Re: QM will not Answer a Simple Question



Steve Bell wrote:

"Pmb" <pmb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h3tfhe$m5s$1@xxxxxxxxxxx


"Steve Bell" <sb635@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1e410$4a60b1ab$944e5322$16917@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




Obviously, due to the complete lack of following of the scientific method for all these years by QM, it will not address a serious inaccuracy of one of its predictions.



The methodology one uses in quantum mechanics strictly follows the scientific method. In fact it follows it so closely that when physicists write a description of the scientific method many of them have in mind the methods and principles one follows when working with quantum theory.




Ok, so I'll show how ambiguous and vague QM can be by asking a simple question.



Just because you believe your question is a simple one it doesn't mean that it's a physically meaningful one within the context of quantum theory. In fact QM is notorious for being hard to learn because people expect the simple concepts from classical mechanics to remain simple in quantum mechanics. Obviously this is not the case.




At the instant an electron's position is measured, is it an actual particle,

whose mass is all "in" a dot in space?



The question "is it an actual particle" cannot be answered by quantum mechanics. The only things that can be answered are questions such as what the result of an observation might be. That's why the role of the observer is extremely important in quantum mechanics.



That said I'll attempt to give you an idea of what you're asking entails - Prior to the measurement of the particle's position it's in a particular quantum state. I'm assuming you know what that means. In practice the measurement of position is accomplished by, say, a particle detector. A particle detector is conceptually something that goes "click" when it detects the presence of a particle. For example; if the particle is a photon then one example of a measurement of position is when the photon is registered in one of the pixels in an array of pixels in which constitutes a Charged Coupled Device (CCD). Think of a CCD simply as an array of extremely small photo detectors. This is what digital cameras use to record images. The photon hits a pixel and its presence is recorded. Since the pixel is of finite size what actually has happened is the photon has been localized in space. When the photon hits the CCD its presence is recorded. This is what it means to be a particle. I.e. its existence is localized to a finite region of space upon measurement of position. A photon is said to be a point particle because the theoretical lower bound for the size of the region in which a photon can be localized in is zero.



I forgot to mention an apparent cross-misinterpretation going on. I have mostly been referring to diffraction patterns as made by an observatory machine, which I have been envisioning as a simple convex lens ("microscope") which focuses the EM used to detect a particle into a diffraction pattern. This is in alignment with Bohr's microscope thought experiment. Above, a particle detector is mentioned, used to detect the energy used to measure a particle's position. The detector uses a CCD made up of pixels. In my thinking, this is simply the image plane of the microscope and a digital image is taken. The fact that it's digital and the size of the pixels is irrelevant. Even if a completely continuous imaging surface is used, a diffraction pattern with an area (an Airy pattern) is produced by the lens. And that's the real issue. Here is a statement from a QM text book: "Recall that a microscope's image of a point is not a point, but a diffraction pattern; the image of the electron is "fuzzy." Sure, the *image* is fuzzy, but even in this very same text book, the particle was actually at a point, which is exactly why the authors said what they said about how the microscope works when it images a point. Now comes the huge mistake made by QM: Because the *image* of a point particle is "fuzzy," it's actual physical position is also "fuzzy" when not being imaged. Since every time we've looked at particles, we've actually seen nothing but particles, that is a huge leap of faith, imo, ending up in a huge pool of crap called "the rest of QM."

The "pile of crap" is your continuing delusions that you know something
when you keep demonstrating you do not. You seem completely ignorant of
what conjugate variables means. It is clear then that you never did any
radar work or you would understand this from ffts.


Steve Bell


.

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