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Theoretical Physics vs. Quantum Mechanics

They still have to find out what particles are composed of. And after that, they are going to have to figure out what composes the particles that particles are composed of.

EDIT: damn, too late....yougene beat me to it
 
yougene said:
Once they find the theory of everything that we know off at the moment chances are a new level of physics will be discovered with it, if it does happen we'll probably be very confused with it. I wonder how many layers of physics there are. Is it a finite amount? Could it possibly be an infinite amount of layers?

There's problems with this... Deep scattering experiments seem to reveal that quarks are fundamental. They appear to have no internal structure, and they come in fractional units of charge.

There's a lot of people who have tried to write "hidden variable" theories of quantum mechanics to explain the statistical nature of it, but when you actually follow through with that you always end up concluding that faster-than-light communication between the particles is necessary.

There may be much more to theoretical physics, but at the same time if your new theory predicts nothing more than the old one then who cares?
 
As Hawking states in a breif history of time....

perhaps one of the laws of the universe is infact that a conciousness can never fully understand the universe...

to a point i kind of like that idea... what a shame if we ever understood "everything"
 
VelocideX - There goes into an issue of VSL theory. What about leptons? I'd say it's like chemistry. Different combinations of the same particles in different arrangements. That's the only way they'd make sense, but what about the stuff we really have yet to research fully. Dark matter, and those areas are still relatively unknown.

If we ever figure it all out I think ascension into energy beings would be next, but I'm just another crazy evolutionist.:p
 
Zorn-

First some of your language isn't quite right, though the basic idea is.

However, as VelocideX noted, there *are* fundamental incompatibilities between the two theories. To begin with, they're not even written in the same language.

Why do we often think that science is somehow always converging on the "great truth"? We are good at finding different truths and ways of somehow combining them, but they always seem to confound us by telling us different things when we apply different "languages" to them.

Perhaps the light as a particle-wave interferometer experiment is not actually about observation per se, but on the "language" we seek to impose on what we are seeing.
 
nick44 said:
Zorn-

Why do we often think that science is somehow always converging on the "great truth"? We are good at finding different truths and ways of somehow combining them, but they always seem to confound us by telling us different things when we apply different "languages" to them.
Two reasons. The first is experience. The history of physics is one of the unification of seemingly disparate phenomena. Since Newton managed to explain both gravitation and mechanics through the same simple set of laws, physics has had astonishing success in explaining more and more from less and less. It does not seem unreasonable to assume this process can continue, so we will eventually have a single elegant "theory of everything" which gives rise to all of physics.

The second reason is basically faith. There is a deeply held feeling among physicists, strengthened by experience, that Nature ought to make sense. Its behavior shouldn't be random or arbitrary. It ought to be orderly comprehensible and, even more than that, it ought to be on some level simple, beautiful, elegant. There is of course no logical requirement that be so. Yet the pursuit of physics -- of all science -- is predicated on the belief or hope that the universe is comprehensible. That hope has been borne out spectacularly in the past; why should it go so far and then stop? Why should so much of physics be so elegant and symmetrical, but a few pieces just have no explanation?

This feeling is eloquently expressed by the following passage, almost certainly written by John Wheeler, which appears at the end of Gravitation (a main textbook on GR):

Paper in white the floor of the room, and rule it off in one- foot squares. Down on one's hands and knees, write in the first square a set of equations conceived as able to govern the physics of the universe. Think more overnight. Next day put a better set of equations into square two. Invite one's most respected colleagues to contribue to other squares. At the end of these labors, one has worked oneself out into the doorway. Stand up, look back on all those equations, some perhaps more hopeful than others, raise one's finger commandingly, and give the order "Fly!" Not one of those equations will put on wings, take off, or fly. Yet the universe "flies".

Some principle uniquely right and compelling must, when one knows it, be also so compelling that it is clear the universe is built, and must be built, in such and such a way, and that it could not be otherwise. But how can one discover that principle?


Perhaps the light as a particle-wave interferometer experiment is not actually about observation per se, but on the "language" we seek to impose on what we are seeing.
It's both, really: there is no either/or. That 'light acts as both a particle and a wave' is on one hand a statement about experimental facts. Knowing the physics of light lets me tell you what you will observe when you perform certain experiments. Whatever language I use to describe the underlying physics, it must in the end give predictions about the results of experiments to be any good at all.

On the other hand it's also a reflection on the 'language' we use. 'Particle' and 'wave' are nice concepts which serve us well, but they are seen to be inadequate here. Light is clearly not described by either, so if we want to understand what's going on we probably need to look for a different way of describing it (light is now well-understood as an excitation of a quantized electromagnetic field.)

The crucial importance of the 'language' one uses to describe physical phenomena for understanding those phenomena is very well appreciated by physicists. We even have a term for it, formalism. Every physicist worth his salt knows several different formalisms for handling a particular class of phenomena. For example, you can do classical mechanics Phys 101-style, with forces and accelerations and such; or you can use the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian formalisms. They're completely equivalent (you can prove this), but "force" and so forth turn out to be concepts of limited use, whereas the Hamiltonian formalism is exceptionally powerful -- it is applicable to a huge range of problems.
 
Zorn-

Not that it matters much since I am now 25 and working as a chemist, but my undergrad degree was in physics. :)


I don't really think that physics or the sciences necessarily will stop, as you put it. I just think that the argument you use in terms of history can also be applied to state that physics will never get the "truth". Famous statements by certain patent office authorities in the late 1890s declared that there was nothing vital yet to be discovered (funny even if taken out of context).

Your view of science is modernist, as it is with most. You believe in the idea that everything can be figured out if we are clever enough. I do not deny that science has gone through many permutations that are based on earlier theory. And that these developments can more closely "model" the real world. But I seem to find more sense, so to speak, in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Even scientists, like myself :p , are beginning to doubt whether or not we will ever find "the answer". It seems to me like our knowledge about the universe outside ourselves is definitely growing, but not in any sort of exponential or linear way. I look at scientific knowledge about how the world works like a function that asymptotically approaches what we experience in the world. Science is just a big model, and it can never be perfect.

Perhaps we will add on certain theories that explain our questions now, but there will be new questions from those answers. Plus, I don't see us predicting earthquakes and figuring out consciousness by using human consciousness anytime soon. (Although Penrose has some nice ideas on the latter...)
 
Thats just it, in this universe entropy rules, it is the only constant.
There is no law abiding form for the universe, only man can create order. Only man can take away the abstract nature of this universe. That's the trade off, organisation and simplicity for art and chaos.

Constant is the chaos constantly causing chaos.
 
yougene said:
I wonder how many layers of physics there are. Is it a finite amount? Could it possibly be an infinite amount of layers?

David Bohm believes it is infinite, his holographic paradigm for looking at the universe seems to work on so many different levels

Bohm's basic assumption is that "elementary particles are actually systems of extremely complicated internal structure, acting essentially as amplifiers of *information* contained in a quantum wave." As a conseqence, he has evolved a new and controversial theory of the universe--a new model of reality that Bohm calls the "Implicate Order."

The theory of the Implicate Order contains an ultraholistic cosmic view; it connects everything with everything else. In principle, any individual element could reveal "detailed information about every other element in the universe." The central underlying theme of Bohm's theory is the "unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders."

During the early 1980s Bohm developed his theory of the Implicate Order in order to explain the bizarre behavior of subatomic particles--behavior that quantum phyicists have not been able to explain. Basically, two subatomic particles that have once interacted can instantaneously "respond to each other's motions thousands of years later when they are light-years apart." This sort of particle interconnectedness requires superluminal signaling, which is faster than the speed of light. This odd phenomenon is called the EPR effect, named after the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen thought experiment.

Bohm believes that the bizarre behavior of the subatomic particles might be caused by unobserved subquantum forces and particles. Indeed, the apparent weirdness might be produced by hidden means that pose no conflict with ordinary ideas of causality and reality.

Bohm believes that this "hiddeness" may be reflective of a deeper dimension of reality. He maintains that space and time might actually be derived from an even deeper level of objective reality. This reality he calls the Implicate Order. Within the Implicate Order everything is connected; and, in theory, any individual element could reveal information about every other element in the universe.

Borrowing ideas from holographic photography, the *hologram* is Bohm's favorite metaphor for conveying the structure of the Implicate Order. Holography relies upon wave interference. If two wavelengths of light are of differing frequencies, they will interfere with each other and create a pattern. "Because a hologram is recording detail down to the wavelength of light itself, it is also a dense *information* storage." Bohm notes that the hologram clearly reveals how a "total content--in principle extending over the whole of space and time--is enfolded in the movement of waves (electromagnetic and other kinds) in any given region." The hologram illustrates how "information about the entire holographed scene is enfolded into every part of the film." It resembles the Implicate Order in the sense that every point on the film is "completely determined by the overall configuration of the interference patterns." Even a tiny chunk of the holographic film will reveal the unfolded form of an entire three-dimensional object.

Proceeding from his holographic analogy, Bohm proposes a new order--the Implicate Order where "everything is enfolded into everything." This is in contrast to the explicate order where things are unfolded. Bohm puts it thus:

"The actual order (the Implicate Order) itself has been recorded in the complex movement of electromagnetic fields, in the form of light waves. Such movement of light waves is present everywhere and in principle enfolds the entire universe of space and time in each region. This enfoldment and unfoldment takes place not only in the movement of the electromagnetic field but also in that of other fields (electronic, protonic, etc.). These fields obey quantum-mechanical laws, implying the properties of discontinuity and non-locality. The totality of the movement of enfoldment and unfoldment may go immensely beyond what has revealed itself to our observations. We call this totality by the name *holomovement.*"

Bohm believes that *the Implicate Order has to be extended into a multidimensional reality;* in other words, the holomovement endlessly enfolds and unfolds into infinite dimensionality. Within this milieu there are independent sub-totalities (such as physical elements and human entities) with relative autonomy. The layers of the Implicate Order can go deeper and deeper to the ultimately unknown. It is this "unknown and undescribable totality" that Bohm calls the holomovement. The holomovement is the "fundamental ground of all matter."

http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/plenum/plenum_3.html
 
That's a very fancy way of putting it. Sounds more like he's trying to explain a way to link string theory with quantum with-out actually using such terms. Essentially that's what he explained there.

Does this guy have any papers in public forum yet?
 
Hawkins writes of similar theories.

Supposedly everything is 2 dimensional information portrayed in a 3 dimensional "brane"
 
I'm not a fan of string theory, nor super string theory. I just can't see something like happening in nature. It still works on the everthing in order principle, but nothing in the universe is really in order. It's just our life time are so fast, and short in comparision to the universe time clock, that it seems that way.
I do believe everything can be predicted, though. Only when given enough data on the surrounding area, and the particulars of the actual event, I'm to look for. That gives some people the concept of having prior knowledge, but it actually works on a basic understanding on how stuff works down to the quantum level, and up to the classical models.


String theory works on too many things remaining constant, and stable. The same with inflation. There's too many variables for it to remain constant, and stable. It has to be more of a mass, or sea...
 
Everything that is understand seems to have an order/structure to it. Everything else is percieved as chaos. We don't really know if everythign has an underlying order/structure to it or if there are some things that are just truly chaotic, or perhaps even both at once.
 
David said:
That's a very fancy way of putting it. Sounds more like he's trying to explain a way to link string theory with quantum with-out actually using such terms. Essentially that's what he explained there.

Does this guy have any papers in public forum yet?

I'd imagine so, he's a respected physisist, here's a brief bio...

David Bohm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

David Joseph Bohm (December 20, 1917 - October 27, 1992) was an American quantum physicist.

Born at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he attended Pennsylvania State College, graduating in 1939, before completing his Ph.D. in 1943 under Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley. Although he was invited, he refused to join the Manhattan Project and to work with other leading scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi in developing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

After the war Bohm became assistant professor at Princeton University where he worked closely with Albert Einstein. In May 1949, at the beginning of the McCarthyism hysteria period, Bohm was called upon to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee but pleaded the Fifth amendment right to decline to testify, refusing to give evidence against colleagues. In 1950 Bohm was charged for refusing to answer questions before the Committee and arrested. He was acquitted in May 1951 but Princeton had already suspended him and after his acquittal refused to renew his contract. Bohm's colleagues sought to have his position at Princeton reinstated, and Einstein reportedly wanted Bohm to serve as his assistant, but Bohm's contract with the university was not renewed. Then, Bohm left for Brazil to take up a Chair in Physics at the University of São Paulo.

In 1955, he moved to Israel where he spent two years at the Technion at Haifa. Here he met his wife Saral, who was an important figure in the development of his ideas. In 1957 Bohm moved to the UK. He held a research fellowship at University of Bristol until 1961, when he was made Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College of the London University until his retirement in 1987.

throughout his life, bohm suffered from bouts of depression, which seemingly worsened with age. he underwent psychoanalysis with patrick de mare. in may 1991 he was admitted to the "old age psychiatry" - de mare declared bohm "suicidal". bohm stayed in the hospital until the end of august 1991. he remained on "medication" (sertralin) ((* for details: see f david peats biography)).

Bohm made a number of significant contributions to physics, particularly in the area of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Still a post-graduate at Berkeley he discovered the electron phenomenon now known as Bohm-diffusion. His first book, Quantum Theory published in 1951, was well-received by Einstein among others. However, he was unsatisified with the orthodox approach to quantum theory and began to develop his own approach (Bohm interpretation), a non-local hidden variable deterministic theory whose predictions are in perfect agreement with the quantum ones. His work and the EPR argument were the major factor motivating John Bell's inequality, whose consequences are still being investigated. In 1959, with his student Yakir Aharonov, he discovered the Aharonov-Bohm effect, showing how a vacuum could produce striking physical effects.

Bohm's scientific and philosophical views were inseparable. In 1959 he came across a book by the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. He was struck with how his own ideas on quantum mechanics meshed with the philosophical ideas of Krishnamurti. Bohm's approach to philosophy and physics are expressed in his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and in the book Science, Order and Creativity. In his later years, he developed the technique of what is know as: Bohm Dialogue, in which equal status and "free space" were the most important prerequisites. He believed that if carried out on a sufficiently wide scale, these Dialogues could help overcome fragmentation in society.

David Bohm died in London, England oct 22, 1992.

Also, check out Micheal Talbot's 'Holographic Universe', a life changing read IMO.

Bohm's fishtank analogy is the simplest explanation of the correspondence of movement between to seemingly independent particles (like, say, a photon), it basically says we are like an obsever looking at a square fish-tank but only able to see two sides of it and unaware that they are part of the same tank. We see two images of the fish and think they are independent of eachother, yet when one fish moves the other fishes movements correspond exactly, one could be forgiven for thinking the two fish were some how communicating instantaneously until one realises that the two fish are actually one and the same. A much neater idea than string theory IMO...
 
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