Re: Layman ruminations on quantum mechanics

PD wrote:
> Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
....
> >
> > So the detector, if the photon travels all paths until its wave
> > function collapses on detection, will not see a point photon but
> > starting at time t the photon in the shortest line and also the same
> > photon that travelled a fractal space-filling path that would take it
> > years to cross thirty meters, so the detector is stuck in time forever?
> > That doesn't seem very plausible.
>
> You are mixing up several things here. You are applying c to the
> *unmeasured* paths of virtual photons, and assuming that long paths
> implies long time of flight in those paths. The value of c is the
> *measured* value, and the shortest distance between two points is the
> *measured* path, but this has no bearing on the *unmeasured* collection
> of all possible histories of the photon.
>
> >
> > For the travel distance to be some average of the paths, or the path
> > integral, then the photon on the actual straight line would be going
> > both forward and variously backward in time. Now, as it goes backwards
> > in time, it follows its same track, so to be not advanced, at some
> > point it would go back in time faster than it went forward, yet back
> > faster again, to not violate c it violates causality.
> >
> > It just seems that some classical explanations do override the quantum
> > in simple experiments.
> >
> > Then as a layman I'm trying to figure out some intuitive reasons to
> > explain in the particle-wave duality such things as the dual slit
> > experiment, or four or eight or all of them leading to the path
> > integral. The explanations are not so counterintuitive within their
> > framework, but via exhaustion there just seem too many implausible
> > implications that can never be verified.
>
> You should start by understanding what constitutes a *measurable*
> parameter and what constitutes an *unmeasurable* parameter in quantum
> mechanics.
>
> >
> > That's probably just a regular skeptic talking, QED, Quantum
> > Electrodynamics or the explanation of quantum mechanics, is said to be
> > very successful and that it verifies all its experiments. That is very
> > key and I respect that, but by the same token it still involves
> > renormalization, and quantization is denormalization.
> >

I guess that kind of wavefront is called the pilot-wave.

In concepts of ghosting, basically, it seems parallel notions are in
the form of the Bohm-type Multiple-Worlds-Interpretation or MWI, where
in the basically parallel universes the particles interact. That seems
counter to the notion that separate universes can not interact. I
don't agree with that, I think no MWI, basically because it would all
be part of some universe or cosmos. If the wave auto-interferes then
the universes are affecting each other.

To have the notion of some kind of infinite surface tension, i.e.,
analogs of the fluid model of electricity, that would seem to be
non-local, ie, similarly to how there are non-local effects in
entangled particles, that there would be non-local effects in the
coalition, coalescion, of waves to detected particle and back to waves.

What gripes about quantum mechanics is the detector problem. It's like
the quantum pot that when watched never boils.

It's the detector problem(s), the observer problem(s): _how can and
does the act of observation change the event._ Then, how can different
observers each observe their own event but that event was unobserved to
the other? How can anything be non-local? If a tree falls in the
forest does a tree fall in the forest?

It seems the mechanisms of detection are themselves interfering with
the system, an impulse response of sorts.

A lot of the quantum problems seem to involve non-locality, which is in
a sense violation of casuality or the violation of light speed being a
maximum velocity of information transfer.

Another notion is of these infinite dimensions of time. That is to
say, it is similar to Zeno's paradox in one dimension of time, then
noting that there is that same problem within it, and so on etcetera
forever, so there are infinite dimensions of time, although semingly at
once one continuum of time is sufficient.

The particle physics, quantum mechanics, is yet representative of
unsolved problems. As a member of more or less the laiety, the search
for understanding of the quantum effects in terms of parallels to
classical systems leads to mutually contradictory yet independently
verifiable alternatives. That must not be the case, something is
missing, arguably some hidden variables, yet if they were
instrinsically hidden or upon discovery dependent on other hidden
variables, then via mathematical induction it should be possible to
address those systems at once.
I think the particle as wave is like the sinecosine. It's not a
two-dimensional wave, what's a three-dimensional wave? Where are the
methods to solve three-body and N-body problems? I have a difficult
time believing they are impossible to solve because any three bodies
serve as an exact experiment. Well, that's not exactly so either, the
universe is an N-body system. With non-algebraic functions, and very
slowly converging sequences, again the good stuff is happening at some
point or lack thereof out towards infinity.

http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/science/nbody.html

As the "particle" moves, the wave goes from being like the ripple of
the pebble in the pond to this n-dimensional tangle. That's not a good
description.

Back to the observer problem, it seems like the observer is like an
electrical ground. There is potential in the wavefront or pilot wave,
and a detector shorts the circuit. Yet, when the detector does not
absorb the particle, then it rereleases into the waveform again.

So I got some sleep on it, and I tell you, sometimes I have some great
dreams. Well, that has nothing to do with this, before I went to sleep
I was reading some more about these various notions.

So anyways then I wonder this morning: what happen's if Schroedinger's
cat explodes if it dies, rupturing the box? Well, I guess then that
violates the rules of the experiment.

I get to that the on the wavefront, there are waves and on them waves
and so on. There's a wave, say the pilot wave or so, and it has a
ripple going around its extremus at basically > c, >>c. Then, the act
of detection somehow is a barrier to that, the protoripple in the pilot
wave. That tears the pilot wave at that point, the tail of the
protoripple coalesces to the point. That is too much and as it can it
immediately reforms another pilot wave, from that point.

That still is the observer problem. Say there's a dual slit
experiment, with a slow stream of photons, and a detector on one slit
with an indicator light to the user under an opaque flipcover next to a
pushbutton toggle. Another user is watching the photon. in the
secondary chamber, or rather where it gathers on the collector. A
Schroedinger cat is used as a source of randomness, cats are fickle and
arbitrary, so it is trained to activate the detector but sometimes
doesn't, it might or might not push the toggle to activate the
detector. Then it is exploded before the observer is introduced to the
system, in the cat disposal. As photons are sent through, the observer
can tell if the detector is on by observing the resulting pattern on
the collector. That's causality, if the cat activated the detector
then the photon doesn't exhibit interference from the pilot wave
through the second slit. So then, without detecting the photon, the
observer knows the photon is being detected when it goes through, but
for each particular photon he can not say.

So, the mechanical detection process doesn't seem to require an
observer, but QM says that until the observer finishes his coffee and
looks at the collector, he doesn't have the information as to whether
the cat activated the detector.

I'm still thinking that there's some physical effect of detecting the
photon that affects it, QM seems to say that, measuring a photon
affects it, like a "flux capacitor" from the silly time travel movie
"Back to the Future."

Thanks, I will try and learn some more about the measurable and
unmeasurable paths. I'm reading that some experiments imply there are
not event histories, others that there are. (Waves arms in air,
screeches like monkey.) I just don't get it.

I'm willing to accept the results of experiment, particularly simple
ones I can do myself, and QM basically doesn't violate causality and
doesn't violate c. While that is so, there is a difference between a
particle and wave, and each particle is either and the other.

Thanks again,

Ross

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