We assume an electron to be like a Ping-Pong ball. We then apply the Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty to its location around the nucleus of an atom. This is Quantum reality.
Why can’t we assume an electron be like a piece of wave that extends in space like a snake. Then we can do away with the Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. That would fit more with the classical reality.
Einstein was opposed to Quantum reality. He would have preferred this snake analogy for an electron. The following ia a quote from the excellent book EINSTEIN – HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 20, Quantum Entanglement.
Einstein’s fundamental dispute with the Bohr-Heisenberg crowd over quantum mechanics was not merely about whether God rolled dice or left cats half dead. Nor was it just about causality, locality, or even completeness. It was about reality. Does it exist? More specifically, is it meaningful to speak about a physical reality that exists independently of whatever observations we can make? “At the heart of the problem,” Einstein said of quantum mechanics, “is not so much the question of causality but the question of realism.”
Bohr and his adherents scoffed at the idea that it made sense to talk about what might be beneath the veil of what we can observe. All we can know are the results of our experiments and observations, not some ultimate reality that lies beyond our perceptions.
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But Einstein seems to be protesting against what he himself contributed to with his idea of photon and his Theory of Relativity.
It seems that quanta of light (photons) shall be packets made up of finite number of wavelengths. In that case, a photon will also be shaped more like a snake than a Ping-Pong ball. If the number of wavelengths per photon is constant then low-energy ELF photons shall be like very long snakes, and high-energy gamma photons shall be like very short snakes. We may then call very long snakes as waves, and very short snakes as particles.
Furthermore, Einstein denied any need of a medium for light. He denied the Newtonian absoluteness of space and time but replaced it by the absoluteness of the speed of light, thus upsetting the reality of classical physics. But Einstein seemed to backtrack from his mathematical reality later in life.
The above quote continues as follows.
Einstein had displayed some elements of this attitude in 1905, back when he was reading Hume and Mach while rejecting such unobservable concepts as absolute space and time. “At that time my mode of thinking was much nearer positivism than it was later on,” he recalled. “My departure from positivism came only when I worked out the general theory of relativity.”
From then on, Einstein increasingly adhered to the belief that there is an objective classical reality. And though there are some consistencies between his early and late thinking, he admitted freely that, at least in his own mind, his realism represented a move away from his earlier Machian empiricism. “This credo,” he said, “does not correspond with the point of view I held in younger years.” As the historian Gerald Holton notes, “For a scientist to change his philosophical beliefs so fundamentally is rare.”
Einstein’s concept of realism had three main components:
1. His belief that a reality exists independent of our ability to observe it. As he put it in his autobiographical notes: “Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of ‘physical reality.’ ”
2. His belief in separability and locality. In other words, objects are located at certain points in spacetime, and this separability is part of what defines them. “If one abandons the assumption that what exists in different parts of space has its own independent, real existence, then I simply cannot see what it is that physics is supposed to describe,” he declared to Max Born.
3. His belief in strict causality, which implies certainty and classical determinism. The idea that probabilities play a role in reality was as disconcerting to him as the idea that our observations might play a role in collapsing those probabilities. “Some physicists, among them myself, cannot believe,” he said, “that we must accept the view that events in nature are analogous to a game of chance.”
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What happened in 1905 was that mathematical reality replaced physical reality starting with the Theory of Relativity. This has continued with Quantum Mechanics even to this date. The article The Philosophy of Cosmology attempts to reverse this trend and reestablish the realism of physical reality.
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Comments
Interesting
Big Bang is the result of “mathematical reality” and not of any physical reality. Not only that. Big Bang doesn’t seem to be consistent with the physical reality of entropy.
Electromagnetic energy filters the perception of space and time.
We use this energy in the visible band for our perception. This is a powerful filter. So, the Theory of Relativity basically deals with this narrow filter and analyzes the illusory perception of spacetime due to this filter.
The actual spacetime is the universal field postulated at point #1 of the essay The Philosophy of Cosmology. This postulated spacetime is a theoretical absolute. It is infinite. It is what Newton had postulated.
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Vinay, forget the galactic entropy, in my view reality is just a condensation of a probabilistic formula, I mean, the reality is the product of the simultaneus decisions of the involved persons and back timetrack of those beings or being deciding so. Reality is ruled and created by the probability rules.
What is being questioned here is just what you are saying.
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The square roots of negative numbers throws us into an unreal dimension, There must be some operation done on the physical reality that would throw us into the spiritual dimension.
Spiritual dimension would be an apect of the abstract dimension.
Physical and abstract reality seem to have the same correspondence as real and imaginary numbers.
Mathematical reality would be part of that abstract reality.
A wave motion arises out of disturbance of some medium. Light represents a wave motion. Light travels in the vacuum of the cosmic space. One would expect some kind of a medium in cosmic space.
But Michelson-Morley’s experiment denied any such medium. This is an inconsistency. My question is,
“What kind of a medium did the Michelson-Morley’s experiment deny? And what kind of medium it did not deny?”
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Michelson-Morley’s experiment simply did not detect any velocity for the medium of light. This may deny the velocity of the medium. It does necessarily deny a medium.
Per Wikipedia: “Following the negative outcome of aether-drift experiments like the Michelson–Morley experiment, the concept of aether as a mechanical medium having a state of motion lost adherents.”
So, in outer space there is no mechanical medium having a state of motion. What kind of medium is there then? To say that there is no medium at all is simply a postulate backed up by nothing. Light wave propagates as a disturbance in some kind of a medium. We can postulate a non-mechanical medium that does not have a state of motion.
The nature of light itself would then shed some light on the nature of this medium.
Light travels in straight lines. That means, the medium of light must have some kind of inertia that keeps the disturbance going in the same direction.
This is very intersting data: Polarization (waves)
Polarization (also polarisation) is a property of waves that can oscillate with more than one orientation. Electromagnetic waves, such as light, and gravitational waves exhibit polarization whereas this is not a concern with sound waves in a gas or liquid which have only one possible polarization, namely the direction in which the wave is travelling.
In an electromagnetic wave such as light, both the electric field and magnetic field are oscillating but in different directions; by convention the “polarization” of light refers to the polarization of the electric field. Light which can be approximated as a plane wave in free space or in an isotropic medium propagates as a transverse wave — both the electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to the wave’s direction of travel. The oscillation of these fields may be in a single direction (linear polarization), or the field may rotate at the optical frequency (circular or elliptical polarization). In that case the direction of the fields’ rotation, and thus the specified polarization, may be either clockwise or counter clockwise; this is referred to as the wave’s chirality or handedness.
The most common optical materials (such as glass) are isotropic and simply preserve the polarization of a wave but do not differentiate between polarization states. However there are important classes of materials classified as birefringent or optically active in which this is not the case and a wave’s polarization will generally be modified or will affect propagation through it. A polarizer is an optical filter that transmits only one polarization.
Polarization is an important parameter in areas of science dealing with transverse wave propagation, such as optics, seismology, radio and microwaves. Especially impacted are technologies such as lasers, wireless and optical fiber telecommunications, and radar.
. . . And Foster Grants!
The medium in which light travels, must have properties of a field. It is a field the disturbance of which gives rise to electric and magnetic type field properties.
What do we know and what can we say about a “field.”
Einstein himself noted that his own model could itself be thought of as an aether, as it implied that the empty space between objects had its own physical properties.
The following is also very interesting data from Wikipedia.
Aether has been used in various gravitational theories as a medium to help explain gravitation and what causes it. It was used in one of Sir Isaac Newton’s first published theories of gravitation, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (the Principia). He based the whole description of planetary motions on a theoretical law of dynamic interactions. He renounced standing attempts at accounting for this particular form of interaction between distant bodies by introducing a mechanism of propagation through an intervening medium. He calls this intervening medium aether. In his aether model, Newton describes aether as a medium that “flows” continually downward toward the Earth’s surface and is partially absorbed and partially diffused. This “circulation” of aether is what he associated the force of gravity with to help explain the action of gravity in a non-mechanical fashion. This theory described different aether densities, creating an aether density gradient. His theory also explains that aether was dense within objects and rare without them. As particles of denser aether interacted with the rare aether they were attracted back to the dense aether much like cooling vapors of water are attracted back to each other to form water. In the Principia he attempts to explain the elasticity and movement of aether by relating aether to his static model of fluids. This elastic interaction is what caused the pull of gravity to take place, according to this early theory, and allowed an explanation for action at a distance instead of action through direct contact. Newton also explained this changing rarity and density of aether in his letter to Robert Boyle in 1679. He illustrated aether and its field around objects in this letter as well and used this as a way to inform Robert Boyle about his theory. Although Newton eventually changed his theory of gravitation to one involving force and the laws of motion, his starting point for the modern understanding and explanation of gravity came from his original aether model on gravitation.
Before accretion there is gravity. Describing gravity as being caused by mass seems secondary to me. Before there is mass, what is there? There is both gravity and spacetime which in its earlier states contains all the ingredients for energy and matter and mass. Because accretion seems to be both ancient and extant, I believe that space contains the both the malleability and elasticity (picture taffy) to gather (gravity) itself together into perceivable energy and matter and then like peeling the skin off cooling fresh pudding the perceptible world coalesces leaving space yet composed of “dark” energy and yet enough mass to hold the universe together.
Before mass there is inertia (resistance to motion).
Possibly we could say that “Mass is condensed gravity.” But why is and how is there such an attractive force? Every moment of our lives we feel its force like a rushing liquid, the force of gravity washes over us dragging at us toward the center of the Earth. The entire subject of balance is the subject of stabilizing ourselves and the objects in our world against the coursing forces of space time rushing toward and gathering itself toward the center of our Earth. This is our relativity and our frame of reference.
In my opinion mass is condensed inertia.
I believe that’s what I have been saying.
Maxwell, at first, did not adopt the modern concept of a field as fundamental entity that could independently exist. Instead, he supposed that the electromagnetic field expressed the deformation of some underlying medium—the luminiferous aether—much like the tension in a rubber membrane. If that were the case, the observed velocity of the electromagnetic waves should depend upon the velocity of the observer with respect to the aether. Despite much effort, no experimental evidence of such an effect was ever found; the situation was resolved by the introduction of the theory of special relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905. This theory changed the way the viewpoints of moving observers should be related to each other in such a way that velocity of electromagnetic waves in Maxwell’s theory would be the same for all observers. By doing away with the need for a background medium, this development opened the way for physicists to start thinking about fields as truly independent entities.
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Here the interaction of a moving source with the medium is assumed to be different than the interaction of a moving observer with the medium. When the source is moving toward the observer, the waves in the medium actually get compressed. But when the observer is moving toward the source, the waves only seem to be compressed. They are not actually compressed.
Why is this difference there?
The difference seems to be that the sound waves are longitudinal, but the light waves are not. There is no compression or rarefaction of the medium occurring in case of the light medium. So in case of light only the relative velocity between the observer and the source matters. It does not matter whether it is the source moving or the observer.
Thus, the velocity of the observer relative to the medium of light cannot be detected due to the transverse nature of light, and not because there is no medium.
I would like you to say this some more about this as I don’t understand but suspect I would like to know what you mean.
Check this out.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/trawvcon.html
Ah, well I might’ve guessed that. Nothing that I bring up is going to be even relatively new in concept. I still have fun learning.
Perhaps YOU are the medium.
Perhaps YOU is a field.
Good. Continue.
Vinaire”
“Perhaps YOU is a field.”
Mark
I would prefer to be a meadow.
Sorry, got to throw one in every now and then.
Mark
We do not seem to quite understand what is being compressed. But inertia tells us that this compression is occurring as one changes velocity with respect to the “field” being compressed. I put that in quotes because I don’t know exactly what I mean by a field.
I see field as space.
yes but we generally mean distance when we refer to space, not what is in that space. Using space in this way as field would be a newer definition of itself.
When I think of electric or magnetic field it seems like how some property is distributed in space
Here is the original paper by Michelson and Morley describing there experiment.
https://vinaire.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/mm-paper.pdf
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I do not understand why Michelson and Morley expected a velocity difference and not a frequency difference per the Doppler effect?
My assumption from their experiment is that they were assuming the medium of space to be relatively at rest with respect to the Earth which is sailing through this medium. Does my understanding seem right to you?
Did you decide whether they had the ability to measure the small difference they were looking for?
Yes, they had the ability to measure the small difference they were looking for.
So how do you evaluate the result of their experiment?
I am working on it.
It has always seemed to me that the medium of space is not a substance in any classical or quantum sense. Space appears to be more a definition of distance, more of a rule, a law, a property rather than a thing.
When matter and space interfere, the interference seems to be only in it’s appearance relative to something else or an observer.
Example: As an object, traveling through space, passes by another massive object, it appears to curve it’s trajectory toward the massive object. But an accelerometer does not register the change in direction. The object actually traveled in a straight line through curved space, or more accurately, through moving space.
But space does not have a velocity as mass or mass-less particles do. It is, not exactly, more like pressure or intention. It is not intuitive as normal experience. As particles travel through space and are ‘interfered’ with by inconsistencies in that space, from the particles point of view, they were not interfered with and traveled in a straight line at a constant velocity, 0
The point is that space is a completely different animal than matter and energy. The rules are completely different and don’t fit the definitions of a medium or thing. As of now, it is best described through philosophical terms but that will change as more is learned and the manner of thinking is expanded.
Perhaps space is defined not in it’s own terms, but as a property of matter, a property of relationships. Perhaps the relative relationships of matter and energy is the definition of space.
The experiment of how droplets of silicon dance and interact while dancing on water when a frequency is applied is very interesting.
Mark
The best framework I have come up with so far is contained in the seven steps here:
The Philosophy of Cosmology
Energy and Mass develop as different forms of spacetime from the primeval field.
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It would seem logical, even at that time, that if the observed velocity of light changed via the motion of space, the observed frequency would change in proportion.
Just seems.
Mark
The velocity of sound does not change in similar circumstances either, as it is always constant relative to air. Why would the velocity of light change relative to its medium?
The only difference is that we can assess the velocity of air relative to the surface or the planet or to the background of space. But we cannot assess the velocity if the medium of light relative to the surface of the planet or to the background of space.
This is only possible when that medium of light is constant not only for ligfht but also for the planet and the space.
The velocity of light will depend on the properties of that background and not on the velocity of the source of light or that of the observer. Those relative velocities shall only result in the Doppler Effect. This is the case with sound too.
This is consistent with the seven points of
The Philosophy of Cosmology
Because air waves and light waves do not propagate in the same way. This is why the analogy breaks down. Light and space-time seem bound to one another in a different way than disturbances in a pond or air. The proof of this can be found in time dilation I believe.
I am currently looking at the following paper:
Principles of Emission Theory
Here is a statement that has been made about the relation between the velocity of
light and the motions of both the source and observer.
Velocity of light does not depend on the velocity of the source. It depends only on the relative velocity between the medium and the observer. This is the statement of the classical wave model, and it follows directly from the wave concept as applied to the wave phenomena in general. As a rule, if anything is a wave, then its motion and the motion of its source are not additive. The wave model predicts the feasibility of determining the absolute velocity of the observer without any reference to the rest of the universe. However, it became clear, after the failure of this prediction that the statement of the wave model is partially, at least, incorrect, and must be modified.
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I believe that the velocity of a wave depends solely on the characteristics of the medium it is traveling in. Velocity of the source relative to the medium changes the wavelength and frequency but not the velocity.
If the medium is moving, or the observer is moving relative to the medium, the velocity may seem to change, but it is still constant relative to the medium.
Another statement that has been made is:
Velocity of light is independent of the relative velocity between the source and the observer. This is the statement of Special Relativity. Because this statement cannot be deduced from any theoretical argument, it must be introduced as a fundamental postulate.
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I believe that the velocity of light is constant relative its medium, just as velocity of sound is constant relative to its medium under all circumstances.
The relative velocity between the source and observer changes the wavelength and frequency but not the velocity.
It seems that the velocity of either the source or the observer relative to the medium of light cannot be determined.
Another statement that has been made is:
The velocity of light depends on the velocities of both the source and the observer. This is the statement of the Galilean theorem of the addition of velocities which forms the basis of the Emission theory, and it follows naturally from the particle concept.
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I belive that light travels on a “disturbance level” that is very different from the “disturbance level” on which solid objects travel. Therefore, the Galilean theorem of addition cannot be applied to this case.
From EINSTEIN – HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 20, Quantum Entanglement, Section on “Physics and Reality”:
“There is no sense in regarding matter and field as two qualities quite different from each other … Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field in which the states of the greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone.”
Einstein viewed particles not as independent objects but as a special manifestation of the field itself:
This is my view as well.
The paper
Principles of Emission Theory says:
The last two statements about the speed of light are diametrically opposed. At the quantitative level, however, there is some sort of symmetry between a compound quantity assumed to be absolute and its fundamental units to be relative, on one hand, and the same compound quantity taken to be relative and its fundamental units to be absolute, on the other hand. This symmetry is capable of rendering any indirect experimental evidence for or against either one of those two theoretical standpoints, completely inconclusive.
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I believe that motion ultimately can be compared to itself only. Space and time are aspects of motion and they are relative to each other.
It is an error to think of space and time as absolute and look at motion to be relative with respect to them.
This paper states:
Light speed as a universal constant, in the Einsteinian sense, is an integral part of the conventional research, and it is reasonable to assume that its theoretical implications have been thoroughly explored. In contrast, the notion of variability has been investigated, only occasionally, by very few individuals.
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I believe that light speed is constant in relation to its “disturbance level” but not universally. Disturbance levels are like different media. Each disturbance level is different kind of spacetime with its own constant speed.
The disturbance levels of radio waves, light and gamma rays are different from each other. The disturbance levels are defined here.
The Philosophy of Cosmology
No disturbance = Theoretical base, Disturbance level 0
Disturbance of frequency 1 = Disturbance level 1 (2^0)
Disturbance of frequency 2 = Disturbance level 2 (2^1)
Disturbance of frequency 4= Disturbance level 3 (2^2)
Disturbance of frequency 8 = Disturbance level 4 (2^3)
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Disturbance of frequency 2^(n-1) = Disturbance level n
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For Radio frequencies, the disturbance level is about 30
For Light frequencies, the disturbance level is about 50
For Gamma frequencies, the disturbance level is about 67
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The light speed constant belongs to disturbance level 50. The speed at radio frequencies shall be greater than the speed of light. The speed at gamma frequencies shall be slower than the speed of light.
Space and time are aspects of motion and they are relative to each other.
They seem to be in a kind of inverse proportion to one another. Not directly but along a geometric progression, don’t they?
The paper on Emission Theory states,
It is the main purpose of this paper to unify those previous theoretical attempts on the notion of variability, within one coherent conceptual scheme, and to explore their implications in optics and astrophysics. It should be noted that the introduction of the notion of variability, into astronomy, in particular, could be very destructive. That is not because the idea in itself is destructive, but because most of the theoretical framework in modern astronomy is built around the notion of constancy.
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In other words, this paper wants to look closely at the inconsistency between wave and corpuscular theories of light more closely.
This paper questions the constancy attributed to the speed of light. It wants to look at the notion of variablity instead.
Per the paper on Emission Theory, the fundamental assumptions are:
(1) The source of light is a collection of basic emitters.
(2) A basic emitter emits the fundamental elements of its radiation, with constant speed, at regular intervals of time.
(3) The speed of the radiation is constant with respect to the inertial frame of the basic emitter.
(4) The wavelength is defined as the distance between two successive elements of radiation.
(5) The primary frame of reference can be identified by the statistical method, the principle of least action, the Bradley law of aberration, or some other method.
Let’s look at the following from the paper on Emission Theory:
In the inertial frame of reflecting surface, light is always reflected with the relative velocity between the incident light and the reflecting surface.
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Note: For reference to disturbance levels, please see
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Let’s take the disturbance level of a solid object to be quite high – say about 100. This would represent the inertial frame of the reflecting surface. The disturbance level of light is about 50. The light speed is constant at c in its own reference frame of ‘D50’. It is interacting with an object at ‘D100’..
After reflection the direction of light changes with respect to the reflecting surface but its speed is still the same. It is like a long train changing its direction. Before reflection the relative velocity of the engine with respect to the the last carriage was zero. After a total reversal of direction the relative velocity of the engine with respect to the the last carriage is 2v where v is the velocity of the train with respect to the reflecting surface.
So we have the whole train still moving at the speed v in its own frame of reference. But a part of it is moving at 2v with respect to another part because of reversal of direction.
What is troubling here is the idea of speed and velocity
(1) The speed of the train is zero with respect to itself.
(2) The speed of the train is v with respect to a reflecting surface.
(3) Reflection causes beginning of the train to have a velocity of 2v relative to the end of the train. But the speed of the two parts is still the same.
The question in my mind is, “How is the inertial frame of ‘D100’ related to the inertial frame of ‘D50’ because the object which appears as a ‘train’ in D50 would appear as a squished plate in D100?”
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Every scientific generation has crashed against the orders of magnitude of the universe and thus the reality or should I write unreality of its existence. It takes a lot of guts to explore beyond what is comfortable. Even the Great Ones found it so. Though they made great strides of understanding, it seems that when life becomes too counterintuitive we all balk. But that’s okay because if we can stretch the envelope of our understanding just a little bit, we make that expanded field normal and soon to be “classical” for the next generation, and so it goes.
Here is a YouTube video showing a cold-temperature experiment that is slated for a few years from now aboard the ISS. I like how it demonstrated the ingenuity of the current generation’s Great Ones. These smart ones carry the banner of scientific exploration forward without giving up or resorting to illogical explanations of “spooky effects” and continue to observe and to calculate. And when it becomes too hard to observe, they come up with a new way to observe even if it takes all of man’s knowledge and experience pulled together and done in outer space to do so. This seems so admirable to me.
Amidst all the brouhaha and fallacious pronouncements about QM by those who would use it to further less holy agendas, SCIENCE is yet alive and well and being practiced daily.
I didn’t get the YouTube link that you mentioned about a cold temp. experiment.
Mark
You need to go to the blog to see it.
Got it, thanks.
The methods developed to reach these temps. is astounding.
Mark, I am somewhat of a farm boy and consider myself deft in mechanical arts but when I see what these boys create to test their ideas, well I have to bow down.