the co-moving frame. (Same for mass, let be said in passing. Even the otherwise excellent Richard Feynman makes that mistake in his lectures. The video I linked above makes that mistake).
So claiming Faster Than Light Communications violates causality is erroneous!
***
Simplicia: If and when do you think we can realize FTLC?
Tyranosopher: We are tantalizingly close. Some physicists (Devoret) adorned with prizes, glory and long careers claim that they candetect the preparation of a Quantum jump, and even that they can revert it. If that’s true, and we can apply that kind of selection to Quantum Spin, FTLC could be installed with Mars before humanity lands on the planet.
Simplicia: Are you serious?
Tyranosopher: Absolutely.
Patrice Ayme
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Abstract: Looked at it the right way, the Stern Gerlach experiment with three consecutive magnets oriented various ways, show that there can’t be LOCAL hidden variables. No need, to exhibit nonlocality, for the precise, but obscure logic of the Bell Inequality. The argument here is less mathematically precise, but more intuitive.
***
Stern-Gerlach Magnets (SGM) reveal an aspect of the Quantum, namely the quantization of (some sort of) angular momentum. SGM launched in 1922 the saga of Quantum Spin (it turns out to be connected to deep pure geometry which had been developed independently by Élie Cartan, a decade earlier). Drive an electron, or (appropriate) atomic beam through a SGM, and one will get two dots, one up, one down. Whatever the axis of the SGM [1]. (The SGM is just a magnetic field with a specific linear direction.)
That means, at the emotional level that, at the smallest scale, spin, the electronic (sort of) angular momentum, or the orbital (sort of) angular momentum, reduce to UP and DOWN. First surprise. (This is actually the case of Spin 1/2, the simplest, such as for an electron; we are trying to learn the most from the simplest case.)
Say the first SGM is vertical (magnetic field along “z axis”) and a second SGM is horizontal (mag field along “x axis”). Call them respectively SGMV and SGMH. So SGMH produces LEFT-RIGHT beams. Put SGMH across the UP beam coming out of SGMV. One could call that beam SGMV (UP). Once goes through SGMH, one will get 50-50 LEFT-RIGHT. No surprise there.
Now say one selects the RIGHT beam coming out SGMH. Call that beam SGMH (UP; RIGHT)… because first the beam went up, then the beam went right.
Naively one would expect, from classical mechanics, that SGMH (UP; RIGHT) to have kept a memory of its initial source as SGMV(UP).
That would be to assume that beam SGMV (UP) and its descendant SGMH (UP; RIGHT) to have kept some memory, in other words that some that the beams through the first SGMV and then the second SGM to harbor some LOCAL HIDDEN VARIABLES.
But that’s not the case.
Indeed, please run SGMH (UP; RIGHT) into a second SGMV (that is a Stern Gerlach Magnet parallel to the first magnet SGMV… Call that second vertical Stern Gerlach Magnet SGMV2 One gets fifty-fifty UP and DOWN coming out of SGMV2. It is as if the initial Stern Gerlach, SGMV, never happened. (This set-up is presented in Feynman Lectures on Physics III, Chapter 6, Spin 1/2)
So if there were local hidden variables carried after SGMV that is in the beam SGMV (UP), they got somehow completely eradicated by getting into the beam SGMH (RIGHT).
So these proposed local hidden variables do not stay hidden inside the “particle”: an outside agent can erase them…. Thus those putative local hidden variables aren’t really “local” anymore: the environment impacts them, outside of the particle, and drastically so, just as the potential impacts the phase of an electron in the Bohm-Aharonov experiment… non locally.
***
One can rerun the experiment, by using both beams SGMH (RIGHT) and SGMH (RIGHT), mixing them up. Then it turns out that SGMV2 deflects ONLY UP. So simply going through magnet SGMH, WITHOUT selecting a beam (either SGMH(LEFT) or SMGH (RIGHT)) doesn’t do anything: a collapsing of the Quantum space available to the Quantum wave, selecting either left or right space, is what does something.
Conventional Quantum Physics, newish, path integral version, phrases this by saying one can’t say which path has been followed [2] to keep the information SGV UP or SGV DOWN. Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum (CIQ) simply says that selecting beam SGMH (RIGHT) is a measurement thus collapses the wave function… SQPR says roughly the same thing.
In any case, this eradication of the influence of SGMH on the “particle” by just keeping open the OTHER beam, which the putative local hidden variable “particle” is by definition NOT taking, is itself a NONLOCAL effect, thus once again demolishing the “LOCAL Hidden Variable” concept. (One could say that one beam is entangled with the other…)
The advantage of this conceptual approach is that it exhibits directly the nonlocality… without hermetic complications [3]. It also shows the interest of a more philosophical rather than purely formalistic approach to physics.
Patrice Ayme ***
[1] Wolfgang Pauli in 1924 was the first to propose a doubling of the number of available electron states due to a two-valued non-classical “hidden rotation“. In 1925, George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit suggested the simple physical interpretation for spin of a particle spinning around its own axis… But clearly that doesn’t fit what is observed. Pauli built a mathematical machinery which reflected the observed GSM behavior. It turned out to be a particular case of deep mathematical work from the French mathematician Élie Cartan who was born and initially educated in the small Alpine coal mining village of La Mure, and rose through merit in the republican educational system. It’s a bit like taking the square root of space. I don’t understand it, neither did the extremely famous mathematician Atiyah…
It is easy to be blinded by the math. But actually the math describes an observed physical behavior. Now this behavior may arise from deeper geometrical reason
***
[2] In SQPR, the “particles” are preceded by the linear guiding waves. Blocking some of them triggers “collapse”. By selecting SGMH (RIGHT) one clearly collapses the linear guidance.
***
[3] Stern Gerlach Magnets also directly illustrates Spin, as did in the first few lines above (magnetic field —> two dots!) The Pauli machinery is often how Spin is introduced in Quantum Physics courses, but that, philososophically is confusing the formalism derived from what is observed with the observation itself.
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
There are theories everywhere, and the more ingrained they are, the more suspiciously they should be looked at. From the basic equations of relativity it is clear that if one adds speeds less than the speed of light, one will get a speed less than the speed of light. It is also clear that adding impulse to a mass will make it more massive, while its speed will asymptotically approach that of light (and, as I explained, the reason is intuitive, from Time Dilation).
The subject is not all sci-fi: modern cosmology brazenly assumes that space itself, after the alleged Big Bang, expanded at a speed at least 10^23 c (something like one hundred thousand billion billions time the speed of light c). The grossest, yet simplest, proof of that is simple: the observable universe is roughly 100 billion light years across, and it is ten billion years old. Thus it expanded at the minimum average clip of ten billion light years, every billion years. 100c/10 = 10c, according to standard cosmology. One could furiously imagine a spaceship somehow surfing on a wave of warped space, expanding for the same obscure reason same obscure reason as the Big Bang itself, that is…)
The question naturally arises whether velocities which are greater than that of light could ever possibly be obtained in other ways. For example, are there communication speeds faster than light? (Throwing some material across will not work: its mass will increase, while its speed stays less than c.)
Textbooks say it’s not possible. There is actually a “proof” of that alleged impossibility, dating all the way back to Einstein (1907) and Tolman (1917). The mathematics are trivial (they are reproduced in my picture below). But the interpretation is apparently less so. Wikipedia weirdly claims that faster than light communications would allow to travel back in time. No. One could synchronize all clocks on all planets in the galaxies, and having faster than light communications would not change anything. Why? Time is local, faster than light data travel is nonlocal.
The problem of faster than light communications can be attacked in the following manner.
Consider two points A and B on the X axis of the system S, and suppose that some impulse originates at A, travels to B with the velocity u and at B produces some observable phenomenon, the starting of the impulse at A and the resulting phenomenon at B thus being connected by the relation of cause and effect. The time elapsing between the cause and its effect as measured in the units of system S will evidently be as follows in the calligraphy below. Then I use the usual Relativity formula (due to Lorentz) of time as it elapses in S’:
Equations help, but they are neither the beginning, nor the end of a story. Just an abstraction of it. The cult of equations is naive, interpretation is everything. The same thing, more generally, holds for models.
As Tolman put it in 1917: “Let us suppose now that there are no limits to the possible magnitude of the velocities u and V, and in particular that the causal impulse can travel from A to B with a velocity u greater than that of light. It is evident that we could then take a velocity u great enough uV/C^2 will be greater than one. so that Delta(t) would become negative. In other words, for an observer in system S’ the effect which occurs at B would precede in time its cause which originates at A.”
I quote Tolman, because he is generally viewed as the one having definitively established the impossibility of faster than light communications. Tolman, though is not so sure; in his next sentence he turns out wishy washy: “Such a condition of affairs might not be a logical impossibility; nevertheless its extraordinary nature might incline us to believe that no causal impulse can travel with a velocity greater than that of light.”
Actually it is an effect those who have seen movies running in reverse are familiar with. Causality apparently running in reverse is no more surprising than the fact that two events at x1 and x2 which are simultaneous in S are separated by: (x1-x2) (V/square root (1-VV/CC)). That introduces a sort of fake, or apparent causality, sometimes this before that, sometimes that before this.
(The computation is straightforward and found in Tolman’s own textbook; it originated with Henri Poincaré.[9][10] In 1898 Poincaré argued that the postulate of light speed constancy in all directions is useful to formulate physical laws in a simple way. He also showed that the definition of simultaneity of events at different places is only a convention.[11]) . Notice that, in the case of simultaneity, the signs of V and (x1-x2) matter. Basically, depending upon how V moves, light in S going to S’ takes more time to catch up with the moving frame, and the more so, the further it is, the same exact effect which explains the nil result in the Michelson-Morley interferometer; there is an underlying logic below all of this, and it’s always the same).
Tolman’s argumentation about the impossibility of faster than light communications is, in the end, purely philosophical and fully inconsistent with the closely related, and fully mainstream, relativity of simultaneousness.
Poincaré in 1900 proposed the following convention for defining clock synchronisation: 2 observers A and B, which are moving in space (which Poincaré called the aether), synchronise their clocks by means of optical signals. They believe to be at rest in space (“the aether”) from not moving relative to distant galaxies or the Cosmic Radiation Background and assume that the speed of light is constant in all directions. Therefore, they have to consider only the transmission time of the signals and then crossing their observations to examine whether their clocks are synchronous.
“Let us suppose that there are some observers placed at various points, and they synchronize their clocks using light signals. They attempt to adjust the measured transmission time of the signals, but they are not aware of their common motion, and consequently believe that the signals travel equally fast in both directions. They perform observations of crossing signals, one traveling from A to B, followed by another traveling from B to A.”
In 1904 Poincaré illustrated the same procedure in the following way:
“Imagine two observers who wish to adjust their timepieces by optical signals; they exchange signals, but as they know that the transmission of light is not instantaneous, they are careful to cross them. When station B perceives the signal from station A, its clock should not mark the same hour as that of station A at the moment of sending the signal, but this hour augmented by a constant representing the duration of the transmission. Suppose, for example, that station A sends its signal when its clock marks the hour 0, and that station B perceives it when its clock marks the hour t. The clocks are adjusted if the slowness equal to t represents the duration of the transmission, and to verify it, station B sends in its turn a signal when its clock marks 0; then station A should perceive it when its clock marks t. The timepieces are then adjusted. And in fact they mark the same hour at the same physical instant, but on the one condition, that the two stations are fixed. Otherwise the duration of the transmission will not be the same in the two senses, since the station A, for example, moves forward to meet the optical perturbation emanating from B, whereas the station B flees before the perturbation emanating from A. The watches adjusted in that way will not mark, therefore, the true time; they will mark what may be called the local time, so that one of them will be slow of the other.[13]“
ThisPoincaré (“–Einstein”) synchronisation was used by telegraphers as soon as the mid-nineteenth century. It would allow to cover the galaxy with synchronized clocks (although local times will differ a bit depending upon the motion of stars, and in particular where in the galactic rotation curve a star sits). Transmitting instantaneous signals in that networks would not affect causality. Ludicrously, Wikipedia asserts that faster than light signals would make “Bertha” rich (!!!). That comes simply from Wikipedia getting thoroughly confused, allowing faster than light signals for some data, and not for other data, thus giving an advantage to some, and not others.
***
Quantum Entanglement (QE) enables at-a-distance changes of Quantum states:
(It comes in at least three types of increasing strength.) Quantum Entanglement, as known today, is within Quantum state to within Quantum state, but we cannot control in which Quantum state the particle will be, to start with, so we cannot use QE for communicating faster than light (because we don’t control what we write, so to speak, as we write with states, so we send gibberish).
This argument is formalized in a “No Faster Than Light Communication theorem”. However, IMHO, the proof contains massive loopholes (the proof assumes that there is no Sub Quantum Reality, whatsoever, nor could there ever be some, ever, and thus that the unlikely QM axioms are forever absolutely true beyond all possible redshifts you could possibly imagine, inter alia). So this is not the final story here. QE enables, surprisingly, the Quantum Radar (something I didn’t see coming). And it is not clear to me that we have absolutely no control on states statistically, thus that we can’t use what Schrödinger, building on the EPR thought experiment, called “Quantum Steering” to communicate at a distance. Quantum Radar and Quantum Steering are now enacted through real devices. They use faster-than-light in their inner machinery.
As the preceding showed, the supposed contradiction of faster-than-light communications with Relativity is just an urban legend. It makes the tribe of physicists more priestly, as they evoke a taboo nobody can understand, for the good reason that it makes no sense, and it is intellectually comfortable, as it simplifies brainwork, taboos always do, but it is a lie. And it is high time this civilization switches to the no more lies theorem, lest it wants to finish roasted, poisoned, flooded, weaponized and demonized.
As Wikipedia itself puts it, weasel-style, to try to insinuate that Einstein brought something very significant to the debate, the eradication of the aether (but the aether came back soon after, and there are now several “reasons” for it; the point being that, as Poincaré suspected, there is a notion of absolute rest, and now we know this for several reasons: CRB, Unruh effect, etc.):
“In 1892 and 1895, Hendrik Lorentz used a mathematical method called “local time” t’ = t – v x/c2 for explaining the negative aether drift experiments.[5] However, Lorentz gave no physical explanation of this effect. This was done by Henri Poincaré who already emphasized in 1898 the conventional nature of simultaneity and who argued that it is convenient to postulate the constancy of the speed of light in all directions. However, this paper does not contain any discussion of Lorentz’s theory or the possible difference in defining simultaneity for observers in different states of motion.[6][7] This was done in 1900, when Poincaré derived local time by assuming that the speed of light is invariant within the aether. Due to the “principle of relative motion”, moving observers within the aether also assume that they are at rest and that the speed of light is constant in all directions (only to first order in v/c). Therefore, if they synchronize their clocks by using light signals, they will only consider the transit time for the signals, but not their motion in respect to the aether. So the moving clocks are not synchronous and do not indicate the “true” time. Poincaré calculated that this synchronization error corresponds to Lorentz’s local time.[8][9] In 1904, Poincaré emphasized the connection between the principle of relativity, “local time”, and light speed invariance; however, the reasoning in that paper was presented in a qualitative and conjectural manner.[10][11]
Albert Einstein used a similar method in 1905 to derive the time transformation for all orders in v/c, i.e., the complete Lorentz transformation. Poincaré obtained the full transformation earlier in 1905 but in the papers of that year he did not mention his synchronization procedure. This derivation was completely based on light speed invariance and the relativity principle, so Einstein noted that for the electrodynamics of moving bodies the aether is superfluous. Thus, the separation into “true” and “local” times of Lorentz and Poincaré vanishes – all times are equally valid and therefore the relativity of length and time is a natural consequence.[12][13][14]“
… Except of course, absolute relativity of length and time is not really true: everywhere in the universe, locally at rest frames can be defined, in several manner (optical, mechanical, gravitational, and even using a variant of the Quantum Field Theory Casimir Effect). All other frames are in trouble, so absolute motion can be detected. The hope of Einstein, in devising General Relativity was to explain inertia, but he ended down with just a modification of the 1800 CE Bullialdus-Newton-Laplace theory… (Newton knew his instantaneous gravitation made no sense, and condemned it severely, so Laplace introduced a gravitation speed, thus the gravitational waves, and Poincaré made them relativistic in 1905… Einstein got the applause…)
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Discontinuing The Continuum, Replacing It By Quantum Entanglement Of Granular Substrate:
Is the universe granular? Discontinuous? Is spacetime somehow emergent? I do have an integrated solution to these quandaries, using basic mass-energy physics, and quantum entanglement. (The two master ideas I use here are mine alone, and if I am right, will change physics radically in the fullness of time.)
First let me point out that worrying about this is not just a pet lunacy of mine. Edward Witten is the only physicist to have got a top mathematics prize, and is viewed by many as the world’s top physicist (I have met with him). He gave a very interesting interview to Quanta Magazine: “A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality.
Edward Witten reflects on the meaning of dualities in physics and math, emergent space-time, and the pursuit of a complete description of nature.”
Witten ponders, I answer.
Quantum Entanglement enables to build existence over extended space with a wealth exponentially growing beyond granular space
Witten: “I tend to assume that space-time and everything in it are in some sense emergent. By the way, you’ll certainly find that that’s what Wheeler expected in his essay [Information, Physics, Quantum, Wheeler’s 1989 essay propounding the idea that the physical universe arises from information, which he dubbed “it from bit.” He should have called it: “It from Qubit”. But the word “Qubit” didn’t exist yet; nor really the concept, as physicists had not realized yet the importance of entanglement and nonlocality in building the universe: they viewed them more as “spooky” oddities on the verge of self-contradiction. ..]
Edward Witten: As you’ll read, he [Wheeler] thought the continuum was wrong in both physics and math. He did not think one’s microscopic description of space-time should use a continuum of any kind — neither a continuum of space nor a continuum of time, nor even a continuum of real numbers. On the space and time, I’m sympathetic to that. On the real numbers, I’ve got to plead ignorance or agnosticism. It is something I wonder about, but I’ve tried to imagine what it could mean to not use the continuum of real numbers, and the one logician I tried discussing it with didn’t help me.”
***
Well, I spent much more time studying logic than Witten, a forlorn, despised and alienating task. (Yet, when one is driven by knowledge, nothing beats an Internet connected cave in the desert, far from the distracting trivialities!) Studying fundamental logic, an exercise mathematicians, let alone physicists, tend to detest, brought me enlightenment. mostly because it shows how relative it is, and how it can take thousands of years to make simple, obvious steps. How to solve this lack of logical imagination affecting the tremendous mathematician cum physicist Witten? Simple. From energy considerations, there is an event horizon to how large an expression can be written. Thus, in particular there is a limit to the size of a number. Basically, a number can’t be larger than the universe.
This also holds for the continuum: just as numbers can’t be arbitrarily large, neither can the digital expression of a given number be arbitrarily long. In other words, irrational numbers don’t exist (I will detail in the future what is wrong with the 24 century old proof, step by step).
As the world consists in sets of entangled quantum states (also known as “qubits”), the number of states can get much larger than the world of numbers. For example a set of 300 entangled up or down spins presents with 2^300 states (much larger than the number of atoms in the observable, 100 billion light years across universe). Such sets (“quantum simulators”) have been basically implemented in the lab.
Digital computers only work with finite expressions. Thus practical, effective logic uses already only finite mathematics, and finite logic. Thus there is no difficulty to use only finite mathematics. Physically, it presents the interest of removing many infinities (although not renormalization!)
Quantum entanglement creates a much richer spacetime than the granular subjacent space. Thus an apparently continuous spacetime is emergent from granular space. Let’s go back to the example above: 300 spins, in a small space, once quantum entangled, give a much richer spacetime quantum space of 2^300 states.
Consider again a set S of 300 particles (a practical case would be 300 atoms with spins up or down). If a set of “particles” are all entangled together I will call that a EQN (Entangled Quantum Network). Now consider an incoming wave W (typically a photonic or gravitational wave; but it could be a phonon, etc.). Classically, if the 300 particles were… classical, W has little probability to interact with S, because it has ONLY 300 “things”, 300 entities, to interact with. Quantum Mechanically, though, it has 2^300 “things”, all the states of the EQN, to interact with. Thus, a much higher probability of interacting. Certainly the wave W is more likely to interact wit2^300 entities than with 300, in the same space! (The classical computations can’t be made from scratch by me, or anybody else; but the classical computation, depending on “transparency” of a film of 300 particles would actually depend upon the Quantum computation nature makes discreetly, yet pervasely!
EQNs make (mathematically at least) an all pervasive “volume” occupying wave. I wrote “volume” with quote-unquote, because some smart asses, very long ago (nearly a century) pointed out that the Quantum Waves are in “PHASE” space, thus are NOT “real” waves. Whatever that means: Quantum volumes/spaces in which Quantum Waves compute can be very complicated, beyond electoral gerrymandering of congressional districts in the USA! In particular, they don’t have to be 3D “volumes”. That doesn’t make them less “real”. To allude to well-established mathematics: a segment is a one dimensional volume. A space filling curve is also a sort of volume, as is a fractal (and has a fractal dimension).
Now quantum entanglement has been demonstrated over thousands of kilometers, and mass (so to speak) quantum entanglement has been demonstrated over 500 nanometers (5,000 times the size of an atom). One has to understand that solids are held by quantum entanglement. So there is plenty enough entanglement to generate spaces of apparently continuous possibilities and even consciousness… from a fundamentally granular space.
Entanglement, or how to get continuum from discontinuum. (To sound like Wheeler.)
The preceding seems pretty obvious to me. Once those truths get around, everybody will say:’But of course, that’s so obvious! Didn’t Witten say that first?’
No, he didn’t.
You read it here first.
Granular space giving rise to practically continuous spacetime is an idea where deep philosophy proved vastly superior to the shortsightedness of vulgar mathematics.
Patrice Ayme’
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
A Proposed Lab SUB QUANTUM TEST: SQPR, Patrice Aymé Contra Albert Einstein: GRAVITATIONALLY DETECTING QUANTUM COLLAPSE!
Einstein claimed that a “particle” was a lump of energy, even while in translation. He had no proof of this assertion, and it underlays all modern fundamental physics, and I believe it’s false. As I see it, this error, duplicated by 99.99% of 20 C theoretical physicists, led the search for the foundations of physics astray in the Twentieth Century. How could one prove my idea, and disprove Einstein?
What Einstein wrote is this, in what is perhaps his most famous work (1905 CE): “Energy, during the propagation of a ray of light, is not continuously distributed over steadily increasing spaces, but it consists of a finite number of energy quanta LOCALIZED AT POINTS IN SPACE, MOVING WITHOUT DIVIDING…” [What’s in capital letters, I view as extremely probably false. Einstein then added nine words, four of which explaining the photoelectric effect, and for which he got the Nobel Prize. Those nine words were entirely correct, but physically independent of the preceding quote!]
If those “energy quanta” are “localized at points in space“, they concentrate onto themselves all the mass-energy.
It’s simple. According to me, the particle disperses while it is in translation (roughly following, and becoming a nonlinear variant of its De Broglie/Matter Wave dispersion, the bedrock of Quantum Physics as everybody knows it). That means its mass-energy disperses. According to Einstein, it doesn’t.
However, a gravitational field can be measured. In my theory, SQPR, the matter waves are real. What can “real” mean, in its simplest imaginable form? Something is real if that something has mass-energy-momentum. So one can then do a thought experiment. Take the traditional Double Slit experiment, and install a gravitational needle (two masses linked by a rigid rod, like a hydrogen molecule at absolute zero) in the middle of the usual interference screen.
Sub Quantum Patrice Reality Is Experimentally Discernible From Einstein’s Version of Quantum Physics! Notice in passing that none of the physics super minds of the Twentieth Century seem to have noticed Einstein’s Axiom, which is ubiquitously used all over Quantum Physics and QFT!
According to Einstein, the gravitational needle will move before the process of interference is finished, and the self-interfering particle hit the screen (some may object that, because photons travel at c, and so do gravitons, one can’t really gravitationally point at the photon; however, that’s not correct, there should be a delayed field moving the needle).
According to me, the particle is dispersed during the self-interfering process: it’s nowhere in particular. Thus the mass-energy is dispersed before the collapse/singularization. Thus a gravitational field from the self-interfering particle can’t be measured from inside the self-interfering geometry.
Could the experiment be done?
Yes. But it won’t be easy.
Molecules constituted of 5000 protons, 5000 neutrons and 5000 electrons have exhibited double slit behavior. That’s plenty enough mass to turn a gravitational needle made of two hydrogen atoms. However, with such a large object, my theory may well fail to be experimentally checked (the molecule probably re-localizes continually, thus the needle will move before impact). Ideally, one should best check this Sub Quantum Reality with a simple unique particle, such as a photon, or an electron.
Why did I long believe Einstein was wrong on this point, what I called “Einstein’s Axiom” above?
First, he had no proof of what he said. Allure can’t replace reason…
Second, localization into a point is contrary to the philosophical spirit, so to speak, of Quantum Physics. The basic idea of Quantum Physics is that one can’t localize physics into points in space… or into points in energy (this was Planck’s gist). Both space and energy come in LUMPS. For example, an electron delocalizes around a proton, creating an atom of hydrogen.
The lump thing for emissions of energy is Planck’s great discovery (a blackbody sends energy packets hf, where f is the frequency and h, Planck’s constant). The non-relevance of points is De Broglie’s great intuition: De Broglie’s introduced the axiom that one can compute everything about the translation behavior of an object from the waves associated to the energy-momentum of said object.
So Einstein was wrong on the philosophy, as he himself concluded thirty years of thinking hard about Quantum Physics, as one of its two founders, with his discovery of what he called “Spooky Interaction At A Distance” (the “EPR”, which has turned from thought experiment to real experiment, checked now in hundreds of different experiments). If “elements of reality” (to use the Einstein EPR language), are spooky action at a distance” why not so when the particle is in flight, which is precisely the gist of the EPR… (After I thought of this, I found a paper by Zurek and Al. who seem to draw a similar conclusion.)
The philosophy of Quantum Physics in one sentence: small is big, or even, everywhere.
Third, Einstein’s hypothesis of points particles being always localized has led to lots of problems, including the so-called “Multiverse” or the “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” (at least, according to yours truly…).
Fourth, the development of Twentieth Century physics according to Einstein’s roadmap, has led to theories on 5% or so of known mass-energy, at most: an epic failure. Whereas my own Sub Quantum Reality readily predicts the apparition of Dark Matter and the joint apparition of Dark Energy, as observed.
Fifth: If Einstein were right, the which-path information in the 2-slit experiment would be readily available, at least as a thought experiment, and that can’t work. The entire subject is still highly controversial: contemplate the massive paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Finally making sense of the double-slit experiment”, March 20, 2017, whose lead author is Yakir Aharonov, from the extremely famous and important Aharonov-Bohm effect. The Aharonov-Bohm effect pointed out that the potentials, not the fields themselves, were the crucial inputs of Quantum Physics. That should have been obvious to all and any who studied Quantum Physics. Yet it was overlooked by all the super minds for nearly 40 years!
Sixth: This is technical, so I won’t give the details (which are not deep). One can modify Einstein’s original EPR experiment (Which had to do with pairs of particles in general, not just photon polarization a la Bohm-Bell). One can introduce in the EPR 1935 set-up, an ideal gravity detector. If Einstein was right about the particle being always localized, determinism would be always true on particle A of an {A,B} interaction pair. Thus particle A could be tracked, gravitationally, always. But that would grossly violated the free arbiter of a lab experimenter deciding to tinker with B’s path, through an experiment of her choosing. (How do large particles do it, then? Well they tend to partly localize continually thanks to their own size, and random singularizations.)
The naked truth can be in full view, yet, precisely because it’s naked, nobody dares to see it!
Richard Feynman famously said that the double slit experiment was central to physics, and that no one understood it. He considered it carefully. Gravitation should stand under it, though! The preceding proposed experiment is one which it was obvious to propose. Yet, no one proposed it, because they just couldn’t seriously envision Quantum Collapse, and thus its impact on gravitation. Yet, I do! And therein the connection between Quantum Physics and Gravitation, the quest for the Graal of modern physicists…
So let’s have an experiment, Mr. Einstein!
Patrice Ayme’
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
In Sub-Quantum Patrice’s Reality (SQPR), Matter Waves are real (in Quantum Theory Copenhagen Interpretation (QTCI) the Matter Waves are just probability waves of… knowledge… hence the insistence that “it came from bit“). There has been no direct evidence that Matter Waves were real. So far. But times they are changing as the other one, Bob Dylan, a gifted yet not too deep singer who got his Nobel today, said.
Both Dark Matter and Dark Energy are consequences of SQPR. So: Observing both Dark Matter and Dark Energy constitute proofs of SQPR.
The prediction of the deviation of light by the Sun was twice with “General Relativity” than the one predicted in Newtonian Mechanics. The effect was minute, and detected only in grazing starlight, during Solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 (by the ultra famous British astronomer and physicist Eddington). Thus, as 95% of the universe matter-energy is from Dark Matter or Dark Energy, my prediction carries more weight.
SPQR also predict “fuel-less” production, in a variant of the effect which produces Dark Matter in SQPR (also called PSQR below):
Dark Matter Pushes, Patrice Ayme Says. Explaining NASA’s Findings?
How does Dark Matter create propulsion? Well, that it does is evident: just look at galactic clusters (more details another day). A Matter Wave will expand, until it singularizes. If it expands enough, it will become so big that it will lose a (smaller) piece of itself during re-singularization. That piece is the Dark Matter.
Thus visualize this: take a cavity C, and bounce a Matter Wave around it (there is plenty of direct theoretical and experimental evidence that this can be arranged).
Make a hole H in the boundary of C (this is not different from the Black Body oven the consideration of which led Planck to discover the Quantum).
Some Dark Matter then escapes. By the hole.
However, Dark Matter carries energy momentum (evidence from Galaxies, Galactic Clusters, etc.).
Hence a push. A Dark Matter push. (Notice: the Dark Matter is created inside the device, it doesn’t have to be “gathered”. DM propellant speed could be many times the speed of light, hence great efficiency…)
The (spectacular) effect has been apparently observed by NASA.
Does this violate Newton’s Third Law? (As it has been alleged.)
No. I actually just used Newton’s Third Law, the Action = Reaction law. So SQPR explains the observed effect in combination with the Action= Reaction Law, “proving” both.
How could we prove SQPR? There should be a decrease of energy-momentum after a while, and the decrease should equal the observed push exactly.
Patrice Ayme’
***
Warning: The preceding considerations are at the edge of plausible physics. (Groups of dissenting physicists are always busy making theories where Dark Matter does not exist (and they should!) Should they be right, the preceding is nonsense. The consensus, though, is that Dark Matter exists, but is explained by a variant of the so-called “Standard Model”, using “Supersymmetry”, or “WIMPs”, or “Axions”. My own theory, SQPR is, by far, the most exotic, as it uses an hypothesized Sub Quantic Reality, obtained by throwing Quantum Theory Copenhagen Interpretation, QTCI, through the window, as a first order theory.)
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
Tyranosopher
State of the Art Philosophy, Devouring the Feeble Minded.
Blogroll
AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
0
EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
0
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
0
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
0
AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
Philosophy and science: the human adventure. Philosophy is not as popular as it should be, as it supports not just civilization, but human evolution. It matters what we love. Philo-Sophy: Love of Wisdom. But what is love, and what is wise? We humbly examine all the issues we can possibly imagine having to do with defining love, and wisdom. Plus Oultre!
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 