quantum

Cancer quackery going the distance

oracknows — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:15:51 +0000

Cancer quackery going the distance

You'd think that after all these years combatting quackery and blogging about science in medicine (and, unfortunately, pseudoscience in medicine) it would take a lot to shock me. You'd be right. On the other hand, Even now, 15 years after I discovered quackery in a big way on Usenet and ten years after the inception of this blog, I still have enough hope in humanity that even when I come across men like Jerry Sargeant, a.k.a. The Facilitator I am still capable of utter wonder that someone would advertise something as reprehensible and/or deluded as this. I half wondered if it were performance art, but in reality I don't think it is. I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all (and in fact I did), but look at the screenshot from his blog above and the photos on Sargeant's website. It's as if the dude thinks he's Doctor Strange, or maybe Harry Potter, or perhaps Gandalf the Grey. I mean, seriously! Emperor Palpatine called, and he wants his lightning bolts back! The guy portrays himself manipulating bolts of electricity, as he makes claims that he can "radically transform your life."

Of that, I have no doubt, but not in the way Sargeant means. I'm sure patients' lives are "radically transformed" by wasting huge sums of money on the fantasy magic medicine that is portrayed on that page. Naturally, as is frequently the case for various dubious healers, Sargeant has a "St. Paul on the way to Damascus" moment to relate:

When Jerry Sargeant woke to a loud crash and flying glass in the passenger seat of a taxi cab in Romania, on his way to the airport, he had no idea it would be the birthing process that led him to discover an amazing healing ability.
‘My families safety were all I was thinking about. The taxi was swaying backwards and forwards all over the road. It was crazy. It turned out we had hit two ladies crossing the road and the first lady came through the windscreen, hit me in the head as I was asleep, got sucked back out of the car and landed in the road. I don’t know whether it was the bang in the head or me seeing her soul hovering over her body once I got out of the car that kick started these abilities – maybe it was both’.

This story, of course, tells us very little, other than that Sargeant, assuming he's telling the truth, was in a cab in Romania when it hit two women. I presume that at least one of them died, given the story about seeing her soul "hovering over her body." Funny how he doesn't mention explicitly what happened to them. Did they die? Did they live? Apparently it doesn't matter; to him they were just a means to his wonderful "powers"! These powers, according to Sargeant, began to manifest themselves shortly after the crash, when he "pulled a migraine from his wife’s head but didn’t think too much of it" and later when he healed a friend in New Zealand who had been in a severe care crash:

"I got my crystals out and lay down on the bed. All of a sudden I was in her hospital room and energy started pouring out of my hands. I mentally put her body back together again. She left hospital in 12 weeks and she walked out. The most amazing part was that once she did she phoned me up and said that she woke one night, looked at the side of her bed and said what are you doing here? She was talking to me. I had imagined myself in her hospital room and she saw me, as clear as day, with her physical eyes."

Let's see. His friend spent 12 weeks in the hospital, and Sargeant thinks that he healed her? Twelve weeks is a very long time for anyone to spend in the hospital these days. She must have been seriously messed up. It's a good thing that she ultimately recovered, but is there any reason other than fantasy to think that Sargeant had anything to do with it? He thinks he did, but there's no reason other than his delusion to support that idea.

Thanks to one or two dead Romanian women and a friend in New Zealand who took 12 weeks to recover after being in a bad car crash, Sargeant became "The Facilitator." But why did he choose that name? Well, first you need to know that Sargeant has become a "distance healer," which doesn't mean he runs over great distances to heal. Rather, it means that he thinks he can transmit healing energy to virtually anywhere in the world to cure virtually anyone. No, I'm not kidding. That's really what he claims, and he's been at it full time for two years, according to his website.

What, exactly, does Sargeant claim to do, except to look serious and to strike brooding poses, his face covered with prominent beard stubble, like the ones in the photos, only without the Photoshopped "energy" added to make it look cool? I must admit, it's hard to read without laughing derisively or weeping that anyone can take this seriously:

Jerry calls himself ‘The Facilitator’ and doesn’t take credit for what happens. He says the energy does the work. He has simply learned how to direct and instruct that energy through Star Magic.

"This is what the Egyptians taught me on my journeys. I was guided to this work, by Spirit Guides and Ancient Civilisations. They are not gone or dead. They are there in the mystical realm of alternate realities, waiting for our re-birth as a planet, so we can unite once more and share these earthly planes. I am using a method of healing that we are all capable of discovering. Star Magic not only has the potential to heal people. It can and will heal the entire planet. My mission is to share this with the world and create an unstoppable wave of love that cradles and inspires the entire human race."

Wow. So to him it's not enough just to heal individuals. He has to heal the whole friggin' planet! I guess I have to give him some credit for at least having ambition, anyway.

But, how again? How does Sargeant achieve these miracles? Read on, friend:

I’m able to edit your Karmic Blue Print and cause huge reality shifts very quickly, with a super-charged form of healing (‘Star Magic’) that uses applied Quantum Physics to quickly release the physical, mental & emotional blocks/stresses/traumas that you may be experiencing, keeping you from creating & living your most extraordinary life.

The key to why this modality is so potent is that all healing’s are done from the zero point energy field (also known as the space of Infinite Possibility/Source Energy) and works on a deep root cellular level. From this space, we immediately align with the most authentic, whole & powerful aspect of ourselves which in itself creates an environment whereby profound healing takes place. This modality has been totally blowing my clients away, and has been considered to be one of the most thorough & alchemising energy modalities available. Tumors, cysts, fibromyalgia, eyesight and much more have been cured. I also use Star Magic to elevate business performance, unlock blocks in relationships and so much more. If you’re not satisfied with life you must try Star Magic.

Quantum. It had to be quantum. Of course it had to be quantum. For woo of this type, it's impossible not to invoke quantum.

Are any of you Star Trek fans? Those of you who are have almost certainly heard the term "technobabble." Technobabble was, unfortunately, a lazy trope that writers started using more frequently (too frequently) in later seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Basically, it consists of impressive- and scientific-sounding jargon, full of buzzwords and made up words. Ultimately, all the science-y jargon means nothing. Now, all of this wouldn't by itself necessarily be an issue. It was a science fiction show. Some level of technobabble is unavoidable in science fiction dealing with technology. The problem comes when writers used technobabble to resolve plots. Indeed, there are even names for tropes based on technobabble, such as when it is used to solve a problem (which it was so many times in ST:TNG), the trope is known as reverse polarity.

So why did I just spend a paragraph describing what technobabble is? Simple. Think of Sargeant's blather as woo technobabble. Maybe I should call it technowoo-babble. We've seen it before many times (for instance, DNA activation), but seldom have I seen such a woo-fully fine example of technowoo-babble in the wild. Oh, in case no one has ever thought of this term, I hear by claim it for my own. Yes, I have seen the term "techno-woo" before (so I can't claim that), but I've never seen "techno-woo" combined with "babble" to produce "techno-woo babble" before. Maybe it's a redundant term, but I claim it nonetheless.

But back to The Facilitator.

What really gets me about him is not so much his claim that he can heal over distances. Rather, it was his take on cancer, because (of course) I am a cancer surgeon. Shockingly, he gets some things right when he describes the "conventional" view of what causes cancer. For instance, he notes that there are over 100 diseases that "fall under the cancer umbrella." Of course, it's way more than 100, but technically more than 100 is accurate. He also acknowledges that mutations are very important in causing cancer. (Well, duh.)

Where Sargeant goes off the rails (well, one of many places) is when he attributes the cause of those mutations leading to cancer to stress due to suppressing emotion or personal trauma. In this, he sounds like a mad, mutated version of the German New Medicine. Given that the German New Medicine is already mad, as are its bastard offspring, that's saying a lot. Add energy woo to German New Medicine, and you have Jerry Sargeant:

I’ve worked with thousands of individuals who have cancer and the one thing I know is that cancer is nothing more than a part of ourselves that has forgotten who it is. When we are children, we take parts of ourselves that we deem unattractive—emotional responses to situations that are unacceptable, undesirable, or just too upsetting—and push them down deep in our bodies. When we try to stuff something down, hide it away, we literally stop a part of the energetic flow in our own body. So it is with cancer: any time we shove something down and the blood flow can’t get to that area, stagnation can occur, a likely breeding ground for a tumor. A tumor is nothing more than some cells, that literally, have forgotten they are part of you and start to develop at their own rate.

It’s so important that you know that cancer is not a death sentence, but an invitation from your body to your psyche to integrate that forgotten part back into wholeness. It’s equally important that you know that you didn’t do anything wrong: you are not at fault; you did not bring this cancer on. Life forces and circumstances, many if not all of them out of our control, put us in situations where we turn to defense mechanisms that we learned as children that encourage us to deny parts of ourselves. Think of the cancer as a message from a part of you, asking you to bring that part back to yourself, even a part that before you deemed unlovable. It is by working with that deepest part of yourself that will affect you the most, in the most positive way. No matter what the physical result of your experience with cancer, if you do this vital work to make yourself whole, you will be the winner. It’s time to listen to your body and re-kindle that love.

What if you die of the cancer?

This is, of course, the worst sort of cancer quackery, a variant of cancer quackery that drives me utterly nuts when I see it. Yes, Sargeant repeats the "right" words over and over: It's not your fault that you got cancer. You can be damned sure that it's your fault if you don't embrace Sargeant's woo and start to "work with that deepest part of yourself" and "do this vital work." Of course, even if you do both of those things, you could still die.

It gets worse from there. First, Sargeant invokes chakras (of course), going on and on about this:

I’ve worked with people who have cancers of every type imaginable, and I do see common patterns. For example, cancers of the reproductive organs, especially Breast Cancer, is often accompanied by feelings of having taken on too many responsibilities — total overwhelm. What woman today doesn’t feel like she is supposed to be superwoman, finessing her job, the kids, the house, her partner, her aging parents. She has little time left over for her own needs.

And:

Energy Healing is an important component in the treatment of cancer. Because it will address the root cause, and it can help the individual focus on the underlying factors and reverse them. It also opens the channels so that treatments such as chemotherapy can work more efficiently. Conversely, it can also remove chemo from the body after it has done its work, thus reducing the toxic load on the body. I have seen many individuals sail through chemo with zero side effects, who have worked with Star Magic Energy Healing.

To give you an idea of how woo-ful this is, I noted that in one of the testimonials one woman claimed that her DNA had been "upgraded." All I could think of when I heard her say that was this:

Jerry Sergeant The Facilitator will upgrade your DNA for only £1,990. Fail to pay, and you will be deleted. Of course, if you do accept upgrading, The Facilitator will make sure your bank account is deleted.

Yes, I'm a Doctor Who geek.

I will give him "credit" (if that's the right word) for not saying that he can cure cancer himself and patients shouldn't undergo conventional therapy. However, it is utter quackery to make the claims that he does, and to me this is the perfect scam. Because patients undergo conventional therapy, if they get better he can take some or most of the credit. If they don't and die, then there obviously must have been too much toxicity for him to eliminate or the patient couldn't forgive or release her anger.

If you don't believe me that Sargeant gets the credit, just look at his testimonial page. (Of course there's a testimonial page. There's always a testimonial page.) Heck, the very first one is about a woman with stage IV breast cancer whose doctor told her she only had 5-6 months to live. She rejected chemotherapy and radiation and underwent Sargeant's distance healing. This completely contradicts what Sargeant says and tells me that he's a cancer quack every bit as bad as other cancer quacks claiming "cures" for cancer.

It's such a bargain, too! Get a load of this price list:

Energy Healing Journey Together Package £1,990
Full Private Healing Consultation £275
Private Healing Session – 15 minutes £90
Private Healing Session -30 minutes £180
Pyramid Home Cleansing/Healing (POA) £925
Pyramid Light Structure & Energy Flow at Work (POA) £1,150
Shadow Parasite Cleansing/Healing (POA) £725

I particularly like the last one:

Many times, astral entities or shadow parasites will intrude into our fields. They will desperately be trying to cling on and hinder your pathway to enlightenment. Whether conscious or unconscious we make agreements with them when we have moments of fear or need. These entities will attach themselves to us, usually promising some aspect of ourselves comfort in exchange for living vicariously through us.

And it only costs £1,150 to have Jerry Sargeant take care of that for you. Nice work if you can get it.

oracknows Thu, 09/03/2015 - 02:15

Tags

cancer

complementary and alternative medicine

Quackery

Science

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

complementary and alternative medicine

Science

You are far too polite in terming this nonsense as "techno-woo-babble", as we have a couple of perfectly good old terms: l*es and b*llsh*t...

I note that Sargeant manages to skirt around a couple of jurisdictional issues: the phone number on his website is a UK one (Cheltenham), but the address given is in the UAE, while the website is a ".com" suggesting not hosted in the UK. Pity as I would otherwise have shopped him to our Advertising Standards Authority, although he would, no doubt, claim not to be operating within any national boundaries but on the astral plane...

one woman claimed that her DNA had been “upgraded.” All I could think of when I saw that was this:

I am more reminded of the phishing spam in the in-box, telling me that my mail is almost overflowing and the departmental policies have changed and I need to upgrade my e-mail account (click on this link!!!) or have it deleted.

Oh, it just gets better!

A quick giigle of his phone number brings up this gem:

https://maximumlife.tv/pyramid-healing/

Looks like an equal ops wooster.

And better:

https://maximumlife.tv/ancestors-contact-extraterrestrial-intelligence/

This guy was born on Alpha Centuria (sic)!

Where's Sun Ra when you need him?

Where to start? For one thing, I suspect the taxi accident in Romania did not happen, at least not as Mr. Sargeant describes it. I'm not seeing how the victim could come through the windscreen and then be sucked back out after hitting Sargeant in the head--and there is no mention in the story of Sargeant himself being injured in the accident. Not to mention that he would have had to be in the front passenger seat, which could happen if there were three other passengers in the taxi (he implies that he was traveling with his family, but doesn't say how many were in the group). And the driver continued as if nothing happened? I don't know about Romania, but in most countries leaving the scene of an accident with injuries is a serious offense. And if the driver was so bad as to get into such an accident in the first place, how did Sargeant manage to fall asleep in the front passenger seat? Then there is the curious description of the car swaying "backwards and forwards all over the road"--that's normally a side-to-side motion.

He mentions crystals when discussing his friend in New Zealand. I thought crystals were out of fashion in woo circles, but I don't pay that much attention to trends in that area.

Follow up with the appeal to antiquity. He claims to get his powers from the ancient Egyptians. The bit about "alternate realities" is technically true: he's definitely living in one.

Then we get to the nonsense about zero point energy. Zero point energy does not work the way Mr. Sargeant thinks it works. I would get a bigger effect out of quantum physics if I were to throw one of my textbooks on the subject at him. I also wonder how he manages to focus his "energy" on a specific person thousands of kilometers away--it's hard to keep that degree of focus even with a laser beam over that distance.

And all this can be yours for a mere two thousand quid!

Good grief. I hope my dear woo-blinded sister doesn't come across this scamster. She was into Matrix Energetics last time I talked to her, which is about as bonkers as this.

This fellow is in serious need of either jail time or Vitamin H (Haldol for those of you who don't know medical slang).

Hmm. His web site is hosted at 46.32.226.64, which is heartinternet.uk – Nottingham, UK. Sounds like British laws should apply.

Clearly the ghost of Nikolai Tesla is alive and well.

It’s equally important that you know that you didn’t do anything wrong: you are not at fault; you did not bring this cancer on.

"It's not your fault."

Think of the cancer as a message from a part of you, asking you to bring that part back to yourself, even a part that before you deemed unlovable...if you do this vital work to make yourself whole, you will be the winner. It’s time to listen to your body and re-kindle that love.

"But if you don't get better, it's your fault because you didn't do this vital work."

And is it just me, or does his little bit about breast cancer (sorry, Breast Cancer...it's a proper noun, dontcha know) come off as a bit paternalistic and casually sexist?

So how does suppressing parts of yourself cause cancer in babies? What parts are they suppressing?

I thought this guy might simply be deluded -- until I saw the price list! That's a pretty serious wallet-ectomy.

Lord almighty!
He describes something that sounds like a physical version of Freudian repression!
And Breast Cancer ( sic) due to "taking on too many responsibilities" sounds like 1970s woo that "feeling unloved" lead to breast cancer ( still heard at PRN).

His texts read like a fan-fic mash-up of Harry Potter and Star Trek with himself in a the staring role as "the hero". That´s ok, we are all nerds, we all did it. But pretending it to be real and scamming money out of people from it, possibly endangering their health in the process, is maybe a teeny weeny bit unethical.
But bonus points for the "Shadow Parasites", that´s a good name for evil beings in a SF or Fantasy novel - where they belong.

Indeed. I'm surprised I've never encountered the term before? Are they anything like the Shadow Proclamation?

Shadow parasites will intrude into your field, desperately trying to cling on and hinder your pathway to health. Whether conscious or unconscious we make agreements with them when we have moments of fear or need. These entities will attach themselves to us, usually promising some aspect of comfort...

The Facilitator describes himself! Does that mean if we pay him £725.00, he will cleanse the world of himself? Nah, I suppose it would be £725.00, so he'd just leave whoever signed the check alone and go make parasitic agreements with some other people who have more fear or need.

I was thinking about all the woo claims for cancer cures and other nasty physical ailments yesterday as I spent the entire afternoon in the dental clinic at UCSF. I mean, if woo can cure cancer, it ought to be able to perform root canal, or at least remedy caries without drilling. (Though mainly I'm there 'cause my old bridge broke, leaving me sand three teeth in the front, and I doubt even the lightning bolt dude can replace a prosthodontist.)

@Denice Walter #13

That's just what I was thinking. I was hoping to coin the term "somatic Freudianism". If I can get the word quantum in there too then so much the better.

I like where he says "I was guided to this work by Angles, Spirit Guides and Ancient Civilisations." Obtuse angles? Or people from Schleswig-Holstein?

Sir Bedevere #8

Excellent!

A complaint to the ASA will be drafted later!

@ Cate K:

That's good.

@ sadmar:
Ha!
Don't the shadow parasites sound Scientology-ish?

@ Kevin:

Angle guides? Do they take you around Stone'enge and explain its mysteries?

Angles? Criminy, angles are the balliwick of the Masons.

^ bailiwick

Shadow Parasites are real. Or in other words, he ripped off the name.

For those most interested in his appeal to our aspirations, you can see him in action here. Scroll down to the bottom for the video.

Regarding angles, they are hard.

He sells a "get rich quick" guide.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maximum-Wealth-Create-Magnet-Method/dp/14931153…

I think we all know his secret for getting rich quick.

It occurs to me that the last time someone on this planet could heal people THIS well, a whole religion sprang up around him. But Jesus didn't charge for healing. If Jerry the Healer thought about the implications of this for just one minute, he would realize that he could charge nothing and yet lay claim to the riches of the whole catholic church (including all that Vatican Moola).

That is, IF he could actually heal anyone...

"Twelve weeks is a very long time for anyone to spend in the hospital these days"

To be fair, if he hadn't done his crystal majik, she would have been in the hospital for about three months.

"Don’t the shadow parasites sound Scientology-ish?"

It's a bit too poetic for Scientology. If anyone could suck the joy out of a piece of writing and refill the dead space with deader redundant prose, it was LRH.

But bonus points for the “Shadow Parasites”, that´s a good name for evil beings in a SF or Fantasy novel – where they belong.

Perhaps they are from Z'ha'dum?

@StrangerInAStrangeLand, Orac, and Not a Troll

Re: Shadow Parasites

What popped into my mind were the Shadows from Babylon 5.

Damn, MO'B beat me to it.

Todd #29.

What originally popped into my head was the Dementors from Harry Potter but I knew I had heard this name before; just couldn't place it.

Turns out they are all over the darn place. The toy reference happens to be the earliest one I found but they are also a D&D creature and in the Transformer world they are lifeforms native to the K'tord Nebula (more like his use of them).

Could he be any more derivative? Not that it matters. How many adults are paying attention to D&D and Transformers anyway.

Wow. I thought this tripe disappeared back in the 70s (ish), when my parents were into it.

When we try to stuff something down, hide it away, we literally stop a part of the energetic flow in our own body. So it is with cancer: any time we shove something down and the blood flow can’t get to that area, stagnation can occur*, a likely breeding ground for a tumor

Angiogenesis, dude. Cousin Judah is spinning, somewhere.

*Does stagnated qi explain DVT/PE or something?

More random thoughts, which randomness strikes me as apropos--

one of the most thorough & alchemising energy modalities

Presumably he accepts payment in Pb.

Am I alone in thinking, on reading "Star Magic Energy Healing," of the homeopathic Light of Saturn?

[...]astral entities or shadow parasites will intrude into our fields. They will desperately be trying to cling on and hinder your pathway to enlightenment. Whether conscious or unconscious we make agreements with them when we have moments of fear or need. These entities will attach themselves to us

This reminds me of nothing so much as the ogga and grel in Michael Gruber's Tropic of Night.* In it, a cultural anthropologist reflects upon her own paranoid psychotic episode while doing fieldwork as a hallucinogen-addled sorcerer's apprentice "ethnologist of the Virchau school" with a group of Siberian nomads called the Chenka. Anyway, (with apologies for length, but the writing is just stellar):

[...] as he reminded me that the Chenka do not have a psychology, as we think we do. No neuroses, psychoses, introjects, repressions, obsessions, phobias or megrims. It is all a matter of spririts, independent transcendent entities who inhabit us in various ways. One of them is the little person in the control booth who operates our bodies and observes the world through our sensoria, and whom we are pleased to call our "self." Among the Chenka, the little person is something of a shift worker, knocking off for long periods while others take control, sometimes several at once. The inner life of the Chenka thus has to do with harmonizing the relationships among the various spirits as they pass through the control room. These beings also have an existence in the unseen worlds, of which the Chenka records several dozen, and a busy commuting takes place among beings human and subhuman and superhuman. There is a whole aesthetics involved in this dance, which I do not have the terms to describe, but it is the essence of Chenka exsistence. I knew this, of course, but I had thought it was all imaginary. Or symbolic. Or merely spiritual, which is much the same thing to 99.9 percent of people in our culture. It did not occur to me that it was about as imaginary, symbolic, and spiritual as quantum electrodynamics.

That's by way of background. This next bit, though, should make clear why it immediately sprang to mind.:

As to why I had gone nuts, why I couldn't learn Chenka magic: Marcel explained that the various ogga lounging about in my particular control room made it impossible to enter into a shamanic apprenticeship. They were in a sense wild ogga, who had invaded me during my childhood and adolescence, when I was angry, or sad, or envious, or wrapped in one of the other psychic states that ogga like to snack on. These beings could be removed or transformed. The procedure was as well known to the Chenka as an appendectomy is to an American surgeon. They would do it for me, but it had some cost. One's ego is, let us say, rectified. One dies, let us say, and is reborn, with the various resident spirits working more or less in concord. Marcel said that I was free to decide whether I wanted this done. [...]

AFIK, the Chenka are entirely fictional. And [spolier alert]: the book's protagonists do go on the save the world. But, here at least, the magical thinking is where it belongs, strictly confined to fantasy and where I like it. In the world of quackery, on the other hand, even fiction doesn't seem to be banished to its proper realm.

Vitamin H indeed. Dude's got some issues, man.

*Gruber, a former marine biologist, is among my top 3 favourite current novelists (Gaiman and Fawber being the others), with this book and his The Good Son on my very short list of must-reads. Very thoughtful and entertaining writer, who clearly does his homework.

I am very confused by The Facilitator's offer of a Spiritual Hygiene Package for the low low price of £95.00.

Sargeant says: "If your serious about your spiritual journey then a Spiritual Hygiene Package is a must."

"As the vibration on this planet is rising and consciousness is flowing, and you as a human being are dropping density*, it’s mission-critical that you maintain a Basic Spiritual Hygiene Programme, to protect your space, your energy and your life. Everyone on this planet should be on a Basic Spiritual Hygiene Programme."

Obviously I'm gonna be all over that. But wait!

"This product is not sold separately. It is recommended to accompany all other healing products."

Dang. But wait!

"It can also be bought separately."

http://thefacilitatorhealing.com/product/spiritual-hygiene-package/

So I can buy it separately or only with other stuff? Are my repressed childhood emotions preventing me from reconciling this conundrum?

HELP!!!

*if only this was true; my bathroom scale says otherwise.

No, any domain can be hosted in the UK, A quick WHOIS search shows that his site is hosted on a 123-reg.co.uk server, so by all means go ahead and contact the ASA.

“It can also be bought separately.”

http://thefacilitatorhealing.com/product/spiritual-hygiene-package/

To make things even better, he needs to add a pyramid scheme MLM opportunity so that scammers affiliates can profit while healing.

This would fit nicely with the "pyramid home cleansing/healing" product he offers.

Given the reference in an earlier comment to his get rich quick book, I wouldn't be surprised to see a scam opportunity pop up in the near future.

I must commend him on his very generous bulk discounts. I mean, why spend £90 on a measly 15 minute Private Healing Session when you can get 30 minutes for only £180. Twice as much time for only double the price, what a bargain!

Basically, he's charging £6 a minute. that's $9.18 at today's exchange rate. I wonder if he'd prorate if your session took less than 15 or 30 minutes. Probably not...

"...I wonder if he’d prorate if your session...

I expect worse. I know someone who worked for a psychic hotline. They were instructed to keep the mark on the phone for as long as possible. She would talk to some for 2-3 hrs.

Still a better story than Twilight...

Strange tales! It is better than twilight!

“I was guided to this work by Angles
Angles are bad; they let in the Hounds of Tindalos.

(And I thought 'Upgrade or be deleted' is Microsoft's message to owners of older Windows machines)
Well, this is very obvious woo; we'd think educated people wouldn't fall for long-distance crystals/energy/...
But for these, there are others worthless treatments.
E.g. In the Asian community there is the supplement 'fucoidan.'
A sister-in-law was unfortunately diagnosed with terminal cancer, of which she eventually died, but in her last months, the family bought this stuff in a last-ditch effort; someone was said to have been miraculously healed by it. And with the dynamics of the situation, opposing this would have sounded hard-hearted and stingy; even with a pharmacist (who actually recommended this stuff) and several (real) medical doctors in the family, the 'fucoidan' sellers got their cut from the dying.
It is not helped by e.g. the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center having a web page on 'Integrative Medicine'
mentioning it
https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/fucoidan

sadmar,

I doubt even the lightning bolt dude can replace a prosthodontist.)

Remember those nuts a few years ago who claimed that God was putting gold teeth in their mouths?

Found it! Sadly there is so much lunacy on the interwebz these days the thrill of the chase has faded.

Shadow Parasites sound like the Vashta Nerada (New Who, Silence in the Library).

Seriously, that technobabble sounds like he took Star Trek, Doctor Who and Stargate and shoved it all in a blender set to "woo".

Shadow Parasites sound like the Vashta Nerada (New Who, Silence in the Library).

I was reminded of the spectres in His Dark Materials, myself.

A mash-up of hungry ghosts and Colin Wilson's Mind Parasites.

PT Barnum would have loved this guy.

"These entities will attach themselves to us,"....
Oooh! Quantum barnacles! ( wait- did he just call me fat?)

Orac, go see comment #42 in your last column "A commercial for acupuncture..." but don't be drinking anything when you do or I'll owe you a new keyboard.

Sadmar, I haven't set up an address for this yet, it's on my stack for tonight if I can get the rest of my client work done at a reasonable hour first.

So about The Facilitator:

At least he gets points for telecommuting. After all, think of all the CO2 that hasn't gone into the atmosphere since he does his Magical Healing from home, rather than driving all over the place, or having his marks er uh patients drive over to see him.

However he just made an enemy out of me for doing something unforgivable: turning a noun into a verb. "Alchemizing." Aaaargggh! Die, fiend!

KFunk932 @ 32: Re. his patients paying him in Pb (lead), I thought guns were illegal in the UK. Besides, being a victim of fraud isn't a defense against a murder charge.

He strikes me as being not well-educated or not very smart. Not just the usual quantum quackery, nor the Egyptology quackery, nor the spelling errors, but his general sloppiness and the fact that some of his woo is woefully out of date. If he was smart he'd sell it as Classic Woo, or "soon to be Antique Woo" (excess capitalization included at no extra cost).

That and his website is just downright _cheesy!_ Pop-ups that wiggle-waggle back and forth, click buttons that do likewise, and worst of all, his testimonials are on an auto-play video!

Agreed, anyone here from the UK is eagerly encouraged to report him to the authorities. Make the call, save a life.

Reported to the Advertising Standards Authority and his local trading standards (for those outside the UK that's the bit of his county council responsible for over seeing businesses in that county - Gloucestershire in this instance).

Checking out if there is anything else to be done about his breaches of the Cancer Act.

And, yes, I have taken screengrabs...

As an aside here are some details of successful prosecutions under our Cancer Act - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939 - which contains some names familiar to our UK readers...

And, looky, that list contains a prosecution by the trading standards bods I've just shopped him to! Excellent!

http://www.amazon.com/Maximum-Wealth-create-wealth-magnet-ebook/dp/B00B…

Murmur: Excellent! As we say in the US, "Right on!"

I checked out the Cancer Act and the link to the UK gov site. Looks like you might score a hit. I think it's probably pretty rare that people file reports under the Cancer Act (who but we, would run around chasing quackers?), so it'll probably get acted on.

We'll know the guy got pounced if the lightning bolts disappear from between his hands in that cheesy picture;-)

The Facilitator today, the Self-Incriminator tomorrow. Heh.

Thank you!

I do hope so, but local authorities have been under the cosh lately, budgets hacked to ribbons by central government and trading standards is an area which has suffered.

He is more than welcome to notify me that my son is cured.

Should be simple and verifiable.

Truncus Arteriosus
22q11 deletion
Cystine kidney stones.
post op lung damage

INormal Sats, we have a pulse ox amd I will arrange his yearly echocardiogram, if that shows a normal heart, wee haw! I will then arrange the 2 genetic tests.

I will be this guys biggest advocate,

Meanwhile, I have something more meaningful to do than wait for this charlatan.

Got spackling to do.

Sorry folks, need to proof read better. I got so angry I rushed.

In non gibberish (I hope)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-
He is more than welcome to notify me that my son is cured.

Should be simple and verifiable, all he has to do is cure:.

Truncus Arteriosus
22q11 deletion
Cystine kidney stones (genetic, so testable).
post op lung damage (easily seen calcifications)

First, normal O2 Sats, we have a pulse ox so that is easy t check. I will then arrange his yearly echocardiogram, if that shows a normal heart, wee haw! I will then arrange the 2 genetic tests.

Those show normal and I will be this guys biggest advocate and I will share the proof with one and all.

Meanwhile, I have something more meaningful to do than wait for this charlatan.

Got spackling to do. (Wife doesn't let me paint anymore, not since I spilled paint on the ceiling)

He sells a “get rich quick” guide.
I think we all know his secret for getting rich quick./blockquote>
"Persuade gullible people to give you all their money."

I notice that Jerry has multiple grifts in that regard. His LinkedIn page emphasises the "Facilitator Healing" scam (based in Gloucester).

" Author Of [list of interchangeable plagiarised 'The Secret' re-treads']
...one of the most sought after, long distance energy healers in the world.
...As the founder of the Maximum Life Group (MLG)
...Energy Healing
Psychic Surgery
Life Coaching
University of Maximum Life

But it also links to his parallel scams as "Strength and Conditioning Coach at Fierce Fitness", Napier (New Zealand) -- "NO Joining Fee, NO Contracts, FREE Nutritional Programmes, FREE Fat Tests" -- i.e. an outlet for the bodybuilding supplements grift.

All combined with an eminently punchable face.

Blues,

Cystine kidney stones.

Ouch - that's rare, your son has my sympathy. I have fond memories of testing kidney stones in the lab years ago. It was one of the few times when I got to play with actual chemicals and a pestle and mortar. IIRC the test for cystine was to set fire to it and it burned it was likely cystine. I don't remember ever seeing one.

For a small one time fee I will use the powers of Zeno to maintain your health. The fee is for entanglement.

I have experienced working with Jerry Sargeant. I had Trigeminal Neuralgia. The doctors had me on all sorts of medication for years. I was in excruciating pain. Nothing the doctors did worked. The medication made me depressed. After 2 healing sessions with Jerry I came off of the medication and have not had any issues since. This was more than a year ago. What this guys does works.

Lula.

Wow, I'm amazed at how judgemental and closed minded people are, how can anyone give an opinion on something they haven't experienced? And I know this because if you had, you'd certainly be singing a different tune. Jerry is doing an amazing thing , he helps others in a miraculous way.

I am so happy for you Lula x

Aaannnd...enter the sock puppets. Why don't they (doesn't he?) ever have anything new or interesting to say? The one-person anecdote and adjuration to not be 'closed minded' gets so old.

I am convinced he pays people to share their made up healing stories with the world. He took my £90. He "kindly"gave me a 50% discount for 30 min distance healing. It might have as well been an eternity distance healing since you never know when he finishes or if he indeed starts at all. You need to turn off all appliances and gadgets. Dim or turn off the lights. And then like an idiot relax in your bed and enjoy it. No matter what happens it's perfectly ok and normal and you should just accept it as such and embrace it (cold or warm sensations, limb heaviness, ghost or entities or his presence in your room,...=distance healing). I felt NOTHING!!!! I was trying to feel anything, anything so subtly installed in my subconscience by him during the skype call, but nothing. Oh, I did feel cold- I had been at work for 14 hours before the short skype call and the so called healing and I felt a bit off the two following days but not because of Jerry's healing, I simply caught a cold and had to rest. No changes. I believe after he and I had finished our skype call, he just watched TV or played computer games or....and laughed at me for handing uhh im the £90 for nothing. Then the creepy dude sends me a video on how to be happy to see your wife or your usband in bed having sex with another man or woman. He professes that it's perfectly fine to be married and to sleep around with whomever you want. He even takes you on a guided meditation, so you could imagine and feel having sex and being happy seeing your spouse fuck another person. Oh, yeah, don't forget to give them both a high five while they are still at it. He makes me physically sick. People remember -once a crook always a crook. Once a criminal always a criminal. Am I judgemental? Well, Jerry thinks the likes of me who do not sexually cheat or accept cheating are wrong, stupid, in need of help, confused by the stupid limiting laws,... Who's what now? What a way to excuse your inability to be a decent husband and keep your dick away from other people's genitals. He is a fraud.THERE HAS BEEN NO CHANGE AT ALL IN MY LIFE. OH YES, THERE HAS BEEN ONE, I AM £90 LIGHTER.

I paid for the 30 minute healing session, he told me the problems i had on my left side was due to problems with male energy. He asked me if i have a sex life with my husband and told me that my husband was not into me because i did not love myself, and when i do. My husband will be all over me.
Well, my husband hasnt touched me because he is on the other side of the planet for work. Not because I dont love myself. I rested on my bed and waited to feel the energy doing its work. I felt ZERO...
Im a hard working mother of 5, and i wanted this healing so badly. I have planter fasciitis in my right foot and it hurts. I also have a heart condition, and suffer from ocular migraines. Two days after the "healing" i had a migraine, there is no change in my foot or heart. I emailed him and stated that nothing had changed. He emailed me back right away and said it can take another week and to love myself more.
ill wait another week before i ask for a refund.

@ Murmur have you heard any news from the trading standards?
My mum is starting to get drawn into this and after reading these comments I am now very concerned! Any updates anyone can provide would be appreciated.

Are Parallel Universes Real?

esiegel — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 15:38:54 +0000

Are Parallel Universes Real?

Farnsworth: "There is it. The edge of the Universe!"
Fry: "Far out. So there's an infinite number of parallel Universes?"
Farnsworth: "No, just the two."
Fry: "Oh, well, I'm sure that's enough."
Bender: "I'm sick of parallel Bender lording his cowboy hat over me!" -Futurama

Our existence here in this Universe is something that we know is rare, special, beautiful, and full of wonder.

Image credit: Kelly Montgomery.

Some things happen with amazing regularity and predictability: the occurrence of days-and-nights, the tides, the seasons, the motion of the heavenly bodies, and so much more. The physical laws that govern the Universe are very, very well understood, and that understanding has helped us construct a rather comprehensive view of exactly what our observable Universe consists of, where it came from, and what it looks like.

And yet, it's not an entirely predictive system! Sure, laws like gravity are predictive and deterministic: in other words, if we knew the positions and momenta of all the particles, and had infinite computational power, we could figure out the properties of any particle an arbitrary amount of time into the future. (Or the past, for that matter.)

But then quantum physics came along.

Image credit: © Copyright CSIRO Australia 2004, via http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/.

And it turns out that knowing the positions and momenta of particles -- even of every particle in the Universe -- isn't enough to determine the properties of that particle in the future. Give me an atom of Uranium, and sure, you know it will decay. But you can't predict when!

You can predict the probability that any particular Uranium nucleus will decay after a given amount of time, and you can -- if you get a large enough sample of Uranium -- predict some properties of the larger ensemble that the individual particles make up. But there is no way, regardless of what you do, to predict what any one particular particle will do. And the same quantum weirdness, or indeterminism, turns up in other system, such as firing a single photon at a screen with multiple openings in it.

Image credit: Robert Austin and Lyman Page / Princeton University.

Sure, if you fire enough photons, you can be confident in the pattern that will emerge, statistically. That's what quantum mechanics allows you to predict with great accuracy.

But if you are asking about the properties of one particular particle -- where it winds up, what path it took, etc. -- there is no way to know. This is one of the most mind-boggling, puzzling aspects of the quantum reality of our Universe.

And at the same time, remember, our Universe, our physical, observable Universe, is full of a huge amount of this stuff!

Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Windhorst, S. Cohen, and M. Mechtley (ASU), R. O’Connell (UVa), P. McCarthy (Carnegie Obs), N. Hathi (UC Riverside), R. Ryan (UC Davis), & H. Yan (tOSU).

When you add everything up that we know of: photons, neutrinos, protons-and-neutrons (or quarks and gluons, if you want to go more fundamental), electrons, antimatter, and everything else, we know that there are at least some 10⁹⁰ particles in the observable Universe. The Universe has been around -- since the era of the Big Bang -- for some 13.8 billion years, or some 4 × 10¹⁷ seconds, or (if you prefer units of Planck time) about 8 × 10⁶⁰ units of Planck time.

Now think about all that time, and think about one particle. Any one you want, but just one.

Image credit: James Schombert of University of Oregon, via http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/.

How many times did that one particle experience a quantum interaction with another? How many times did its position or momentum change? How many times did one particular quantum possibility happen for that particle, and hence, not the other possibilities?

The answer, for each of these 10⁹⁰ particles, is a lot. Each time a nuclear reaction takes place inside a star -- something that happens maybe 10²⁰ times each second in our Sun alone -- a huge number of particles experience a quantum interaction. And if just one of these interactions had a different outcome, our Universe would be in a different quantum state than the one it's actually in.

Image credit: Jeff Miller, Ph.D. via Apologetics Press, from http://vnn.org/.

If just one randomly directional process -- like matter-antimatter annihilation -- had occurred in a slightly different direction, like it was off by 0.000000001°, our Universe would be different. If a single radioactive atom decayed just an attosecond later than it actually did, our Universe would be different.

And with all the particles interacting in all the ways they have over the Universe's history, you can make some calculations to try and determine how many of these quantum "decisions" have been made, and what the odds are that our Universe would exist with every quantum phenomenon shaking out exactly the way it has.

Well, the number of possibilities is somewhere around -- are you ready for a big number? -- 10^10⁹⁰!, which should be read as ten-to-the-((ten-to-the-ninety)-factorial). Which, unless you're a professional mathematician who specialized in number theory, is probably the biggest number you've ever seen or conceived of. (For comparison, I'm going to show you only 1000!, or 10³!, below.)

Image credit: Mohammad Shafieenia of http://www.codeproject.com/.

"So what," you might scoff! "A number can be as big as it wants, but if the Universe is infinite, then there are an infinite number of realizations that are just like this, and every quantum possibility can happen somewhere!"

Easy there. Those are some big assumptions. First off, there's an assumption underlying the idea that parallel Universes could be real, something that's glossed over by many-worlds interpretation enthusiasts.

Image credit: Wikipedia's comparison of interpretations of quantum mechanics.

You see, in quantum mechanics, we define a particle's properties by a wavefunction, and that function changes over time. Now, in some interpretations, that wavefunction isn't a real thing, with definite properties, that determines anything about that particle. Measurables are the real thing, and the wavefunction is just a calculational tool. But in other interpretations (like many-worlds), the wavefunction is really a real thing, and so every time a "quantum decision" can be made, every possibility happens somewhere, and what we experience as our Universe is simply a path being chosen.

Image credit: Christian Schirm of Wikimedia Commons.

Mathematically, these different interpretations yield the same measurable results. But if we want this latter interpretation -- the many-worlds one (with a huge number of parallel Universes and all) -- to be true, we need at least 10^10⁹⁰! Universes-worth of space, time, and matter for it to happen in.

And while there are some good arguments that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse, the leap to having that much Universe to work with is staggering. Let me explain.

Image credit: me.

You see, the Universe, in its very early history, underwent a period of cosmic inflation, where the Universe expanded exponentially. For a period of at least ~10^-30something seconds, this was what happened to set up the Big Bang.

There are some good arguments that inflation has been happening for a very long time (detailed here), which means that there could be 10^10⁹⁰! regions of spacetime identical (more-or-less) to our own.

Image credit: me.

But there's a huge leap between "at least 10^-30something seconds" and the "at least 10^10⁹⁰! seconds" (or years, or Planck units, or whatever; the units are unimportant at this level) that having real parallel Universes requires.

Now, this isn't to say it can't or doesn't happen, but it is a tremendous leap, and one that requires an inordinate extrapolation to make. We're still trying to figure out what came before inflation, how long it lasted, and whether there was a singularity or not to initiate it. Let's keep in mind how mind-bogglingly much one must assume if we want infinite parallel Universes to be real, and remember as we move forward in time through the Universe: some infinities are bigger than others. And that's what I have to say about the physics of parallel Universes!

esiegel Wed, 09/25/2013 - 11:38

Tags

Before we had direct observational evidence of the atom, many scientists scoffed at the idea that they existed, even if the calculations/theories of the times indicated that they did exist. They believed that science could not explain the reality of the situation and should only be used as a calculation tool. This is instrumentalism. This view should have been laughed at by other scientists of the time, but it wasn't, it was a mainstream view.

If our best explanations seem to indicate that X could be true about the world, then it should be taken seriously, and not just brushed off as a calculation tool. To not do, is a failure of imagination and inhibits further progress. The multiverse denial seems so anthropocentric.

Ethan: See position space and momentum space on wiki and note the reference to the Fourier transform. Then take a look at weak measurement work by Aephraim Steinberg and Jeff Lundeen et als. Note Jeff's semi-technical explanation where he says this:

"So what does this mean? We hope that the scientific community can now improve upon the Copenhagen Interpretation, and redefine the wavefunction so that it is no longer just a mathematical tool, but rather something that can be directly measured in the laboratory".

Think of the photon as a waveform in space, analagous to a seismic wave deep in the ground. It goes through both slits and interferes with itself. However when you detect it at one slit you perform a wavefunction-wavefunction interaction that operates akin to an optical Fourier transform. The photon is transformed into a dot at that slit so it goes through that slit only, and there is no interference. When you detect it on the screen you perform another wavefunction-wavefunction interaction that again operates akin to an optical Fourier transform. Hence you get a dot on the screen. No magic, no mystery, and no multiple universe is required.

Yeah, it seems like a perfect example of an argument from incredulity to me. Besides, I don't know of any a priori reason to assume that all 10^10^90! or so universes would have had to exist from the beginning, rather than being spawned at each possible interaction.

FWIW, I am kind of a fan of many-worlds, but I do acknowledge that there's essentially no evidence for it, and it may not even be possible to collect any evidence in principle, so I wouldn't be upset if some other interpretation turned out to be correct, or at least many-worlds were disproved. In some regards, I'd actually be rather relieved.

I am not reading this as multi-universe denial, as much as "Before we go off whole hog, let's get some questions answered, because this is a big one!"

Mike,

That is correct. You see, the recognition that the Universe went through a period of cosmic inflation coupled with our understanding of quantum field theory leads us to the conclusion that even though our little corner of the Universe has stopped inflating, inflation has been happening in most places for the last 13.8 billion years, and who-knows-how-long before that.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/10/28/why-we-think-theres-…

But you think there's a big difference between 10^-33 seconds and 13.8 billion years? Try the difference between either of those numbers and 10^((10^90)!), and you'll be thinking in exclamation points, too!

The problem is with referring to each one as a "real parallel universe". That's just a visualization, at least relative to Everett's original idea. There's one universe, which exists in a superposition of multiple states. I've seen other articles about the idea talk about violating conservation of energy when "creating" these other universes and I just facepalm, because that's not what this interpretation actually says. (Thank you for not going there.) There aren't a whole lot of universes, there are a whole lot of terms in the wave function that describes the universe. And in exchange, you get locality and determinism. This way of describing it is surely less interesting to sci-fi authors (though one could still imagine a technobabble explanation for "traveling between universes" - it could even use the word "phase" in a semi-accurate way!) but if you can grok the math, it makes a lot more sense. (And note that the little math needed to use bra-ket notation is all you'd really need.) Looking at it like that, I actually find it vastly simpler than any other interpretation.

Multiple universes is fun and very syfy to consider. However, such thoughts still describe the issue in three dimensional terms. What are the other dimensions that the mathematics suggest are there? Even the terms "what" and "there" rely on 3D ideas.
If we can conceptualize other dimensions, and consider the properties they offer, and the effect of the 4 we normally deal with, we might begin to understand quantum issues as intersections, wave functions as descriptions of reality and not just tools.
No analytical support? Einstein et al conceived of much of what we know long before they had the tools to confirm it. Creative thinking, consistency of argument and a recognition that current ideas are inadequate.

When Sean Carroll describes the Many Worlds interpretation, he describes it more like BenHead does. There aren't many parallel universes, there's just a single universe described by a single wave function which evolves according the the Schrodinger equation and that's it. "Many worlds" just comes from the fact that we are part of that wave function, too, and the various outcomes for us exist in a superposition just like it does for everything else, and what "I" am is just one of those possibilities which is why, subjectively, it looks like wave functions collapse.

He's made the "brief intro to QM" chapter of one of his books available online and it goes into the Many Worlds interpretation. Here's a linky:
http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/quantum/

After reading that the Many Worlds interpretation made a lot more sense to me, and now I think it has a lot to recommend it.

It does still have the unnerving property there are 10^whatever other "me"s that exist just as much as I do. But not in the same sense as "parallel universes".

Jim:

"What" and "there" are well-defined valid terms for any arbitrary dimensionality. A "dimension" is an axis of measurement, and "there" is a position; in N-dimensional space "there" is defined by N values. Additional dimensions may be nigh-impossible to visualize, but it's trivial to conceptualize and there's lots of math already dealing with it and theories that incorporate that math. I don't think any of them have solved the fundamental interpretation issues with QM.

Not to say that a specific idea which includes extra dimensions couldn't solve the issue, but I don't think it's as easy as postulating a greater than 3+1 dimensional space.

BTW, seeing that "Turbo C++ IDE" window was a real blast from the past. :)

Just for a little clarification, the many-worlds-interpretation doesn't require that parallel universes are real. The parallel Universes are -- in a conservative MWI view -- a visualization of what the wavefunction creates.

But there are people who are putting together the huge amount of Universe-space created via eternal inflation and the MWI to argue that parallel Universes are real, and that for every quantum realization that occurs in our Universe, there exists a real parallel Universe where everything that ever occurred in our Universe occurred over there, except for that one difference.

That is what I've been talking about here; commenters BenHead and CB are correct that the MWI does not necessitate these real, infinite parallel Universes.

What eternal inflation? We can envisage an early universe where energy density was very high, much as it is down near a black hole where gravitational time dilation is high. So if the universe expands even at some sedate pace, any observers within that universe would assert that the expansion was extremely rapid. Like inflation. And we have no evidence that this occurred in only one region. So all this multiverse stuff is a speculation riding a hypothesis on top of a conjecture. It isn't science, it's pseudoscience. It's woo. But people sure do love their woo.

Well the other quantum possibilities encoded in the wave function would be as "real" as I am (and I think I'm pretty real).

But I think I understand your clarification about combining it with eternal inflation -- the idea is that they're really *parallel*, as in taking place in a separate inflation bubble that happened to exactly match the quantum state of ours up to some point of divergence, and with infinitely many such bubbles every quantum event will be the point of divergence between ours and some other bubble.

Is that correct?

Seems to me that by assuming that once a quantum event occurs differently in the two universes that they now diverge entirely after taking on a specific state, this is more Copenhagen + eternal inflation. If it was Many Worlds, each inflation bubble that started with the exact same quantum state would evolve the same way, each containing all the possibilities. Which makes me feel like I'm not understanding.

In any case, thanks Ethan.

Darn. When I said "we have no evidence that this occurred in only one region" I should have said "we have no evidence that this occurred in more than one region".

I think you're underestimating the necessary universes by a few orders of magnitude, Ethan. Each of those parallel universes would have their own evolution, and unless we somehow assume ours is special, then each of them would need that huge number of parallel universes itself, right? And so on...

When I read your columns, Ethan, I always regret that I did not get my degree in astrophysics. So fascinating!

it could possible be true due to quantum mechanics and string theory which states there a 7 dimensions instead of 4 as we thought of in the past. This is due to Einstein General relativity and quantum mechanics so there could be other dimensions that we can explore and see the laws of physics even govern them as they do in our 4 dimensional universe.

I honestly don't see the issue with the number being so big. The question is a process one: do we have scientific evidence or theory which predicts there is a process for universe-splitting or universe-formation at quantum events. If the answer is "yes," then whatever number of universes you end up with is just the natural outcome. If the answer is "no," then you don't have any reason to expect any of them.

Its sort of like compound interest or evolution. Non-experts are are constantly surprised/amazed at the amount of total change those processes can produce in a significant time too. Again though, it's just a question of whether you have a reasonable mechanism. If you do, then you ought to accept any counter-intuitive result you might get out of cranking that mechanism.

So, what happens to the law of conservation of mass-energy? Every particle change creates, from nothing, an entire new universe having all of the dark and barionic matter of the first. Just doesn't pass the test of common sense.

Does quantum computing offer any ability to exclude or favor any of the interpretations on offer? Some authors I've read have argued that if we're successful in building quantum computers this proves the reality of many-worlds (This was in In Search of the Multiverse, but I think David Deutsch has said similar things).

Um, the wave function evolves in a Hilbert space of undetermined dimensions. _Not_ our three- (or four-) dimensional physical space (or spacetime.) So yeah, there's extra dimensions to move around in. But they're more like the temperature-dimension or the momentum-dimension.

Ah, I see this has already been covered. My apologies. That'll teach me to skim ;-)

CB and marcel - thanks for the feedback
I first began to think of other dimensions when I followed the Herculean effort at CERN to drill deeper and deeper. Instead of trying to breach the vault door directly, mightn't one simply walk around the edge of the facade and unlock the vault from the inside?
My favorite idea for another dimension relates to human perception. Some call it a sixth sense, others intuition. I have no idea what causes this, but haven't you known people who seem to have insights that others lack? Like they can see into the future, or have an understanding of a person or situation that is remarkable. Are they more "in tune" with another dimension and able to better adapt to our 3+1?

Many worlds?

How many papers have the phrase "many worlds" in their title
- 17 papers published in 2013 on the Philosophy of Science preprint online data base
- 1 paper published in 2013 on the arXiv (e.g. physics) preprint online data base

As I suspected. The "many worlds" idea seems not to make much difference to physics and astronomy either experimental or theoretical. There are very few even thought experiment differences between the many worlds interpretation and other quantum mechanics interpretations. But the many worlds idea is very important philosophically.

"The reason for adopting the MWI is that it avoids the collapse of the quantum wave. (Other non-collapse theories are not better than MWI for various reasons, e.g., nonlocality of Bohmian mechanics; and the disadvantage of all of them is that they have some additional structure.)... The MWI is a deterministic theory for a physical Universe and it explains why a world appears to be indeterministic for human observers... However, THE ADVANTAGE OF THE MWI IS THAT IT ALLOWS US TO VIEW QUANTUM MECHANICS AS A COMPLETE AND CONSISTENT PHYSICAL THEORY which agrees with all experimental results obtained to date." date.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/

But is quantum mechanics "a complete and consistent theory" yet?
A few typical quotes suggest NOT if you include gravity.
"general relativity and quantum field theory are outright incompatible... there is no way to a peaceful coexistence; a shoot out is inevitable."
"The 21st century has thus inherited a fundamental crisis in physics, viz., the incompatibility of general relativity and quantum physics!"
"I would like to suggest that it is possible that quantum mechanics fails for large distances and large objects. Now, mind you, I do not say that quantum mechanics does fail at large distances, I only say that it is not inconsistent with what we do know. If this failure of quantum mechanics is connected with gravity, we might speculatively expect this to happen for masses such that GM2/~c = 1, of M near 10^−5 grams, which corresponds to some 1018 particles ” - Feynman (1957)

Also INTERPRETATION OF MANY WORLD INTERPRETATION VARIES DEPENDING UPON WHICH PHYSICIST YOU READ.

The importance of the MWI, for me, is that it is a current example that illustrates how important philosophical assumptions are to current physics. Physicists seldom will admit that philosophy plays any role in their theories. (e.g. "As a theory relevant to the origin of the universe, the Big Bang has significant bearing on religion and philosophy. As a result, it has become one of the liveliest areas in the discourse between science and religion. Some believe the Big Bang implies a creation, while others argue that Big Bang cosmology makes the notion of a creator superfluous." wikipedia

Why is there a problem with the wavefunction collapsing? Maybe that's what is happening (in as much as the model of the thing is the thing itself).

"But is quantum mechanics “a complete and consistent theory” yet?"

Again, it depends on what you're going to want for making the assessment of being complete and consistent.

Its successes, especially in areas where they were consequential results of the model but not a prediction or pre-requisite for it shows it's to that extent complete.

And consistent with what?

F=ma can be proved from "first principles" from the wave equation of QM (if you assume the Newtonian result is the "expectation value" result.

So it's consistent with classical mechanics.

Then again, you can point to places where it's inconsistent with other theories and where it doesn't apply (even if only because QMing a cat is a silly thing to find out if it purrs: ask a vet).

So the answer is yes and no.

One reason why science isn't interesting to the Jenny Housecoats of the world but religion "seems" "better": it's damn certain in its answers, and doesn't publicly waver.

So, what happens to the law of conservation of mass-energy?

Maybe it puts a limit on the types of universes out there - i.e., they must have net zero energy - but it certainly doesn't limit the amount. Ten-to-the-((ten-to-the-ninety)-factorial) times [universe which has zero net energy] is still zero net energy.* You could also have a bunch of net-positive and net-negative universes that balance out to meta-net-zero.

But that is a curious and possibly informative question. If we hypothesize that all of those ten-to-the-((ten-to-the-ninety)-factorial) universes must, like ours, have a net zero energy, does that allow us to derive some understanding of what those universes must be like? Or does having the same net energy as our universe mathematically follow from QM (same number of particles and strength of gravity, just with the bits arranged differently), and thus not really tell us anything?

*Like ours. AIUI, according to how cosmologists and physicists count, our universe has a net energy balance of 0 because the 'negative' energy of gravity matches all the other energy and mass in the universe. In fact, this observation is the reason why Hawking came out a few years back and said that the universe could come from nothing.

, so mass and energy can be conserved no matter how many universes there are.

I could never understand the logic or rational for Many Worlds interpretation.

Multiverse from inflation does allow for similar universes. But that is not the same as Many Worlds. Yes.. if there are enough unique bubble universes, there is a chance that in one of them everything happened in just the right way to make another me with everything being the same except i won a lottery. But that's irrelevant to anything physics says about this universe.

Like I said in the beginning, I could never understand MW. Would like for someone to explain what it really means for a "function" to be physically real. I just don't understand what that means. No more than I understand "truth" to be physically real.

Where is that function? Is it big? Small? How much does it weight? Does it like pizza?

But it gets worse, because it's not that there are many universes. No.. you have our universe.. that goes on it's merry way, then I choose to wear red socks, and whoala.. a whole universe appears "somewhere" that has to replicate my universe exactly, just with i.e. green socks. Eghm... seriously? Appear from what, where, how? By what energy and cause? etc...

So ok.. forget that one. Let's look at it in a different way. They say we have a physically real function... So there it is, this "wave function" that is somewhere..., and in it is everything that has happened, happens, and will happen. It hasn't been made. It's without cause. It "knows" everything. And everything that happens "under" it has no more say in it than anything else. It does as it wills. In a way this sounds like a notion of deity. Except now you know it's useless to pray to it 'cause math says there is no "prayer" value in the function...

I took it to extreme, but no more than I feel MW camp has taken "randomness" to extreme.

"Would like for someone to explain what it really means for a “function” to be physically real. I just don’t understand what that means. No more than I understand “truth” to be physically real."

I've used this one many times, but again.

Evanescent waves.

Simplifying the maths for an E-M wave you can, instead of using sin/cos for the amplitudes of the electric and magnetic fields, you can keep a single *complex value* amplitude and have it rotate and the real part gives you the real (observed) electric field strength. The change of this gives you the magnetic field strength.

HOWEVER, using a complex number on the 19C maths used to describe total internal reflection there's an imaginary part that extends beyond the medium reflected in the original direction of travel. This decays exponentially and is entirely imaginary (as in it's a value multiplied by the square root of -1, there is no real part of the complex number).

HOWEVER, again according to that maths, if you put another refracting medium in this "evanescent" field, you will get the creation of a new EM field with a strength equal to the size of the imaginary vector of the evanescent wave at that distance from the totally reflected surface.

This was only a mathematical trick to make it easier to do the figures.

But when placing a refracting medium close to another one which had a wave being totally reflected internally to that medium, you got light coming out of the first medium, unlit by anything else.

A function that appears to be totally real: EM fields of a photon being a single-valued complex number rotating through i-r number space.

I think it's possible that the probability wave is more real than the classical particle since this helps describe the two-slit experiment in the case of limited numbers of discrete quanta entering the experiment and being individually measured.

It is also to some extend realised inthe lamb shift, where the probability of the electron acts as if it were an equivalent fraction of an electron with an equivalent fraction of an electronic charge and interferes with itself and the remainder of the atom. I.e. the electron is "smeared out" throughout the QM probability distribution of the electron in its shell.

This also explains why this electron isn't giving off massive amounts of synchrotron radiation: it's not moving at all: the wavefunction is stationary.

In a two-slit experiment, the probability field means that the probability of an event resulting in detection reflects the diffraction pattern in a wave-like experiment and the scattered beam in a particle-like experiment. Both types change the probability wave. Neither make the "electron" "know" that it's in a different experiment in-flight.

Maybe one way to change this would be to have a wavelike/particlelike experiment set up that can be changed as to what it's meant to detect quicker than the transit time from emission to detection locations for the particle/wave, then swap between them and see if the pattern changes.

Maybe it wouldn't help at all. I've not yet managed to work out what the consequence that would happen under any model of what "reality" "really is" and therefore make this experiment capable of eliminating a view or not.

This, however, doesn't require a MW view. Just that the wavefuntion is more "real" than the quanta that is detected.

Although "just" is a rather small word compared to what it means.

Rather like "In order to fly, you just have to throw yourself at the ground and miss".

Sinisia @27:

Multiverse from inflation does allow for similar universes. But that is not the same as Many Worlds.

Isn't it the same sort of mechanism though? In the first case, you've got a set of QM principles that allows universes to form. The probability of allowed events never happing is infinitely small, so we can reasonably expect them to happen.

In the latter case, we've got a set of QM rules that appear to allow wavefunctions to collapse in many different ways. Since its allowed....[repeat above logic]

Hawking and Mlodinow's Grand Design hints at this (but doesn't cover it...gripe gripe gripe). In the book, they point out first that QM allows our present to have many possible futures. Then, secondly, they point out that QM allows our present to have many possible pasts. Okay. That leads very naturally to a discussion I wish they had included (but didn't): are there therefore many presents? Seems odd to think that the QM multiverse has an infinite number of futures, a lesser but still infinite number of pasts, but necks down to a single universe at each instant of the present. If Hawking is right about past and future, why should we think such a neck exists?

Sinisa:

Yeah it's always troublesome trying to think of math as "real" rather than as a description of reality. Even if unintuitive implications of that math end up being borne out by reality, like evanescent waves, you could just take it to mean the math was an even better description of reality than you thought (but not necessarily perfect). So let's just set that aside.

What Many Worlds is saying is that the wave function isn't just a description of the state of a quantum system prior to its "collapse" into a single classical state, but rather a description of reality at all times. What appears to be "collapse" is really just the measurement apparatus and the system being measured becoming entangled so only certain subsets of their states are consistent. An electron exists as a superposition of all possible locations. When the apparatus measures an electron "there", then only states of the electron where it is "there" are consistent. Yet because the measurement apparatus is itself a quantum system, it also exists as a superposition of every possible ("electron measured there", "electron is there") state.

What Many Worlds is asking you to believe is "real" is superposition and entanglement. It's asking you to believe that quantum systems subject to these phenomenon aren't just tiny collections of particles we study in a lab, but everything. Including the apparatus, and also -- now here's the tough part -- including you.

You are not a classical observer who makes quantum systems start behaving classically when you look at them. You are a quantum system that exists as a superposition of all valid states. However because you are heavily entangled with everything around you, those valid states for you correlate heavily with specific subsets of valid states for the rest of the universe. So each of the possible "you"s sees only that subset of consistent valid states for the universe, which is why the world mostly looks classical and why wave functions appear to "collapse".

The key point for me to make here is that there are no spontaneously generated universes -- the "many worlds" are really just subsets of the valid states of the universe as described by the wave function that all exist in a superposition. No Conservation of Energy problem. No new information is created, or for that matter destroyed. Unlike in Copenhagen, in Many Worlds quantum mechanics is (in principle) completely reversible.

A universal wave function that defines all possibilities in the universe shouldn't on its own strike you as odd. It is in this sense precisely the same as the set of classical laws of physics plus the state of everything in the universe, from which one could calculate all future (and past) states.

"" Multiverse from inflation does allow for similar universes. But that is not the same as Many Worlds."

Isn’t it the same sort of mechanism though?"

No, not really.

Multiverses do not start out (or get chosen from) states that are in one universe progressing.

The MWI in its broadest and most colloquial sense is saying that the possibility produces another world where the alternative outcome was the one chosen.

The "solution" this gives is that which universe you perceive as real is the one of those many possible outcomes that came out true.

I.e. you're about to roll a dice. Six universes come into being from that point where one universe rolls a 1, another has a 2, and so on.

When you, the observer, notice that the answer that came up was 5, the universes stay, but your continuing consciousness has been placed into the universe that rolled a 5.

Those other universes, in the most common use of MWI, continue to exist, since the result of the "random" dice roll was never random, only which one you happened to follow on to was random.

Multiverses were abandoned because no causality from this one can ever reach it, even to the extent of "The value of the constant G is 6.7x10^-11". Or anything else.

Unless some physical laws are required for a universe to "survive" (three space dimensions, for example, may be an absolute requisite for a universe that can survive more than a plank time).

It never linked, never was, never will be, to a universe that had you, or any particle, force, wave or propagation that you will find in this universe, past, present or future.

@CB

am not sure I understand MW the way I do. It's not about believing that we are all QM systems or that we as observers are QM entangled as well. I understand that and agree.

If we move it from electron cloud to two slit.. the way I understand MW (and as ethan writes as well)... there IS physicaly REAL universe parallel to this where the particle passes through the other slit. and so on for every interaction... or the cat. just because the math says there's a 50/50 odds that's dead or alive, the moment you open the box there isn't a new universe getting created where the cat dies... yet it seems to me that MW is arguing precisely that

p.s. sorry first sentence should be: "... the way YOU do."

p.p.s.

" in Many Worlds quantum mechanics is (in principle) completely reversible."

well, how does this reconcile with uncertainty or entropy rise?

Quantumly, (cromulent new word!) entropy is just the difficulty of getting the same state back. Colliding two billiard balls back to their original location goes from having one force (the initial cueing) that was done any old how, to having to have two forces putting the two balls back in their original places and, rather than be any old way, they have to be precisely reversed.

If in the meantime, one or other (or both) had hit another ball, the reversal would require more forces in the right direction to cause the reversal.

And, stochastically, there are many more "wrong" ways to get the balls moving back (but not to precisely the same location) than there are "right" ones, leaving the scene as it found it.

MWI has many more worlds where you don't go back to where you started but if you could navigate precisely, you may be able to find one.

I don't really know it helps, though.

think I'll end here because it's hard to keep track :) anyways the math is same, regardless of interpretation. and as long as we get same results, i guess it's ok to believe anything :)

Sinisa: "well, how does [MWI implying QM is reversible] reconcile with uncertainty or entropy rise?"

Same way as all the other laws of physics which are completely reversible. :) In principle if you could reverse the motion of every particle in a (classic ideal) gas resulting from mixing a hot and cold gas you could get it to return to its original state of two separate resevoirs In practice the odds of this happening spontaneously are infinitesimal, and therefore (at a macroscopic statistical level) entropy always rises.

"there IS physicaly REAL universe parallel to this where the particle passes through the other slit. "

Absent path information, the particle passes through both slits. Do you believe that is physically real? MWI asks you to believe that it is.

All that happens then is when you detect the path, then the detector becomes correlated (entangled) with the particle and each of the two possibilities of detection are not compatible with the opposite possibility of path.

Both paths still occur, though. Just now the superposition includes the correlated state of the detector. And then you, as you say either "Ah-ha! It went through slit A!" or "Ah-ha! It went through slit B!" Those two possibilities exist in a superposition, as do their further evolutions. But the "you" that saw it go through slit A cannot see anything about the "you" that saw it go through slit B because those states are no longer compatible.

So instead of viewing it as every interaction forking a new universe, you can look at it as every interaction causing a subset of the universe (which is all states allowed in the wave function) becoming invisible to you.

I'll leave this link here again as it explains it much better than I can:
http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/quantum/

I'll finish by saying that while MWI has grown on me (not having an point of arbitrary irreversibility being part of why), I don't really "believe" it. Frankly I don't "believe" any interpretation of QM, and use Copenhagen as my mental model because it's simpler to conceptualize. I and my macroscopic experimental apparatus are classical observers and when quantum superpositions are observed they collapse and all the possibilities that I didn't observe cease to exist. Simple!

Consider that measurement will realise the answer of a quantum superposition. That doesn't have to be you looking at it either, it can just be something that can change if the superposition were in one state but not in any of the others.

Yes, the _last_ thing I want to do is imply that "observation" implies "observer" implies "human sentience" -- the pun-based "logic" that results in all kinds of woo. Observation is measurement is anything that's state will correlate with the state of the thing being measured, whether that's intentional or not (one of the ways this is made practically clear is by the difficulty designers of quantum computers have *not* measuring the state).

@CB #43: I think you (i.e., all of us physicists) have to be a bit careful when you say "anything." Generically, if you have something which couples to (correlates) "with the state of the thing being measured," what you end up with is an entangled quantum system.

In order to reduce or avoid that entanglement, and end up with a "classical measurement," what you need is a coupling which not only "correlates with the state of the thing being measured", but also acts as a projection operator, picking out one of the eigenstates of the system (by "picking", I mean a la the Born rule).

This turns out to be much harder, philosophically. In practical terms, what we have observed so far (pun entirely intended :-) ) is that you need something which couples to the environment, or to anything with a large number of stochastic degrees of freedom. That something acts as a projection operator, or to diagonalize the density matrix, or to "collapse the wavefunction," or whatever particular terminology you like this week.

There have been some really cool papers over the past decade or so, which have quantified this. For example, coupling an atom in a superposition to a microwave cavity, and measuring, for example, the time it takes the atom to end up in one of the two eigenstates as a function of how many photons are in the cavity. It's not instantaneous, and the time varies inversely with a power of the cavity population.

It's quite impossible to imagine about another universe 'cause we are bought up to believe that our earth is the only one that has air water and oxygen but I do believe in parallel universe because of all of my friends amazing facts and information and a lots of images

Amazing or what? Just amazing. God's Nature is amazing.

re #46: I thank you. It's some of my best work. I'm working on Nature v 2.0, using what I learned in creating this one.

Shaping up to be great!

Beyond Baryons

esiegel — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 12:53:19 +0000

Beyond Baryons

"In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature." -Murray Gell-Mann

You might think that we know it all, at least as far as knowing-it-all is possible. After all, we know that matter is made up of atoms, which are made up of electrons and nuclei, and the nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, and then the protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons.

Image credit: Hyak / Martin Savage, eScience Institute, University of Washington.

Along with the electrons, the quarks and gluons are -- as far as we know -- indivisible, which places them among the fundamental particles of the Universe.

Image credit: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Every proton and neutron is an example of a more general type of particle known as a baryon, which is a particle made up of three quarks, as well as the gluons that hold them together. Each quark has two types of charge: an electric charge, just like an electron has, as well as a color charge!

Unlike the electric charge, which is fixed for particles and has its force carried by a chargeless particle (the photon), a quark always carries a color -- either red, green or blue -- but that color always changes over time, since the gluons that carry the force are also colored!

Image credit: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons user Qashqaiilove.

Last year, I wrote up a brief introduction called The Strong Force For Beginners, which I encourage you to look at if you want more details about how this works. With six quarks and eight different gluons mediating the strong force, the number of different baryons, or stable/quasi-stable combinations of three quarks, are tremendous. The key is that, to exist, the combinations of quarks needs to be completely colorless when taken all together.

But baryons are not the only possibility for satisfying this.

Image credit: McLean County Unit District Number 5, http://www.unit5.org/.

Each quark has a color charge, and each anti-quark has an anti-color charge, but these are not independent! For example:

Anti-red is the same as blue+green, since red+anti-red or red+blue+green both = white.
Anti-blue is the same as red+green, since blue+anti-blue or blue+red+green both = white.
Anti-green is the same as blue+red, since green+anti-green or green+blue+red both = white.

So you can have a quark-antiquark combination, which is known as a meson. Or you could have three quarks, a baryon, or three antiquarks, an anti-baryon.

Image credit: Bryan Yarmak of University of Alaska Fairbanks.

All of these particles, with the sole exception of the proton and antiproton, are unstable, and will decay over time.

Image credit: R. Nave of http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/.

If a particle is unstable under the strong interactions, it will decay the most quickly, as the strong interaction is (duh) the strongest! A particle that undergoes a strong decay lives only some ~10^-22 to 10^-24 seconds.

If a particle is stable to the strong interactions but unstable to the electromagnetic interaction, it decays very quickly, but not quite as quickly as the strong interactions. A particle (like the neutral pion) that undergoes electromagnetic decay lives ~10^-17 to 10^-21 seconds.

And if a particle is both stable to the strong and electromagnetic interactions but not to the weak interactions -- which pretty means it needs to change its quark-type -- it lives the longest: ~10^-8 to 10^-13 seconds. (The lone exception is the free neutron, which for a variety of reasons lives about 10 minutes.)

But we can make other combinations of quarks and gluons than just mesons, baryons and antibaryons that are allowed by our governing theory: quantum chromodynamics, or QCD.

Image credit: Zoe Matthews / IOP / http://physicsworld.com/.

While they'll be unstable to strong decays, and hence will have incredibly short lifetimes, we can theoretically also have combinations such as tetraquarks (two quarks and two antiquarks), pentaquarks (four quarks and one antiquark, or four antiquarks and one quark), glueballs (bound states of gluons-only), or hybrid particles (a quasi-stable quark configuration with one or more extra gluons inside).

For a long time, these were only theoretical predictions of our theory of the strong interactions, but about a decade ago, claims started rolling in from particle accelerators that a pentaquark state had been discovered!

Image credit: Sandbox Studio / Symmetry Magazine / Fermilab / SLAC.

Now, it turns out that -- like many borderline discoveries in particle physics -- this one went away with more data, although there is at least one group that still claims to have found a pentaquark. (If you remember how long it took for physicists to confidently announce the discovery of the Higgs Boson, it's because they waited until they had enough data so that they could make sure they weren't announcing something that could possibly have gone away!)

And yet, states like tetraquark, pentaquarks and glueballs must exist if QCD is correct, so long as there are at least three colors.

Image credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker, via Physics Viewpoint, edited by me.

In a surprising announcement earlier this week, two independent teams have just found overwhelming evidence for a tetraquark state: the Z_c at a mass/energy of 3900 MeV! [Known, at least for now, as the Z_c(3900).] Made up of two quarks, an up and a charm, and two anti-quarks, an anti-down and an anti-charm, this is the first confirmed particle made up of quarks-and-gluons that doesn't fit into our standard picture of either meson, baryon, anti-baryon, or a multi-baryon combination (which is what atomic nuclei are).

Yes, it's true that with a lifetime of less than 10^-20 seconds, it's not like these particles have much effect on the Universe today. But back when the Universe was very young -- less than 100 picoseconds after the Big Bang -- these particles were just as abundant as any baryon or meson that existed, and provide the first real confirmation of one of the most novel predictions of our theory of the strong force! Here's hoping it continues to hold up, and that many more of these exotic particles await us in the future. (I'm particularly excited for the first glueball.) The search, and the journey, continues.

esiegel Fri, 06/21/2013 - 08:53

Tags

As I understand it, which isn't a great deal, it is impossible for a quark to exist independently, but always must be glued to another quark, hence the term gluon?

@Tony Rotz: Basically, yes. The name "gluon" was coined back when physicists had a sense of humor, and didn't take their field quite so seriously as we do now :-/

Quarks can't be isolated from an existing bound state because the strong force (mediated by gluons) _increases_ with distance, rather than decreasing. (The converse, that the force decreases as the separation between quarks goes to zero, is called "asymptotic freedom").

If you want a classical analogy, take a strip of rubber in your hand. Label each end with a "Q" (for quark), and the rubber itself is the strong field (mediated by gluons). As you pull the ends apart, the rubber stretches, and just like a string exerts a stronger and strong restoring force. Eventually, you can pump enough energy in that the band breaks somewhere in the middle. Do you now have two free quarks? Nope! You have two bands, each one with two ends (go and label the new ends with "Q" as well). So from a single bound state (e.g., a meson), you now have two bound states, with shorter bands (and hence lower masses) than the original.

An interesting side note is that this argument really only applies to trying to "pull" a quark from an existing baryon or meson. It is conceivable that there are some left-over unbound quarks from the Big Bang. So far, searches for such entities passing through our partice-physics detectors have been unsuccessful.

As I understand it, the strong force doesn't become stronger at greater distances in an absolute sense -- as the separation becomes greater, the force between them does become less. It's that the relative strength of the force, the way it scales with 1/r^2, and compares with other forces at that distance, increases.

Here's an explanation: http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics…

Could dark matter be "baryons" with non integer charge? An assemblage of quarks with a 2/3 or 4/3 charge couldn't interact with photons or charged particles because charge couldn't be conserved.

Electromagnetic interactions don't exchange or alter charge so how would charge not be conserved?

"Quarks can’t be isolated from an existing bound state because the strong force (mediated by gluons) _increases_ with distance, rather than decreasing."

The result being that if you stretch them apart further apart, at some point you've enough energy in the binding force to create a new pair of quarks that then bind to the two you're yanking at.

And you have now separated them and created some new baryons.

This ensures that the force has a maximum range based on the energies of the quarks that you are pulling apart.

The mechanism for this is that the force carrier becomes more and more energetic until the force carrier has the energy to decay into two products that just so happen to be the composites.

CB, the massless force carriers can reach infinite distance (because if they need to reach further, the force can create a smaller virtual particle as the force carrier without disobeying the uncertainty principle, therefore not have to decay into other particles that will be noticed and not therefore a force carrier.

Sort of.

So the range of these forces depend on the distribution of their attributing phenomenon. Mass or charge in the case of gravity and electromagnetism. And on large enough scales, this becomes neutral, therefore electromagnetic forces are limited by how much, and how large, a charged volume can be created.

Strong and weak nuclear force work over nm and therefore cannot collect a lot of their activating participant (color) because it just damn well won't fit in a volume that small.

Well, not since inflation.

So the strong force is short ranged. It DOES increase with distance, but only to a small distance. After that, the force carrier is de-virtualised into real particles with color and closes the gap, removing the color difference that you were trying to extend.

Google reader has been bringing me to this site for years.

will have to start learning some more about particle physics. Am a bit lost in all this.

Am pretty fine with cosmology.. things seem so elegant there. Particle physics is such a crowded, noisy jungle :D Sigh

So now I am confused. I thought tetra- et cetera resonances were suppressed instead of simply demanding higher energy, which is why we haven't seen them. But that would explain why 5.2 sigma (IIRC) was sufficient for some excitement instead of say, oh 7(?), for an unexpected observation.

Also, I read somewhere else that the di-meson configuration, which should be energetically preferred I take it, wasn't consistent with the decay times seen. Maybe it isn't because that the times given here seems to place it among meson decays, instead of first decaying into 2 mesons and then those decaying?

@ Wow:
Yeah, the distance Matt Strassler was talking about where the Strong Force becomes really strong was at a one proton-radius.

So if I understand your last paragraph, the short-range of the strong force is in part a consequence of gluons having color. When a real one is emitted, it ends up cancelling the color charge.

Could dark matter be “baryons” with non integer charge?

It turns out that any combination of quarks that satisfies the color charge neutrality condition must have a total electric charge which is an integer multiple of the electron charge. Single quarks have a charge of either +2/3 or -1/3, so the allowed charge states of three-quark combinations are +2, +1, 0, or -1. Multiply all of the above by -1 if you are talking about antiquarks. For mesons you can have +1, 0, or -1. Obviously, more options are possible if you allow more exotic states, but the electric charge will still add up to an integer multiple of the electron charge.

An assemblage of quarks with a 2/3 or 4/3 charge couldn’t interact with photons or charged particles because charge couldn’t be conserved.

Even if such assemblages could exist, the electromagnetic force is mediated by photons, which have charge 0. One of the vector bosons associated with the weak force also has 0 charge. Nothing prevents these entities from interacting by these paths. Furthermore, if we assume arguendo that a state with a charge of 4/3 must exist, then we can show that a state with a charge of 1/3 must also exist (e.g., if a uu combination exists, a ud combination must also exist), so interactions via the charged vector bosons are also allowed.

Pretty much, CB. Though the Feynman diagrams are more accurate. The explanation gives a decent framework to understand the process.

I never really got far with QCD. Never even read the Feynman lectures on that, never seemed to get round to getting them.

Thinking of it, maybe I ought to fire up and see if I can get them in ebook...

Thanks Michael K for the very understandable answer.

@CB #3 -- I read the page you linked to, and got rather confused. The author seems to assume that all forces are 1/r^2 with different coupling strengths, and that isn't true for either the strong or weak forces.

It's only true for EM and gravity because (a) the force carriers are massless (otherwise, you'd have a Yukawa coupling, exp(-r/L)); and (b) the force carriers do not interact with themselves/each other.
That second condition is what is violated in QCD (the gluons themselves carry color charge), and it is what leads to the "string-like" force (*NOT* "string theory", but the stretched-rubber-band model I described initially).

The fact that the force _increases_ with distance, is what makes all the bound hadrons so small. If you try to bind two quarks together over a distance larger than about 1 fm (the diameter of a nucleon) the gluon field ends up having so much potential energy that it spontaneously produces q-qbar pairs.
At that point, you end up with a pair of bound systems, each smaller than 1 fm. But inside that range, the binding force really does *increase* with distance.

But what about bigger "strongly bound" objects, like whole nuclei? The nucleons are bound to each other by the "strong force," but not directly by QCD gluons. Rather, you can sort of make an approximate analogy to molecules binding together with van der Waals forces -- each nucleon is tightly bound up with gluons, but there's a residual strong "color-static" field surrounding them, which allows them to attract and bind each other together. The typical model approach is to use virtual pions and rho mesons within the nucleus to provide a shortish-range Yukawa coupling.

Talking of rubber bands, take a look at the tricoloured trefoil here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trefoil_knot#Nontriviality . Then starting from the bottom left, go round anticlockwise calling out the crossing-over directions: up down up. Then take a look at this topological quantum field theory web page: http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~rpicken/tqft/ . Look at the top. Here's another TQFT web page: http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/research/geom-top . The blue torus isn't a proton. That's an electron. Here's another one: http://scgp.stonybrook.edu/about . Always blue for some reason. I guess these guys talk. And they've seen the images:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_kathlyn__080309_electron_filmed…

http://io9.com/the-first-image-ever-of-a-hydrogen-atoms-orbital-struc-5…

@ Michael

I don't think he's assuming 1/r^2 drop-off; he's using that as the point of comparison for comparing force strength.

Beyond that I don't know; I've quite possibly misunderstood.

Could someone please explain why matter and anti-matter annihilate each other on contact (and do they really?) but quarks, anti-quarks, gluons and anti-gluons can exist peacefully in the same proton?

Thanks!

Colour separation.

You can have an top quark and an anti-up quark because the anti particle isn't the antiparticle of the positive quark.

And anti-proton consists of three quarks each of which is the antiparticle of one in the proton.

@Alissa: You generally don't have quarks and antiquarks together in the same baryon; it's either three quarks (such as uud, giving you a proton) or three antiquarks (such as anti-u + anti-u + anti-d), giving you an antiproton. With mesons, you have a quark and an antiquark, but they can be different flavors (such as u + anti-d). Where the quark and antiquark are of the same flavor, the meson in question is its own antiparticle, and it is invariably unstable.

Gluons are force mediators. Six of them have the effect of two quarks in a baryon exchanging their color charges, or the quarks in a meson going from A + anti-A to B + anti-B (where A and B are two of red, green, and blue); obviously three of them are the antiparticles of the other three. The other two (why there are two rather than three is above my pay grade since I am not a particle theorist) are color-neutral and act as their own antiparticles. (The photon and the Z0 vector boson are also their own antiparticles; the other two weak vector bosons are a particle-antiparticle pair.) When you have a gluon-antigluon pair simultaneously present in a proton, they are usually virtual particles, meaning that they coexist for a short time because energy and time obey a similar uncertainty relation as position and momentum.

Wow,

So then you wouldn't expect to observe a meson that is composed, for instance, of an up and an anti-up quark, right? (Or at least such a particle would be highly unstable) Or am I understanding you wrong?

Thanks Eric, I didn't see your post while I was writing my question. You've pretty much answered me.

No, though this is why this new baryon conglomeration was not expected (I hadn't noticed that five quarks were being included).

Elementary particle physics was really interesting, but I never really got the chance to keep up with it when I had to start working.

I could theorise about why this works, but it would be reasoning from analogy, and I suspect that there's been a lot of changes that I've been completely in the dark about in QCD.

It's a lot easier to be competent when understanding some other genius's work, but it's really not the same when you are at the cutting edge: there's still a hell of a lot of work to go to understand, and the path isn't an old and well-worn one.

Eric, I was assuming Alissa's query was "How come baryons like proton/anti-proton will collide and annihilate when they are each made of quarks, but quark and anti-quark don't".

It's a lot easier for charged particle/anti-particle, since the attraction increases as the particles get closer. But it's possible that conditionally stable results can be attained with a bound up/anti-up, since their attraction will fade as they close, and the presence of another colour may allow these near misses to be converted to a divergence.

But that is conjecture.

Wow: Yes that was my question, thanks. I still don't understand why the baryons (which are made of quarks) annihilate each other when the two colliding would be the quarks and anti-quarks inside them colliding; but the meson can exist using exactly the same (in theory) quarks and anti-quarks.

Eric: I did understand some of that, thanks! So you are saying colour plays a part in whether a quark and an anti-quark are truly explosive opposites? I must admit I'm still wrapping my brain around the quark/anti-quark combinations with the different "flavours" (up, anti-up etc.) to even think about the colours right now. Especially considering the mysterious colour switching process!

So, are you both annihilation only occurs if everything matches its opposite?
For example: A red up quark will only destroy a red anti-up quark? (or is that an anti-red anti-up quark? Goodness!)

Sorry about the last paragraph!

(Heh, I'm too busy to hang out here for a week or two, and look at all the cool stuff I missed;-)

For fellow laypeople, this quote from the Wikipedia article Ethan linked, is useful:

"The "color" of quarks and gluons is completely unrelated to visual perception of color.[1] Rather, it is a convenient (and somewhat whimsical) name for a property that has almost no manifestation at distances above the size of an atomic nucleus. The term color was chosen because the abstract property to which it refers has three kinds of values, which are analogized to the three primary colors of red, green, and blue.[2] The analogy lies in the fact that combination of three particles with red, green and blue color charges each doesn't interact with outside color charges (it is "white"). By comparison, the electromagnetic charge has only one kind of value. (Note that positive and negative electrical charges are the same kind of charge, they only differ by the sign. Color charges also can be negative. For example, "anti-red" color charge is simply a negative red color charge)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge

For those of us who have internalized our understanding of electricity/electronics, this element is interesting: Electrical charge has a single value, "color" charge has three. That suggests a visual analogy: electrical charge has one axis of measurement, analogous to a straight line; "color" charge has three, analogous to three lines in the three spatial dimensions.

But this begs a question, though the question might even be "not even wrong" in the sense that it's asking the wrong question about the phenomenon: is there, or could there be, a technology application of the three values of color charge?

Lastly, it seems that the tetraquark can be accommodated within existing physics, since it was already predicted. Is that correct?, or are we looking at something that calls for a small piece of new physics to be added on?

So, are you both annihilation only occurs if everything matches its opposite?
For example: A red up quark will only destroy a red anti-up quark? (or is that an anti-red anti-up quark

Well, yes, a proton and a positron don't annihilate. They have to match up.

But the ant-Red is as equivalently made up of a positive Green and Blue. Therefore if there were a green or blue matching quark in there, then that anti-Red may become bound to the Green or Blue (or both!). Therefore never actually meet the Red to annihilate.

" is there, or could there be, a technology application of the three values of color charge? "

Almost 100% certainly not. The force range is very small and you can't collect a lot of one colour charge without making a whole slew of baryons and mesons as the energetically favoured decay product.

Black Holes Won't Incinerate You, After All

esiegel — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:30:42 +0000

Black Holes Won't Incinerate You, After All

“You wait for a gem in an endless sea of blah.” -Lawrence Grossman

On the one hand, we have General Relativity, our theory of space, time, and gravity.

Image credit: Wikimedia commons user Johnstone; Earth from NASA's Galileo mission.

It describes the Universe on both large and small scales perfectly, from the hot Big Bang to our cold accelerating expansion, from vast superclusters of galaxies down to the interiors of black holes.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH Team.

But General Relativity doesn't tell us everything. It doesn't tell us, for example, about protons, neutrons or electrons. It doesn't tell us the properties or interactions of matter and energy in the Universe. It only tells you about gravitation: how spacetime affects the matter and energy in it and how the matter and energy respond, gravitationally, to the spacetime they exist in.

But that does include, when an excessive amount of mass/energy gets concentrated in one region of spacetime, black holes.

Image credit: anrophysics 2008-09, via Bangkok Patana School http://www.patana.ac.th/.

But if you want to properly describe the matter and radiation that lives in this spacetime, you need something else.

You need equations and laws that govern each individual quantum of energy and all of their interactions. You need the Standard Model of Elementary Particles, and all the laws that govern their interactions.

Image credit: The Particle Adventure / CPEP / LBNL.

For that, you need quantum field theory. This is fully relativistic, and is the most complete way we have of describing the interactions of all matter, energy, and fields in the Universe.

It's incredibly complex, but it's calculable using a variety of techniques.

Image credit: Michele Vallisneri, Ira Rothstein and Chad Galley, using an EFT.

The problem -- and the source of many paradoxes -- is what happens when we try to put General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory together. Because we don't have a quantum theory of gravity, this typically means using General Relativity to figure out how the background spacetime is configured, and then using Quantum Field Theory in that curved spacetime to figure out the nuances of how that particle behaves.

I've done exactly one calculation of QFT in curved spacetime in my life (the one to derive Hawking radiation), and it was one of the most difficult calculations I've ever done.

Image credit: John Baez, Nature 421, 702-703 (13 February 2003).

Recently, another paradox has emerged that you might have heard of: that of Black Hole Firewalls.

Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

If you fall in towards a black hole, you wouldn't notice anything special other than the gravitational redshifting of light and the increasing gravitational tidal forces as you fell in.

As you got close enough to the event horizon, you'd pass through ISCO, or the innermost stable circular orbit, interior to which there would be no matter or radiation. The black hole eventually swallows your field of vision, and into the event horizon you go.

Image credit: Andrew Hamilton, who has some great visuals at http://jila.colorado.edu/.

According to standard General Relativity, nothing funny or fancy should happen to you as you cross the event horizon, just the same small increases in tidal forces as you continue to approach the singularity.

But the "Firewall paradox," discovered last year, appeared to show that an intense firewall of radiation existed everywhere at once along the event horizon in a large black hole, and would incinerate anything or anyone that attempted to cross in horrific fashion.

Image credit: lordphenix2002 of photobucket.

Here's the thing: when two quantum systems are entangled, you can know the properties of one particle by measuring the properties of the other. For example, I can entangle two photons so that one has spin +1, and the other has spin -1. If I measure the spin of one, I immediately know the spin of the other. But if I don't measure the spin of either, they both remain undetermined.

The paradox comes about when you have two entangled particles, and one -- but not the other -- falls into the black hole.

Image credit: Oracle Thinkquest, via http://library.thinkquest.org/.

If you break the entanglement, by say, measuring the properties of the one that didn't fall in, a barrier of energetic particles would descend around the event horizon of the black hole; that's where the alleged firewall comes from.

At least, that was the paradox, as it was stated last year. But three physicists that you've probably never heard of -- Samuel L. Braunstein, Stefano Pirandola, and Karol Życzkowski -- have come up with the resolution here!

Image credit: Braunstein, Pirandola and Z˙yczkowski, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 101301 (2013).

The fun thing that they found, here, is that the greater the entanglement across the event horizon of the black hole, the later the firewall curtain falls. More entanglement = more time.

So you'd think that this would be good for large black holes and bad for small black holes, naïvely, and this could have been the case. But in our Universe -- as this paper shows -- entanglement across all black hole event horizons is maximized, which means that the time it takes the firewall curtain-to-fall is... infinite.

Image credit: Sabrina Herbst of Penn State.

In other words, entanglement is maximized and the black hole firewall never forms.

So you won't get fried as you fall into a black hole, even if you wait an arbitrarily long time. You can wait and wait and wait all you want, but infinity never comes.

Image credit: Ashley Corbion of http://atramateria.com/.

So when you fall into a black hole, it's death by spaghettification, not by incineration! And that's the end of the Black Hole Firewall Paradox!

esiegel Fri, 03/08/2013 - 12:30

Tags

And for a large black hole, death by boredom.

You'd be thinking "Where are all the special effects?". Art. Sexing up the ordinary for over 300 years.... :-)

Even without a firewall, I'd expect death by x-rays long before spaghettification.

"Black Holes Won’t Incinerate You, After All"

Perhaps, but I cannot imagine that it is a healthy environment.

Therefore, Hawking still loses his bet and Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia still goes to John Preskill and information can still be stored and not lost in the black hole by becoming part of the event horizon, as a hologram. I wonder whether Susskind was getting worried for the moment. The firewalls and the incineration put the Holographic Principal on shaky terms.

This paper is completely wrong! The authors don't understand QM.As I pointed out in 1991 (Proc of the Santa Fe conf on Found QM) QM acts as a singular perturbation on GR and there is no event horizon.

Yeah, george.

That's entirely how a scientist counters a paper. Just claims "This paper is completely wrong! They don't understand it at all!!!".

Yeah, right.

Problem is, you're not that George at all, are you.

Actually this paper almost literally satisfies Pauli's famous dictum of being "not even wrong." There are no results. Nothing is calculated at all and the authors simply talk and wave their hands. It's embarassing for Physical Review Letters. Actually that's also true in the 'firewall' papers.

What actually happens at the edge of a 'black hole' will be determined in the next 5-10 years by astrophysical observations. But George is right. There are good reasons to think there is a real surface there. See arXiv:gr-qc/0109035.

Is the human mind information? Is the Goldberg Variations information? Is 'General Relativity' information? If so, then what happens when our physical selves die? Does Plato's Ideals, Fermats Last Theorem, Archimedes Screw disappear?

No. No, No. The same thing as happens to the movement of an object that comes to rest: it stops. No.

@ William McDill

When talking about information in Physics, it's not talking about what you or I or anyone else knows. It's not about that.

A single piece of information or "bit" or "qbit".. depending on system, is a basic value of information about a system. i.e. if electron has spin up or down. You could say "0" for up, and "1" for down... or "A" and "B"... matters not. Very similar to computers. i.e.

Let's say I take your name "William" and I say it has 7 letters. Or I could say that it has 7bits. Of course this isn't really true.. your name doesn't have 7 bits in computer terms.. but as explanation you get the idea.

The thing is.. the Law says you can never ever destroy that info. It might get ripped apart, mixed with something else, one bit might be here, the other in a different galaxy or in Black Hole. But they still exist! In principal... if you knew everything that happened to every single of those bits, you could always reconstruct that package "William" from original bits that constitute it.

That's what meant by information.

Thank you! I appreciate being told that this paper made it through peer review and that some in the physics community accept it.

Even though the write up and the characterization of the authors (all 3 physicists, or 1 as coauthor?) seems a bit simplified to me. I thought the moral was that there is some as of yet unknown sort of quantum "code" protection of the entangled information, until the black hole evaporates and regurgitate it as nicely as it once ate it.

@george chapline:

They are working against the accepted theory, which has an event horizon, you can't fault them for that (and in fact you would have to fault them else).

If you do, you are "completely wrong!"

@Blackmage:

They do present a lot of (they claim new) results. Why don't you go have a read before commenting? That is, and excuses for using the same characterization as for george but it suits sooo well, “not even wrong.”

@Ian Liberman

But the paper has the information encoded all over: "The simultaneous encoding of information externally (in the combined radiation and external neighborhood) and
‘‘internally’’ (if one slightly stretches the horizon to envelop the bulk of the external neighborhood entanglement in addition to the black hole interior)".

They also refrain from specifying the new proposed physics outside of its entanglement effects. How should we test that it is holography?

[Which, as I understand it is not about where information lives but a correspondence between 4D physics that approximates ours and a 3D conformal physics. The entire 3D embodiment is analogous to a hologram, there is no actual subset becoming a hologram projection.]

And it would be "principle", wouldn't it? A principal is "highest in rank".

But... Aren't you only relatively spaghetti-like?

And, how can black holes actually be a singularity if they didn't start with an infinite amount of mass? I mean, I'm sure they're a hell of a lot closer to infinitely dense than regular matter, very closely approaching it even, but wouldn't you ultimately get compressed with an (almost) infinitely dense ball of matter? Seems to me like it'd be death by squishing.

"...you’d pass through ISCO ... The black hole eventually swallows your field of vision ..." Yes, but you could still "see" out wouldn't you, at least directly "up", wouldn't you see an intensely blue-shifted point of light of the external universe?

Does this mean The Flying Spaghetti Monster is located at the Event Horizon? Bring on the beers! Ramen.

That should have read... "The Flying Spaghetti Monster, in hiser infinite existence, lives at the Event Horizon"... :-)

Gabe, infinity isn't being reached, not in any finite time.

But the singularity is where it's so small, you can't tell the difference between zero size and the size it is.

Spagett!

While I think the picture of the object resting on a two dimensional plan and distorting it into the third dimension, I try to wrap my head around the fact that it isn't a two dimensional plane but three dimensional space. I somehow can't visualize this even though I can conceptualize this. Are there any pictures out there showing it visually?

It's not much of a shift than looking at a photo with perspective lines on it.

We're just built to see this 3D world with our 2D vision (beyond a few score meters, binocular vision adds nothing), so we're mostly fine with it, though our mind can be fooled, hence the optical illusions.

Your best bet is to think of it in three dimensions and thinking how it would look to something who can only see the planar surface.

"Black Holes Won’t Incinerate You, After All"

Really.
I'll read the firewall theory and the rebuttal and assume that they are correct.
OK. So we won't be incinerated that way.

But what about spinning black holes. Like spinning at near the speed of light. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/spinning_blackhole.ht…

In my mind, galaxies are spinning and so the supermassive black holes at center of galaxies should be spinning. Specifically, I find it impossible to imagine a non-spinning black hole; just as I find it impossible to imagine a non spinning solar system or galaxy or even planet or moon.

But no one good measure the speed of the spin at the event horizon of a black hole until now. Well 84% of the speed of light is pretty fast.

So I assume things get pretty dynamic and pretty hot as you fall into a black hole spinning at 84% the speed of light (at the event horizon). I don't know which would happen first: tidal forces due to frame dragging of general relativity (spaghettification) or being fried by x-rays or friction (incineration). Hmm I think both would happen before even reaching the event horizon.

In my mind Schwarchild (non spinning) black holes are NOT physical. All real black holes spin (are Kerr black holes). We do Schwarzchild black hole calculations because they are simple; kind of like we assume the earth is a solid and the sun is an ideal gas. Sometimes its a useful approximation.

So I don't think falling into a black hole would be a la di da fall down the rabbit hole; it will be hot.

"But what about spinning black holes. Like spinning at near the speed of light. "

What is spinning at the speed of light?

Something spinning isn't translating at all, therefore is going at zero velocity.

What's "spinning" is the tangential speed of the event horizon. But that isn't a "thing" at all. It can spin at 10,000,000 times the speed of light, because it isn't anything, just geometry.

Also note that the above "FTL spinning" is what is happening to the electron if its "spin" really IS a classical-understanding of spin. In that case, it's probably not really "spin as in spinning top".

PS before the advent of really powerful computers, the only solutions to hard equations like the gravitational tensor or spacetime were ones that assumed all sorts of things so as to throw away almost all of the variables and make their effect negligible. Non-spinning material falling in to the black hole and therefore not imparting any rotation to the accreting body was one such simplification.

And for a very large black hole that isn't currently having dinner you'd drop inside the event horizon and never know the difference unless you're looking out.

A very small one would rip you apart well before you got near its event horizon. E.g. an earth-mass (forced stability) black hole. You could still be miles away from the objects event horizon and the tidal forces will rip your bits off..!

If the geometry is spinning at the speed of light; then the particles falling in are spinning in an accretion disk for some time at the speed of light . And there is friction heat in an accretion disk.

"Such space-time twists influence the motion of stuff moving close to the black hole, and by tracking nearby orbits we can work out the spin of the black hole. And in this respect we're lucky: falling material rarely drops straight in, but tends to miss and ends up orbiting before making its final plunge. Because of the above, some supermassive black holes are surrounded by immense, brightly-glowing accretion disks, with material whizzing around, heating through friction, at speeds approaching that of light." http://phys.org/news/2013-03-supermassive-blackholes.html

"a very large black hole that isn’t currently having dinner "
Well I don't believe there is such an animal as a very large black hole that 1) isn't spinning and 2) that isn't currently eating asteroids, dusts, planets and stars for dinner. The problem is we just can't see the event horizon of (e.g. the black hole at thge center of the Milky Way) because of the accretion disk (i.e. the cosmic sludge) that the black hole at is continuously sip, swig, swilling swallowing and quaffing down the hatch.

There is no such animal as a supermassive non spinning, non dining black hole in the middle of a supervoid. I mean, I haven't heard of any 1 million or more solar masses black holes that aren't sitting in the middle of a smorgasbord (i.e. in the middle of a galaxy) yum yum oh so many planets, and stars and asteroids and dust clouds to gobble.

In my opinion, regardless of the la did da quotes from Hawkings, Thorne or other experts about floating passively, not noticing anything, across the event horizon toward the most massive objects in the universe (i.e. a supermassive black hole); that idea is a physical idealism of immense proportions, i.e. a utopia build upon simply immense and unphysical assumptions.

"If the geometry is spinning at the speed of light; then the particles falling in are spinning in an accretion disk for some time at the speed of light"

Incorrect.

If they were in stable orbit, they'd have to be moving at the speed of light.

If they aren't, then they don't.

"There is no such animal as a supermassive non spinning, non dining black hole in the middle of a supervoid"

Uh, how would you know? It's not visible.

Look at the name: Black Hole.

What's the thing about space? It's black.

Mr. Larsson,
I did read the paper --or tried to earnestly--several times. It makes no sense. You can see for yourself that there are no detailed calculations of any kind.
What do you think the 'new' results are?

Incorrect, incorrect!

"One should keep in mind that nothing is static in Universe and a rapidly rotating black hole is most natural... Finally I can say, black hole angular momentum always should be considered, before making any inference about global disk properties. It is more important as most of black holes are thought to be rotating. Therefore due to the rotation of a black hole not only quantitatively but also qualitatively accretion disk properties change." http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0402178v1.pdf

"some time" does not imply stability; it mean some time during which such matter travels many times around the accretion disk.

"The possibility of steady and stable disk formation by incoming matter towards a black hole is allowed only for certain sets of initial parameters... As it is well known that no object is static in the Universe, before making any serious conclusions about the inner properties of the accretion disk, the consideration of rotation of a black hole is essential... It is clearly seen that, at a particular entropy, if the rotation of black hole increases, marginally bound (xb) and stable (xs) orbits as well as sonic points shift to a more inner region and the possibility to have all four sonic points in the disk outside the horizon increases. As an example, for a = 0.998, the inner edge of accretion disk enlarges in such a manner that the fourth sonic point in the disk appears outside the horizon... Higher co-rotation results in a shift of xb and xs to a more inner edge of the accretion disk and an enlargement of the stable disk region (as we know that the stable circular orbit is possible in the disk upto the radius xs). On the other hand, higher counter-rotation results in an outward shift of xb and xs and the size of the stable disk region reduces... Overall we can say that the rotation of a black hole aﬀects the sonic locations of an accretion disk which are directly related to the formation of stable disk structure. Therefore, the stability of an accretion disk is strongly related to the rotation of central black hole." http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0212186v1.pdf

I do not claim to understand more than a bit of these papers.
But they clearly suggest that
1) "consideration of rotation of a black hole is essential"
2) understanding "the stability of an accretion disk " is important and does not require or even mention particles moving at the speed of light.

How would you know there are no pink elephants in trees at night; they are invisible to anyone who is awake?

Oh and then there is the issue of nucleosynthesis in the accretion disk of black holes.

"For instance, in a Shakura-Sunyaev (1973) Keplerian disk, the temperature becomes close to a few times 10^7K. . In a two-temperature transonic ﬂow, the ions may remain hot (Tp ∼ 10^8−11K) while the electrons may be cooler ((Te ∼ 10^7−9K) depending on accretion rate of the Keplerian and sub-Keplerian components." arXiv:astro-ph/0103230

Oh well, but why would anyone even think that nucleosynthesis with tempratures 10^7 to 10^11 K might be common in the accretion disc of a black hole.

Incorrect, incorrect!

“One should keep in mind that nothing is static in Universe and a rapidly rotating black hole is most natural…

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!

Not the quote, but your assertion of "Incorrect!".

Go on, read what was written there, you may have missed in your urge to find fault:

PS before the advent of really powerful computers, the only solutions to hard equations like the gravitational tensor or spacetime were ones that assumed all sorts of things so as to throw away almost all of the variables and make their effect negligible. Non-spinning material falling in to the black hole and therefore not imparting any rotation to the accreting body was one such simplification.

Read that again.

What does it say?

But they clearly suggest that
1) “consideration of rotation of a black hole is essential”

And nobody has said that it isn't.

All I've said is that before we had enough computational power (hell, computers at all: this stuff predates prevalent computing) simpler versions had to be considered.

Wow

Here is the problem.

Remember Ethan's post The Physics of a Bottomless Pit.

In that post Ethan explained that a simple Hole through the Earth is not so simple.
And then you and others shared your knowledge of the real complexity of a hole through the center of the Earth.

And Ethan's post and your comments and others were great. It was a discussion that was not condescending. It assumed that WE could understand and would enjoy learning of the real complexity of a hole through the center of the Earth.

BUT!!!!
Ethan's discussion of a BLACK HOLE (IN THE VERY FABRIC OF SPACE TIME) keeps to the simplest most idealized description and thrills that an interesting complexity has been discredited.

And you Wow do not add your understanding of the real complexity of a black hole to the discussion. And others remain silent.

Yes my understanding is impwerfect and yes I do not fully or even nearly understand the arvix research to which I point.

But I do know that the idealized Schwarzchild non rotating black hole is further from the reality of a real rotating black hole; than the idealized cylinbdrical hole through the center of the Earth. Yes I know this as certain as I know that there is no classical idealized vacuum. Yes, I know this as certain as I know that there is no classical general relativity infinite singularity. And so,

Yes, I understand that such idealized simple models are useful and necessary working models (tools) of physics.

But stop pandering and paying homage to such simple and yes UNPHYSICAL ideas. The subject under discussion is physics not metaphysics. And the physics of black holes is every bit as messy as the physics of a hole through the Earth.

Probably a great deal messier.

So Wow, stop trying to break my ideas or point out why they are wrong. I already know the limitation of my ideas. What I would like is for you to join in the discussion with your superior astrophysics understanding and yes educate me to the real complexities of a real (yes and thus rotating) black hole.

Because if you are not educating you are politicing. But I'm not a politician, my goal is not to convince or persuade or to judge. My goal is only to understand that little bit more that I can understand of that little bit more that working scientists struggle to understand.

So give me the skinny. I've said enough already. And yes there are assumptions and hedges and extenuating circumstances and a great many details in the referenced research that I do not understand. Yet I dare to try.

I'm not arguing with you Wow or Ethan; but I am asking you to dare try to teach me and WE.

I mean a BLACK HOLE is the ULTIMATE BOTTOMLESS PIT.

"Here is the problem.

Remember Ethan’s post The Physics of a Bottomless Pit."

This isn't the bottomless pit.

"I mean a BLACK HOLE is the ULTIMATE BOTTOMLESS PIT."

Not from the POV of the thing falling in. Time and space is dilated and so it doesn't look as though anything odd is happening to it.

And here's the problem: Neither of those have anything to do with either what I said or your assertions around them.

I hold a different opinion.

Space and time are dilated from the POV of the thing falling into a cylindrical hole right through planet Earth too, i.e. Einstein's elevator gedanken.

So my point is that it is just as important, maybe more important to discuss the extenuating details of falling into a black hole than falling into a hole in the Earth..

"Space and time are dilated from the POV of the thing falling into a cylindrical hole right through planet Earth too"

Well, in the same way as an elephant is like an ant.

Or, indeed, an elephant and an ant are big.

Just remember that the Schwarzschild solution -- a non-rotating black hole -- was discovered about a month after GR was published. The Kerr solution -- a rotating one -- was discovered about 48 years afterwards.

GR is mind-bogglingly difficult to calculate even the simplest-configured systems in. Yes, real astrophysical objects all rotate, but if M (amount of energy in mass) is large compared to J (angular momentum), then Schwarzschild becomes an excellent approximation for about 97% of the behavior of black holes.

Part of the art of being a good theorist is knowing when you can make simplifying approximations, and this art is one of the most difficult things to teach.

Words Of Wisdom indeed; I am wow'd by the deep physical insight that ant and elephant, being neither subatomic nor astronomical, are roughly the same size. Very nice.

"So when you fall into a black hole, it’s death by spaghettification, not by incineration! "

Well maybe in an idealized unphysical Schwarzchild black hole. But in a real physical black hole; it's incineration one way or another long before the event horizon is even reached or spaghettification.

""Gas from the companion swirls into the black hole like water down a drain. The swirling gas is what we call an accretion disk. As the gas gets closer to the black hole, it heats up from the friction of ever faster moving gas molecules. just outside the black hole's event horizon, the gas heats to temperatures in the range of millions of degrees. Gas heated to these temperatures releases tremendous amounts of energy in the form of X-rays. Supermassive black holes also have an accretion disk that emits X-rays. This is formed not by a single star, as in a binary system, but by the great amounts of gas present in the regions between stars. In about 10 percent of supermassive black holes, jets of energized matter thousands of light-years in length shoot out in opposite directions. This can be detected in radio, visible, X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths. These jets accelerate matter to nearly the speed of light through a mechanism not well understood." NASA

@OKThen

as far as I could find, this is the latest and most precise computer simulation of how BH behaves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUD1upHu8zQ

it was big news couple of months ago.

p.s. meant to say ... as far as we can go today.. this is the best at the moment. In couple of years it will probably be more than it is now :)

"But in a real physical black hole; it’s incineration one way or another long before the event horizon is even reached or spaghettification."

Well that depends on the amount of matter and its energy in the accretion disk, now doesn't it? Sagittarius A* is a light eater as it happens, and thus a puny source of X-Rays by the standards of active SMBHs (which it is not). It also depends on the strength and material of the vessel you necessarily need to entertain the notion of approaching it in the first place.

You're talking about a practical, realistic sort of incineration. The kind that while it may be a challenge to avoid, it is not impossible, in theory.

Nothing will survive spaghettification, even in theory. No matter what kind of Unobtanium you build your ship out of, it will be stretched and squashed by the very geometry of space near the singularity.

In comparison the energy of the Sag A* accretion disk is like a camp fire -- which is also capable of incineration, but is obviously not the same magnitude of unavoidable death that the black hole firewall (if it existed) or spaghettification are.

"Words Of Wisdom indeed; I am wow’d by the deep physical insight that ant and elephant, being neither subatomic nor astronomical, are roughly the same size. Very nice."

Took me two goes to get a good one out, though, you'll notice.

You got it fairly readily, though: depending on POV/scale/interest, you can get a completely different answer, which is why your statement was so hard to talk about: it was right, for a certain POV. It wasn't *helpful* though, in the scale of nominal black holes.

Magnitude was not the right word. It's a difference in kind.

"No matter what kind of Unobtanium you build your ship out of, it will be stretched and squashed by the very geometry of space near the singularity."

Though this may not be the case in the quantum world. If something is small enough, then there's no appreciable distance on the quantum scale and no differential forces. Hence no shear forces.

It's why GR and Quantum Gravity is such a bugger.

Of course, you'd need to be an electron, quark or similar to get away with that, so not helpful to anyone going on.

"Though this may not be the case in the quantum world. If something is small enough, then there’s no appreciable distance on the quantum scale and no differential forces. Hence no shear forces."

True, true.

To go even more beyond current physics, if the Unobtanium in question was negative mass, would there be a possibility of survival as you create your own bubble of not-too-warped-to-live spacetime? I've heard of this used to create stable wormholes or Alcubierre warp drives, but haven't heard what would happen if you drove one into a black hole.

Sinisa, CB and Wow
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It's these ideas and observations of current black hole physics that I wanted to hear discussed and acknowledged, of course with standard disclaimers for such a difficult field of study.

Thanks all I did not know.

I'm still listening; any other thoughts and discussion will be appreciated.

"but haven’t heard what would happen if you drove one into a black hole."

Just don't cross the streams!

This paper seems to nicely explain some of what is observationally known about black holes

A note on the observational evidence for the existence of event horizons in astrophysical black hole candidates, by Cosimo Bambi, May 2012, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.4640v1.pdf

Of course I don't claim to understand this paper, even when I think that I do. So read some quotes below. My comments are in ((double parentheses)). I defer to any expert interpretation.

"Astronomers have discovered at least two classes of astrophysical BH candidates: stellar-mass objects in X-ray binary systems and super-massive objects at the center of every normal galaxy. ((I thought more types had been observed, oh well))

"These objects are thought to be BHs because they cannot be explained otherwise without introducing new physics: the stellar-mass BH candidates are too heavy to be neutron star for any reasonable matter equation of state, while at least some of the super-massive objects in galactic nuclei are too heavy, compact, and old to be clusters of non-luminous bodies." ((OK))

"There is also a set of observations suggesting that BH candidates have really an event horizon ((I assume this means a physical somewhat stable event horizon made up of physical particles))

"... This body of observations can be easily explained with the fact that BHs have no surface and that the gas crossing the event horizon cannot be seen by distant observers any more. Strictly speaking, the conﬁrmation for the existence of an event horizon would require the knowledge of the future null inﬁnity of the Universe, which is clearly impossible for us. ((I have no idea what "the future null inﬁnity of the Universe" means, but it sounds interesting and I wish someone would explain))

"On the contrary, the non-observation of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the gas after falling into the compact object ((I assume this means after crossing the event horizon which is a physical compact object made up of particles)) nicely meets the deﬁnition of apparent horizon."

"However, the geometry of the space-time around astrophysical BH candidates is practically stationary for the timescale of our observations, and that may make impossible to discriminate an event horizon from an apparent horizon... ((could someone explain what is mean by an apparent horizon versus an actual I suppose physical horizon. I'm supposing that an apparent horizon is unstable with constantly new particles; while an actual horizonb is stable orbit with the same particles. But just my guess.))

"The existence of event or apparent horizons in astrophysical BH candidates is also suggested by considerations concerning the stability of these objects. ((OK I really am interested in the stability of event horizons and accretion disks))

"It is well known that rapidly-rotating very-compact objects may be aﬀected by the ergoregion instability.((don't ask me I don't know)) In the ergoregion, gtt > 0 (if the metric has signature − + ++) and the frame-dragging is so strong that stationary orbits are not allowed. That implies that in the ergoregion there are excitations with negative energy with respect to a stationary observer at inﬁnity. These excitations can be seen as quasi-bound states: they are trapped by the gravitational potential on the one side, and by the surface of the object (or by the center of the object if the latter is made of matter non-interacting with the excitations) on the other side. ((if you can explain this better please do))

"As some mode can escape to inﬁnity carrying positive energy, negative energy modes in the ergoregion can grow indeﬁnitely, thus generating an instability. Objects with a horizon may instead be stable ((aha, stability)) because there may not be quasi-bound states in the ergoregion: any excitation in the ergoregion is swallowed by the BH.

"Let us notice, however, that the existence of a horizon is not suﬃcient in general to prevent the ergoregion instability. Roughly speaking, the instability timescale τ decreases as the angular velocity and the compactness of the compact object increases. For rotating very-compact objects, one typically ﬁnds that the instability is strong and occurs on a dynamical timescale τ ∼ M; that is, ∼ 1s for objects with a mass M ∼ 10 M⊙ ((OK this seems to say that a 10 solar mass black hole's event horizon/accretion disk particles orbit is stable for 1 second, not bad)) and ∼ 10^7s if M ∼ 10^8 M⊙ ((this seems to say that a 10^8 solar mass black hole has an event horizon/accrretion disk whose particles are stable for 10^7 seconds, that's like 4 months, well then not bad for the unstable apparent event horizons)) ...

"Considerations on the nonobservations of electromagnetic radiation from the surface of BH candidates are much more model-independent ((so we can feel pretty confident that the accretion disk/event horizon particles themself do not emitt radiation beofre they finally cross the event horizon)) and rely on a set of assumptions that can be violated only invoking very exotic new physics...

"However, we can optimistically arrive at the following conclusion. If the geometry around astrophysical BH candidates is very close to the Kerr solution((apparently only rotating, i.e Kerr, black holes are the only physical objects observed so far, in fact it is very hard to find a current research paper on Schwarzchild black holes)), the existence of stable or long-living objects likely requires some kind of horizon ((here again, I think the authors mean physical horizon made of particles)).

"Otherwise, we can probably hope to discover deviations from the Kerr background with tests already proposed in the literature and possible in a near future with new observational facilities. ((well I am certainly interested in what kind of non-Kerr black holes people are looking for))."

OK any help interpreting this paper about observed black holes will be appreciated. Any thoughts about realistic black holes (e.g. theory or observation) will be appreciated

When I were a lad...

The evidence for supermassive stellar objects (luminous stars over about 50 solar masses) which was precluded by the known physics at the time (a star of that size collapsing would attain supernova and collapse to a black hole as soon as or even before ignition and illumination) was entirely by noting the mass density of the visible stars too.

However, please remember that if there are black holes NOT chowing down on a fair bit of matter, we don't see them as bright objects (in X Ray) therefore won't look closely to any old region of sky to see if there's a large dense mass sitting in there.

So our observations will be pre-selecting those tiny regions that are bright and therefore only accretion disk black hole systems. Quiet black hole systems are tiny black needles sitting in a country-sized haystack of black hay.

When we can only look through a drinking straw.

In the dark.

:-)

"in fact it is very hard to find a current research paper on Schwarzchild black holes"

It's rather hard to find current research papers that use only Maxwell's field equations.

We now have the computing power to use the Kerr approximations rather than be forced by utility to the Schwarzchild approximation. It would only be used if there were compelling need.

Note that a Kerr approximation can STILL BE for a non-rotating black hole, just like the Schwarzchild one can be used for a rotating one. The former is a waste of computation and the latter limited to low rotation-to-mass scenarios before being untenably inaccurate.

Yes, yes. Let's discuss further.

Let's just focus on the idea of a 50 solar mass black hole that is isolated from other matter (i.e that is not sitting in the middle of a smorgasborg) and hence not eating.

First, let me say that such an ISOLATED BLACK HOLE is extremely unlikely. (in my non-professional opinion)

But I can be convinced to accept the possibility of such a 50 solar mass isolated black hole with some difficult but possible observations. (maybe they've already been done, I don't know).

Stars form in clusters from very large gas and dust clouds. They do not form in isolation. And a 50 solar mass star once formed would not be able to acquire enough energy to leave its cluster; unless there was a bigger nearby cluster or galaxy attracting it. (at least so I would think). In my opinion, in the least a large star 50 solar mass would cling very tightly to other stars (i.e dinner). So when it would collapse to a black hole; it would be in the middle of a smorgasbord.

Very simply, a star can never acquire the necessary escape velocity to leave its cluster or galaxy of formation; without the attraction of another galaxy. And one of those galaxies, or a stringy cluster at least, will hold such a large star. (in my opinion).

It's much more possible for a atomic nucleus or an asteroid or comet to escape from a star, cluster or galaxy. But a planet or a star is very unlikely.

So in my opinion (I don't know) all 25 to 50 solar mass stars (or binary stars) from which an isolated black hole could form a non eating, non rotating Schwarzchild black hole are near dinner (i.e. are part of clusters, galaxies and near other stars, planets, dust, etc.)

Our Milky Way galaxy is 2.5 million light years away from our nearest neighbor galaxy Andromeda. But a big telescope can see individual stars in Andromeda galaxy.

Our sun is 4.3 light years away from our nearest neighbor star Alpha Centauri.

Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter.

An isolated 50 solar mass star between the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy should be viewable with a big telescope. SO, if you can name me ONE such isolated star (or binary or trinary star system) that is say 100 or 1000 light years from any another other observable star, cluster or galaxy; THEN I will accept the possibility of a 50 solar mass non eating non rotating black hole.

So, educate me please.
I defer to Wow )or other expert) opinion as to an appropriately very isolated still shining very large star or star system. My criteria are really just qualitative (i.e. my numbers as only for example).

I do like to be proven wrong. It is a very important way to learn. Please prove me wrong.

"First, let me say that such an ISOLATED BLACK HOLE is extremely unlikely. (in my non-professional opinion)"

Not really.

We've barely scratched our own galaxy, never mind any others, in enough detail to notice.

A black hole 4 light years away from the nearest star has nothing to eat.

OK.

if Wow says a "A black hole 4 light years away from the nearest star has nothing to eat."

Then, I stand corrected. I don't like the answer; but I see Wow's point. So I accept the possibility that we can have a non eating non rotation 50 solar mass black hole (i.e. essentially Schwarzchild black hole) in our own Milky Way galaxy.

So, I assume that such a beast would be directly invisible.
Is there any proposed way (e.g. gravitational clumping/orbiting of stars) that has been proposed as a way of observationally finding such invisible black holes? Even with the next generation space telescopes and computer data analysis?

Thanks Wow, I stand corrected because obviously (I assume) their are very big stars in the Milky Way that are 4 light years from the nearest star. Ergo also possibly very large black holes.

It is exhausting to be wrong; but thanks.

"Is there any proposed way (e.g. gravitational clumping/orbiting of stars) that has been proposed as a way of observationally finding such invisible black holes?"

Gravitational microlensing.

And observing the paths of visible stars that have been affected by the gravity of a large black hole.

You find it to be a black hole by noting that there's a stellar-mass object that you can't see there.

Great entry; great discussion (above). This blog has quickly become my favorite here.

"Since microlensing observations do not rely on radiation received from the lens object, this effect therefore allows astronomers to study massive objects no matter how faint. It is thus an ideal technique to study the galactic population of such faint or dark objects as brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, planets, white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, and Massive Compact Halo Objects. Moreover, the microlensing effect is wavelength-independent, allowing study of source objects that emit any kind of electromagnetic radiation... Hundreds of microlensing events are detected per year toward the Galactic bulge, where the microlensing optical depth (due to stars in the Galactic disk) is about 20 times greater than through the Galactic halo. In 2007, the OGLE project identified 611 event candidates, and the MOA project (a Japan-New Zealand collaboration) identified 488 (although not all candidates turn out to be microlensing events, and there is a significant overlap between the two projects). In addition to these surveys, follow-up projects are underway to study in detail potentially interesting events in progress, primarily with the aim of detecting extrasolar planets. These include MiNDSTEp, RoboNet, MicroFUN and PLANET." wikipedia

Well, I see microlensing events being identified as planets but as far as I can tell no definitie black holes found yet; but some tentative black hole within the Milky way galaxy itself and some predictions for many isolated black holes. Nothing to write home about yet. I can wait.

Oops, look at this.

"Researchers believe they may have spotted the youngest black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, and — from scientists’ point of view – it’s not far away... And this fascinating space phenomenon is relatively nearby, just 26,000 light-years away. So, astronomers plan to study it closely, NASA says... he black hole nearby and young, at just 1,000 years old as seen from Earth, but it also was created in a very rare way." LATimes Feb 13, 2013

""It's a bit circumstantial, but we have intriguing evidence the W49B supernova also created a black hole," said co-author Daniel Castro, also of MIT. "If that is the case, we have a rare opportunity to study a supernova responsible for creating a young black hole." ... The new results on W49B, which were based on about two-and-a-half days of Chandra observing time, appear in a paper in Sunday's issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The other co-author was Sarah Pearson from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. " NASA Feb 13, 2013

Amazing. I can't wait to learn more. It may not be an isolated black hole but seems to me it is an amazing tentative new black hole right in our own Milky Way back yard.

Check this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_holes

most of the stellar ones are binary x-ray sources. Which is natural since they are active.

Nearest one, 3000 LY from earth

"Well, I see microlensing events being identified as planets but as far as I can tell no definitie black holes found yet; but some tentative black hole within the Milky way galaxy itself and some predictions for many isolated black holes. Nothing to write home about yet"

Space is big.

Really big.

You may think it a long way to the shops, but compared to the universe, it's peanuts.

Microlensing requires that the black hole go past a star we're looking at in detail to notice that two appear temporarily. That's a fine and narrow window for that event.

And using the perturbations of other stars' loci require an accurate and long term record of the paths of all the stars.

It's one reason why dark matter isn't all black holes: if it were, the chances of microlensing would be high enough to be a guaranteed observation. And the evidence for DM is *based on* perturbations of the loci of visible stars.

@ Wow

hehe... nice hint to Douglas ;)

Well, it's an appropriate quote too.

I also like Terry Pratchett's "Space isn't big, it's a place to be big IN". Which nicely gives hints as to the answer to "What is the universe expanding into".

This blog states that death by spaghettification occurs if a human was to fall into a black hole, as a black hole will not incinerate you into nothingness. As any type of matter approaches a black hole, and falls into it, it is instantly stretched to an infinite length, which means that matter still exists within a black hole. When reading more about this subject, it got me interested in the properties of energy, and how that relates to the existence of matter. Energy is defined as the sum of all energies in a system. For a system to have energy, it must also have a mass. For something to be defined as matter, it must have a mass (this mass can be at the atomic level and beyond). Relating this to absolute zero, where entropy reaches its minimum value, and movement stops except for at its ground state, energy is so minimal that it is almost non-existant. It only possesses quantum mechanical zero point energy. This got me thinking, is there maybe a temperature that we can not define by our standards of calculation today at which there is no energy, which in term means there is no mass, and in term means there is no such thing as Matter at this temperature. If everything completely stops, does that mean that there is a form of complete nothingness. As we do not know what happens to matter after it falls into a black hole, we cannot determine my thought of this temperature at this time. In principle a black hole is never ending. Does that also mean that the space of everything is not finite? I am puzzled by this because if a black hole takes up infinite amounts of space, how can we define what matter truly is if there is an infinite amount of space in our world. As matter must take up space, is this temperature that I proposed maybe reached at the end of a black hole, and if space is not infinite can we possibly define this end in the future. In accordance to what we know about black holes, they must have an infinite speed, which would surpass our perception of maximum speed at which all matter in the universe can travel, the speed of light. This all leads me to question how we are still here, and why a black hole doesn’t have an infinite gravitational pull that would suck everything in this world as we know it into infiniteness at this very second.

If you fall into a black hole then you will be there at two places at a time..

Today, researchers are building black holes out of sound and light in the lab. These experimenter are seeing Hawking radiation comming out of their new creations. The pictures of the photonic black holes show Hawking radiation as frozen waves emanating outward that completely surrounds the artificial black hole. The wavelength of the light of this radiation that has been measured is what would be expected for what Hawking radiation would produce.

If the matter that surrounds these artificial micro black holes become entangled by their Hawking radiation what would happen to that matter. Black holes generate massive entanglement. Entanglement means that the position of the matter no longer matters. The waveforms of this matter becomes as one, entwined and interwoven no matter how distant this bits of matter are from each other. I wonder what would result from the entangled marriage of that matter?

Wordsalad.

Not even edible.

Quantum Reality

esiegel — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:41:16 +0000

Quantum Reality

“I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.” -Shel Silverstein

When it comes to the classical world -- the world on a macroscopic scale -- we all feel comfortable using the word reality. While we may quibble over the finer, technical points of the definition of the word, you and I know reality when we see it.

Image credit: NASA / Apollo 17.

There are all sorts of properties we assign to real objects: they have energy, they exist at certain points in space and moments in time, they have certain properties of motion, and are measurable and quantifiable in a variety of other ways.

This ranges from microbes here on Earth to the largest structures in the Universe: all of these are quantifiable as real in terms of energy, position, time, and momentum, among other properties.

Image credit: Adam Block / Mount Lemmon SkyCenter / University of Arizona.

But if we head into the quantum realm, down to scales so small that our classical laws and pictures break down, we discover that things are drastically different, and that reality no longer conforms to our expectations.

Image credit: Wikimedia commons user Reyk.

You might think of an atom the same way you think of a planet orbiting the Sun: an electron moving in orbit around the center-of-mass of the electron/nucleus system. But whereas if you knew a planet's orbital properties and the mass of the star it was orbiting, you'd be able to know with certainty where that planet was and how it was moving (i.e., its position and momentum), the quantum world is a little different.

Okay, a lot different. Because you can no longer predict the position of that electron -- only the probabilities of finding the electron in a certain position -- as time goes on.

Image credit: Hideomi Nihira / U. Rochester, based on Z. Dacic Gaeta and C. R. Stroud, Jr.

If you're like most people, this is going to trouble you. It is so ingrained in us -- by our own experience -- that objects are real, particles are real, and that these real things have definitive properties, that we instinctively start asking questions like, "Okay, where is that particle, really, when we're not looking at it?"

And we assume that this question makes sense. We assume that there is a real position for this real particle at every moment in time, and a real momentum, and a real amount of energy assigned to it. We assume that it's our knowledge that's somehow limited, and so we struggle to fit this troubling observation in with our picture of what reality is.

Image credit: Science / AAAS.

It's no wonder that quantum mechanics has a number of different interpretations behind it: we're trying to understand reality, and yet the things that we're observing are completely unlike what we experience as reality! Some people, quite understandably, view this as a tremendous problem. After all, there's no consensus as to which interpretation is the "right" one, or even the best one!

Image credit: Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, & Anton Zeilinger.

There are some interpretations that are demonstrably wrong: the idea that physics is local (things can only affect things they interact with), real (as opposed to complex, or partially imaginary), and deterministic cannot all be simultaneously true. So you might ask which ones are true, and I wouldn't blame you for asking.

The problem is, not only are multiple interpretations equally valid, but none of them tell you anything more or less than any of the others! And there are plenty of valid ones; here's a brief summary.

Image credit: Wikipedia's comparison of interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Rather than go through what the different interpretations are, I prefer to look at it in these terms:

We have a new set of physical laws that describe the Universe on the quantum level: how things exist, how they evolve in time, how they interact with one another.
These laws allow us to predict the probability distribution of certain outcomes that we can measure, but not what the outcome of a given measurement is going to be.
There is an intrinsic amount of uncertainty that is always preserved, and so it is impossible to know certain properties of a system -- in tandem -- to an arbitrary accuracy.

That is what reality is. Different interpretations may look at them differently (maybe a wavefunction is collapsing, maybe an operator is evolving, maybe a selection is being made from an ensemble of possible outcomes), but that does not change what reality is. And it is not reality's fault that it is unintuitive to our minds and our experiences.

Image credit: Jim Branson of UC San Diego.

It is what it is, and the only way to develop any sort of intuition for what's going to happen in a given situation is... to figure out what's going to happen in a variety of situations, until you begin to develop an intuition for it! In other words, the most lampooned quote of all time (when it comes to quantum mechanics),

"Shut up and calculate!" -David Mermin,

is actually the one-and-only thing you can actually do for yourself in order to better understand reality.

Image credit: http://library.thinkquest.org/19662/high/eng/exp-stern-gerlach.html.

In other words, it doesn't matter how you arrive at the results, and there are many path there that are equally good. What matters is that, irrespective of how you interpret it (or even whether you interpret it), what you call "reality" at the end of the day matches what your theory predicts.

If you can do that, then your physical theory -- or your favorite interpretation -- is just as valid as any other. And if it doesn't, you're compelled to discard it. However, and you should consider this a warning, this is not without danger.

Image credit: Institute of Physics.

This carries with it the danger that you can make something as philosophically complex as you want to satisfy as fully as nature will allow whatever preconceptions you have about how reality should behave. If you demand locality, you can force it. If you demand realism, you can force it. If you demand determinism, you can force that, too. If you demand wavefunction collapse, you can make that happen.

And if you demand non-locality, or non-realism, or non-determinism, or wavefunctions that never collapse, you can force those just as easily. Even if you want an interpretation where information travels faster than light, you can make one up, and it still works! But it's no more a mirror of "reality" than one where it doesn't.

Image credit: Robert Austin and Lyman Page / Princeton University.

In the end, all that matters is that your method of calculating predictions aligns with what you've observed. And if you can get it right, then you'll understand reality as well as anyone.

So let other people be "embarrassed" for quantum mechanics. If you can let go of your classical notions of what an interpretation ought to be, you'll have discovered something even better.

Image credit: Technical Services Group (TSG) at MIT's Department of Physics.

You'll understand the quantum reality of our Universe.

esiegel Fri, 01/25/2013 - 11:41

Tags

Interesting

Interpretation may not change reality, but it has a big effect on how it's described to an audience that doesn't have the chops to understand the equations. QM is somewhat counter-intuitive and if there were one preferred interpretation that most everyone shared, the language and ways of talking about it would be more-or-less unified and more laypeople would be able to understand the basic concepts rather than "quantum" being a catch-all term for anything and everything.

Quantum mechanics is confusing and I accept that. But I do have a question about the double-slit experience. Does the double-slit experiment work with protons or neutrons? The real question is at what point does the double-slit experiment break down? After all, it doesn't work with bowling balls or oranges.

As an undergraduate physics student, I've read a little about the different interpretations of QM. In these interpretations I have found that philosophical speculation is much easier to come by than is a testable scientific model. I think it's unfortunate that these interpretations are often presented as though they are scientific. Wikipedia's table comparing the different interpretations of QM deals with criterion that science does not directly address. In the interest of promoting a greater public understanding of science, I think it would be beneficial to make clear distinctions between a scientific interpretation and a metaphysical interpretation. The former being actually testable, and the latter merely debatable.

@Vern the double-slit experiment has shown a wave-like distribution for objects as large as bacteria. IIRC, the reason we don't see it for bowling balls or oranges is that either the wavefunction associated with objects that big is to small to have a noticeable effect or that in order to get a wave-like distribution, the experiment would have to run for trillions of years. I'm not a physicist, so I could very easily be wrong.

Aether has mass and physically occupies three dimensional space.

A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave.

In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.

Ethan - if I were to write a text where my implied definition of "real" changes about five times between all kinds of folk-philosophically naive ones (without even scratching on counter factual definiteness), I would shut up and think, not come to the conclusion that "shut up and calculate" is the last answer (is that what you would have concluded about relativity at the very beginning, too?)! Sorry mate, not that you are not a nice guy or anything, but objectively speaking, your kind of scientism (and yes, it is a particular sort of naive scientism that I cannot share as a scientist), is getting worse instead of improving. Since you did not say anything of substance (how could you with five different "real"s all mixed up), there is no more constructive criticism that can be supplied, except the general about that you need to start thinking more seriously or leave the serious questions alone.

You are rude.

@Vern #7: The double-slit experiment works for everything, as near as we can tell, *including* oranges, bowling balls, and you. As laconicsax implied, for truly macroscopic objects, the isolation you need from the environment is too great for the experiment to show any decent results.

Our best understanding is that _everything_ is quantum (c.f. Schrodinger's cat), but as the size of the object increases, the time it can remain in a pure quantum state (unmixed with the environment) decreases, and the magnitude of quantum state differences also decreases.

There are lovely demonstrations of quantum interference with large molecules, for example C_60 (http://www.univie.ac.at/qfp/research/matterwave/c60/index.html and links there, published in Nature in 1999) and organic molecules with up to ~430 atoms (6900 dal) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3104521/).

@mpc755 [citation needed]

Presenting personal opinions as fact, and especially personal opinions which have been ruled out by other facts (the actual pilot-wave model makes specific predictions which are not supported by experiment) is not a particularly good way to have your opinions accepted in a scientific discussion.

@Colin: Who is rude? You? Ethan? The guy you thought you were texting?

Thanks for another interesting post Ethan. I appreciate that you give up part of your week to educating others. Cheers!

I loved the post, thanks much, for me it was much pedagogic.

"Does the double-slit experiment work with protons or neutrons?"

Yes.

"The real question is at what point does the double-slit experiment break down? After all, it doesn’t work with bowling balls or oranges."

They would if you had a slit around the same size as the De Broglie wavelength of a bowling ball or orange that the orange or bowling ball could get through. And that would mean either an impossibility (slit smaller than the item) or it going so slow that you'd need quadrillions of lifetimes of the universe to see one go through.

The De Broglie wavelength of an electron or proton or neutron at moderate energies are of a size we can create a diffraction grating for.

And as the energy of the particle (or photon: this is true for photons too!) increases the wavelength (and therefore the size of the slits needed to produce diffraction) decreases.

"Aether has mass and physically occupies three dimensional space."

It can't be seen.

Therefore it can't have any effects on things we CAN see. Such as:

"A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave"

Michelson-Morely.

Dear Ethan.
I enjoy reading your texts and want to thank you for writing them. Thanks for putting so much work into giving us something interesting to read.
Therefore, please allow me to also add a constructive
suggestion: You often add (really nice) images to your text. However, you tend to not really reference and describe them within the text. For instance, people who have already a little bit of knowledge about quantum mechanics, things such as the double slit are easy to recognize and they will know how to put it into the context. A reader not familiar with this will maybe not know how to interpret the image. Therefore, as a thankful reader of your blog, I would be even more thankful if you could couple the images closer to the text.
Again, many thanks.

'Interpretation of quantum mechanics by the double solution theory - Louis de BROGLIE'
http://aflb.ensmp.fr/AFLB-classiques/aflb124p001.pdf

“When in 1923-1924 I had my first ideas about Wave Mechanics I was looking for a truly concrete physical image, valid for all particles, of the wave and particle coexistence discovered by Albert Einstein in his "Theory of light quanta". I had no doubt whatsoever about the physical reality of waves and particles.”

“any particle, even isolated, has to be imagined as in continuous “energetic contact” with a hidden medium”

The hidden medium of de Broglie wave mechanics is the aether. The “energetic contact” is the state of displacement of the aether.

"For me, the particle, precisely located in space at every instant, forms on the v wave a small region of high energy concentration, which may be likened in a first approximation, to a moving singularity."

A particle may be likened in a first approximation to a moving singularity which has an associated aether displacement wave.

"the particle is defined as a very small region of the wave"

In a double slit experiment the particle travels a well defined path which takes it through one slit. The associated wave in the aether passes through both. As the aether wave exits the slits it creates wave interference. As the particle exits a single slit the direction it travels is altered by the wave interference. This is the wave piloting the particle of pilot-wave theory. Detecting the particle strongly exiting a single slit turns the associated aether wave into chop. The aether waves exiting the slits interact with the detectors and become many short waves with irregular motion. The waves are disorganized. There is no wave interference. The particle pitches and rolls through the chop. The particle gets knocked around by the chop and it no longer creates an interference pattern.

The Michelson-Morley experiment looked for an absolutely stationary space the Earth moved through. The Michelson-Morley experiment looked for the 'aether wind'. The aether is not an absolutely stationary space. There is no 'aether wind' to detect. Aether is displaced by matter.

'Ether and the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein'
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Einstein_ether.html

"the state of the [ether] is at every place determined by connections with the matter and the state of the ether in neighbouring places, ... disregarding the causes which condition its state."

The state of the aether at every place determined by connections with the matter and the state of the aether in neighboring places is the state of displacement of the aether.

There is no such thing as non-baryonic dark matter. Particles of matter move through and displace the aether.

I'm not a phycisist, but as far as I underdtand, it does work with bowling balls and oranges. It's just that the wavelength of these objects are so massive that you wouldn't be able to see the inference pattern unless you have a detector the size of the universe (or was it larger?).

“any particle, even isolated, has to be imagined as in continuous “energetic contact” with a hidden medium”

No it doesn't.

The aether doesn't exist, chelle.

"The aether doesn’t exist, chelle."

Then explain to us what occurs physically in nature to cause gravity and the observed behaviors in a double slit experiment and while your at it explain to us why there is an offset between the light lensing through the space neighboring galaxy clusters and the galaxy clusters themselves and explain what is outside of the solar system pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward the solar system causing the magnetic field to pile up.

'NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge'
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/dec/HQ_11-402_AGU_Voyager.html

"Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. ... Like cars piling up at a clogged freeway off-ramp, the increased intensity of the magnetic field shows that inward pressure from interstellar space is compacting it."

It is not the particles of matter which exist in quantities less than in any vacuum artifically created on Earth which are pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward the solar system.

It is the aether, which the particles of matter exist in, which is the interstellar medium. It is the aether which is displaced by the matter the solar system consists of which is pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward the solar system.

'Offset between dark matter and ordinary matter: evidence from a sample of 38 lensing clusters of galaxies'
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1004/1004.1475v1.pdf

"Our data strongly support the idea that the gravitational potential in clusters is mainly due to a non-baryonic fluid, and any exotic field in gravitational theory must resemble that of CDM fields very closely."

The offset is due to the galaxy clusters moving through the aether. The analogy is a submarine moving through the water. You are under water. Two miles away from you are many lights. Moving between you and the lights one mile away is a submarine. The submarine displaces the water. The state of displacement of the water causes the center of the lensing of the light propagating through the water to be offset from the center of the submarine itself. The offset between the center of the lensing of the light propagating through the water displaced by the submarine and the center of the submarine itself is going to remain the same as the submarine moves through the water. The submarine continually displaces different regions of the water. The state of the water connected to and neighboring the submarine remains the same as the submarine moves through the water even though it is not the same water the submarine continually displaces. This is what is occurring physically in nature as the galaxy clusters move through and displace the aether.

Displaced aether pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward matter is gravity.

A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave. In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.

"Then explain to us what occurs physically in nature to cause gravity"

It isn't aether.

" and the observed behaviors in a double slit experiment "

It isn't the aether.

"offset between the light lensing through the space neighboring galaxy clusters"

It isn't the aether.

"and the galaxy clusters themselves"

It isn't the aether.

"and explain what is outside of the solar system pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward the solar system causing the magnetic field to pile up."

It isn't the aether.

Do you know why?

Because if the aether existed and gave those effects, the michelson-morely experiment would have found an anisotropy in their values.

The did not.

The aether doesn't exist.

If you're going to continue with the bollocks blather, chelle, pop back to the thread for this sort of anti-science shite:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/09/23/weekend-diversion-yo…

"Because if the aether existed and gave those effects, the michelson-morely experiment would have found an anisotropy in their values."

The Michelson-Morley experiment looked for an absolutely stationary space the Earth moves through. The aether is not an absolutely stationary space. Aether is displaced by matter.

Watch the following video starting at 0:45 to see a visual representation of the state of the aether. What is referred to as a twist in spacetime is the state of displacement of the aether. What is referred to as frame-dragging is the state of displacement of the aether.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ITt44-EHE

The analogy is putting a mesh bag full of marbles into a supersolid and spinning the bag of marbles. If you were unable to determine if the superfluid consists of particles you would still be able to detect the state of displacement of the supersolid.

The supersolid connected to and neighboring the mesh bag of marbles is in the same state throughout the rotation of the bag in the supersolid.

The aether connected to and neighboring the Earth is in the same state, or almost the same state, throughout the Earth's rotation about its axis and orbit of the Sun.

The state of which as determined by its connections with the Earth and the state of the aether in neighboring places is the state of displacement of the aether.

mpc755,

We have a comments policy on this blog, which you can check out here -- http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/09/23/weekend-diversion-yo… -- as wow correctly referred you.

If you would like to promote your version of the aether on that thread, you may do so. However, I would appreciate it if you refrained from discussing it here, as it is completely off-topic and has no place in a discussion of the nature of quantum reality and various interpretations of QM.

If you continue to do so here, you will be banned from commenting on this blog.

First I have to point out that the poll that set this web spat of articles off is made at a religious meeting (Templeton founded; Zeilinger is a member of its science panel and a godbotherer on seminars - I have been on one) and purposely filled it with philosophers and other non-scientists.

Then I have to point out that nowhere else is there a science area where people are satisfied with shut-up- and calculate instead of putting "interpretations" as possible and testable theories. If decoherence exists, some of those would fall, for example.

But QM is considered "mysterious" and hands off. This is by the way the religious interest, since it usefully reminds them of their religious mysteries and shut-up closing down of questions by pointing to something and go "godsdiddit". They can implicate religion.

What is reality? To say that it is objects that have properties that are quantifiable is a testable definition, but it works for quantum systems too so is not a dividing line between classical and quantum systems.

I like Deutsch's testable definition of, roughly, "constrained reaction of constrained action" or in other words Samuel Johnson's "I'll refute it this! [kicks stone]". That means every mechanics tests for reality from the start, action-reaction classically and relativistically, observation-observable quantum mechanically.

So as it turns out I have to agree with Siegel on what reality "is" (comes out as). I just don't think “Shut up and calculate!” is the "one-and-only thing you can actually do for yourself in order to better understand reality." For now, perhaps. But not for long.

Italics fail, sorry. :-/

"However, I would appreciate it if you refrained from discussing it here, as it is completely off-topic and has no place in a discussion of the nature of quantum reality and various interpretations of QM."

Quantum reality is a moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave.

so rather than do what's asked by the owner, you prefer to be banned?

PS you're wrong.

I'm discussing the physical nature of quantum reality and that is aether has mass and is physically displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it and in a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit while the associated wave in the aether passes through both.

Why have a blog titled "Quantum Reality" and refuse to understand quantum reality?

No you're talking post-normal non-science.

Ethan, I'm happy with these responses to this idiot being deleted too.

The quantum reality is in a double slit experiment it is the aether which waves.

trolls gotta troll, I guess.

Ignorance has to permeate quantum mechanics, I guess.

All in order to not understand in a double slit experiment it is the aether which waves.

Aaaaaaand there's the ban.

Let's see if it holds. So far so good.

Torbjörn Larsson,

I fixed your italics tag. And yes, ideally some (more) interpretations could be falsified down the road; that would be nice.

Thanks also for the background about this paper; I didn't do enough homework to figure that out. I feel a little bit like a sucker for getting drawn in to a topic that -- if I had all of that information -- I might have stayed away from. I'll know better for next time. :-)

Ironic that they should talk about ignorance whilst espousing ignorance of the MM experiment.

A Brain-Exit failure.

An example of how you need to think things all the way through when it comes to non-classical physics:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/01/purported-relativity-para…

"The quantum reality is in a double slit experiment it is the aether which waves."

I could've possibly sat back and watched the physics spanking if it wasn't for the bad grammar.

"Then explain to us what occurs physically in nature to cause gravity and the observed behaviors in a double slit experiment and while your at it explain to us...."

This is what really bothers me, your theory is not correct by default because there are things we can't explain yet, you bear the burden of proof. Gah.

Anyway, interesting post Ethan. Reminds me of when I was a teacher and I ask the class a question, and then I get to say, "well, in a way, you're all right..."

A photon carries energy. When it moves from A to B there has to be a *very very* small change in the curvature of space. So I want to know, (a) does one change start just when the photon leaves A and a second change start when it reaches B – or (b) is it continuous? If the photon goes thru two slits, its final position is not determined until it materializes at B (wherever that turns out to be). That would appear to be a problem if the curvature of space were adjusting continuously -- suggesting that postulate (a) is the correct one. If that logic is correct would that also apply to an electron or an atom of gold?

Ethan, I think your definition of "real" in QM is not right. If I recall correctly, it has nothing to do with complex or imaginary numbers. Rather, a "real" property is one that has a definite value even if the value is not observed. I think that is the definition of "real" needed in the most general form of the proof of Bell's inequality (an inequality which is violated by QM and by the "real" world).

Ethan you say:
"There are some interpretations that are demonstrably wrong: the idea that physics is local ... And there are plenty of valid ones; here’s a brief summary."

And then I assume that all of the interpretations below are valid. The problem is that in the column "Local"; some of those equally valid interpretation of QM have a "Yes" in the local column.

So please clarify. What am I misinterpreting?

Are interpretations with "Yes" in the "Local" column valid or not? Please clarify? Thanks.

Ethan, I think your definition of “real” in QM is not right. If I recall correctly, it has nothing to do with complex or imaginary numbers

I think you would have a better idea of what (I think) Ethan is talking about if you read about Evanescent Waves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescent_wave

Cliff note version.

Instead of a sine wave for a photon, it can be mathematically described as an imaginary vector of constant length and the Electromagnetic field seen is the real part. This makes some maths easier.

PURELY mathematical trickery.

But plugging an imaginary number in to Maxwell's equations and you get a funny term left over in total internal reflection. The imaginary part of the photon doesn't reflect and continues in the same line, with an exponential decay term.

Purely mathematical trickery.

But put another refracting solid near enough, and the imaginary wave can be turned back into a real photon and this is *actually seen*.

A few other things like that seem to turn up occasionally.

Since we're on some of the difficulties in interpreting QM.
I would sort of like to understand the idea of Wheeler's which I'll call cosmic delayed choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler's_delayed_choice_experiment

In the wikipedia reference above there is a section titled "Wheeler's astronomical experiment" and in that section we see an image of "Einstein's cross" which is an astronomical observation.

But reading the section and doing various searches;I'm not sure if delayed choice experiments have been done at an astronomical scale or not.

I think I understand the basic delayed choice idea. But maybe not.

Any clarification, by someone that understands, would be appreciated.

We have timing well enough to test approximations of true/false to that experiment in the lab on earth, so no need to go astronomical on it. The errors in asserting the scale would likely introduce more error than the accuracy you'd get for the longer transit times.

The universe the wave-particle operates in is different if it's operating in a universe which has two slits looking for a particle or a universe which has two slits looking for a wave.

I don't find it particularly odd that these two different universes have a different result!

Explaining the causality is tricky, and we mostly have to post-hoc rationalise it because we don't have the right language yet to describe it beforehand.

Mind you, reading that it's sad to think I was jawing over with a fellow student in 1990, 10+ years after this was thought up, and wondering the same thing.

I thought I'd thought of something new at the time.

Bugger.

Michael

Great question. The problem is that the General Relativity view of the world (where things with mass curve spacetime) and the QR view of the world (where photons 'sniff out' alternative paths) aren't compatible. Both are terrific mathematical representations of certain phenomena and both appear to hint at a view of 'reality'...but they can't coexist the way they are formulated today and that's perhaps the biggest puzzle in physics for the last 90 years or so. Maybe something deeper is going on...extra dimensions, strings, quantum loops..no-one knows (except obviously mpc755 but he's been sniffing the aether).

My off topic opinion in response to Sascha Vongehr comment (above) can be found on Ethan's comment page.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/09/23/weekend-diversion-yo…

@Sascha Vongehr

You know Sascha, for a guy who regularly criticizes pretty much anyone who is more famous than yourself for being bad a writer, your own writing style is a big drain to read. You use double negatives, you twist a simple sentence into a complicated phrasal structure that is difficult to parse, you write preambles that seem to have nothing to do with the rest of your articles.

I would love to read criticism of blogs that I read, but they are useless if they are barely readable.

Wow
Thanks for the delayed choice explanation.

Wow, in the QM foundational literature, locality and realism (or lack thereof) play essential roles; see for example D'Espagnat's general versions of the proofs of Bell's inequality. This use of the term "real" has nothing to do with the mathematical concept of real (vs complex or imaginary) numbers; it isn't related to the things you mentioned. The definition of realism (as the term is used in foundational debates about QM) is the one I gave above.

Well, it read as you were talking about real in the complex number scheme, as you used "mathematical" there.

And "real" in maths means solely that: the real part of complex numbers.

It is also a very "real" part of what Ethan is talking about (though he'd have to confirm: I'm going by what I can read, and I can't read minds over t'internet).

Mathematical tricks like using complex numbers and proposing only the real part of the complex number is seen in this reality works very VERY often. And it has no reason why.

So to a very large extent, these things can be considered "really a complex number",

Wow, Ethan defined "real" as the opposite of complex, or partially imaginary. It seemed to me that he was making the mathematical distinction between a real variable and a complex number with an imaginary part. Of course I can't read his mind either, so maybe I am wrong about what he intended to mean, but the words he wrote suggest that he was making the mathematical distinction between real numbers and complex numbers (numbers that have an imaginary component, where "imaginary" means the square root of -1). I think you also read it this way, otherwise you wouldn't have brought up the examples you did. But that is NOT the definition that is relevant to QM debates. The three key words he defined in that paragraph, "local", "real", and "deterministic", have precise definitions in QM, since they are at the center of debates on the meaning of QM. Ethan's characterization of "local" and "deterministic" seem ok, but not his characterization of "real".

Wow, Ethan defined “real” as the opposite of complex, or partially imaginary.

I call "citation needed" on that for 5 points, Bob.

Wow, it's right in Ethan's post above: "There are some interpretations that are demonstrably wrong: the idea that physics is local (things can only affect things they interact with), real (as opposed to complex, or partially imaginary), and deterministic cannot all be simultaneously true."

Lou,

I hate to have you feel that I have given you incorrect information. When I wrote that sentence, I was referring to (unfortunately, not very clearly) whether the wavefunction itself was real or not. In some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the wavefunction is a physically real thing, while in others it isn't.

If you want to describe it mathematically, you need both real and imaginary parts, but if it's a physically real thing, it is unknown how one would reconcile that with a mathematically complex object.

But I agree that I should have chosen a better parenthetical synopsis than the one I did; my apologies for any confusion.

Thanks Ethan. Part of the confusion was the context. You were mentioning the three classic things that QM violates: locality, realism, and determinism. Those words each mean something very specific in this context. EPR and Bell's work were concerned with "local realism". "Real" in this context doesn't refer to the problem of getting a real number from a complex function, but rather to the idea that an observable has a definite value independent of our observing it.

Try rephrasing the statement to use "reality". It's not open to such confusion!

I agree that reality and real in QM is very tricky.

Reality is what experiments show us. i.e. electron emitting a photon of a certain value or not emitting (nothing in between), which very different from classical mechanics.

QM is mathematics (very abstract one) that tries to make sense of that reality. I know there proponents that the math is reality. I don't know if it is. But to stay true to Ethan's sentence: "you and I know reality when we see it."
Only experiments are reality. Unless one devises an experiment to test if Wave Function really exists, or if Modal Reality that i.e. Sacha so loves is Reality. No problem, just put forth a thought experiment that proves Many Worlds exist as actual worlds, and I will try to believe it. Untill then IMO it's not science.

@Vern,

My apologies if anyone else has already answered this; I haven't read through all the comments yet. In the historical development of QM, one of the results that came about was that particles and waves are not separate entities, but rather are two different ways of looking at things. That being the case, all particles have a wavelength. This wavelength is inversely proportional to the particle's momentum. (Planck's constant, h, being the constant of proportionality, ie wavelength = h/momentum).

With that in mind, recall that CLASSICAL physics states that a wave will undergo diffraction and interference if it encounters an aperature with a size that is comparable to its wavelength. Particles like apples and oranges have momenta that are many orders of magnitude greater than particles like electrons and protons. Therefore, the wavelength of an apple or orange is much smaller than the wavelength of an electron. In fact, it's so small that we cannot create an aperature small enough to cause oranges and apples to show an interference pattern. That's the reason that the double slit experiment doesn't work with apples and oranges.

Anyone else notice that the responses to the poll question that Ethan posted had a total of 129%? The poll asked what is your favorite interpretation, not what are your favorite interpretations, so this is certainly an inconsistent result. Ironic that the poll respondents were non-scientists. Apparently they aren't mathematicians, either. :)

@ Sean T

it's a quantum fluctuation ;D those 25% are uncertanties in voters count.. lolz

Sinisa Lazarek

Here's a article that is readable and puts Many Worlds in perspective. It's a pretty balanced sensible explanation.

Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?by Sean Carroll 2011, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/are-many-wo…

Sean T

In the original paper it says, "To ensure representative sample sizes, we required a specic answer A to have been checked by at least 4 participants. Then, if a fraction f of members of this group had also checked a certain answer B, we registered a relationship between the two answers A and B if the following conditions were met..." http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069v1.pdf

So multiple answers were allowed for each of the 16 questions asked.

It's an interesting and readable paper.

Thanx OKThen,

just skipped through it quickly now, but will read the papers in the evening. Am specially interested in Suskind's paper. It's something that i gravitate to. "On the one hand, complementarity says that we shouldn’t think about what’s outside our observable universe; every question that it is sensible to ask can be answered in terms of what’s happening inside a single horizon..."

but won't go into it more until I have read the papers. But the problem of interperting QM is still there. To quote mr. Carol: "Quantum mechanics describes reality in terms of wave functions...."

and "describes" is the key word. It's our description of reality. Description and reality aren't same things. To push it and say that our description IS the reality. IMO is too far.
i.e. just by looking at Shroedinger's cat.
"The cat is neither alive nor dead; it is in a superposition of alive + dead. At least, until we observe it. In the simplistic Copenhagen interpretation, at the moment of observation the wave function “collapses” onto one actual possibility."

But that's p.o.v. of observer. From p.o.v. of the cat it's rubbish. Because she's pretty certain of the moment when whatever was in the box killed her or didn't. You pondering about some abstract math outside the box, changes nothing to her. Nor to you for that matter. The math just ends up telling you.. well.. you know.. she's either dead or alive :D.. A bit ironic isn't it :)
Anyways, IMO, we shouldn't assume what reality is. We should go and test it. And I also agree that we should only concern us with our own "reality". If there is no causal link between pocket universes or actual many worlds. Then they are of no reality of ours. And as such don't exist.

OK Then,

I admit, I didn't read the full paper. It just seems that the poll question that they quote is inconsistent with the poll results. Just thought it was a bit ironic, but obviously the result is consistent considering the methodology used.

and “describes” is the key word. It’s our description of reality. Description and reality aren’t same things. To push it and say that our description IS the reality. IMO is too far.

Yes and no.

:-)

Yes, to say it is REALLY real, absolute reality would be too far.

However, when talking to each other, we say things that can be extended to the absurd. And that isn't what;s meant by "real".

A solid isn't "really really" solid. It's mostly empty. But we can't move another solid through it (though hydrogen will diffuse through any solid we can muster up to contain it), so as far as saying what's going on, it really is solid.

We don't bother with the "mostly empty space".

And this idea of "reality" is embedded in science.

To Newton, gravitational attraction REALLY exists.

But when SR said it is REALLY a manipulation of the flat space, it was found not to be REALLY a plain old attractive force.

Science reality is not absolute. It's contingent.

And therefore using "real" like this in science is acceptable.

If someone seems to be getting the "really real" meaning, then correct them. But it's actually fine.

i.e. just by looking at Shroedinger’s cat.

Not really a useful point to bring up. It was a deliberate argument ad absurdium brought up to show how the copenhagen interpretation didn't actually fit in the macro scale.

But it said nothing about the quantum scale. There we have experiments that show that the "cat" really IS alive and dead at the same time.

It just has to be a quantum scale analogue of a cat. Not a macro-scale one.

@ Wow

Agree with you. And that's the most sensible position we should be in. However, to my mind, there are physicists or mathematicians out there who are not of that view.

I agree 100% with your sentence: "Science reality is not absolute. It’s contingent."

but proponents of Modal realism i.e. believe that many worlds are actual REALITIES. This is taking math and QM way beyond it's intended purpose IMO. This is saying that vector spaces of complex numbers in QM are real physical entities. Or whichever interpretation you choose. One shouldn't hold it as faith or whatever. But in debates it almost looks that way. Like it's a religion.

But in debates it almost looks that way. Like it’s a religion.

That, again, isn't the problem of the science.

It's the problem of the few extrememly noisy kooks who don't brook kany contention that this reality is contingent.

However, in this case, much like the case in rigid mechanics, where if there's no way of determining the difference, it doesn't exist (so a diatom has no rotational momentum around the longitudinal axis), it doesn't actually make any difference if these parallel universes actually exist or not.

Only if they produce an effect by which their existence can be inferred can they be called "real".

TBH, I feel much the same way about Dark Matter as some use it: "It really exists as real matter!", no, it is contingently proposed. It is currently the simplest most complete explanation, but it's not known what form it takes. Until then, we have a good placeholder for the effect.

Much like Newton's God who causes the planets to be attracted.

Turned out not to be god, but it WAS a scientific force: gravity.

And then once we had an idea precisely what that meant, we progressed to gravitons, Special Relativity, Quantum Gravity, Higgs and so on.

Ethan, I normally enjoy your posts, but this is the first time I've posted a comment. Because in this case, I think you're dead wrong.

I'll start my argument with your conclusion. The idea that there is nothing to choose between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics save taste is equivalent to throwing up your hands and saying "I give up! The universe is incomprehensible!" It's possible that that is the case, though I doubt it. However, that doubt is not sufficient argument that the universe is comprehensible.

That said, regardless of whether or not we can ultimately understand and explain the universe, as scientists, we have a responsibility to assume we can. Why? Because we can only improve our understanding of the nature of the universe if we believe we can.

Since I reject your conclusion, I suppose I have a responsibility to show where I believe you went wrong. I'll start with the wavefunction. Is it real? The equations of quantum mechanics describe it. Using it, we can predict the behavior of physical systems. As with Newton's force of gravity, we must assume it exists unless and until some better theory, a la General Relativity, shows it to be an illusion. It's only rational to assume that things we observe exist.

Next, wavefunction collapse. There is no mechanism in the math of Quantum Mechanics for such a process. Tacking it onto a theory is an error equivalent to Einstein's cosmological constant. (Yes, I know, dark energy exists. However, nothing Einstein knew indicated that it was so. An error is an error, coincidentally proven correct by later discoveries or not.) The equations tell us that the wave describing a particle continues beyond an observed interaction of that particle, so we must assume it does.

Hidden variables are an error of the same category, tacked onto a theory to try to make it behave the way we think it should.

Now, on to the role of the observer. The mind - the observer - is a psychological phenomenon. The laws of psychology emerge from the laws of biology, which in turn emerge from the laws of chemistry, which themselves emerge from the laws of Quantum Mechanics. With so many layers of reality isolating quantum phenomena from psychological ones, we must be leery of any theory that posits a direct causal connection between the two. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there is ANY rational alternative, we should use it, and if there isn't, we should try harder to think of one.

So, the faculty of reason, which we as scientists must apply if we are to attempt to understand reality, tells us that the wavefunction exists, it does not collapse, there are no hidden variables, and the observer does not directly interact with observed quantum phenomena. If you look at your Wikipedia chart of the interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, you will see that this leaves the Many Worlds interpretation as the most viable. In other words, our knowledge of quantum mechanics tells us that we live in a multiverse, wherein all possible histories of every particle objectively happen. As I have already stressed, future, improved knowledge may modify this understanding in some manner, but that is no excuse for failing to properly apply our best theory of reality, Quantum Mechanics.

Doug,

I can respect that argument and that point of view. Even if we disagree about our conclusions, I can never say anything bad about taking the approach that says, "I think there's enough information in the Universe to solve this problem."

In this case, the problem that you're talking about is choosing between quantum interpretations. There's the possibility that you're right: it's the approach that people who work on this problem for a living count on! As you can tell from what I've written here, I think that another possibility -- the one that many interpretations are physically and mathematically indistinguishable given the information in our Universe -- is more likely.

MWI is one of my least favorite interpretations, as I think it's very unnecessarily fantastic. There are far "simpler" ensemble interpretations of the vector space of possible outcomes than MWI, and it does not require the assumption of an exponentially increasing number of possible universes to hold the space of outcomes.

But it could be. I just don't think it's necessary, or even educational, to claim it as the interpretation of quantum reality.

@ Doug

In a way, am glad that you believe in MW interpretation and you believe the wave function is real. I don't. And that is fine. But, if you have some time, I would like if you could give some explanation about certain things. Mainly, I would like to know why you interpret certain things the way you do.

You say: " I’ll start with the wavefunction. Is it real? The equations of quantum mechanics describe it."
- I don't understand how you reason this? Equations don't describe it. The results of calculations is a wave function. You don't start with it, you arrive at it. And it is nothing more than probability of certain experimental results. Seems to me you are switching positions of terms. It would like saying that pythagoras' theory describes real numbers. That doesn't mean anything. A real number is the result of the theorem. Nothing more.

then you say: "As with Newton’s force of gravity, we must assume it exists unless and until some better theory,"
- again, I don't understand your view on this. Probability function isn't a force! Quantum Mechanics is a calculus! It's not a force of Nature. It's like alegebra or whatever else. The state space in QM is not real! Why makes to "make it" real? This I don't understand. You are not using real vectors. In fact, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get valid results if you used real vectors. You need complex numbers, imaginary numbers, in order for QM to calculate. It's not real vector space! And all of it is rooted in experiment. I mean, the matrix is nothing more then mathematical representation of an experimental measurement. It doesn't exist on it's own.
You say "we MUST assume it's real" WHY?? Why in the world do you have to assume that? It's not needed for calculating anything. In fact the math plainly calls it "imaginary".... so why? If you have some personal need, to "believe" in it.. ok, that's fine. But then say.. I MUST believe it's real.. don't say we.

"The equations tell us that the wave describing a particle continues beyond an observed interaction of that particle"
- well, first of all, you are describing only a certain measurement outcome of a certain property of the particle or whichever quantum system, but let's keep it simple. You are not describing the existance of a particle nor what it does in the world. Measuring i.e. the spin of electron is a far cry from saying anything about it's future existance in the real world.

"Now, on to the role of the observer. The mind – the observer – is a psychological phenomenon."
- what are you talking about? The oberver/observable, is just a measurement of an experiment. There is nothing psychological, philosophical or whatever about the observable. And as far as QM it's just a number. A real number. I do an experiment, I get a result. And all the rest of QM is just predicting what results I'll get. Will the light blink or won't it. Or how many times ON AVERAGE will I get tails or heads. There isn't anything mystical about this. Just as there is nothing mystical in measuring a rotational speed of some planet.

The rest of your post is not much about science. But the above interest me very much.

I hadn't spotted this:

“As with Newton’s force of gravity, we must assume it exists unless and until some better theory,”

No.

Newton's laws required some attractive force.

Newtonian gravity was the result of looking at the observations and needing this in there.

(much like DM/DE is there because the observations are inconsistent without them [well, even more inconsistent])

But the many-worlds is an attempt to answer "Why do probabilities work?".

We don't observe probabilities.

And the many-worlds (and string, and brane and ...) don't give any reason why they are right or even definition of why they exist.

Newtonian gravity gave a reason why it exists AND a definition.

So Newton ascribed it to the influence of God. Wrong, but the force is there whether it was God or Gravitons doing the work.

Not the same for Many-Worlds.

"that is no excuse for failing to properly apply our best theory of reality, Quantum Mechanics."

But that best theory doesn't actually include the answers to these questions. That's why these are all called "interpretations" and choosing between them is a matter of preference because they have no additional predictive power (that we can tell, yet). You deride other interpretations for adding things not included in the theory, but QM also has no mechanism for replicating the entire universe on every measurement.

This is not like the Cosmological Constant, which was part of GR from the beginning, and made different predictions for different values. Einstein's error was simply assuming a value that produced the universe he wanted without waiting for the necessary measurements.

At this time, there are no known measurements that could support your favorite interpretation over others, and nothing in the well-verified parts of the theory to suggest that the universe forks. There's no "universe multiplication" factor that you could presume was non-unity.

So we're left with just the philosophical argument for why one is better than the other. One of the oldest tools in such arguments is Occam's Razor. Are you really sure you want to apply it in this case?

Oh and by the way, Ethan was not saying that we should just throw up our hands because we can never figure it out (although, bear in mind, it's possible we live in a universe where we can't).

He's saying that it's not useful for understanding QM today to presume a certain interpretation.

Obviously theorists should continue trying to find out if we could learn more, and if they do find a meaningful, measurable implication of some interpretation then the experimentalists should jump in and do it.

But if you aren't doing that, then just shut up and calculate, because that's how you will figure out what the theory actually implies.

"but QM also has no mechanism for replicating the entire universe on every measurement"

not only that but you can't even measure two things at the same time. Not unless they have totally same eigen values, which is in fact a very specific circumstance.

This is the pitfal. Calling QM a theory of reality. It's not that. Not by a long shot. In order to get expectation values, you need physical experiments. You can't get them just from theory. QM will tell you what a probability of a certain observable will be given some initial parameters, and that's it. It won't tell you what will happen to something 10 minutes from now. It was never meant to do something like that. Maybe to someone a probability of measured value is everything there is in the Universe... but that's their loss. To call it theory of reality is just so wrong.

“Now, on to the role of the observer. The mind – the observer – is a psychological phenomenon.
- what are you talking about? "

He's talking about the pun-based reasoning that New Age woo-shiters use to argue that QM supports the idea of ESP and other psychic nonsense. "Measurement implies observation implies observer implies sentient human brain causing quantum events to occur"

Which, yes, is nonsense, but isn't really relevant to the scientific discussion.

Doug0523
Thanks for finally commenting.
You bring a reasoned and interesting perspective to the table. Please comment more. Look at the interesting discussion you've started.

Sinisa
Good questions and discussion. Well reasoned.

But let me add my point of view
Personally, I like the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics. Such multiplicity shows that QM is a living active dynamic theory that has much room to grow and which has many more surprises to be discovered.

The other theory, general relativity, that has been as thoroughly tested and confirmed as QM, does not have 10 interpretations. GR is great; it is the best. But like Newtonian Mechanics, it is a dead end. It has 1 interpretation.

QM has been enriched considerably since its founding (in a way that GR has not). Think entanglement, superconductivity, Bose-einstein condensates, quantum computing and quantum cryptology. And I expect many more quantum surprises.

GR is quite static by comparison. And I love GR; but I can't see more than maybe 1 interpretations. (not counting MOND and without adding extra dimensions of space and time).

But then I need string theory is maybe. Or maybe just more QM. I don't know. But they'll tell when they do.

So why would I want to limit myself just to 1 interpretation of QM. No I prefer a dozen interpretations. I want that new insights that explodes into our consciousness from a dozen interpretations of QM. Andthen all of the other interpretations wiggle and transpose and try to accommodate.

In my mind quantum mechanics is a theory of reality; because:
- I need it to try understand the smallest bits of matter
- I need it to try to understand very strange phenomenon
----- superconductivity
----- superfluidity
- I need it to understand why a solid is a solid
- I need it to understand how stars work
- I need it to understand the energy levels of atoms
- I need it to understand the energy level states of positronium

What part of Classical reality that has not been re-understood in terms of some quantum interpretation.
-- physical chemistry
-- biochemistry
-- magnetic resonance imaging of the brain

I dare you to explain virus interactions in the detail without mention of quantum mechanics. Pick a topic.
I just did virus's and quantum mechanics.

Can We Detect Quantum Behavior in Viruses?http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311092429.htm

So what part of reality has not been effected and clarified by quantum mechanics? Who ever thought that physicist would be writing papers clarifying what an observer is or is not.

Can we talk about the self without talking about the observer?
Have quantum theorist reached consensus yet on the meaning of observer. Is it only or more than a measurement?

Do you think that quantum weirdness disappears when we aren't measuring?
or do you think that quantum weirdness is there even if we aren't measuring?

Quantum mechanics is our best working theory of reality whether you want to try to understand some tiny little aspect of reality like qluon walls or some giant aspect of reality like the quantum mechanics of cosmic inflation.

There is no theory more fruitful to wrap around the detail of a strange observation than quantum mechanics.That kind of makes it a theory of reality.

I mean Google:
QM and any physical detailed thing and see if interesting research is being done.
versus
GR, or string theory or thermodynamics or .... and any physical detailed thing and see if interesting research is being done.

I think we are going to be struggling with new insights and revolutions in quantum mechanics for another 100 years.

Yep. And macro reality is much the same. I have done and witnessed enough 'impossible' things to know. When people see physical or political laws, I see probabilities. I'm used to being right when everyone else is not. The other way around too. All one can get out of any model of 'reality' is 'how to bet'. It's ALL quantum.

So I place my bets on the horses I WANT to win. Sometimes (entanglement anyone) that seems to make the outrageously implausible merely unusual, especially after it has actually occurred.

" All one can get out of any model of ‘reality’ is ‘how to bet’."

Yes.

"So I place my bets on the horses I WANT to win. Sometimes (entanglement anyone)"

No.

" that seems to make the outrageously implausible merely unusual, especially after it has actually occurred."

Indeed. It's called Selection Bias.

@ OKThen

I'm not sure that you understood my point of view. At least not from reading your post. I will try to explain my position, as well as make some observations of your last post.

First and foremost is I have nothing against QM. It's a brilliant tool and it works extremely well. So not really sure to whom you are addressing: "I dare you to explain virus interactions in the detail without mention of quantum mechanics.". Where did I ever say we don't need QM?

What I do object to is some of the interpretations. Mainly Many Worlds view and mostly Modal Realism. Again, notice I didn't say "I disregard them", I said "object". Meaning I have objections to their logic. And I am asking proponents of that view to describe why they believe that. Because the reasons they give, as you can see, aren't really that solid.

What I object to is calling mathematical constructs physically real. Because that's what they are doing. Not the space in which experiment is happening, but abstract space used to calculate it.

Concerning your comparisons between GR and QM. I don't understand why would you make such a comparison? They are not opposing theories, they have nothing in common. If you want to compare things, then compare QM with classical EM or atomic theory of Bohr.

GR and SR have nothing to do with all this.

then you say: "So why would I want to limit myself just to 1 interpretation of QM?"
- who says you should? I'm having issues with one particular interpretation not all of them. And I don't have an issue with math, only interpretation. Interpretation doesn't mean calculating it differently. There aren't 10-15 different calculus for different interpretations. It's not about that.

As for if it's a theory of reality.. Ok, this really needs it's terms defined in order to not talk pass each other. With the criterium you list, every working theory in physics, be it classical or probabilistic, is theory of reality. Cause it helps us deal more efficiently with nature around us.
What I object to is putting QM on the pedestal as THE THEORY of Reality. It ONLY deals with one part of our experience of reality. Try using QM to calculate how much concrete you need to build a damn, or what's the total resistance of a given macroscopic circuit. It can't. It's wasn't meant to do that. And that is fine by me. Just like we don't call GR theory of reality, or any other theory about anything, likewise we shouldn't call QM that. It's a theory of one small part of reality. But that is, in truth misleading also. Because if you want to stay true to QM, then it's a theory of what happens when you make an experimental observation of the QUANTUM system, because by doing it, you will change what the system was before you made it. And I understand that physicist of that time, and even some of today, find this disturbing. Because looking at something doesn't disturb it in macro world, and want to find a way to interpret it for themselves. Maybe I'm just not that bothered by it. So an electron can be either up or down. But that means we need to change all of our atomic physics... well.. tough luck. The thing is... reality didn't change. We did. Or our understanding did. Electrons always did what they do know. The fact we couldn't understand it 100 years ago is not a question of reality, but our limited knowledge. And I don't mean this in a sense of Hidden Variable Theory, just as a simple statement about our science. In 200 years from now, who knows what theories we'll use.

"Do you think that quantum weirdness disappears when we aren’t measuring?
or do you think that quantum weirdness is there even if we aren’t measuring?"

Come on dude... do you honestly believe that the Sun disappears when it goes below the horizon? Like.. ceases to exist? Of course you don't. So don't make a mistake and go in those waters of QM interpretations.
Because here's a simple concept. Everything existed just fine before we ever began making QM experiments and observations. And will continue to exist long way after we're gone. To be so bold or stupid (sorry, not you.. but I just find that view stupid) and say that nothing really exist until we measure it, is just retarded in my book.

p.s.
further confusion is introduced because we use the same words (QM) for two things...
We use Quantum Mechanics to imply that atomic and subatomic systems are doing something. And we use the same word/s Quantum Mechanics for the calculus to find probabilities for experimental outcomes. And I think this is the only area of physics with such a problem in terminology.
We don't say that relativity of earth couples to relativity of the Sun. We don't talk about relativity of the Universe... And as such you can clearly distinguish to what you are refering to when talking about calculating something, and what it actually is. In QM, if you just say QM, that distinction is broken. Because you no longer know if one is talking about the actual subatomic world, or of a certain probability calculation. And IMO that's not good.

"Because if you want to stay true to QM, then it’s a theory of what happens when you make an experimental observation of the QUANTUM system"

Though you're mostly correct, this bit needs work.

You can derive F=ma by using Schroedinger's Equation and assuming the values in the macro scale are averages.

The quantum interactions are the basis for the reality that is, but our QM model isn't the quantum interactions. They're our model of them.

Just like Bohr's model of the atom wasn't the atom.

This is a very interesting discussion, but I wonder if all the discussion about interpretation of quantum mechanics isn't just totally fruitless. What I mean by this is that right now we cannot experimentally distinguish the different interpretations. So long as that's the case, there's no scientific basis for favoring one interpretation over any other.

However, assume that at some point in the future someone does devise an experimental way to determine which interpretation is best. It seems to me that the history of QM points to the idea that instead of distinguishing one interpretation from the others, that all of them will gain support, with the experimental design determining which of the interpretations appears to be correct.

That's the case with the debate about whether light is a wave or a particle phenomenon. Phyiscists such as Young and Fresnel seemed to prove that it's a wave, but then Einstein's photoelectric effect explanation came along and treated light as a particle. The problem was that our notions of "wave" and "particle" simply were not representative of reality. Reality just could not be categorized into simple bins like "wave" and "particle".

In a similar vein, isn't it at least possible, if not likely, that reality just can't be categorized into our neat notions of "quantum reality"?

"In a similar vein, isn’t it at least possible, if not likely, that reality just can’t be categorized into our neat notions of “quantum reality”?"

That is as good of a guess as any. It might be.
I did read somewhere about an idea that the observable in QM needn't be fixed. Meaning it might be the case where two observers see different outcomes of same process. Very similar to relativity. I don't know the details, but it's an interesting concept.
I'm looking forward to seeing experiments in the future, at least thought experiments, that could eliminate some possibilities.

"We use Quantum Mechanics to imply that atomic and subatomic systems are doing something. And we use the same word/s Quantum Mechanics for the calculus to find probabilities for experimental outcomes. And I think this is the only area of physics with such a problem in terminology."

Those aren't actually different, as long as you understand as Wow says that it's just a model. A provisional description of reality. QM implies that particles are doing things. Based on that QM gives us math to predict the outcome of experiments. Because it does so correctly to very high precision, we take QM as a provisional model of reality and say that particles are really doing things that QM says they are.

Of course while the model is indeed provisional, we have progressed to the point where we can say with certainty that any model that replaces it cannot get rid of all of the 'quantum weirdness' and instead look like a classical theory.

"We don’t say that relativity of earth couples to relativity of the Sun."

That's because the specific terminology of GR is different, but the actual usage is exactly the same. GR implies that the geometry of space-time curves. It also gives us equations to predict the outcome of experiments with great precision. We therefore take it as a provisional model of reality and say that space-time actually curves.

"Try using QM to calculate how much concrete you need to build a damn, or what’s the total resistance of a given macroscopic circuit."

The reason you can't use QM to calculate the concrete needed to build a damn is the same reason you can't use a non-quantum but nevertheless detailed molecular chemical interaction model to do the same: The math is too hard.

You absolutely can use QM to determine the resistance and other properties of circuits on the scale of nano- and micro- meters, indeed it's absolutely essential for determining the behavior of semiconductor devices. Which we then model using simpler math derived from the QM prediction to determine the behavior of larger circuits, but again that's just because it would take too long otherwise. There are deadlines to meet.

The reason QM seems different than GR or any other physical theory is that it's SO WEIRD that we have a hard time believing it, or even understanding what the theory is actually implying that the particles are doing, or if we can even ever know that because the vexing part is the part that happens *before* the particles interact with anything and that's kind of a problem when it comes to measuring.

But on the other hand, what is actually inside a black hole where the theory of general relativity says there's a singularity, a geometrical discontinuity? What does that actually mean? Is it real? It's beyond the event horizon, so we probably can't ever answer this question.

But that's out of sight, out of mind. QM slaps you in the face with the problem of our intuition versus what our model of reality says. That's the real difference.

Sinisa

First the only thing I said in response to you was, "Good questions and discussion. Well reasoned."

Everything after that was my thoughts, not a response to anything in particular that you said.

Second, we aren't in disagreement. I mostly agree with what you say and your way of thinking, give or take a nit pick here or there. And I am certainly an amateur not an authority.

HERE'S A NIT, an example of my nit picking, which normally I wouldn't even mention.

You say, "So an electron can be either up or down."

And my immediate reaction is No!
Electron spin is an intrinsic property with magnitude of s = 1/2; but it can be in any direction and is constantly changing direction. When we put the experimental apparatus in place; then we force the electron to be in one of two directions which we call up and down. But your statement already assumed the experimental apparatus, situation and such. OK that's a nit.

HERE'S A DISAGREEMENT (i.e. not a nit.)
You say, "Try using QM to calculate how much concrete you need to build a damn."

But how much concrete you use depends upon the strength of the concrete for a specific application. But maybe you assume that nobody is thinking about the strength of concrete in terms of quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity.

So here's a quote:
"Although important advances have been made in understanding the behavior of reinforced concrete columns... the size effect in columns has escape the attention so far. but no phenomenon in physics is understood until the scaling law is understood. This also applies to concrete structures. Discrepancies in the scaling laws at very large and very small distances were the primary impulse for the development of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics."
Failure of slender and stocky reinforced concrete columns by ZB Bazant 1994

So someone is at least metaphorically (probably not mathematically) considering quantum mechanics when experimentally testing concrete and other materials.

But suppose that I am the engineer in charge of building the biggest dam in the world. A dam so big that it boggles the imagination of engineers. In other words, everybody says that it is impossible, that it will surely fail. But I am going to build it with concrete. But what kind of concrete and how much. Well I better get the experts who understand, in the detail, the strength of concrete.

So I'd start with the authors of this book.
Electronic Basis of the Strength of Materials
John J. Gilman, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003
"This 2003 book relates the complete set of strength characteristics of constituent atoms to their electronic structures. These relationships require knowledge of both the chemistry and physics of materials. The book uses both classical and quantum mechanics, since both are needed to describe these properties, and begins with short reviews of each. Following these reviews, the three major branches of the strength of materials are given their own sections. They are: the elastic stiffnesses; the plastic responses; and the nature of fracture. This work will be of great value to academic and industrial research workers in the sciences of metallurgy, ceramics, microelectronics and polymers. It will also serve well as a supplementary text for the teaching of solid mechanics."

So yes, I think that if you plan to build the biggest dam in the world successfully; then someone applied the knowledge of quantum mechanics to the building materials (e.g. particular steels and concretes).

"What I mean by this is that right now we cannot experimentally distinguish the different interpretations. So long as that’s the case, there’s no scientific basis for favoring one interpretation over any other."

Moreover, there's no point to proposing any of those interpretations.

"What's the sound of one hand clapping?"
"Who cares?"

Really it's the same thing here. If the interpretations come up with interesting science that differentiates it from the others, then that becomes a discussion.

But if you can't, it's not really worth talking about.

Just do the maths and while they work, use them.

"Electron spin is an intrinsic property with magnitude of s = 1/2; but it can be in any direction and is constantly changing direction. When we put the experimental apparatus in place; then we force the electron to be in one of two directions which we call up and down."

By, for example, putting it next to another electron...

But if there's nothing else there, then we have no preferred direction for up (or down), therefore we say that, by fiat, is pointing up.

Bring another electron along and it won't want to be near the first electron unless it is going the opposite direction, which (by the fiat declaration of up before) must be down. It won't point "a bit down" or "sideways", it'll point down.

@ Michael Kelsey
Has the pilot wave been dis proven? I don't like the term pilot wave but if you mean hidden variables then most people take Bells inequality to disprove hidden variables when in fact it just shows that any hidden variables formulation of quantum mechanics must be non local in fact any single world account of quantum mechanics must be non local.. see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/#hv

Wow

I avoided clarification on spin of an electron because I was confusing myself and unsure of a concise explanation.

Well done, as concise as can be.
Thanks for that clarification on spin of an electron.

@the biophysicist

Right, only local hidden variables are out. This doesn't mean there are no hidden variables.

It does mean no classical formulation of hidden variables can work. Even a version of QM with hidden variables is still going to be full of quantum weirdness.

Which is why (this is addressing Sinisa's point, btw) even if you imagine that the QM model is wrong, at some level it really is describing reality. A reality that won't go away even if we replace QM with some other model.

that's true

If this is correct: http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.5173

there might not be anything more.. ever :)

re: #92
Sinisa
That link report considers the possibility of improvement of measurements precision (vis a vis the uncertainty principle) and thus getting more information about a system than current quantum theory allows. And concludes that no improvement is possible, i.e. we are stuck with the uncertainty princip[le.

That's OK.
However, new insights are allowed.
That's why without any improvement in quantum measurement; experiment and new insight led to such as phenomenon as entanglement or superconductivity, etc. And without any improvement in quantum measurement; we may get further insight and predicted and observed and understood phenomenon from a quantum gravity or a string theory or some other theory.

There is a lot more; because we understand so little.
This blog though not nearly as popular as Ethan's
http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/?utm_source=bloglist&utm_medium=drop…
is worth a bookmark. It writes up current exciting experiments about things we don't understand, e.g. gluon walls, high temperature superconductivity. It is experiments like these that inform theorists' next theories.

There is so much more.
My modest prediction is 1,000 years of science discovery at least as rapid as the scientific advances of the last 100 years.

Now back to the link referenced in #92. Is it correct? Probably not. Probably yes. Don't know. Why does it matter?
Yes that's the question, why does it matter?

Well the paper's implied answers is "quantum cryptography."
OK so no one will be able to break a quantum cryptography code. Fine. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a secure internet in the near future (i.e. next 100 years).

@ OKThen,

I will not lie and say that I understood completely the math behind the proof, but it's not only about the measurments, that was the point.
It's a proof of general notion of expanding QM, with any kind of additional information, regardless of what it is. It's in a way like bell's inequality proof.

This again has no reference to quantum gravity or strings or etc. This is purely as far as QM results go. Who ever said that means physics wont progress???

or in other words, regardless of new information about the system, the predictive power won't go up. Or in other words, the predictive power of the system is already at maximum. For quantum systems, of course.

At least that's how I understood the paper.

even if we discover new properties of nature, new particles, etc... the probability for spin up or down will still be +-1/2.

Sinisa: O_o

OKThen: Neither quantum entanglement nor superconductivity are new discoveries. Superconductivity pre-dated quantum mechanics, in fact. Entanglement was an understood implication of QM theory from the beginning (though it didn't have that name) and was used as part of the EPR parodox to suggest QM was incomplete. But then Bell's Theorem came along and we experimentally verified that nope, it really does behave how the existing QM theory said and EPR isn't a paradox.

So while I too am sure we'll make many more discoveries, the history of QM doesn't really suggest that they will be in the field of QM itself.

That doesn't mean I was expecting a result like that in the paper Sinisa linked. Once again: O_o

"Before the realization of the importance of Bell's theorem, which happened only in the 1970's, the conventional wisdom among physicists was that the "founding fathers" of quantum mechanics had settled all the conceptual questions... I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the realization of the importance of entanglement and the clarification of the quantum description of single objects have been at the root of a second quantum revolution, and that John Bell was its prophet." Alain Aspect, 2004, Introduction to
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics 2nd edition, by J.S. Bell

Yes, it's Bell's Theorem, introduced in the 60s and tested in the 70s that gave quantum entanglement a newly understood importance. And that importance was in demonstrating -- via experimental violation of Bell's Inequalities -- that quantum entanglement worked just like the Quantum Mechanical theory developed in the 1920s said it did.

Before that, many were convinced that our theory of quantum mechanics had to be incomplete because the implications of quantum entanglement contradicted local realism. Then Bell came along with a way to test this, and then the experiments came back and they said: "Nope! Local realism is out. Entanglement really works the way our theory says it does!"

Quantum entanglement was not a new phenomenon.

What changed is realizing that the phenomenon really did work how QM said it did. That there WASN'T some new aspect to the theory that we just hadn't figured out yet which would get rid of the "spooky action at a distance" and preserve local realism.

That's the opposite of "we discovered new phenomenon which demonstrate that QM was incomplete and that this will happen again in the future."

It's still possible QM is not complete, but the history of QM is actually the opposite: Coming to grips with the uncomfortable truth that it IS.

CB
Well yes, but quantum mechanics said nothing about entanglement in the 1920s.

"Research into quantum entanglement was initiated by a 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen describing the EPR paradox[ and several papers by Erwin Schrödinger shortly thereafter." wikipedia

"So, despite the interest, the flaw in EPR's argument was not discovered until 1964, when John Stewart Bell demonstrated precisely how one of their key assumptions, the principle of locality, conflicted with quantum theory. " wikipedia

So saying "that quantum entanglement worked just like the Quantum Mechanical theory developed in the 1920s said it did" is really beside the point; because obviously nobody clearly understood quantum mechanical theory until Bell's 1964 paper exposed "the flaw in EPR's argument".

"It took him (John Bell) a decade to have his questions taken seriously... With his questions about entanglement, John Bell was able to clarify the Einstein-Bohr debate in an unanticipated manner, offering the opportunity to settle the question experimentally. His work, without a doubt, triggered the second quantum revolution, primarily based on the recognition of the extraordinary features of entanglement, and pursued with efforts to use entanglement for quantum information... Many of the fundamental questions about the measurement problem, including the role of decoherence, are not yet settled, and reading these papers (Bell's) is a source of stimulation and inspiration for contemporary research." Alain Aspect, 2004, Introduction to
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics 2nd edition, by J.S. Bell

"Quantum entanglement was not a new phenomenon."
But as Wheeler says, "no elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

And until Bell's 1964 paper there was no "opportunity to settle the entanglement question experimentally." i.e. no one could figure out how to do an entanglement experiment. i.e. entanglement was not a phenomenon because it was not an observed phenomenon, just an conundrum (maybe possible, maybe impossible).

It's worth reading the 2nd edition of Bell's book just to read Alain Aspect's 22 page introduction. And most of Bell's papers are highly readable in large part even for an amateur like me. I don't claim to understand it all.

But when someone finally understands and explains " the fundamental questions about the measurement problem, including the role of decoherence" in quantum mechanics; well then maybe there will be a third quantum revolution.

Of course someone might just say, "quantum decoherence worked just like the Quantum Mechanical theory developed in the 1920s said it did."

Superconductivity is a quantum phenomenon that was not understood until the 1950's.

"Superconductivity... was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911... Since the discovery of superconductivity, great efforts have been devoted to finding out how and why it works. During the 1950s, theoretical condensed matter physicists arrived at a solid understanding of "conventional" superconductivity, through a pair of remarkable and important theories: the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory (1950) and the microscopic BCS theory (1957)... Superfluidity of helium and superconductivity both are macroscopic quantum phenomena." wikipedia

"Well yes, but quantum mechanics said nothing about entanglement in the 1920s."

Of course it did. The potential for correlated systems was right there. It was the possibility of having such a correlated system separated by a space-like distance that provoked the EPR paper with its argument that Quantum Mechanics must be incomplete.

It was the final resolution of the problem that in fact it isn't. The formalism established in the 1920s was (as far as we know even today) complete.

And that's not beside the point. It is rather the point entirely. It's why the "interpretations" of QM are of no consequence. It's why taking the history of QM does not imply that some day they will be, or that there will be modifications made to the theory, because so far, there have not been any.

In a given mathematical framework, there is a set of statements that are true, and they are true regardless of whether you have proven that they are in that set yet. Discovering a new member of that set is not the same as modifying the framework.

For example -- Alan Turing had no idea in the 1930s that the Universal Turing Machine could be used to make voice recognition software or the AI for Aibos. But every time someone creates some new piece of software this doesn't change anything about Turing Machines. We only went beyond the Turing Machine with the development of quantum computing, which required a new framework: the Non-Deterministic Turing Machine. That was something new.

There has been no such advancement in QM. The whole point of Bell's Theorem and subsequent verification was that it wasn't needed. The people who thought that QM was incomplete, that it needed to be modified, were wrong.

While I have no doubt that we will find many, many more novel *applications* for Quantum Theory, I do have my doubts that we will ever have need to extend the theory itself. And it's the history of QM itself that informs this doubt.

"Of course someone might just say, 'quantum decoherence worked just like the Quantum Mechanical theory developed in the 1920s said it did.'"

And if that understanding requires zero changes to the QM formalism established in the 1920s, then that would be completely appropriate to say.

CB
So I think I understand and agree with you. At least you've stated your position clearly and it makes sense to me. Nice.

So I think that means that, from your point of view (which I am accepting), that QED and QCD are not extensions of QM. They are applications of the QM formalism to electroweak and strong forces. And thus in that sense a future quantum gravity (and all approximate quantum gravities) are not new quantum theories; but rather extensions using the exact same fQM ormalism. Is this correct CB?

And further, from your point of view (which I am accepting), the various string theories, supersymmetry theories, etc are/will not be new quantum theories but extensions using the exact same formalism of quantum mechanics. Is this correct?

Can you clarify a little further; and thanks for the education.

@OKThen

I know you are addressing CB, and am sorry to jump in. But one thing you say sort of nags at me.

"from your point of view (which I am accepting), the various string theories, supersymmetry theories, etc are/will not be new quantum theories but extensions using the exact same formalism of quantum mechanics. Is this correct?"

One can't really ask something like that and get a sound answer because part of the answer has to take into account experimental results. And for strings especially, this is impossible in any foreseeable future.
Let me explain.

What theory we'll use depends on how the system behaves. The greatest achievement of QM experiments was to show that there is a part of reality that can't be described classically. How they behave we now call QM.

Now for anything beyond that who knows. Speaking purely theoretically. If we could experiment on strings, and they manifest quantum behavior, then yes. Any theory describing them has to be quantum in nature (meaning probability distributions etc. etc). But just as well, they needn't behave like quantum systems do. They might not behave like QM and not behave classically. Then some new math will come along. So you can't really ask or guess at something like that. QM is at a scale of 10^-15 or something like that. That's our experimental limit. Strings are at plank length (if they exist). Without some kind of experiment, you can't tell how those systems behave.

For SS it's a bit different since SS is already a QM theory. It can't become anything else than QM :)

"So I think that means that, from your point of view (which I am accepting), that QED and QCD are not extensions of QM. They are applications of the QM formalism to electroweak and strong forces."

In my last post I addressed my view of Bell's Theorem -- a mathematical proof of a consequence of the equations of Quantum Mechanics. Discovering a new element of the set of true statements in a given algebra is definitely not an alteration or extension of that algebra.

This is a different case. Quantum Mechanics on its own doesn't predict what quantum particles and forces exist -- that's the Standard Model's job. So you could call QCD an "extension", but it's really a new theory built on the QM framework. And I do still say that is categorically different than modifying the framework.

To help explain my view, consider this: QCD and QED and all quantum theories are Relativistic theories. They obey the rules of Special Relativity. And so far none of those theories or their experimental results (including quantum entanglement) has required that we modify SR or implied that it is incomplete.

So is QCD an extension of SR? I guess I have no problem with you saying that, as long as it's understood that in this context "extension" doesn't mean "filling in a gap in SR" or "modifying SR from its original formulation". It just means building a new theory predicting phenomenon not in the purview of SR on top of an unmodified SR framework.

As far as the future, I don't know. Like Sinisa said, that depends on future developments and experiments. However IF these new theories that are built on QM behave exactly in accordance with the rules of QM, then yes I would say they fall in the same category as QED and QCD.

E.g. if quantum gravity turns out to really just be a new 'graviton' boson behaving like any other QM particle, then that counts.

String Theory is a new framework that happens to reduce to QM in certain regimes and GR in others. I'd say if we ever get confirmation that Strings are a better model of reality, then it will necessarily mean we've replaced the QM (and GR) framework with the String Theory one. But... well, like Sinisa said about that...

Sinisa
Of course jump in, it's an open discussion.

CB
Thanks for your clear explanation.

So in my paraphrase, you seem to be saying that, we have absolutely no experimental or observational motivation to build a theory that in anyway contradicts (or tries to improves upon, i.e. more precision) quantum mechanics. That seems correct.

However, we have to leave the possibility open that future theory explains experiment on phenomenon that "might not behave like QM and not behave classically." OK, hard to imagine; now that you've clarified. But that is the point; the unknown and un-understood remains to be discovered and/or explained.

So m,y last questions. There are a number of unsolved problems in physics.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics
Obviously theorists and experimentalist are working to understand these various phenomenon. Do any of these problems suggest more strongly than others; the need to extend the formality of QM? Are (and Where are) any new more stringent tests of QM formalism being being proposed? Or is?

Oh well to answer my own question (I always try to find an answer if I can). Here's one answer that makes sense:

"Today there is not one shred of experimental evidence against quantum mechanics and much to be found for it on scales ranging roughly from those probed by the highest energy particle accelarators (10^−17 cm) to delicate experiments on condensed matter systems (10^−5 cm). That is a wide range of scales but still small compared to the range of 10^−33 cm to 10^28 cm that characterize the phenomena considered in contemporary physics. Recent experiments have extended the range on which quantum mechanics has been or will be tested. To motivate and analyze future experiments that probe quantum mechanics at new scales it would be very useful to have alternative theories. These should agree with quantum mechanics where it has been tested so far, but diﬀer from it on scales where it has not yet been tested and be consistent with the rest of modern physics such as special relativity. But as Steve Weinberg puts it: “It is striking that so far it has not been possible to ﬁnd a logically consistent theory that is close to quantum mechanics other than quantum mechanics itself”." Quantum Mechanics with Extended Probabilities
James B. Hartle 2008 http://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0688v3

Nice.

Thanks again CB for the discussion and education. Sinisa and others too.

Ciao.

"However, we have to leave the possibility open that future theory explains experiment on phenomenon that “might not behave like QM and not behave classically.” OK, hard to imagine; now that you’ve clarified. "

I don't think it's that hard to imagine. Hard to imagine what it would BE, but not hard to imagine that it exists.

In all honesty despite arguing that the history of QM says we don't need anything more than QM, I still think/thought that some future discovery implying that there is such a need was more likely than the papers linked by Sinisa and you suggest. I'm quite surprised by that.

yes,I'm surprised too.
But the implied assumption, that blocks, new insight is hard to see before the new insight, but obvious after it is seen. E.g. Assumption of flat space

"To look at what everyone has looked, to see what no one has seen. " by someone

Sometimes that assumption is made not because it is thought to be correct, but that the calculations for any other assumption are just not possible to do.

Which is what happened with the flat/open/closed trilogy.

NOTE: it was not assumed it was flat. The maths available only allowed investigation on certain assumptions and those THREE were the three outcomes that the mathematical treatment was able to address.

Many more have been found, some just by throwing computer power at the problem.

non-locality can be understood in terms of scale invariant quantum impedances
http://vixra.org/abs/1303.0039