[daveshorts]

When you say that Quantum physics is getting too mathematical and not grounded in experiment this is a bit like saying that all footballers are paid too much. Quantum mechanics affects just about everything in physics, you may only hear about the string theorists, but there are tens of thousands of scientists out there using Quantum mechanics to investigate basic physics, and build things using it.

 Even if the whole theoretical basis was overturned the tranistors, lasers, new materials, all of chemistry and all the experimental results that have been obtained would still exist. It is probable if nothing else because there is a huge literature of experimets that quantum mechanics explains, that any change will be a subtle one at high energies, low temperatures or other extreme conditions a bit like relativity is to newtonian physics.

It would probably  annoy/affect some hard core theorists, but everyone else would either be able to work around it.

The deeper socialogical point is interesting. I think that rebellion against science have been happening regularly ever since poison gas was invented in WW1. There is a problem that science is now so huge that the practitioners have a hard time getting an overview let alone the public, but I think this is indicative of the univers being complex and the limitations of common sense rather than of science. It may mean that science needs a careful (not too enthusiastic) PR strategy, but anything more radical would start to stop it being science...

[rosy]

If people are "believing" in the science rather than the scientific method that put it there, then there are clearly potential pitfalls. For science to continue as science we need to all be aware that there is a theoretical possibility of any of it being wrong.
If this were drummed into kids in school then we could move on with our lives from there using the predictions science gives us and occasionally, without too much fuss, revising bits of exactly how we think it works.
Ah well... it's a nice idea.

I shouldn't have thought that avian flu would turn the world population against scienctists, because that really is just a natural phenomenon... zoonoses happen, we have to deal with them. Possibly cheap air travel isn't going to help but that's hardly the scientists' fault at this stage.
If a microbiologist caused an equilvalent epidemic by inadvertantly releasing some organism they were uing for research into the environment it might be different of course. Which is why they're pretty damn careful not to (use bugs with an absolute requirement for some rare amino acid, for example, so that they won't grow elsewhere.

I don't rate your chances of tying in even the quantisation of energy with common sense, let alone the further reaches of physics... on a macro scale quantisation just makes my head hurt.... but all the same, it provides a damn good explaner/predictor of exactly how really very complicated molecules will react! Not to mention the spectroscopy which allows us to figure out what we've got/made.

Mind you, if you do find a way let me know 'cos it might make my life easier!!!!

[chimera]

quote:Originally posted by daveshorts


[1] When you say that Quantum physics is getting too mathematical and not grounded in experiment this is a bit like saying that all footballers are paid too much. [........]

[2] The deeper socialogical point is interesting. I think that rebellion against science have been happening regularly ever since poison gas was invented in WW1.

Good weather's arriving a day late - [] but it'll be 25 C+ tomorrow. Yes.

[1] When I say 'inappropriately applied', I do not mean 'wrong', just like when I say solutions are 'nonsenical' they are not 'ridiculous', just that they do not make sense. They are not intuitive, or flow from normal experience. They are not connected to the rest of our 'body of knowledge'. Yet they should be all of the above, and letting it fester as it currently is for whatever reason is bad, simply put. Such a bridge as I describe is of much more importance to us as humanity than just as some nice feather in our cap, if only we could somehow fix it at some point in time, as some minor afterthought. Oh, much more than that. Such a vacuum area between bodies of knowledge can prove to be very costly to our development in the longrun, and lead to all kinds of possible things going haywire in our psychological self-image.

[2] Maybe you should read the 'life story' of Fritz Haber. He not only invented poison gas in the illusion it would perhaps shorten the war, but which instead lead to his wife Clara Immerwahr killing herself, on the eve of the Battle of Verdun, in protest. He's also responsible for our ability to bind nitrogen so efficiently you can say at least 2 billion people on this planet would not be alive without him - for simple lack of food.

So there is a difference in your own idea of responsibilities, and what history eventually makes of it, I'd say.

The living are the dead on holiday.  -- Maurice de Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

[chimera]

quote:Originally posted by rosy



[1]I shouldn't have thought that avian flu would turn the world population against scienctists, because that really is just a natural phenomenon... zoonoses happen, we have to deal with them. Possibly cheap air travel isn't going to help but that's hardly the scientists' fault at this stage.

[2] I don't rate your chances of tying in even the quantisation of energy with common sense, let alone the further reaches of physics... on a macro scale quantisation just makes my head hurt.... but all the same, it provides a damn good explaner/predictor of exactly how really very complicated molecules will react! Not to mention the spectroscopy which allows us to figure out what we've got/made.

Mind you, if you do find a way let me know 'cos it might make my life easier!!!!

[1] It's more the expectations: you are a nurse in a village with a shortage of medicine trying to help desperate people with dying children in their arms and coughing in your general direction, not really believing the small supply of drugs you have there, you are probably keeping the rest for your rich white friends, they just read about that horrible vaccination error where 5000 got the real McCoy by mistake, they are pissed off and you are available. Say again?

Who invented those airplanes btw, the economy is in ruins because of foreign technology, the WTO is a.... need I continue? Stuff like that can blow up in your face in minutes. It's not your fault they expect all that from you, I know. Just don't think they are very sympathetic to your erudite reasoning at this precise junction in their lives.

[2] As I said in my earlier post, and also to Dave, I don't think QM is wrong, and that trying to bridge it with classical stuff is anything but quixotic. I just think that you are giving the best reason here that I tried to expound earlier, it only makes your head ache, and it does not sound as if you're really happy with it, if it weren't for the results.

My view on the whole matter in a nutshell: our classical world works via Newton, because Newtons laws are only the fuzzified detritus of the more basic QM ones. Only problem, you cannot draw a straight line between the probabilistic results of QM and the fuzzy vagueness that is the classical world. No way Jose.

Oh, the QM results work, the theories are fine, incomprehensible at times and counterintuitive, but fine. Yet there is no single way to backtrack the results via any known classical mechanism. Our failure to come up with that is our single biggest defeat so far. We're stuck with QM statistics and high speed particle chases, yikes. And worse, we have theorems that tell us that this is going to stay this way, by act of Law.

So I'm trying to tackle this on several fronts at the same time, by combining old and new theories in new ways, finding loopholes in supposedly uncrackable logic, and just plain dogged stubbornness.

In QCD you have three quarks that can come in 8 colours. Now how can you marry the idea of three-valued logic with an eight-valued one in an exact way? Well, one way would be to take the cosine of 20 degrees on the first 'circle' or quark, 40 on the second, and 80 on the third and multiply and see it equals exactly 1/8th. Mmm.

[daveshorts]

What do you mean by not being able to draw a line from QM to classical physics? If you look at most big things with QM they behave as they would with classical mechanics. In the same way that you can approximate relativity to newtonian mechanics in some circumstances, or QM to wave theories of light to optics... (We can't do QM to General relativity, as this is keeping lots of theorists busy atm) We can't go the other way, but why should we be able to? we can't with any other part of physics...

QM is probably involves more maths to do this but it still works. You can use classical analogies for bits of QM, wave analogies are very useful, and for what I do balls rolling down bumpy slopes happen to come out of the maths, but we are fundamentally creatures of the classical world rather than the quantum one so it is going to be hard work. I wonder whether you could build a version of Quake working on bits of QM and bring up a generation of kids to whom microscopic scale behaviours are more intuitive.

I think there are various other formulations of QM that produce the same maths but involve different interpretations of what is going on, which may be more to your taste..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

[chimera]

quote:Originally posted by daveshorts



[1] What do you mean by not being able to draw a line from QM to classical physics? If you look at most big things with QM they behave as they would with classical mechanics. In the same way that you can approximate relativity to newtonian mechanics in some circumstances, or QM to wave theories of light to optics... (We can't do QM to General relativity, as this is keeping lots of theorists busy atm) We can't go the other way, but why should we be able to? we can't with any other part of physics...

[2] QM is probably involves more maths to do this but it still works. You can use classical analogies for bits of QM, wave analogies are very useful, and for what I do balls rolling down bumpy slopes happen to come out of the maths, but we are fundamentally creatures of the classical world rather than the quantum one so it is going to be hard work. I wonder whether you could build a version of Quake working on bits of QM and bring up a generation of kids to whom microscopic scale behaviours are more intuitive.

[3] I think there are various other formulations of QM that produce the same maths but involve different interpretations of what is going on, which may be more to your taste..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

[1] Oh, I know you don't even need QM for most RL things. Some QM math does get into trouble on larger scales, tho. Infinities do that.

Marrying QM to GR is easy. Just solve gravity, and that's that. []

[2] Wouldn't that be cruel and unusual punishment at this point in time? Anyway, spawning/ teleporting and being able to shoot improbable voltages at your opponent doesn't really sound Newton to me... know any games or educational stuff that actually uses such things? I've only seen some QM physics/chemical modeling stuff, mostly highly DIY Linux/Unix gear, not exactly for noobs, an Alpine learning curve, and more toggles than your average nuclear powerplant. Real fun stuff.

[3] Cool page. Shame they don't have more on Bell and 'hidden variables'. Know any good ones on that? Remember something about a guy called DeWitt or so who'd done work on that,  should get into that, too. Wonder how that theorem works out with what's essentially trinary logic, not binary, just have a suspicion it does not really 'covers all bases' on that, which could be really wicked.

added: Could you tell me more about what you do that resembles balls rolling down bumpy slopes, I just remembered reading something once about Pachinko (Japanese falling marble game) and QM, can't remember exactly what, tho....

[Tronix (OP)]

See, this is why im just an ecologist/enigneer (or at least going to be) so it not my job to have a headache. but their fun to have willingly.

I have seen alot of talk about quantum physics, and have seen almost all of the NOVA specials about the vast powers at work in physics and almost all the cool models for explianing it in layman terms, and it has seemed to come a long way from Einstien and Newton.

But i dont know if i mentioned this, but QM does seem to have a correlation with relgion in that its a far reaching explination of things. Religions explian the universe in simple and often mythical means, of great gods battling in the end of the world or the Quinetessintial arch-woman watching over us as a madien, mother, and crone all at one and one at a time (which is kinda complecated, in a way, come to think of it), and QM explains the forces and machinations of the world with vastly complex and yet stupifiyingly simple and obvious formulae. WIth Unified Field Theroy, One forumula to explain it all, and one book to explain the ways of life.

but im starting to bash this argument to bits, so a bit of fun digression, Einstien took his quest for two part unified field theory to his grave, and now we have added strong and weak atomic forces to this equation. Personally, i think we should continue to add more quintessial factors, like maybe transdimensional forces. If string theory is right in saying that their is more than one dimension, whom are we to assume that these dimesnions follow our rules? what if they have no atoms? no magnetism? no (and i really mean not a bit of) gravity? A world with no permanent structure? And what of more philisophical forces. if no one confirms the exsistance of a chair, is it really there? what of belief itself? is it a "force"? I think these questions shoudl be asked, and no assumption made that the universe behaves how are math predicts, becuase though forumlas may (but not likely) are perfect, the numbers we put in, and the things we base them off of are rather limted. we only knwo what physical forces happen on planet earth, and we havent bothered to look for others in other places becuase of that. what if the geothermal dynamics on mars are completly different than anythign we dared to calculate. what if we find something as weird as gravitional "layers" on jupiter, or that or wind forumla are perpendicuarly screwed up on uranus. Time may even flow different in different places, or the one im a biggest proponent on, that we are flying or hyperdrive or wormhold dirve or panckae drive spaceships through a nebula, and suddenly slam into a big ass vaccum whale or some other creature that doesnt need air or gravity to survive, just the gas feeding bacteria in the "cool" parts of the nebula. Life always seems to find a way, maybe even into outer space. To recap, i dont thin we should assume we have the big picuture, and we should be looking to prove ourselves wrong in alot of cases. but thats kooky me.

well, that was refreshing.

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"If i cannot have company whose minds are clearly free, I would prefer to go alone."                  -Dr. Gideon Lincecum

The BPRD rejected my application becuase their brain-controled by Cthulhu Rip-offs. And im sure "Sparky" is sleeping with them too, kinky little firecracker she is...