Parallel Universes

[Sapiens]

[Sapiens]

Re: Parallel Universes

LOL, can't wait for my very own kit to create my own universes down in the cellar.

[cjppjc]

Re: Parallel Universes

Good god. I just watched four parts of that. These guys speak with much too much certainty, when in 10 years all that is thought correct now will be though of differently.
Sorry I couldn't go any futher. Did they finally get to proving parallel universes?


Or as someone once said; String theory, because it's what's hot.

[marvenger]

Re: Parallel Universes

I don't think they can physically prove anything yet but the math makes sense apparently. Sounds like economics. from the maths, two parrallel universes or membranes could collide and create our universe, the collision is the big bang.

[cjppjc]

Re: Parallel Universes

I don't think they can physically prove anything yet but the math makes sense apparently. Sounds like economics. from the maths, two parrallel universes or membranes could collide and create our universe, the collision is the big bang.

Or not.:rolleyes:

[Guest]

Re: Parallel Universes

Well, evidently there must be "something" beyond the end of all known matter, no?? Duh. At very least, this investigation is not engaged in a specious exercise. Even we Neanderthal 21st Century humans should be able to intuit that much.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Parallel Universes

Quantum Mechanics as the ever more bizarre and inscrutable calculations of geniuses that we are unable to understand ...

No. There is an alternative.

I recomment to your consideration Lewis Little's "The Theory of Elementary Waves" (TEW). It provides a completely alternative explanation that is quite more common sensical, without resort to the bizarre paradoxes of Quantum Theory. The key notion is that the wave like aspects of light (like gravity!) travel "upstream", in the opposite direction of the photon particles. These "elementary waves" guide the path of photons from the emitter (your flashlight, say) to the detector (your eyeball, say.) It is not, as you've been told, that light is an odd couple of a wave and a particle traveling through life together. Rather the a priori wave guides the particle.

Granted, some fine physicists (I am not even a novice one) find serious and fatal flaws with TEW. The most serious such flaw seems to be that TEW is refuted by the experiments demonstrating Bell's theorem. These Bell theorem experiments show that what is measured at one location instantly affects what is measured at a separate, far away location.

Because these Bell's theorem experiments prove that the bizarre non-local affects predicted by Quantum Mechanics really do exist, they therefore show that no "common sense" (local affects only) theory (such as TEW) can possibly be correct.

However a new result Disproofs of Bell, GHZ, and Hardy Type Theorems and the Illusion of Entanglement (April 2009, Oxford University, Joy Christian) purports to demonstrate that Bell's theorem is fundamentally flawed, and that the experiments demonstrating Bell's theorem do not demonstrate quantum mechanical non-locality.

This is good news for Little's TEW. It's main stumbling block, Bell's theorem, may have just been shot down. However this new Oxford paper is far beyond my comprehension, so I can not pass judgement on it either way.

P.S. An informal summary of Joy Christian's and others attempts to rethink Bell's Theorem can be found at http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/20...er/001833.html -- Added 2 July 2009.

P.P.S. Related works and replies of Joy Christian can be found at http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...=Joy_Christian -- Added 2 July 2009

P.P.P.S. See Brian Atkins' message at http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/20...er/001833.html for more recent discussion of Quantum Mechanics.-- Added 2 July 2009

P.P.P.P.S. There's a biography of Bell and brief description of his inequality at Answers.com: John Stewart Bell. -- Added 8 July 2009

P.P.P.P.P.S. There's a decent explanation of Bell's inequality at Spooky Action at a Distance - An Explanation of Bell's Theorem. -- Added 8 July 2009

[marvenger]

Re: Parallel Universes

I kind of like the idea of parrallel universes, gets you away from thinking you are the be all and end all. But I suppose us humans will take it as an invitation to try and conquer some other dimensions. But infinite universes means there's going to be infnitely smarter beings than us and we may just end up being severely reprimanded

[Guest]

Re: Parallel Universes

The Australians are in a parallel universe really when you think about it. Walking upside down. Who ever heard of that?

I kind of like the idea of parrallel universes, gets you away from thinking you are the be all and end all. But I suppose us humans will take it as an invitation to try and conquer some other dimensions. But infinite universes means there's going to be infnitely smarter beings than us and we may just end up being severely reprimanded

[marvenger]

Re: Parallel Universes

we've just had some crap business investment figures come out finally guaranteeing official recession. the time dimension seems a bit out here. maybe all that hanging upside down and blood pooling in the head is slowing experience of events.

[Finster]

Re: Parallel Universes

Quantum Mechanics as the ever more bizarre and inscrutable calculations of geniuses that we are unable to understand ...

No. There is an alternative.

I recomment to your consideration Lewis Little's "The Theory of Elementary Waves" (TEW). It provides a completely alternative explanation that is quite more common sensical, without resort to the bizarre paradoxes of Quantum Theory. The key notion is that the wave like aspects of light (like gravity!) travel "upstream", in the opposite direction of the photon particles. These "elementary waves" guide the path of photons from the emitter (your flashlight, say) to the detector (your eyeball, say.) It is not, as you've been told, that light is an odd couple of a wave and a particle traveling through life together. Rather the a priori wave guides the particle.

Granted, some fine physicists (I am not even a novice one) find serious and fatal flaws with TEW. The most serious such flaw seems to be that TEW is refuted by the experiments demonstrating Bell's theorem. These Bell theorem experiments show that what is measured at one location instantly affects what is measured at a separate, far away location.

Because these Bell's theorem experiments prove that the bizarre non-local affects predicted by Quantum Mechanics really do exist, they therefore show that no "common sense" (local affects only) theory (such as TEW) can possibly be correct...

The alternative "theories" that I'm aware of aren't in conflict with Bell's theorem or QM in general. Rather they seek an alternative way of visualizing things to the (now mainstream) Copenhagen Interpretation. The bone of contention isn't the experimental results but rather the way in which one "understands" them in terms of his own psychoepistemology.

[Finster]

Re: Parallel Universes

... But far as I'm aware no serious physicist disputes those results…

Well, the non-locality, instant action at a distance, explanation of these results (or at least my limited layman's understanding thereof) sure sticks in my craw.
So I end up gravitating towards explanations that seem less bizarre, and quite a bit simpler, even if no self respecting physicist would be seen in the same library alcove with the article.

Me too, TPC. If two theories both agree with experiment and one is simpler and more sensible-seeming than the other, I'll always go with the simpler and sensibler.

You would probably appreciate Wallace's book. (Link to parent thread: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...666#post107666) It's called Paradox Lost just because it aims to show that QM, properly understood, ought not involve paradoxes, or internal conflicts. If it appears there is a paradox, then somewhere in the reasoning is a logical error or incorrect premise.

There has been a lot of writing that seems to sensationalize the "weird" aspects of QM, even suggesting that it implies some kind of moral relativism. Or even that there is no such thing as objective reality ... what one person perceives is just as good as any other person. To such suggestions, I respond with a kind of darwinism: If you insist that that tractor-trailer rig speeding your way doesn't really exist, you can seek to prove it by stepping into the road ... and you will be removed from the gene pool...

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Parallel Universes

The alternative "theories" that I'm aware of aren't in conflict with Bell's theorem or QM in general.

The experimental evidence for QM is robust enough that it would be easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than to postulate a successful theory that could be experimentally distinguished from QM.

However my experience in foundational mathematics and later in computer software was that just getting the right answer wasn't a sufficient objective. Ones understanding had to be elegant enough that it could fit in ones mind with some capacity left over. That way one could build on the understanding. This is sometimes called "beauty" by mathematicians and programmers. Well, it's probably called "beauty" in other disciplines as well, though such would be mostly outside my experience.

QM doesn't fit in most people's head. Even Feynman, as I recall, who had an inordinately large mind, complained of this.

Little's alternative (see earlier post above) changes one basic construct, by having the wave and the particle separate. The wave travels into the "source", guiding the particle back out, along wave-like paths. Conventional QM has the wave and particle traveling together, as some sort of split personality. I cannot evaluate the serious physics of such alternatives, but it sure makes things easier for us lay idiots to think about. Indeed there is another instance of this pattern that is now so familiar to anyone with modest scientific training that we hardly notice, and that would be gravity.

As I recall, we see something like this in economics as well, when it is asked (hopefully with tongue in cheek) of something that works in practice "but does it work in theory?"

A beautiful, elegant theory is essential to the further advancement in certain ways of any discipline. We cannot rest until we find such. This is not to claim that such can always be found; it might just condemn us to eternal toils. But if that is the inherent property of some discipline, then toil on we must.

[Finster]

Re: Parallel Universes

The experimental evidence for QM is robust enough that it would be easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than to postulate a successful theory that could be experimentally distinguished from QM.

However my experience in foundational mathematics and later in computer software was that just getting the right answer wasn't a sufficient objective. Ones understanding had to be elegant enough that it could fit in ones mind with some capacity left over. That way one could build on the understanding. This is sometimes called "beauty" by mathematicians and programmers. Well, it's probably called "beauty" in other disciplines as well, though such would be mostly outside my experience.

QM doesn't fit in most people's head. Even Feynman, as I recall, who had an inordinately large mind, complained of this.

Little's alternative (see earlier post above) changes one basic construct, by having the wave and the particle separate. The wave travels into the "source", guiding the particle back out, along wave-like paths. Conventional QM has the wave and particle traveling together, as some sort of split personality. I cannot evaluate the serious physics of such alternatives, but it sure makes things easier for us lay idiots to think about. Indeed there is another instance of this pattern that is now so familiar to anyone with modest scientific training that we hardly notice, and that would be gravity.

As I recall, we see something like this in economics as well, when it is asked (hopefully with tongue in cheek) of something that works in practice "but does it work in theory?"

A beautiful, elegant theory is essential to the further advancement in certain ways of any discipline. We cannot rest until we find such. This is not to claim that such can always be found; it might just condemn us to eternal toils. But if that is the inherent property of some discipline, then toil on we must.

Yep, I think that's where the serious debate remains; not on whether QM "works" but how to apprehend it. Bohm's hidden variables version, for example, comes up with the same answers, but with a different physical "picture".

This is where I run into problems with formulations like the "many universes" theory. Is it more plausible to imagine multiple entire universes than it is to imagine, say, limited super-luminal phenomena in just one? Especially when contact between such multiple universes is not possible anyway?

Not for me, anyway!

[ASH]

Re: Parallel Universes

Little's alternative (see earlier post above) changes one basic construct, by having the wave and the particle separate. The wave travels into the "source", guiding the particle back out, along wave-like paths. Conventional QM has the wave and particle traveling together, as some sort of split personality.

Hi Cow. This description of particle/wave duality in conventional QM doesn't really match the conventional picture I learned. How's your linear algebra? I admit mine isn't stellar, but I think the mainstream picture is actually pretty clear. The problem is the connection between the abstractions of math and the tangible world -- and the introduction of ad hoc rules that happen to fit experience.

The establishment picture is not of a wave or particle traveling together, but rather an exercise in linear algebra: particles and waves are viewed as alternative basis sets in which a given state can be represented, and notionally, you could imagine a system being in an eigenstate of one of these representations (i.e. a "pure" particle or wave) -- but the mathematical relationship between the representations is such that states which are simultaneously eigenstates of both representations don't exist. It's not what the thing is (particle or wave), but the fact that particles and waves are alternative -- but incompatible -- ways to express the same thing. To draw a very broad analogy, there is only one ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle, but if you write it in base-pi, it takes a single digit to write out; in base-10 it takes an infinite number of digits. The fact that you can write the same quantity in multiple ways, depending upon what number system you are using, probably isn't all that weird to a programmer.

If you accept the mathematical abstraction -- that physically tangible objects can behave in essentially mathematical ways -- then the whole particle/wave thing seems pretty straight-forward. I think the most unsatisfactory thing about the Copenhagen interpretation is the role of measurement and the associated ideas of entanglement and non-locality. Why should measurement put the system into an eigenstate of the measured parameter, and why should this instantly force resolution of linked variables? It's a bit too much like the universe being put on the spot, and scrambling to get its story straight at all locations for the sake of consistency.

I won't claim that the Copenhagen interpretation makes intuitive sense -- and I'm certainly not the guy to improve upon it. Still, at one level, we can be empirical. The justification "because it works" is another way of saying "because predictions based upon this model match what we measure empirically". I'm sure further progress will be made on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and measurement in particular, but I don't think its counter-intuitive nature disbars conventional QM as a "reasonable" description of nature. After all, our intuition about what makes physical sense is informed by our experiences in the macroscopic world -- locality seems reasonable "because it works" at our distance scale. If non-local phenomena impacted the evolution of our brains or our everyday experiences in such a way that an intuitive grasp of it figured on our survival and day-to-day living, it too would seem reasonable. Therefore, I don't think that our physical intuition is at all a good guide for what is reasonable in physical law (except, perhaps, for phenomena that play out at our distance scale). That's why I can accept QM in its conventional formulation without being bothered by the picture it paints.

For any who are interested, I highly recommend the first chapter of Modern Quantum Mechanics by J. J. Sakurai, which is an exceptionally clean and clear discussion of the mainstream interpretation of QM.