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I didn't see anywhere I claimed QM could answer everything I did say partial try putting you reading glasses on your age is definitely getting to you smile

If you are going to extend "why" to everything then no science is going to answer that ever Bill, and it's just becomes another Bill's box crazy posts. Perhaps you should join Paul in a religion, it's not a big step from there, as classic physics answers no questions and is wrong. That means Paul was right ... dam!!!!!

QM answers some very specific questions in that we wouldn't have quantum electrodynamics, we wouldn't have quantum field theory our atomic theory literally wouldn't hold together and it explains why energy behaves well like energy. Does it answer everything nope it's not a theory of everything but that means it doesn't answer "why" to you, so GOD here we come.

Personally I don't really care how you feel about my claims not like "Bill the box" really matters in the scope of science just another poor anti-QM nutter, not like we don't see them every other day and I love some of your claims too smile

It's interesting symptom that all the crazies here seem to think it matters what they think. Here we are on a backwater science forum that most of this garbage would get moderated out on a normal science site and they think it matters. At least I am getting something useful out of the site in practicing my English so I can hopefully pass my english exam but I am not sure what you other crazies think your getting out of this.

Last edited by Orac; 05/26/14 02:07 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
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Originally Posted By: Orac
Under classic physics there is no mechanism you just have to accept it does it, QM is telling you why it does it think about Haroche’s experiment.

This sure looks like you said that QM tells us why.

Bill Gill


C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.
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You know you should look at Paul and Marosz comments Bill it's remarkable how people see what they want to see smile

Perhaps try actually reading the paper and see what they did or have you lost your glasses again. You could also read the details around how to build a heat invisibility cloak if you don't think we understand what is going on. Oh but that is right your classic physics is so accurate that sort of stuff can't happen.

See I work on evidence and observation not what Bill thinks. In fact let me do something the crazies in this zoo would never do and change my byline and see if that changes anything laugh

True faith is interesting ask Rev K ... appearance and ego less so smile

Last edited by Orac; 05/26/14 06:31 AM.

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What triggers decoherence?

Thread drift!

Well, that's sorted that.


There never was nothing.
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Let me see. As I recall I said that QM was a better description of the universe than classical physics. Then you said that QM told us why. I took exception to that and asked you to tell us why several things are way they are. Now all at once I am trying to say that QM is wrong and all we need is classical physics. I'm not sure how we got there, except that you, Orac, are getting arrogant. You appear to feel that we should all bow down and acknowledge you as the master of SAGG.

My feeling is that you aren't really here to help us understand what modern science. You seem to be here more to bolster your own ego, at the expense of us ignorant boobs. I suggest you try to be more tolerant of the fact that we really don't know as much about QM as you do. We still do have some intelligence and are capable of figuring things out, with a little guidance.

And you should probably also accept the fact that for the time being GR is just as valid as QM. Someday there will be a theory which ties them together, but for now we need to be accepting of the facts shown by both of them.

Bill Gill


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Originally Posted By: Bill


My feeling is that you aren't really here to help us understand what modern science. You seem to be here more to bolster your own ego, at the expense of us ignorant boobs.

Bill Gill


Doh! Just because he thinks everyone is ignorant, don't make it so... blush


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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Originally Posted By: Bill
...you, Orac, are getting arrogant. You appear to feel that we should all bow down and acknowledge you as the master of SAGG.

My feeling is that you aren't really here to help us understand what modern science. You seem to be here more to bolster your own ego...
Bill Gill

Bill, all I can say is, it's taken you long enough to concede those facts. I guess you're nothing if not thorough. Whilst one realises that anyone wishing to learn about these topics has access to a cornucopia of professional input on the net, one must acknowledge that there's the attractive aspect of social interaction and exchange of ideas on the forum; but why would anyone wish to adopt the role of idiot pupil in Orac's pretentious and childish little classroom game here? He's been assassinating his own character from day one.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
What triggers decoherence?

Thread drift!

Well, that's sorted that.


Sorry Bill S yes you were the only one who was actually interested in science which is what is provable not what someone says they believe or what is safe or what is nice.

So yeah slap me again ... my bad.

Last edited by Orac; 05/27/14 01:00 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Doh! Just because he thinks everyone is ignorant, don't make it so... blush


So another belief TT or is that a judgement smile

So why do you hang out on some back water forum because it stimulates your intelligence TT laugh

As I said at least I get something useful from the forum I get to practice my english, what are you getting from it?

Anyhow as we aren't on topic perhaps lets go back to NQS shall we.

Last edited by Orac; 05/27/14 01:03 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Bill
My feeling is that you aren't really here to help us understand what modern science. You seem to be here more to bolster your own ego, at the expense of us ignorant boobs. I suggest you try to be more tolerant of the fact that we really don't know as much about QM as you do. We still do have some intelligence and are capable of figuring things out, with a little guidance.

Seriously I told you why I was here Bill because it lets me practice English, I really am not here for the science just look at the state of the forum. Sorry I can't fix that it needs moderation and policies and yes I probably have become part of the problem now because I have taken advantage of that for my own ends.

So if I was to comment to you seriously on science, at the end of the day the relevant thing in science is what the observation and experimental evidence says certainly not what I say, not what the media says and not what someone else thinks. The thing is can you draw a direct line of evidence from A to B to C and does it hold up. To do that in a more modern context you have to actually read the science papers, even if you only understand 10% of what is written you will get more than the distilled down media version. Actually from that whole discussion you suddenly realize how far wikipedia can be behind in that the 2012 Nobel winners have precious little written about there work look at the entries again

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Haroche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wineland

I have sent of an email to a group that does wikipedia and hopefully that will change soon.

Of the current scientists Anton Zeilinger is the one to read any paper he publishes. I suspect he will be given the Nobel prize in the next couple of years. It is well worth doing a lot of reading around all his work.

I am sorry I get caustic at times but really sometimes is is like a discussion with a group of Marosz's where the science is bent so badly and so wrong it hurts. Energy was the big change of 2003-2013 and a lot was added and Relativistic Quantum Mechanics came to the front. That area has been updated in wikipedia heavily and is almost up to date but excludes the work merging it with GR (post 2009 stuff) but it does carry all the main work up to the discovery of the Higgs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_mechanics

For all it's success however you are right in one sense it is incomplete
Originally Posted By: RQM
Nevertheless, RQM is only an approximation to a fully self-consistent relativistic theory of known particle interactions because it does not describe cases where the number of particles changes; for example in matter creation and annihilation

That was where I was trying to take Bill.S because it is the answer to his question and the best understanding we have of energy until the stuff still goes off the reservation or out the universe (your choice).

My complaint was and is you are treating RQM as if it somehow is just a different description of classic physics and if you read the article it is far from that it predicts results and outcomes that even old school QM doesn't. RQM isn't complete but nor does it deserve to be treated like it doesn't exist or isn't an important step because it understands enough about energy to may predictions something classic physics and old QM fail dismally at.

Ok I will try to chill out a bit besides summer vacation coming up smile

Last edited by Orac; 05/27/14 02:21 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Orac
Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Doh! Just because he thinks everyone is ignorant, don't make it so... blush


So another belief TT or is that a judgement smile

If you were here to speak in a scientific forum to the scientific observations and facts, we could come to a hypothesis regarding your question.. (if it was a question).

However.. being that you're just here to practice your English I guess we'll never get beyond your ability to masterfully project the ad-hominems. wink Just an observation.. Can I get witness!!?? cool


Originally Posted By: Orac

So why do you hang out on some back water forum because it stimulates your intelligence TT laugh


If you want to practice your English, you might learn to include certain punctuation marks in order to differentiate a question from a statement.


Originally Posted By: Orac

As I said at least I get something useful from the forum I get to practice my english, what are you getting from it?

Holy Crap! I got that you were asking me a question!

Anyway (to respond to the question) right now, just simple entertainment. (If anything you're consistent in distancing yourself from the people you address and flame, and you flame just about everyone other than the moderator.) So.. I'm guessing if you are taking some kind of correspondence course thru popular mechanics magazine.. or, attending an accredited program guided by someone who actually knows English. grin

OR.. It could be today's Horoscope:
Sagittarius
11/22-12/21

You can't help it -- the details are just jumping out at you! Even though you'd rather broaden your view, there's just no way for you to keep from narrowing down until you've found the source of the problem.


Today I can't help myself! shocked

I guess that could be a problem! whistle


Originally Posted By: Orac

Anyhow as we aren't on topic perhaps lets go back to NQS shall we.


Since you're obviously not here for the Science I guess it makes no never mind if we all just practice our English. whistle


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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That was quite amusing really we dragged them all out of the woodwork TT, Rede ... I am disappointed Paul didn't join in he must be away I sat it up for him to take a whack or maybe he is wary. I sit here a sad and broken man slayed by formidable combined intellect of the forum on full display. I don't know how I am ever going to live with myself, my science is in ruins, my belief gone and my ego well it got smashed and left the building like Elvis. Oh time to adjust my byline so I say what you all want.

TT that is just unkind flogging a guy when he is down where is all your compassion and brotherly love, I confessed to everything you all asked for. What more do you want me to confess to, perhaps the murder of JFK?

But I am sorry I think the threads dead Bill S if you really do want to go on probably start a new thread from where your thoughts are at and as shattered as I am I will drag myself up to answer anything you would like me too.

Last edited by Orac; 05/27/14 06:28 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Orac
my ego well it got smashed and left the building like Elvis.

Elvis had something to build his ego on. He left the building because his show was over. Apparently all you have is ego and it hasn't left the building.

We would be happy to listen to you if you would not demand that we accept your every word as the truth straight from God. When you make a goof accept it and go on and try to get it right the next time.

Bill Gill


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Originally Posted By: Orac

TT that is just unkind flogging a guy when he is down where is all your compassion and brotherly love, I confessed to everything you all asked for. I will drag myself up to answer anything you would like me too.

Sorry, all credibility has been lost.. cry
I think for all concerned, you will probably be known as "The boy who cried Wolf". blush

Perhaps you're familiar with the fairy tale?


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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Man tough audience here .... say what they want, agree to what they want and still I am a problem.

I don't get it Bill I said what you asked, what more was there?

Interesting thing what people say they want and what they actually want isn't it.

Man struggling to confess my faults in 100 characters ... I just want to be friends.

Last edited by Orac; 05/27/14 04:33 PM.

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Bill S if you are around and want to get back on track there is a really funny article from Lubos (you think I am caustic I am not even close). It's actually a good read about a paper from a couple of fantastic scientists David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto that want to make QM a complete theory of everything which got a write up in Scientific America. I have the paper up for tomorrow to read just out of objectivity to make sure Lubos has got it correct but I am really struggling that any scientist would be that stupid.

http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/constructor-theory-deutsch-and-marletto.html#more

It's sort of interesting because the argument gets inverted against some of our own. See we have to fight the crazies on both sides smile

Last edited by Orac; 05/28/14 05:04 AM.

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Orac, I had a quick look at the link, and intent returning when time permits. Looks good.

You've probably noticed that I quite like quoting DD on subjects like the multiverse and gravity.


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Too late, newton, the thread was already derailed!


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Having started this thread, I think I should say something about where I have reached in trying to answer my original questions.

"What triggers decoherence?"

"Why, after almost 14 billion years, have not all the quons in the Universe decohered?"

It seems that decoherence is triggered when a quon interacts with its environment. This may mean interacting with just one other quon, or with complex system.

The question as to why there are plenty of quons in the Universe that are still in superposition when quons have been interacting for billions of years is perhaps rooted in a confusion between wave function collapse and decoherence.

Wave function collapse involves a process which is irreversible under the second law of thermodynamics, and involves the permanent loss of “quantumness”. Once collapsed, the object involved can be totally described in terms of classical physics.

Decoherence, on the other hand, is a less cut-and-dried concept in that, although the process that triggers it may be thermodynamically irreversible, decoherence itself is not so easy to pin down. It appears to be much more observer specific. If, for example, I observe a quon, I will not see it in a superposition. As far as my observation is concerned, the wave function has collapsed, but in a broader context, the quon retains its “quantumness” and may be in states of superposition that I am unable to observe. If I stop observing the quon; then observe it again, decoherence will happen again, and I will observe something of which the wave function has just apparently collapsed.

Decoherence brings about an apparent wave function collapse only in the frame of reference of the observer.

That's about where I am at the moment, but I'm sure there's room for more refinement.


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That is exactly where you need to be and you have got everything factual that science knows.

I am going to borrow the general conclusions that we currently "know" because you have now arrived where everyone else has that followed the evidence and you should be able to tick off the twelve statements some may appear technical but I am confident you can work out what is meant.

They are a statement of twelve observational science facts you accepted in your journey although probably not consciously. They are however the observational facts as we sit here in 2014 and you would need new evidence to overturn any of them. What no one will be able to tell you is why those 12 observational facts occur that is outside our current understanding.

Quote:

1. Quantum mechanics is valid everywhere, for small and large systems, for intelligent and unintelligent objects; and all quantities that were thought to be "real" classical observables in the ignorant era of classical physics become linear operators on the Hilbert space with their eigenstates, eigenvalues, and their probabilities that can be predicted from the amplitudes (but never deterministically); there is no segregation of contextual and real observables

2. Classical physics is always just an approximation, and can be derived to be a good one under certain circumstances

3. Only probabilities may be predicted by quantum mechanics (i.e. in the real world) and classical determinism only occurs when the probabilities become negligibly small everywhere except for a small vicinity of the "correct" classical history

4. The boundary between the quantum and classical realms occurs when the interference effects get suppressed; this loss of coherence (the loss of information about the relative phases of complex amplitudes) is the only effect that universally occurs to produce a limit that is well described by classical physics in our quantum world

5. The suppression of quantum interference is called decoherence, and is caused by the interactions with the environment (i.e. degrees of freedom that we can't and don't want to keep track of); in this process, the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix plummet and the diagonal entries may be interpreted as classical probabilities; in this regime when the interference is gone, Bell's inequalities (and other manifestations of the classical intuition) become approximately valid

6. Quantum mechanics fully determines where this boundary occurs, and the required inequalities depend on the physical system, its Hamiltonian, the density of the environment, the strength and speed of interactions, and many other things: the emergence of the classical limit is a dynamical question and there is no "universal" answer to the questions e.g. "how many atoms or how long time one needs for classical physics to emerge"; everyone should calculate or review at least five order-of-magnitude estimates of the "critical" quantities where the classical limit becomes valid, in order to see the huge diversity of these scales in different contexts; these calculated boundaries are obviously correct on theoretical grounds and in many cases, the quantum-classical transition can actually be observed (at the predicted place)

7. In a classical regime, the preferred basis vectors of the Hilbert space are those that can imprint themselves into the environment (in Zurek's jargon, these states pass the einselection which makes them immune against decoherence); bizarrely non-local Schrödinger's cat superpositions are not in this category, and one can show, e.g. in the consistent history framework, that they don't allow us to formulate consistent histories (for which the probabilities add as expected from logic); it is fully understood what's wrong with Schrödinger cat superpositions and the derivation of the preferred states depends on the Hamiltonian

8. There is no room for a physical collapse or, on the contrary, for an ad hoc privileged role of conscious observers; the wave functions only predict the probabilities but they can be calculated for any set of consistent histories, regardless of whether the systems look conscious, unconscious, macroscopic, or microscopic; the only "collapse" that occurs is the rapid diagonalization of the density matrix in the preferred basis by the interactions with the environment; however, the "unrealized" diagonal entries of the matrix (probabilities of outcomes that won't come true) are never "physically" set to zero because their interpretation always remains probabilistic, even when the classical approximation becomes acceptably accurate

9. There cannot be any deterministic description that would allow one to know the outcomes non-probabilistically, such as "pilot waves" or "hidden variables", not even in principle, and questions attempting to know "more" than what quantum mechanics predicts are unphysical; the Conway-Kochen Free will theorem is a way to prove that the microscopic outcomes can't be deterministically determined

10. From all practical points of view, Niels Bohr and his friends in the Copenhagen school were right on the money and decoherence may be interpreted as a justification, derivation, or a proof of their assumption that the classical intuition is fine for (mostly) large objects and quantum mechanics is crucial for (mostly) microscopic objects; they didn't know the modern derivation of decoherence but they understood its qualitative implications

11. Decoherence is a process with an inherent arrow of time that makes it analogous to friction, heat dissipation, and other thermodynamic processes with an arrow of time; the effects are related, the arrows inevitably agree with one another, and decoherence is as real as the other processes (that increase the entropy); the time-reversal asymmetry of decoherence is inevitable because the environment can't be assumed to be non-locally entangled with the system in the far past, but it can be shown to be correlated in the future because of the evolution (and one can't ever assume anything about the future or impose "final" boundary conditions by the very definition of the future which is yet to be seen)

12. On the other hand, consistent histories are just a particular convenient framework to formulate physical questions in a certain way; the only completely invariant consequence of this formalism is the Copenhagen school's postulate that physics can only calculate the probabilities, they follow the laws of quantum mechanics, and when decoherence is taken into account, to find both the quantum/classical boundary as well as the embedding of the classical limit within the full quantum theory, some questions about quantum systems follow the laws of classical probability theory (and may be legitimately asked) while others don't (and can't be asked)

Last edited by Orac; 05/30/14 07:53 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
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