Observers

[Dinosaur]

From QuarkHead Post #29

A quantum state (for example) remains indeterminate until measured

The above is incorrect & is due to misunderstanding of remarks made by knowledgeable experts.

It implies that interaction with a human observer is required.

The following is more in line with the mainstream expert POV. From my Post 28

Quantum level entities cannot be said to have properties until/unless the quantum level entity has some effect on (or interaction with) a classical level entity or process.

My remark is a reasonable facsimile of the correct view. Those desiring a correct statement of the Copenhagen (mainstream) POV should use google.

 

[danshawen]

This is also the most perfect example I can think of to demonstrate that:

1) entanglement states exist for both bound and unbound energy
2) entanglement states may change at rates not subject to the Minkowski causality limitations imposed on simultanaeity by making time intervals or velocities proportional to AN INSTANT OF TIME. Time, an instant of time, entanglement, and the speed of light are different things. I'm not saying they aren't related in some way unimagined by Minkowski. Only that two of them (an instant in time and entanglement) are.

From QuarkHead Post #29The above is incorrect & is due to misunderstanding of remarks made by knowledgeable experts.

It implies that interaction with a human observer is required.

The following is more in line with the mainstream expert POV. From my Post 28My remark is a reasonable facsimile of the correct view. Those desiring a correct statement of the Copenhagen (mainstream) POV should use google.

I most certainly have not implied that a human observer is required; merely that a direction for the observation is chosen (and changes the entanglement state of one of the pair) when that happens.

Think about it.

 

[arfa brane]

With these coins, you should think about having a whole lot of them, and measuring their states should be a way to divide their number in half.
That is, the coins are a statistical ensemble, you can measure heads or tails, or you can measure copper or silver, but not simultaneously.

Ok, so you divide all the coins according to whether they show heads or tails. Now if you want to divide, say, the heads up half according to whether the coins are copper or silver, you again get two halves.

But now these halves are neither heads or tails; if you measure copper or silver with all the coins, you lose the information about which half is heads or tails--you have to measure it again.

This is a consequence of the Uncertainty Principle. The bumper-sticker version of this says you get half the amount of information you expect classically. There's a better way to understand the measurement problem in terms of something like spin measurements in two orthogonal directions.

You need to use vectors and vector subspaces though.

 

[danshawen]

You need to use vectors and vector subspaces thoug

No I don't.

There's no such thing as a fixed position or an origin in inertialess space, and it doesn't currently interest me doing any math with Euclidean geometry based on coordinates planted in solid matter. Why would that even be relevant to these kinds of problems?

"Galilean relativity" and relativity that is based on coordinate system differences planted or refernced to a solid roadbed have their uses, the best of which is to derive the time dilation equations of Special Relativity. And these work just fine for velocities <c, or for any purposes other than quantum entanglement. I have already stated why. Vectors and vector subspaces are irrelevant. Entanglement is not something that can be added to a velocity (because it is NOT a velocity), so why do you feel a need to revert to using math that is wrong from the start?

There is not a "smooth, vector velocity transition" between entanglement and the speed of light. The transition is very abrupt, and there are no intermediate velocities in which anything having inertia can move at velocities >c , in case that wasn't clear. An absolute instant of time actually exists in this universe, even if time intervals may be dilated over a wide range by means of relative motion (bound energy only).

It interests me even less to eliminate time as a variable, throwing away conservation of momentum and energy along with it. Eliminating the conservation of energy in this universe is the same inconsistent nonsense that begets multiverses. The conservation of energy in the universe we can observe does not allow this. Time travel is not possible for the same reason in this universe, even though causality reversals are possible with entanglement under certain conditions.

I didn't need anything other than relativity PLUS enganglement to solve the double slit problem, and neither does anyone else.

 

[arfa brane]

No I don't.

There's no such thing as a fixed position or an origin in inertialess space, and it doesn't currently interest me doing any math with Euclidean geometry based on coordinates planted in solid matter. Why would that even be relevant to these kinds of problems?

If you want to measure spin in the x direction, you need to know what "the x direction" is.

Moreover, in a vector representation of particle spin, you take the two directions "up" and "down" (which are 180deg apart in Euclidean space) to a vector basis ("90deg" apart or having a zero inner product).

In the case of measurement, that's a basis too. Without vector subspaces of the Euclidean space you do measurements in, how do you measure anything?
Although you might believe you don't need a coordinate system, you will find it difficult I imagine to do any science without one or two.

Or mathematics, like basic addition, say.

A physicist might argue against your POV by saying you can't really avoid vectors and coordinate systems, they're just too ubiquitous. A mathematician might argue that vector spaces are also ubiquitous mathematical structures, that they happen to explain a lot of physics isn't the point (unless you're a physicist, see previous sentence).

I didn't need anything other than relativity PLUS enganglement to solve the double slit problem, and neither does anyone else.

I don't understand what you mean by "solve the double slit problem".

Can you solve the delayed-erasure experiment problem the same way?

 

[danshawen]

If you want to measure spin in the x direction, you need to know what "the x direction" is.

Moreover, in a vector representation of particle spin, you take the two directions "up" and "down" (which are 180deg apart in Euclidean space) to a vector basis ("90deg" apart or having a zero inner product).

In the case of measurement, that's a basis too. Without vector subspaces of the Euclidean space you do measurements in, how do you measure anything?
Although you might believe you don't need a coordinate system, you will find it difficult I imagine to do any science without one or two.

Or mathematics, like basic addition, say.

A physicist might argue against your POV by saying you can't really avoid vectors and coordinate systems, they're just too ubiquitous. A mathematician might argue that vector spaces are also ubiquitous mathematical structures, that they happen to explain a lot of physics isn't the point (unless you're a physicist, see previous sentence).

I don't understand what you mean by "solve the double slit problem".

Can you solve the delayed-erasure experiment problem the same way?

It was also ubiquitous for Minkowski to set time ITSELF, an INSTANT of it, proportional to the speed of light. Wrong. Space has no inertia, and if you expect the math will still work by endowing space with inertia (by giving it a coordinate system that has physical meaning in terms of distances and velocities), that would be just as wrong. This is the proportional math equivalent of dividing by zero. It matters little whether after that, you decide the quantity needs to be complex so as to give it a preferred direction (no reverese time travel), or to start doing Pythagorean geometry with it because you know how to build that geometry into transformational boost matrices. It was wrong before boost matrices were even invented.

Look, trying to understand entanglement with vector math is going to be about as productive as working out the Periodic Table using billiard ball collisions as your only modeling tool.

There was a time, on these forums, that I still believed you could pack up the geometry of Special Relativity into a tool kit and use it to go exploring the spin energy dynamics inside of electrons or quarks. I now realize, this was a mistake. Entanglement is what makes it a mistake. Entanglement is what makes bound energy possible. For that matter, it is also what makes unbound energy propagating at c possible. It is not possible to attach (with inertia) a photon, or the path of a photon to inertialess space, because absolute position does not exist. Absolute veloctity, even an invariant one like c, does not work the way you think it does either, and for the same reason absolute position does not.

Inertia is not a property of space. It is a property of energy. And neither energy nor inertia exists without a deeper understanding of an instant of time, and entanglement.

Absolute time, however, is another matter. It is because the quantum field that pervades all of what we call "space" has no quantum spin (spin=0) that entanglement has meaning, and in particular, that this allows particles with spin both to exist and to PERSIST indefinitely as a function of the passage of time at various rates associated with relative motion and other factors. An absolute instant of time spanning the known universe is not possible with Minkowski's version of time, which would be limited to a consideration of unbound energy propagating at c, (the only state in which it can persist in unbound form), or of the centers of bound energy (particles) at velocities <c. He covered nearly every contingency in a universe of events, but did so in a manner that for over 100 years has obscured understanding of possibly the most important energy transfer event in this universe.

 

[Write4U]

Oh dear - what does it mean for "nature to go on"? Mathematical functions are not observer dependent.

Yes you would. A quantum state (for example) remains indeterminate until measured.

I disagree, IMO, "uncertainty" is only uncertain to human observation.

Allow me to propose another perspective. In the abstract, the mathematical function between two particles has already determined how a particle will impact and interact with another particle on an intersecting trajectory, but such small objects travelling @ *c* this mathematical interaction only becomes measurable after the event. The intersecting angles are already mathematically present, long before the particles collide.
There is no uncertainty in mathematical functions, only observational limitations.

The double slit experiment is proof by its predictable wave-interference functions which are mathematically exact at all times, and which would suggest that once a particle is in motion along a trajectory, it will remain in that exact trajectory until interfered with. The double slit experiment clearly shows that the wave function of particles behaves exactly the same as all wave function interference patterns, which would suggest a consistent mathematical function, with non-random components.

Just a thought that occurred to me, while watching another clip on the four fundamental forces. This (of course) is speculative and I would appreciate to hear a reason why, at quantum level, particles should interact randomly (in uncertain ways) and not in accordance with known mathematical laws.[/QUOTE]

 

[danshawen]

I disagree, IMO, "uncertainty" is only uncertain to human observation.

Allow me to propose another perspective. In the abstract, the mathematical function between two particles has already determined how a particle will impact and interact with another particle on an intersecting trajectory, but such small objects travelling @ *c* this mathematical interaction only becomes measurable after the event. The intersecting angles are already mathematically present, long before the particles collide.
There is no uncertainty in mathematical functions, only observational limitations.

The double slit experiment is proof by its predictable wave-interference functions which are mathematically exact at all times, and which would suggest that once a particle is in motion along a trajectory, it will remain in that exact trajectory until interfered with. The double slit experiment clearly shows that the wave function of particles behaves exactly the same as all wave function interference patterns, which would suggest a consistent mathematical function, with non-random components.

Just a thought that occurred to me, while watching another clip on the four fundamental forces. This (of course) is speculative and I would appreciate to hear a reason why, at quantum level, particles should interact randomly (in uncertain ways) and not in accordance with known mathematical laws.

Your critique that my view of entanglement is a throwback to determinism has merit, and it also bothers me. But it is still not as deterministic as absolute space, and that is really all we are losing.

I don't yet have a thought experiment to demonstrate how deterministic entanglement might be. But each time I look at my own image in a plane mirror everywhere or anywhere (whatever that means) or at any time in the known universe regardless of my relative state of motion and it appears to be the same if I am not spinning or if the mirror is not spinning, that seems deterministic enough.

You could even play billiards by viewing the game in a mirror; things would simply appear reversed.

 

[danshawen]

Now all of us here understand something else about quantum entanglement that we did not know before. It will not work as advertised with light pulses. As soon as the waveform connection between the moving electric charges and the photons it produces is interrupted, the propagating energy is no longer entangled with its source. This is a bolder idea than you think it is, mainly because the double slit experiment yields no clue this is the case. You can defocus either lens as many times as you wish and it still works. Think deeper. If you FM modulated the photons instead of interrupting their waveforms (and the electrons that emitted them), then the photons would remain entangled. Photons are unbound energy extensions of an electron's wave function which persists in time in a different mode. Has anyone taught you that anywhere else? No, because they all think time itself is proportional to c. It is not.

Both electrons and photons may be entangled. It is a property of entanglement that the passage of time in the quantum field in which they exist, that persistence in time is very different for bound energy, like an electron in this case, than it is for unbound energy (the photon produced by accelerating an electric charge). Neither an electron nor a photon can "exist" if it is stationary. But of course they can be slowed down.

That's a source of a large indeterminacy; whether something exists or not. The solution is related. If bound energy 'stops' (whatever that means-- NO ABSOLUTE SPACE, REMEMBER?) , this is, in most cases, not a problem, because most particles can exist in any inertial reference frame. But NOT an electron, and not a photon either. You can't red shift a photon "all the way" and expect that it will still propagate. So much for the idea of photons orbiting black holes. Those would be pulses, if they existed at all, which is doubtful. The hole will still appear to be black, except for Hawking's virtual ones. I forget whether that required an event horizon composed of non virtual photons or not? I suppose electron degeneracy for neutron stars will also need revision from these ideas. Funny how changing just one little thing can unravel 100 years of mathemagical science fiction or pseudoscience. No giant turtles all the way down here.

There is still a lot of related cutting edge physics to be discovered, but we have cleared a path for it to proceed in a direction it has not taken in over 100 years.

 

[Write4U]

Your critique that my view of entanglement is a throwback to determinism has merit, and it also bothers me. But it is still not as deterministic as absolute space, and that is really all we are losing.

I don't yet have a thought experiment to demonstrate how deterministic entanglement might be. But each time I look at my own image in a plane mirror everywhere or anywhere (whatever that means) or at any time in the known universe regardless of my relative state of motion and it appears to be the same if I am not spinning or if the mirror is not spinning, that seems deterministic enough.

You could even play billiards by viewing the game in a mirror; things would simply appear reversed.

The *mirror function*, my favorite subject, for both the consistency of repeating mirror patterns in nature as well as the human ability to *recognize* these patterns.

 

[Write4U]

I find the concept of a universe shaped as a dodecahedron fascinating. Each face is the exact opposite (mirror) of its opposite side. What did Plato see, when visualizing such a configuration? Interestingly, the opposite sides also reverse the vertical orientation of its opposite side. It is a true 3D mirror function, whereas a regular mirror provides a 2D image.
Moreover, such a configuration allows for curved planes (visualize a soccer ball) and obeys the Poincare conjecture of a fundamentally spherical construct which allows for single points at all locations of the surface, apparently an important consideration.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/dodecahedron.html
and in greater complexity,
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...vt=dodecahedron&qpvt=dodecahedron&FORM=IARRSM

Interestingly Poincare refused the million dollar prize for his work as well as refusing the prestigious Fields Medal. A true scientific mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincaré_conjecture

 

[danshawen]

I find the concept of a universe shaped as a dodecahedron fascinating. Each face is the exact opposite (mirror) of its opposite side. What did Plato see, when visualizing such a configuration? Interestingly, the opposite sides also reverse the vertical orientation of its opposite side. It is a true 3D mirror function, whereas a regular mirror provides a 2D image.
Moreover, such a configuration allows for curved planes (visualize a soccer ball) and obeys the Poincare conjecture of a fundamentally spherical construct which allows for single points at all locations of the surface, apparently an important consideration.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/dodecahedron.html
and in greater complexity,
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...vt=dodecahedron&qpvt=dodecahedron&FORM=IARRSM

Interestingly Poincare refused the million dollar prize for his work as well as refusing the prestigious Fields Medal. A true scientific mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincaré_conjecture

I don't remember, how many faces does an Amplitudihedron have in n dimensions?

Math is indeed fun, and so is geometry. Useful, too. Don't think I didn't notice. I'm trying to model something else here that is a different kind of geometry. It's faster than light, and so, not something remotely in our everyday experience, or at least, not that most people fail to notice simply because it appears to be "normal" to the way we think about things here on the "at rest" end of relative time dilation. It's why solid geometry appeals so strongly, even if there is no mathematical basis for lengths constructed of nothing more substantial than light travel time from a frame that is at rest or nearly at rest to most local bound particles, nor for them to behave anything like the rock hard solid geometry of Euclid.

"Spacetime" doesn't quite capture it. "Timespace" still might. Time gets top billing because absolute time is a more realistic physical concept than space was. Light travel time connecting particles with no anchors, other than their own inertia in space? If someone has a name for that, I need a shorthand term to refer to such a concept. So far, Relativity WITH Entanglement seems like the best, and also least ambiguous term so far.

 

[Write4U]

I don't remember, how many faces does an Amplitudihedron have in n dimensions?

Math is indeed fun, and so is geometry. Useful, too. Don't think I didn't notice. I'm trying to model something else here that is a different kind of geometry. It's faster than light, and so, not something remotely in our everyday experience, or at least, not that most people fail to notice simply because it appears to be "normal" to the way we think about things here on the "at rest" end of relative time dilation. It's why solid geometry appeals so strongly, even if there is no mathematical basis for lengths constructed of nothing more substantial than light travel time from a frame that is at rest or nearly at rest to most local bound particles, nor for them to behave anything like the rock hard solid geometry of Euclid.

"Spacetime" doesn't quite capture it. "Timespace" still might. Time gets top billing because absolute time is a more realistic physical concept than space was. Light travel time connecting particles with no anchors, other than their own inertia in space? If someone has a name for that, I need a shorthand term to refer to such a concept. So far, Relativity WITH Entanglement seems like the best, and also least ambiguous term so far.

Thanks for the response.

I was not visualizing the Platonic solids as solids, but as abstractions without physical properties. Livio explained that a circle is not a physical circular line you draw on a piece of paper, but that circles exist in the abstract as a property (potential) of space.

Hence my mention of the Poincare Conjecture.
I must admit, I'm in deep water here. But the subject is fascinating.

 

[The God]

I don't remember, how many faces does an Amplitudihedron have in n dimensions?

Math is indeed fun, and so is geometry. Useful, too. Don't think I didn't notice. I'm trying to model something else here that is a different kind of geometry. It's faster than light, and so, not something remotely in our everyday experience, or at least, not that most people fail to notice simply because it appears to be "normal" to the way we think about things here on the "at rest" end of relative time dilation. It's why solid geometry appeals so strongly, even if there is no mathematical basis for lengths constructed of nothing more substantial than light travel time from a frame that is at rest or nearly at rest to most local bound particles, nor for them to behave anything like the rock hard solid geometry of Euclid.

"Spacetime" doesn't quite capture it. "Timespace" still might. Time gets top billing because absolute time is a more realistic physical concept than space was. Light travel time connecting particles with no anchors, other than their own inertia in space? If someone has a name for that, I need a shorthand term to refer to such a concept. So far, Relativity WITH Entanglement seems like the best, and also least ambiguous term so far.

I like your repeated reference to "light travel time". What is so fundamental about this?

To define time itself, light is used, you know that Cs transition radiation, so your reference to light travel time is not so fundamental. I can appreciate your bound energy concept but "light travel time" is trivial and will not lead to anything great.

 

[arfa brane]

Look, trying to understand entanglement with vector math is going to be about as productive as working out the Periodic Table using billiard ball collisions as your only modeling tool.

I disagree. The vectors and their bases let you define an entangled state. The mathematical approach can't be said to be unproductive.

 

[danshawen]

I like your repeated reference to "light travel time". What is so fundamental about this?

To define time itself, light is used, you know that Cs transition radiation, so your reference to light travel time is not so fundamental. I can appreciate your bound energy concept but "light travel time" is trivial and will not lead to anything great.

You are refering to the reference time INTERVAL of 1.ooooooooooo standard seconds by means of a certain number of wavelengths of a transition of an optically pumped cesium atom in the frame that is at rest relative to the electrons that produce those wavelengths. This is a definition of a time INTERVAL, and NOT a definition of time itself.

You cannot "define" time itself with the propagation of light in a vacuum, period. You CAN define it with entanglement, but that definition entails the recognition that entanglement states transition in an INSTANT of time faster than light can travel between the charges responsible for producing the photon, not proportional to a velocity including c, nor any time interval.

"Light travel time" is standard Special Relativity, which I have not changed. Only entanglement (and along with it, "real" simultanaeity) has been added in order to explain the results of the entangled double slit experiment in detail, an experiment which supports the view that entanglement occur FTL

A side effect of adding entanglement to relativity without Minkowski's erroneous speed of light proportion for an instant of time is the restoration of conservation of energy for both bound and unbound forms of energy, and an understanding that persistence in time means unbound energy MUST propagate at c (non-locality), and bound energy has a distinctly different permanence in time that requires it to be localized. Both of these forms of energy can be entangled in the case of electrons and photons.

 

[arfa brane]

"Light travel time" is standard Special Relativity, which I have not changed. Only entanglement (and along with it, "real" simultanaeity) has been added in order to explain the results of the entangled double slit experiment in detail, an experiment which supports the view that entanglement occur FTL

Entanglement doesn't occur FTL. Particles have to have interacted to be entangled.

You cannot "define" time itself with the propagation of light in a vacuum, period. You CAN define it with entanglement, but that definition entails the recognition that entanglement states transition in an INSTANT of time faster than light can travel between the charges responsible for producing the photon, not proportional to a velocity including c, nor any time interval.

You're saying time can be defined in terms of instants?
You seem to be talking about measurement though, not what entanglement is, nor how it defines time.
What about the fact that Alice and Bob can measure their particles, but then need to compare the results? Without the comparison, how does either of them know if there are correlations?

 

[danshawen]

I disagree. The vectors and their bases let you define an entangled state. The mathematical approach can't be said to be unproductive.

It is the erroneous definition of a tensor in relativity that prevents you from doing that. Minkowski did this before Hilbert followed his example.

I have noted that in Hilbert space, they try to avoid the problem largely by dealing with probabilities, but once the error has been made, it is too late to fix it in that manner. You wind up throwing out conservation of energy to deal with entanglement. If that works at all it would come as a surprise to me. As I have explained, Minkowski basically divided by zero in his first attempt to define time. It allowed him a compact way to describe relativistic mechanics for velocities < c, but it then it can't handle entanglement because it is FTL, and that turns Special Relativity into sheer nonsense for explaining entanglement.

 

[arfa brane]

I have noted that in Hilbert space, they try to avoid the problem largely by dealing with probabilities, but once the error has been made, it is too late to fix it in that manner. You wind up throwing out conservation of energy to deal with entanglement.

Really? In what way is energy conservation thrown out? It's a basic law of physics.

As I have explained, Minkowski basically divided by zero in his first attempt to define time.

I haven't seen this division by zero, can you post something?

 

[exchemist]

Really? In what way is energy conservation thrown out? It's a basic law of physics.

Indeed. I think Dan is either wrong or indulging in a slightly hysterical overinterpretation.

Energy is conserved, although tiny bits of it can get temporarily "borrowed"from "nothing" due to the operation of the uncertainty principle, energy and time being complementary variables. But in terms of expectation values it is conserved. That at least has always been my understanding.