Or An Electron Model Consistent with Electron-Positron Pair Production from High Energy Photons by Donald Bowen and Robert Mulkern. Don’t beat about the bush Oliver. But there is a high price to be paid for that understanding – admitting the existence of parallel universes. Tell us what you really think! He’s a cuckoo in the nest. Carroll said we can’t predict where this location will be, all we can do is calculate probabilities. She has no electron model, and QED has no foundation. Damn right it is. You definately need to watch the episodes concerning his “profound discoveries & interpretations” that only he could have made. Then he asked this: “What is the wave function?” Carroll asked if it’s a complete and comprehensive representation of the world, or whether we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality. I don’t think that is the case but I do think that there is some tying up of loose ends that will lead to thing people have lost sight of expecting any more. I am reliably informed that I am not alone in this. I just said this: “I think the problem is more widespread than you think. This is a conversation where I get to do something I’ve always wanted to do: Ask a real quantum physicist all of my questions about quantum physics. And yes, that is probably the most cogent description.So what is quantum mechanics, besides weird? In the case of very simple linear models of mechanics the dual solutions look like probability distributions – but they are not real. Samuel Goudsmit would have loved this paper, because along with George Uhlenbeck, he discovered electron spin. Quantum mechanics is a very successful theory that has impacted on many areas of physics, from pure theory to applications. Imagine a world where objects can be in two different places at the same time and cats are locked in sealed containers with flasks of poison and objects that spew radiation.In this counter intuitive fairyland, your intuition is false. (If they did, they would be taking far too much risk.) Please don’t tell me we’re still saying some strings are superior to others. Hence quantum field theory is up the creek without a paddle, and it’s been there for ninety years. Noted, Anders. Courtesy of some magical mysterious creation and annihilation operators? Sadly the comments are what you’d expect. The charge of a single electron does not polarise the vacuum, and an infinite number of electron-positron pairs do not emerge. If You Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics, You Die •You might exist in a world where questioning the truth of PEOPLE or ATOMS is not calculated to be adaptive, hence you... •You might exist in a world where questioning the truth of PEOPLE or … It almost gave Albert Einstein a nervious breakdown: It sounds as if this guy knows that a magnetic field is a “turn” field. Theoria Aposphasia? Electrons are not attracted to positrons because an infinite number of electron-positron pairs are popping in and out of existence. They seem to me to be dangerously close to being completely irrelevant. Andy: Thanks Greg. https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-to-quantize-something-and-why-is-it-so-hard-to-do-it-to-spacetime-in-particular. He is now my newest favorite comedian.Until next time. People say light doesn’t interact with light because of the mathematics of QED, even when there’s hard scientific evidence that light does interact with light. Or because an infinite number of virtual photons are popping in and out of existence. "Nobody understands quantum mechanics," Richard Feynman bluntly stated. I don't know, but . Here’s a selection: Alessandro Strumia said this: “Writing that physicists are not interested in understanding quantum mechanics and suggesting that physicists pushed out of the field those who tried is worse than inaccurate. Instead we get fairy tales and lies to children. Moreover nobody seems to know about Art Hobson’s explanation of the double slit experiment in his 2013 paper There are no particles, there are only fields. It doesn’t have a stochastic nature. The solution of the first-order optimality conditions imply the existence of two objects: a (primal) control of optimal trades, and a (dual) time-indexed probability distribution. The answer goes further to explain that as a result of the assumptions that it ends up as a core assumption to make the maths work that light does not interact with light. He tried to undermine Carroll’s claim that the leading journal rejected papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics. All the fairy tales, all the lies to children. The space does not contain free electrons and anti-electrons, and no, she hasn’t discovered anti-particles in the theory. Because it isn’t just Physical Review D that rejects papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Particles can be created and destroyed. They’ll peddle nonsense about quantum gravity reversing cause and effect, but they won’t print a paper on the nature of the electron. Richard Feynman once said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” While that may be true, it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t try. And that there are wrong-headed people in physics who will fight dirty to preserve the impasse that’s killing physics. I hate the way physics is withering on the vine because scientific progress has been stalled for decades. Uncertainty Study the uncertainty principle. Carroll started by quoting Feynman, who said this: “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics”. how our classical reality emerges from a fundamental quantum theory). Carroll isn’t, and quite right so. We will talk about this some other time, so keep the density matrix in mind. That’s not physics, that’s cargo-cult science. But hey, I’ve just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whoylwf-i0A . Take a look at Peter Woit’s blog. The guy is bang on. He’s part of the problem, not part of the solution. Exploring the quantum world. All the misconceptions. Or whether the wave function has no direct connection with reality at all. So much so that even Einstein found himself estranged from the field. It all sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? The solution to the wave equation can be interpreted as leading to the (proper) time indexed flow of a “probability” distribution. Quantum physics is a perturbative view of the world. It’s about the wave function and he gives a very nice explanation of how tracks are formed in the cloud chamber. See page 9 of Infeld’s 1965 article As I see it for more. Anyway, I digress; have we just been misinterpreting the facts? It's a world whose foundation is mortared by math that comes in two brands: abstract and mindbogglingly abstract.The brilliant Albert Einstein didn't believe in this realm, and yet he won a Nobel Prize for playing in it.This is the world of quantum mechanics, and it is %^$&#*@ weird. Jim Baggot said “this kind of stuff is dangerous and threatens to undermine the authority of science just when it is under unprecedented attack from anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific propaganda”. Mark Hillery said “Carroll’s piece paints a very misleading picture of the past and present of research in quantum physics”. PS: Sadly Martin van der Mark passed away on 27th January 2020. It says this: “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”. . The Copenhagen interpretation is literally that, an interpretation. The bottom line is that quantum physicists don’t understand their subject. I thought it was great. Unfortunately, “shut up and calculate” is the right response – but the real reasons for the truth of that statement needed to wait until the developments of optimal control theory in the 60’s and 70’s. Instead she tells us about “infinite dimensional space”. Get the picture? Does most of the theoretical quantum scientists realize how far behind in the cosmic dust they are being left by the rest of the physics community? (Nor did Dirac. I was impressed with it. how our classical reality emerges from a fundamental quantum theory). Carroll has said it loud and clear in an international newspaper. The thing about Woit is that he portrays himself as some white-knight champion of rationality, nobly defending physics from pseudoscience. And it looks like he’s touched a nerve. But prices don’t behave like that. Or do waves change from an open linear path to a closed chiral spin ½ path? Quantum mechanics says our world is nebulous, fuzzy, a haze of possibilities until it somehow snaps to attention upon an appropriate interaction, observation or measurement. I know the insight is aimed at people learning QM and as that is correct and I have nothing to add. Richard Feynman famously said of quantum mechanics, “I don’t understand it. The combination of the mass energy relation and the uncertainty principle causes this. So perhaps it is not that we have collected the right data for the last century but we have simply been interpreting it incorrectly. position, momentum, spin, any property) once observed. While I have substantial experience with both, I don’t claim to be a leading expert in either QM or PM. In contrast, I think that the physics detective blog has provided a space where people can raise non-mainstream issues and consider ideas that genuinely push forward the development of new perspectives in physics. “In a relativistic quantum system, the particle number is not a conserved quantity. Mind you, I thought this was excellent: Something is Rotten in the State of QED by Oliver Consa. The physicist are being taught that light does not interact with light because it is a required assumption of their analytical methods without which their theory end up up the creek without a paddle. He also said it’s surprising that physicists are OK with not understanding the most important theory they’ve got. The control problem is to minimize the price to hedge the option. Check out Sean Carroll’s New York Times article Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics. Andy: I’ll get back to you properly later. He’s a one-sided propagandist who censors the comments that point out the issues. I didn’t link to the physics detective. Woit isn’t just the Witchfinder General of String Theory. . In mathematics a goal is to often convert some system into linear algebra, where upon it is worked much more easily. Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't Understand Quantum Mechanics. In fact, differences in the underlying control problem lead to differences in the structure of the dual solution, just as you would expect. Hence, why should we pay attention to a statement of just one of these copies?” Because there is no multiverse, and Carroll is telling it how it is. It seemed mysterious to me, until I could prove to myself that it is entirely due to an interpretation of the dual solution implied by the optimal control problem. Lindgren and Liukkonen talk about understanding quantum mechanics but I think they should talk about understanding photons and electrons instead. The bottom line is that quantum physicists don’t understand their subject. is very very widely attributed to Feynman-- at the moment, a full-phrase exact match search on that in Google hits "about 16,500" pages. And I just loved that subtitle: Worse, they don’t seem to want to understand it. It was Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg who were so determined to oppose Schrodinger’s 1926 wave in a  closed path that they promoted Yakov Frenkel’s point-particle electron. Until next time. She says particles can be converted into other particles, but there’s absolutely no attempt to explain how. Hi John, I just thought I would share a link to an answer on quora to a question about why space time time is so hard to quantize. It is a theory of linear vector spaces and operators. Her equations are full of infinities because she’s using a point-particle electron. See Graham Farmelo;s 2010 article did Dirac predict the positron? IMHO they don’t understand how gravity works or how electromagnetism works, so they’re going in the wrong direction. I think this OpEd from The NY Times contains at least a few take-home points for the BB community. Worse, they don't seem to want to understand it." It was Pauli and Heisenberg and Dirac and Bohr who sidelined Charles Galton Darwin’s 1927 vector-wave electron, It was all downhill from there, it was nearly a hundred years ago, and it’s all so simple. Unlike Weinberg, my point of view on this has always been that it’s not quantum mechanics we don’t understand, it’s classical mechanics (i.e. He said this: “Few modern physics departments have researchers working to understand the foundations of quantum theory. Another great read John. In the theory of relativity, we can't solve the two-body problem. Electron papers must be rejected so you don’t find out that the Higgs mechanism truly is the toilet of the Standard Model. As you pointed out with the behaviour of traders, there are few, if any, real systems that behave like a perfectly random system. And then ask again, when I don’t understand the answer, which I usually don’t. You might think he spends his ample spare time attacking string theory, but under the covers he’s also promoting and protecting the status quo. None of it has anything to do with reality. This refers to an editorial in the July 15 1973 issue of Physical Review D written by Samuel Goudsmit, then editor-in-chief. And this: “I’d like to note that QED is a very simple theory as the photons have no direct self coupling”. As is “The charge of a single electron polarises the vacuum and an infinite number of electron-positron pairs emerge”. Perhaps it’s related to something Carroll said towards the end of his article. Oliver Consa has written an excellent article that really should make people question why QED has the status it does. “This sucker makes my eyes hurt”. I have commented on this topic here https://physicsdetective.com/the-theory-of-everything/#comment-2383. 80 years after Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, et al provided their important limitations on reality, we really have made no further mathematical progress in … It’s all of them. I completely agree with his point of view, both for physics and in finance. I was pleasantly surprised. His final words were “They may however come to the same conclusion I’ve just reached: best to ignore him, which I’ll try to do from now on”. . And then again, when I sort of understand… I also accidentally came accross a Wikipedia list of famous academic frauds and it added much insight as to the money grubbing that permeates modern science. That’s strong stuff. And how people like Woit are part of the problem, not part of the solution. GoletaBeach said “Sean Carroll’s op-ed left me unimpressed”. PS: I think the many-worlds multiverse is pseudoscience, but I still think Carroll was spot on in his NYT article. The guy absolutely nailed it. I’ll check him out Greg. That sort of position smacks more of religious zealotry than broad minded scientific enquiry. I took that as a reference to the weak measurement work by for example Aephraim Steinberg et al and Jeff Lundeen et al. Nevertheless, Randall's message is: you don't need to understand quantum mechanics to judge the statement. No matter what the sentence is, it is almost certainly incorrect, so “you can safely ignore” it. It’s the most intuitive thing in the world: If you don’t know where something is, it can be anywhere (or indeed nowhere); to know where it is you have to look. So I fully expect that the stochastic model of the Minkowski metric in L&L is not a real description of reality. And interesting too. See the past research page on the Lundeen lab website. But in addition I think things are real whether you observe them or not. . There is no new physics here. Oh phooey. Which means Woit is not your champion. What could be simpler? Unlike Weinberg, my point of view on this has always been that it’s not quantum mechanics we don’t understand, it’s classical mechanics (i.e. Is randomness just an idealistic illusion that it useful for some stuff, or is it the real basis of reality? It’s fake news”. And particles do not move the way that they do because of vacuum fluctuations. That we do. One is to not be too quick to put “quantum” in front of your idea as a way to convey that ‘it’s really basic.’ Quantum mechanics (QM) is a black box that no one really understands. Carroll said this attitude goes back to the 1920s and Niels Bohr, and that people who didn’t like it found themselves estranged from the field. I think gamma-gamma pair production is an example of the non-linear behaviour of energy in space. As a little demonstration of what I mean, I left a comment on Woit’s blog. . to be highly entertaining. I don't know, but . It delivers … Continue reading Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics → Quantum mechanics by itself is not hard to understand. So then you’ll say how can they have discovered the Higgs boson? See the 2011 physicsworld article top 10 breakthroughs of 2011, along with the secret lives of photons revealed and catching sight of the elusive wavefunction: Also see the ScienceMag article Furtive approach rolls back the limits of quantum uncertainty and the underlying Science paper Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer. . Quantum mechanics comes along and says that whole experience is misleading, and that the best you can ever do is to predict the probabilities of outcomes. Then you’ll understand the photon in the mirror-box, and then you’ll realise that mass is all down to E=mc². But for now, let me say that I think this: the Copenhagen interpretation is junk, and randomness is just an idealistic illusion that’s worse than useless. ‘If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.’ - Richard Feynman (And if anyone was at all likely to understand Quantum Mechanics it was Feynman or Einstein.) It certainly is. . Sounds like fun! They’ve been shying away from understanding it for the thick end of a hundred years, and it’s got to stop, because physics is trapped in an impasse and it’s dying. Or with a quantum fluctuation borrowing energy from the vacuum. Spontaneously, like worms from mud? He described this issue as the measurement problem, and said “the whole thing is preposterous”. It is shame he will not be around to see how things unfold. Maybe their paper might be useful for some things, but I don’t think they come to the right conclusions I’m afraid. See An Apology. What the actual outcome will be, we don’t know. He’s a custodian of ignorance, not a beacon of enlightenment. The Einstein-Bohr debates were between realism and mysticism, and mysticism won. SUMMARY: So many “authorities” exposit that science is the great arbiter of truth, yet this course clearly shows that while we require the quantum world’s limitations on particle/wave behavior, we do not understand its basis. There are numbers. A fine comment. Carroll said until physicists answer these questions, they don’t understand quantum mechanics. A: Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. John Williamson and Martin van der Mark wrote their electron paper in 1991, and spent 6 years trying to get it published. 2: The particle melting pot; A “no math” (but seven-part) guide to modern quantum mechanics He’s right. Whilst it’s still fresh in your mind, read the nature of time. He’s the one who’s not even wrong. After all, where would we be without our innate curiosity? Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics Contact Us The Original "Liberal Forum" - Founded 2003 - America's Political Chat Room Powered by Invision Community But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. On the contrary, students who demonstrate an interest in the topic are gently but firmly – maybe not so gently – steered away, sometimes with an admonishment to ‘Shut up and calculate!’ Professors who become interested might see their grant money drying up, as their colleagues bemoan that they have lost interest in serious work”. After a hundred years on the job, our quantum mechanics still don’t understand their subject. Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't Understand Quantum Mechanics. It was a good comment. It says nothing definitive about reality. “I don’t feel that I don’t understand quantum mechanics,” he says. Anyway, his last words were music to my ears: “After almost a century of pretending that understanding quantum mechanics isn’t a crucial task for physicists, we need to take this challenge seriously”. Except that this is the kind of duality that folks like me use every day to calculate options prices. Pair production has got nothing to do with the uncertainty principle. What’s not to like? Or how gravity works. Quantum mechanics explained Dr. Morales tries to explain quantum mechanices without math. In your question there are different things to define previously to answer you: what you mean by don't accept quantum mechanics or what it means to understand it. . Now that is not good. Because the maths is, we have simply been interpreting it incorrectly nevertheless, Randall 's message is you... It doesn ’ t it s food for thought borrows energy from space for a short period of.! 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