41

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 28/10/2019 08:28:50 »

As the strict definition is concerned, you are right but inertia is always measured with an exchange of momentum in reality. A photon has a relativistic mass. You can say its a relativistic inertial mass only in its direction of motion. I know that strictly speaking, it is not the same but in the end, it could be the same basic phenomenon and there are good reasons to think that way.

The calculation of an effective radius of an electron depends on the theory. It is the measurement which counts. It is a circular argument. Do you know that the maximum electric field you can measure for an electron is equivalent to a charge at a distance equal to its Compton wavelength divided by 2*pi? (at least for a slow electron)

42

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are my atoms not flying apart? Please Hurry - May Have Limited Time Left

« on: 28/10/2019 01:14:52 »

Ok, I must admit, I made a mistake by saying that curvature of spacetime is not fundamental. It is, but when you look at Einstein's field equation, the curvature of spacetime equals energy. E=MC^2. Is it possible that particles are curved spacetime? In QFT, the energy of the vacuum is just too high. When you look at the calculation of the energy of a single particle in QFT, it gives a sum of positive and negative terms. Maybe the real potential of the vacuum is just the remnant of the calculations and all the vanishing terms are not real... The problem is they calculated all terms for the total vacuum energy of the universe as if they were all real.

43

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 28/10/2019 00:50:35 »

The uncertainty principle shows that if you want to measure the energy or momentum of a particle, you have to measure it over a minimum of time corresponding to the Compton wavelength of the particle at the speed of light which gives you uncertainty on time and position. According to the uncertainty principle, if the size of an electron is equal or smaller than its Compton wavelength, it is impossible to know its size. The size of a proton is larger than its equivalent Compton wavelength.

The momentum of a photon may be interpreted as a relativistic inertia as you will be pushed by it when you stop it. But it is a priori entirely relativist unless you take account of the entire Universe where you may possibly obtain a non-vanishing but still relativistic mass.

What Alan said about the proton and the quarks is very interesting. Quarks are supposed to be elementary particles but no quark has ever been observed directly. Is the proton an elementary particles or were quarks separated in the early universe?

44

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 24/10/2019 22:06:39 »

Halc, the proponents of the MWI don't see it as a causal set but that is truly what they are thriving for. The use of the Schrödinger equation doesn't change anything for that matter. The problem with the MWI is that it replaces our own world relations with inter-worlds relations, moreover, with an exponential growth of new worlds created.

Concerning superposition, you are basically right that it is a matter of belief. Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo: it is a belief. But not all beliefs have equal value. Superposition is all the possible results given by a probability distribution (the square of the function). But only one result is measured. Show me an example in real life where the probability distribution is real in regards to a single possibility that was measured as real. The probability distribution may be made of facts but they are never the properties of a single elements. For example, you may make a distribution by asking blindly the age of each student in a class and then try to guess the age of a specific student. But each student has only a single age.

Superposition being real is not a small leap of faith...

45

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 24/10/2019 21:31:46 »

Archangel; I have, so far, only skimmed through your posts, but I plan to return for a better look.  I suspect that much of what you say would fit well with Bohm’s implicate/explicate orders.  If so, is that intentional?

That was my own conclusion a while ago (if you look at my theory). Contrary to Bohm's interpretation, consciousness, if produced by entanglement, would not be outside the brain but it would be the spatial complement to the space-time causal connections. This would be a synthetic image resulting from the brain of our perception which would include our current memory feed backs.

The idea comes from the current interpretation of entanglement mixed with a hidden variables theory. All classical forces decrease with the distance. The current interpretation of entanglement does not follow that law.

The problem is the detector is included in the wave function parameters but the mechanism of the particle being entangled with it is not explicit. As long as we don't have a good description of the mechanism, it is difficult to draw a conclusion. Some experimental setups may induce non-causal correlations while being interpreted as entangled states. I still think there are real entanglement relations though. There are quantum computers and encryption processes using entanglement. If it is useful, there is a reality to it. I doubt that electricity and gravity have entanglement relations which break the law of distance but magnetism could. Entanglement comes from the quantization of energy. In my theory, there are only space and time, and its dynamics.

46

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 24/10/2019 07:59:46 »

If I remember correctly, there are 26 or so necessary irreducible parameters in the current theories of physics as a whole. Twenty six parameters for 3+1 dimensions, this seems to be a very complex system for only four dimensions. Cosmologists will tell you that the Universe should be much simpler. The more parameters above the number of dimensions plus a few others, the less likely it is. To reduce the number of parameters by a huge factor, you need unification of many of them. Randomness is in the way of progress because physics needs reductionism desperately. We must learn about what's under the hood.

47

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 24/10/2019 02:30:37 »

Many-worlds is 1-B, the hidden variables are the other branches. There are other interpretations like QBism which are difficult to categorize but they are truly metaphysical.

My point is if you start by stipulating that the randomness is intrinsic then this is the end of it. No explanations for how the measurement influence the outcome. See the blog "backreaction". 

I don't think the Causal sets Theory is good. I speak of a general causal set. Logically, from what we have learned before the Schrodinger equation, the Universe is a causal set. There is no limit to the gravitational and EM fields which means each object is always subject to everything else. Now we have QM, which behaves like a causal set if you start with one particle and and then add particles one at a time. QM does not explain everything besides gravity. QCD, QFT... There is no theoretical synthesis of QM as a theory, It is more like an imperfect predictive operator.

The thing is, there is no reason to believe randomness is fundamental. If you don't look, you won't find anything. I've been thinking and reading about this almost everyday for 9 years now. What I have found is mesmerizing, a huge faith in randomness mostly based on weak and incomplete arguments.

I haven't try to falsify anything by mocking, I just expressed my feeling about it. I am ready to bet anything you like on the fact that Quantum Gravity theory will only be achieved within a realistic theory demonstrating that randomness is emergent.

Superposition being real is a belief. It is a mathematical equation... Which does not correspond to what is being observed as a result of a measurement.

I think I've said enough to at least demonstrate that a causal theory with randomness as being emergent is not only possible but probable. Randomness has been adopted, nearly a hundred years ago, more for historical reasons in a fight for prestige than from true scientific reasoning...

48

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 23/10/2019 21:09:29 »

Superpositions means the probability of finding the state of a particle is 50% up and 50% down.

I'm no QM expert, but are you saying that superposition is confined to spin measurements, and to 50/50 probabilities? Given what you say below, I don't think you mean that, but it sounds like just an epistemological assertion:  I toss a coin and catch it under my hand and don't know if it's heads or not.  That's not superposition, but your description here seems to indicate it being your understanding of it.

It does not mean it is in a real superposition.

I've never heard of 'real superposition' as distinct from a different sort of superposition. Kindly give an example or a link or something. You've really lost me with all this.

You say for you what is real is what can be measured or detected.

I said that under my preferred view, what is real to X is what has been measured by X. It has nothing to do with what can be measured.

You can't detect a superposition.

Interference is one way superposition is detected. A simple lack of knowledge does not explain interference.

The MWI is special because it tries to include the superposition in parallel worlds, but in the end, it is a causal set in many worlds instead of one.

I don't know your personal understanding of MWI.  There's typically the actual-splitting-worlds interpretation (De Witt) where ontologically distinct worlds result from a measurement, and then there's the relative state formulation (Everett) which is just one thing.  The former has serious problems in my opinion, but the latter has problems as well.

The farthest star we could see has an impact on us due to gravity, even though you can neglect it in practice because it is too small.

Not negligible since there's so bloody many of those distant stars.  They have more effect on our potential energy than do the nearby objects.

There is no proof that randomness is fundamental.

Of course not.  Neither Bohm nor Everett have any randomness in their interpretations, but some others do. Einstein had a significant distaste for it, but most of the QM interpretations at his time posited randomness. I'd love to hear his take on some of the more modern ones.

Now, if you take only a very small number of particles and you have no prior information on them, your power of prediction becomes minimal.

I'd say the particles do not meaningfully exist at all given no prior information on them. I suppose Bohm would say otherwise since he posits a measurement-independent reality.

Unrealistic interpretations are not better, they are worst because they all demand more free parameters.

One that is free of contradictions seems better than one with them, but with fewer 'free parameters'.  Not sure what you consider these free parameters to be.  What's your QM interpretation of choice?  Causal sets is not a QM interpretation.  Not without unification with QM at least. I like the relational one (Rovelli, 1994) for the reasons I've posted in this thread.

You don't read carefully. I must admit my writing is generally a high condensate. If you want to understand me you have to read all my posts on this discussion and think about it. But maybe you don't have the background or you just have too much faith in your own beliefs.

I wrote 50-50% is used as an example for simplicity.

Most people think the superposition is real before the measurement and then collapses randomly to a specific value when there is a measurement or an interaction with the system.

What we know is, from our prior knowledge on the system, we can use the wave function to predict what are the possible states at a later measurement. The square of the wave function is a probability distribution which gives you the probability of any specific state within a distribution of possibilities. The measurement gives you a specific state as a result of new knowledge.

The long debate is, why this probability distribution (superposition) seems irreducible but the measurement still gives only specific states. Superposition is never observed.

1- The old rational point of view is simple, there is things you don't know that you need to know in order to predict the exact final state.  This point of view splits into two categories but both mean more work to be done:

A- You can get all the necessary knowledge 

B- There is hidden knowledge you cannot obtain because of the structure and the mechanism.

Category A seems to have been eliminated but there are still loop-holes.

2- Randomness is intrinsic to the system. The major problem is the randomness is not random but follows a complex set of rules giving specific distributions and so on. How is it even possible? This is ridiculous. Applying randomness ad nauseam to vacuum up to cosmology and hoping the models are good. What a joke! This makes good sci-fi stories and that's it from the theoretical point of view.


I told you about my interpretation already. Read my last post and think of it within a causal set.

49

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 22:17:59 »

On the measurement problem by Sabine Hossenfelder:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/

When I speak of the wave function of the Universe, I don't speak of a function giving probabilities but a real function which includes all wave-particles having real trajectories and their intrinsic properties (space-time included). The QM wave-function is not real but represents our expectations due to our limited knowledge. In that sense, I am not a realist. Though QM wave-function includes a part of reality demonstrated by its predictive power which comes from the limited but valid prior knowledge.

50

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 21:31:55 »

Aharonov and his team have lately demonstrated a dependency of the phase of photons and their positions on interference patterns. Not knowing the phase adds to the uncertainty. Not explained by QM random interpretations.

51

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 20:15:52 »

Superpositions means the probability of finding the state of a particle is 50% up and 50% down. It does not mean it is in a real superposition. You say for you what is real is what can be measured or detected. You can't detect a superposition. Superposition just means you don't have the necessary prior information. Superpositions have never been measured. You either measure up or down. Here I use the 50-50% up down example for simplicity.

The MWI is special because it tries to include the superposition in parallel worlds, but in the end, it is a causal set in many worlds instead of one. There are big problems in the justifications of the cause of the splitting anyway.

Forget the specific theory called Causal Sets Theory, just think of how GR works as a causal set. The farthest star we could see has an impact on us due to gravity, even though you can neglect it in practice because it is too small. Now take a particle and apply this principle to all other interactions...

There is no proof that randomness is fundamental. If you are a tiny part of a huge causal set, you will be stuck with probabilities in practice without having any fundamental randomness. When you throw a ball in the macroscopic world, you can easily get enough information to predict the trajectory but you can't predict with a 100% certainty the exact trajectory, but you could if you had the information on all the rest of the Universe. Now, if you take only a very small number of particles and you have no prior information on them, your power of prediction becomes minimal. Your uncertainty was small for the ball but it is huge for the particles... QM gives the same thing but we need to describe the causal connections for all interactions! And there is quantization, which cause uncertainty by itself in practice (sudden unpredictable steps needing more prior knowledge).

Unrealistic interpretations are not better, they are worst because they all demand more free parameters. Show me a good explanations on why the Universe is the way it is. By Occam's razor, the best should be the one with less free parameters... It is not realistic because it is not real...

52

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are my atoms not flying apart? Please Hurry - May Have Limited Time Left

« on: 22/10/2019 08:05:52 »

Gravity not being a force is Einstein's interpretation of his own theory. It was not fundamental in his theory. He doesn't not describe matter and particles but its behavior in space and time as if they were centers of mass in a gravitational field. It is his interpretation of his fields equations in the absence of a description of how the energy is exchanged. He did not do the maths alone. In the end, maybe it is not a force but energy must be conserved somehow. When you consider QM, there is no energy without particles. And there is no limit to how large a particle can be but the size of the Universe.

Imagine you look from the Earth at two large stars. These two stars come closer together. According to GR, their emissions are redshifted from your point of view. Why? Energy must be conserved. If you have particles mediating gravity and the distance between the two stars is shorter, the wavelength is shorter and the frequency is higher for particles mediating gravity. If they have a single wavelength in-between, the gravitational energy increases in the field while the wavelength of the particles inside the stars increases and their energy decreases. These particles, or rather their oscillations travel at the speed of light. The energy is transferred from the stars particles to the gravitons in-between relative to you. Not only energy is conserved but you can't eliminate gravity by blocking it because you need to put an object with a size larger than the distance in-between to stop or dampen the gravitational field, which is impossible. And in fact, the angular size observed is larger by the same amount as the gravitational redshift in real observations of stars and other celestial objects... Not only that but the speed of light becomes a true constant for all observers... It is the wavelength which truly changes according to the gravitational potential in agreement with GR. Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect included. GR speaks of redshifts of bodies, QM speaks of wavelength of particles but no gravity is included.

53

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 02:35:15 »

"Unifying the theories cannot be as trivial as mere application of the principle, else it would have been done."

It is not trivial because we are stuck with probabilities in experiments. Bohm's theory is just an example but it does not go far enough. There are many others like causal sets or the Many-Worlds, which is a weirder kind. The thing is when you look at QM from a causal sets point of view, it explains so many things without any contradiction that it is just striking. And this is how GR works. 

54

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 01:26:00 »

Moreover, there is always holes in any successful theory. I say, rather than trying to fill the holes with everything we could imagine, we should start with the minimum necessary and then add on things from a minimalist perspective. If I remember  correctly, the theoretical estimation of the vacuum energy is 120 orders of magnitude higher than what is being observed at cosmological scale... 1 to the power 120! This is why it is impossible to produce black holes at the LHC but according to some theories, it should be possible.

55

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 22/10/2019 01:15:45 »

I was not trying to argue with you, Halc, but I was rather trying to point the flaws in the point of view of what is usually being considered as mainstream. If you ask theoretical physicists, most of them will tell you that there is no mainstream in theoretical physics.

Essentially, what I say is Einstein built his theory by following Mach's principle. It is extraordinary successful. Why not use Mach's principle to unify QM and GR to get a Quantum theory which includes gravity? With my explanations, this is quite logical and resounding. Isn't it?

56

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are my atoms not flying apart? Please Hurry - May Have Limited Time Left

« on: 21/10/2019 21:28:11 »

Look how neutrons, neutrinos and other interactions are measured... You will see I am correct. This is all inference from EM field and momentum exchanged.

57

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 21/10/2019 19:33:26 »

Science is based on reality. A scientific who denies reality is like a marathon runner who shoot himself in the foot at the start of the race...

58

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are my atoms not flying apart? Please Hurry - May Have Limited Time Left

« on: 21/10/2019 19:22:20 »

Photons have a mass but no proper mass. A proper mass is just a mass going slower than C, with everything that comes with it.

Photons are detectable. What is real might not be all detectable directly. For example, gravitons exchanged between the Earth and the Moon may not be detectable because it is a symmetrical exchange, the total flux is null except for the energy lost in tides and changes in the trajectories. Furthermore, it is probably a fundamental relation between all particles which can only be influenced by gravity. If you try to measure the gravitons between two bodies, you can only influence them by adding a mass in between. What you will measure is gravity...

When a particle is measured, it is only the EM field and possibly the inertial mass which are detected. Does this mean only the EM field is real?

59

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 21/10/2019 18:58:47 »

Halc, I was not talking about you but physicists who debated about a universe from nothing.  This is probably where you got the idea.

Particles do not appear without a cause. This is an interpretation, not a fact. Look for the 'measurement problem' in QM. We know that the measurement must influence the outcome of a measurement but QM is blind on this subject. This leads to an easy explanation for randomness: you need a theoretical mechanism for the measurement process and you need the wave function of a sufficient causal part of the universe to collapse the randomness. For example, if you take only two particles in your experiment, you minimize your knowledge about the particles because you neglect all other relations of the ensemble. It is like sending a rocket to Mars while neglecting the influence of the Moon, the Sun and all the rest of the Universe. For the measurement problem, this leads to mixed states with no pure states of entanglement. What it means is the measurement of a single particle is maximally influenced by the measurement and what is measured is a mixture of the entanglement of the particle with the detector and with the rest of the Universe. This is how randomness appears in experiments at a particle scale and why we can predict with high confidence the trajectory of a space probe...

You must take account of all important causal relations to have a power of prediction.

Here, Universe with a capital 'U' means everything.

60

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why are my atoms not flying apart? Please Hurry - May Have Limited Time Left

« on: 21/10/2019 01:25:36 »

Space expands only when you have more energy of expansion than contraction. Space does not expand by itself.

There was no problem until it was demonstrated to expand at an increasing rate at the cosmological distances. The extra energy needed for this accelerated expansion is called Dark Energy. Forget models, just stick to observations. Whatever Dark energy is, it does not expand space at a galactic scale or smaller. Everything else is hypothetical.