This could change everything, literally

[stankeylegjones]

1. Electrodynamics is wrong for the same reason classical mechanics is wrong. Neither theory fully describes reality. They describe reality at a macroscopic scale but not a **very** macroscopic scale or a quantum scale.

2. By "fucked up" I mean it's really counter intuitive. There are so many bizarre results that seem really wrong. For instance, delayed choice. Are you familiar with that? It's incredibly weird. Note that Einstein also thought quantum mechanics was incredibly strange.

3. Because the schrodinger equation is a 4-d pde.

4. No., I'm not confusing the uncertainty principle with quantum tunnelling.

5. I didn't say the entire standard model is elegant. But the building blocks of QFT - especially QED and QCD -- are, in my view. For instance, I like thinking about forces and fields as "operators." There's a level of abstraction that goes above and beyond classical physics. Maybe it's my background in computer programming. It reminds me of building a function that takes other functions as parameters and operates on them. I haven't studied the math in a very long time, though. Maybe I'm romanticizing what I remember. A chacun son gout.

1. Then, do you not also think relativity (both forms) is wrong? Along with the standard model? Any other theory that doesn't describe everything?
2. Yes, and yes, I agree, there are some things that at first seem counter intuitive. But, every theory has counter-intuitive results. Einstein really didn't like that quantum physics (both formalisms at the time) are not deterministic. He did find other aspects of quantum physics to be pleasing - he contributed significantly to them.
3. What is your definition of a 4-dimensional pde and how does it from a pde in 3 coordinates + 1 parameter?
4. Then please explain in more detail what exactly you mean.
5(a). What do you mean by saying QED and QCD are part of the building blocks of QFT? They are examples of a QFT.
5(b). By operators, I'm assuming you mean linear transformations on your Hilbert space. You can describe classical physics in the same way - linear operators on an underlying vector space.

Super, I must say, I'm glad you brought this thread into existence. It's rare that I get to discuss things that I've studied for many many years!

Edit: I forgot to say/ask, given your background in computer programming, have you studied much category theory?

 

[superrific]

1. Then, do you not also think relativity (both forms) is wrong? Along with the standard model? Any other theory that doesn't describe everything?
2. Yes, and yes, I agree, there are some things that at first seem counter intuitive. But, every theory has counter-intuitive results. Einstein really didn't like that quantum physics (both formalisms at the time) are not deterministic. He did find other aspects of quantum physics to be pleasing - he contributed significantly to them.
3. What is your definition of a 4-dimensional pde and how does it from a pde in 3 coordinates + 1 parameter?
4. Then please explain in more detail what exactly you mean.
5(a). What do you mean by saying QED and QCD are part of the building blocks of QFT? They are examples of a QFT.
5(b). By operators, I'm assuming you mean linear transformations on your Hilbert space. You can describe classical physics in the same way - linear operators on an underlying vector space.

Super, I must say, I'm glad you brought this thread into existence. It's rare that I get to discuss things that I've studied for many many years!

Edit: I forgot to say/ask, given your background in computer programming, have you studied much category theory?

1. All right. I was providing a high level overview on a thread for people who don't necessarily know anything about quantum mechanics. "Wrong" is obviously not a technical term. I'm not going to fight about this. I don't care. The point is, Maxwell's laws have been superseded and while elegant, are oversimplifications of reality. Simplifications are more likely to be elegant, almost by definition. My ultimate point was quantum mechanics being the pinnacle of science.

2. I consider the counter-intuitive results of quantum to be more counter-intuitive than any other theory I've encountered. I don't think this is a minority opinion. The Wheeler experiments and the quantum eraser experiments seem utterly wild to me. I do not claim to fully understand them.

3. You are correct. 3 coordinate PDE + 1 parameter. Again, I was writing for a highly non-technical audience, but what I said was technically not correct.

4. I don't know what you want me to say. The analogy to a ball on a hill is common. For instance, from wikipedia:

"Quantum tunnelling falls under the domain of quantum mechanics. To understand the phenomenon, particles attempting to travel across a potential barrier can be compared to a ball trying to roll over a hill. Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics differ in their treatment of this scenario.

Classical mechanics predicts that particles that do not have enough energy to classically surmount a barrier cannot reach the other side. Thus, a ball without sufficient energy to surmount the hill would roll back down. In quantum mechanics, a particle can, with a small probability, tunnel to the other side, thus crossing the barrier. The reason for this difference comes from treating matter as having properties of waves and particles."

That was the whole point. The only way a ball can get to the other side of a hill is by having enough energy to roll up and over. That is not true of an electron approaching a Coulomb barrier. That's bizarre and counterintuitive.

5. I mistyped. QED and QCD are building blocks of the standard model. Both are QFT.

Yes, you can describe classical physics in operator form. I have never seen it done. It's not necessary and it's certainly not part of traditional notation. As you know, bra-ket notation is everywhere in quantum and there's just nothing like it commonly used in classical mechanics -- not that I've ever seen, at least. I took a graduate level course (first year grad course, I'd imagine) in classical mechanics and I don't remember seeing that operator notation. I've never studied cosmology. Maybe it's used there.

6. I don't remember category theory. If I did category theory, it would have been my freshman year in college, which was a very long time ago and I remember nothing of it. Why are you asking?

 

[stankeylegjones]

1. All right. I was providing a high level overview on a thread for people who don't necessarily know anything about quantum mechanics. "Wrong" is obviously not a technical term. I'm not going to fight about this. I don't care. The point is, Maxwell's laws have been superseded and while elegant, are oversimplifications of reality. Simplifications are more likely to be elegant, almost by definition. My ultimate point was quantum mechanics being the pinnacle of science.

2. I consider the counter-intuitive results of quantum to be more counter-intuitive than any other theory I've encountered. I don't think this is a minority opinion. The Wheeler experiments and the quantum eraser experiments seem utterly wild to me. I do not claim to fully understand them.

3. You are correct. 3 coordinate PDE + 1 parameter. Again, I was writing for a highly non-technical audience, but what I said was technically not correct.

4. I don't know what you want me to say. The analogy to a ball on a hill is common. For instance, from wikipedia:

"Quantum tunnelling falls under the domain of quantum mechanics. To understand the phenomenon, particles attempting to travel across a potential barrier can be compared to a ball trying to roll over a hill. Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics differ in their treatment of this scenario.

Classical mechanics predicts that particles that do not have enough energy to classically surmount a barrier cannot reach the other side. Thus, a ball without sufficient energy to surmount the hill would roll back down. In quantum mechanics, a particle can, with a small probability, tunnel to the other side, thus crossing the barrier. The reason for this difference comes from treating matter as having properties of waves and particles."

That was the whole point. The only way a ball can get to the other side of a hill is by having enough energy to roll up and over. That is not true of an electron approaching a Coulomb barrier. That's bizarre and counterintuitive.

5. I mistyped. QED and QCD are building blocks of the standard model. Both are QFT.

Yes, you can describe classical physics in operator form. I have never seen it done. It's not necessary and it's certainly not part of traditional notation. As you know, bra-ket notation is everywhere in quantum and there's just nothing like it commonly used in classical mechanics -- not that I've ever seen, at least. I took a graduate level course (first year grad course, I'd imagine) in classical mechanics and I don't remember seeing that operator notation. I've never studied cosmology. Maybe it's used there.

6. I don't remember category theory. If I did category theory, it would have been my freshman year in college, which was a very long time ago and I remember nothing of it. Why are you asking?

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4. Yes, this is a standard explanation of quantum tunneling. In your first post on it, you stated that "you can place a basketball on one side of a hill, but its actual location could be on the other side of the hill because it "tunnels" through the hill. This is not what the wiki post is saying. That is why I asked for more clarification. But, I get the point you were trying to make, and trying to reach a larger audience with it.
5. You can also use a "function" approach to describe quantum mechanics, with no mention of vector spaces and linear operators. I do agree with you, the "more abstract" approach is more palatable. (The best approach, imo, is to use the language of bundles.)
6. DAMN. If you ever do find yourself learning category theory, then take a look at topological quantum field theories (tqfts). Given you appreciation of quantum theory and your desire for a more mathematically rigorous explanation, you will really enjoy learning about them.

 

[superrific]

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4. Yes, this is a standard explanation of quantum tunneling. In your first post on it, you stated that "you can place a basketball on one side of a hill, but its actual location could be on the other side of the hill because it "tunnels" through the hill. This is not what the wiki post is saying. That is why I asked for more clarification. But, I get the point you were trying to make, and trying to reach a larger audience with it.
5. You can also use a "function" approach to describe quantum mechanics, with no mention of vector spaces and linear operators. I do agree with you, the "more abstract" approach is more palatable. (The best approach, imo, is to use the language of bundles.)
6. DAMN. If you ever do find yourself learning category theory, then take a look at topological quantum field theories (tqfts). Given you appreciation of quantum theory and your desire for a more mathematically rigorous explanation, you will really enjoy learning about them.

On that first post about tunneling, I must have edited myself into a mistake. You are right, what actually made it into the final post implies something more akin to an exceedingly macroscopic uncertainty principle. I will edit.

I am fairly certain I am too old to learn any new mathematically rigorous concepts. My plan is more like "let my son study it and then tell me about it."

I've been revisiting my quantum lately because I'm working on a sci-fi novel that posits an extension of relativity and quantum that describes matter "shade" (i.e. dark matter, ultra-dark matter, etc). I've been enjoying it because I get to play Einstein, so to speak. I start with a couple of basic maxims, in the manner of relativity theory, and then tease out all the consequences. It's a lot easier when you get to assume reality fits your theoretical constructs, but anyway. What I'm trying to do is somewhat recreate the mentality that physicists might have had around 1910-1915, when it was clear that the old physics was incomplete but nobody knew what the new physics looked like yet.

The basic premise of the theory is "energy is a complex vector in shade space," where shade is a quantized property of matter. Eventually I get to E = mc2 as a special instance of a more general equation, which is roughly E=m(ci)^n, where n is a particle's shade. For n = 2, we get Einstein's formula (there's a stray negative sign that easily falls out). For n=3, we get dark matter. There's not actually so much dark matter; it's just that it's really massive. For n=1, there's "ight" matter and n=4, super-dark. Particles can, under certain circumstances that my protagonist discovered but nobody else has been able to replicate just yet, switch between states according to a law of conservation of shade. Particles get paired by a mediator such that one flips into n=3 space and the other falls to n=1 space. They remain tied to each other, and their interaction with the physical world is almost non-existent because their energy vectors are on different axes in the complex plane.

A few problems emerge and that becomes a driving force in the plot (there's a lot more plot going on than just this), one of which is the possibility of an n=4 particle. That's a real-energy particle with an incredibly high rest energy in absolute terms, but negative mass. So its gravitational interaction is repulsive. By my rough calculation, an n=4 ball bearing would have the gravitational power of the moon, except repulsive. Destructive potential is high. It's not so much that people will build it into a bomb, so much as researchers -- understanding little about the underlying theory -- might excite matter to an n=4 state to tremendous destructive effect. Yes, the parallel with AI theory is intentional. Anyway, I need to hurry up and finish it before the AI kills us all.

 

[stankeylegjones]

On that first post about tunneling, I must have edited myself into a mistake. You are right, what actually made it into the final post implies something more akin to an exceedingly macroscopic uncertainty principle. I will edit.

I am fairly certain I am too old to learn any new mathematically rigorous concepts. My plan is more like "let my son study it and then tell me about it."

I've been revisiting my quantum lately because I'm working on a sci-fi novel that posits an extension of relativity and quantum that describes matter "shade" (i.e. dark matter, ultra-dark matter, etc). I've been enjoying it because I get to play Einstein, so to speak. I start with a couple of basic maxims, in the manner of relativity theory, and then tease out all the consequences. It's a lot easier when you get to assume reality fits your theoretical constructs, but anyway. What I'm trying to do is somewhat recreate the mentality that physicists might have had around 1910-1915, when it was clear that the old physics was incomplete but nobody knew what the new physics looked like yet.

The basic premise of the theory is "energy is a complex vector in shade space," where shade is a quantized property of matter. Eventually I get to E = mc2 as a special instance of a more general equation, which is roughly E=m(ci)^n, where n is a particle's shade. For n = 2, we get Einstein's formula (there's a stray negative sign that easily falls out). For n=3, we get dark matter. There's not actually so much dark matter; it's just that it's really massive. For n=1, there's "ight" matter and n=4, super-dark. Particles can, under certain circumstances that my protagonist discovered but nobody else has been able to replicate just yet, switch between states according to a law of conservation of shade. Particles get paired by a mediator such that one flips into n=3 space and the other falls to n=1 space. They remain tied to each other, and their interaction with the physical world is almost non-existent because their energy vectors are on different axes in the complex plane.

A few problems emerge and that becomes a driving force in the plot (there's a lot more plot going on than just this), one of which is the possibility of an n=4 particle. That's a real-energy particle with an incredibly high rest energy in absolute terms, but negative mass. So its gravitational interaction is repulsive. By my rough calculation, an n=4 ball bearing would have the gravitational power of the moon, except repulsive. Destructive potential is high. It's not so much that people will build it into a bomb, so much as researchers -- understanding little about the underlying theory -- might excite matter to an n=4 state to tremendous destructive effect. Yes, the parallel with AI theory is intentional. Anyway, I need to hurry up and finish it before the AI kills us all.

It sounds like an interesting novel. You'll have let us know when you finish it. And, shamelessly I'll state: If you are looking for folks to read through parts of it, let me know. By the way, if you're looking for a good explanation for the history of Einstein's general theory of relativity then let me know. (There's a good lecture on it, on Youtube.)

I completely disagree with you, you are not too old to learn new mathematics. No one is!