Quantum Heresy

I've been meaning to write a column about a problem I have with current quantum theory or, more specifically, with the current public understanding of it. And, yes, quantum phenomena are still largely not understood, but there is a paradigm reigning at the present time with which I don't agree. And the basis of my disagreement is that it is treated as the only paradigm when, in fact, since the dawn of quantum theory in the 20th century, there have been two prevailing views, both in contention (although there are actually now more than two.) A recent article from Science News saves me the trouble to write that column as it describes the issue very well (ref).

Discussions between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, which did lead to developments in quantum theory, were actually an argument. Einstein did not accept what he was hearing about quantum theory from Bohr and was working very hard to refute it. He saw that the implications of quantum theory would describe a universe where cause-and-effect did not hold, which led to his famous "God does not play dice" quote. He was not successful in refuting Bohr, but the world view he espoused, that the cause-and-effect must hold and the universe is therefore deterministic, is the prevailing view today.

Which leads to my problem. The current view is only one view. And it is founded on a basis (Einstein) that was trying to disprove the claims of quantum physics, even as quantum results continue to prove Einstein was wrong. The famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox was Einstein's attempt to disprove quantum theory by showing that "spooky" actions at a distance could occur. These interactions do occur with entangled particles, not to Einstein's credit but to his chagrin were he alive.

So, being heretic enough in this day and age to say Einstein was wrong ( he was and more than once, as he himself admitted about the cosmic constant), let me continue to state a few more quantum heresies against the prevailing paradigm of quantum beliefs:
1) At the quantum level, photons, electrons and other atomic particles exhibit both particle and wavelike properties. These are mutually exclusive properties in the large scale world but at quantum dimensions, things can be both one thing and its opposite. They are not one thing because I think they are and another thing when I think that they are the other thing. They actually in themselves both and contain their opposites.
2) Similarly, at quantum dimensions, "here"and "now" are not precise, but are fuzzy. Things are mostly in some location but to some vanishingly small degree everywhere else to. And they travel through that fuzzy location with some approximate momentum but with small percentages also travel at all possible momentum values. This is not a consequence of what I know, but intrinsic to that object. Measuring its location down to zero precision increases the fuzziness in its momentum to have any value from zero to infinity. Really. And not just that I can't know it. Each particle at a quantum level is a fuzzy location/momentum ball and you can squeeze it as much as you want in one property but you will only cause it to extend in the other property to keep the ball's "volume" greater than Planck's constant. More on the basic math behind this here. (ref)
3) When you move away from quantum lengths (on the order of Planck's constant) the fuzziness gets collective and things average out to the deterministic universe of the classical world we perceive. You can calculate the quantum wavelength of a baseball (I have) but it is meaningless not because it is a such a small number, but because the fuzziness of the particles making up the baseball have already been averaged into the classical properties. Think of a single wave on the surface of the ocean. The "fuzziness" my equations might show in trying to describe the motion and location of that individual does not translate to the "motion of the ocean" which exhibits the collective motion of all the waves in the sea.
4) Which leads to my last bit of heresy. Screw Schrödinger's cat! It's dead. Or alive. But without me knowing it or not knowing. Because either it died or didn't (yet.) Quantum causes do not command classical effects. The interference of the measuring mechanism which either kills or does not kill the cat has already removed the fuzziness. Don't believe me? I give you a roomful of sealed containers into which you cannot see, full of Schrödinger cats. As you walk through that room, you naturally smell what? Dead cats. Which ones, you don't know, so you can't claim your "mind"collapsed the quantum state. The measuring mechanism did that and full half those poor cats are dead. THAT'S quantum probabilities tied to the classical world in statistics, not through my knowing or not knowing.

Am I right? I sincerely believe so. But so do the other guys.  I just object to the world subscribing to only the one view. And that view being one that denies quantum theory while trying to explain it at the same time. Maybe it's just another example of bringing the realm of quantum fuzziness into the classical realm where it just doesn't apply.

A Wrinkle in Memory

“Watch!” the Medium told them. The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to comfort them? Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear.

Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. “You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!” Mrs Whatsit sighed, a sigh so sad that Meg wanted to put her arms around her and comfort her. “Tell us exactly what happened, then, please,” Charles Wallace said in a small voice. “It was a star,” Mrs Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”

L'Engle, Madeleine (2010). A Wrinkle in Time (pp. 102-103). Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). Kindle Edition.

Proof! that There Are Proofs for the Existence of God

An article on io9 caught my eye (ref), not because they were claiming a new proof for the existence of God, but because of the report that it was the great mathematician, Kurt Gödel, who offered that proof!

Gödel is most famous for his Incompleteness or Inconsistency Theorems (ref). Gödel worked during the middle of the twentieth century, when general relativity and quantum mechanics were offering a new relativistic, indeterminate view of the world. This view was over against the formerly classic Newtonian view. Gödel's theorems were part of that zeitgeist, in that he proved if you tried to build a system (or a computer!) that could develop a complete set of logical statements from scratch, there would necessarily be at least one which might be correct in that system, but whether it was correct or not could not be proven. For instance, if the system being developed were the English language, it could create the correct English sentence, “This is not an English sentence.” ... which is not capable of proof (although it sounds like something I would say.) And so you could never have an absolutely complete logical system. Ever. 

This brought the relativistic thought of that age to new heights, arguing that just as there was no absoluteness to the universe; neither could there ever be an absolute system of thought. But that the man in his free time was also doodling proofs for the existence of God was news to me (ref).

Gödel's Proof for the Existence of God

The io9 article starts out by inferring it was a modification of the proof offered by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) in his best-selling Proslogion (ref). I am somewhat aware of Anselm’s proof and know that it was used in process theology and process philosophy in the 70s and 80s (a school of thought which was favored by some members of the Dominican religious order or “Dominicanes” in Latin. Tradition has it that their detractors said it with a pause, “Domini Canes” = Dogs of the Lord. Religious humor. Ha.)

Anselm’s proof is not adequately portrayed in such a short news article (nor I suspect is Gödel’s.) In fact, it seems to me that in the article text, there seems to be a flaw that occurs between the these two sentences:

1) If he doesn't exist, he necessarily doesn't exist in any possible worlds.
(insert flaw here)
2) It is not possible to say that God does not exist in any possible world.

The first sentence stands almost as a tautology:

If (God exists = FALSE), then necessarily (God exists = FALSE).

OK, got it, but there is no reason to think that the second sentence follows from the first, nor is any proof offered that the second sentence is true on its own. So, the first sentence is all that stands.

But the Wikipedia article referenced above does a more complete job, as when they reference Anselm's restatement of his proof in his third chapter of the Proslogion. This version states, in short form, if the God concept is “greater than which cannot be thought” yet doesn’t contain the necessity to exist, you haven’t thought hard enough. That's the version of the proof that was preferred by process philosophers following Charles Hartshorne (ref)

Gödel’s proof does seem to follow along Anselm's lines, but I wasn’t able to find a good statement of it in the article. I suspect Gödel’s proof (which I can’t read) doesn’t have that simple a problem wrong with it, but likely has some unprovable hypothetical that didn't take away from it's use as an exercise in logic. This article here (ref) does do a more complete job of explicating things. But it still comes to the same point; that without proof that God exists somewhere, there is no convincing argument anywhere.

Maybe God wanted it that way.

What goes up, must come down. Global warming edition.

I saw this article today about California having record heat AND cold in the same day. Believe it, it is an effect of global warming.

Global warming is an odd thing.

It is calculated on an average temperature. 

For the entire planet.

But it does work as a valid indicator of the current state of thermal affairs, even better than sticking a thermometer in your mouth as an indicator of your body temperature. That's because over the last 4 1/2 billion years, the Earth has settled into a sort of heat balance. Insulated by the vacuum of space, heat in to our atmosphere comes from the Sun and internal radioactive sources and heat out is radiative transfer of infrared into space. 

But into that balance is a bunch of things including the increase of heat from the entropy of human activity around the world. And that heat energy is feeding into the abovementioned heat balance. If you view the current heat balance like a swing in the park, imagine what happens when you push it, pump more energy into it? Yah, it's average height (read "temperature") goes higher. But it also has more energy too, swinging back and forth, up and down, harder than ever before

That's why just focusing on the average temperature, although a good measure, doesn't touch on these changes which we all experience, an increase in the frequency or occurrence of climate events with increasing severity.(ref)

People are confused when they read about sudden changes to extreme cold or sudden severe rainy seasons, they wonder aloud "What happened to global warming?"  But, in fact, these downs are just the other end of the swing ups of extremely high temperatures and droughts.

It's a system in balance and it's being perturbed. What we can do about it and what will be the result is yet to be determined. But we will see the swings continue to climb up. And down.

Potential Theory Actually

My attention was recently drawn to this video created by Terje Sorgjerd of the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights (not to be confused with the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights, of course.)

My own back ground in geophysics has been to specialize in the potential fields of the Earth. These are the heat (steady-state), electrical, magnetic and gravity fields generated by the Earth and which follow a simple equation which we call Laplace's Equation:

 ∇²φ=0

which simply says that a potential field is one of which the Laplacian in free space is equal to zero. This simply means these fields are always spread out smoothly and continuously, looking like the hillsides in the background of a Teletubbies episode. 

There. Now you know as much about geophysics as I do. 

And in this video, you can SEE as much geophysics as I do. The aurorae are the effect of ionized particles, blown off by the Sun, delicately impinging on the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Being electrically charged and moving, they are compelled to line up along the magnetic field lines. Once hooked on these field lines. they are compelled to spin around them. As they move closer in to a magnetic pole of the field, where the magnetic field lines converge, they spin faster and faster, gaining energy, energy which they release as light.

For me, it is exciting to actually SEE these field lines normally invisible to us and to witness them following what the Laplacian describes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've built a life around believing in the validity of such equations as these anyway but actual seeing that the equations actually WORK is a treat.

チキン・リトル CHICKIN RITORU

Someone directed my attention to this article about the nuclear reactor accident in Sendai, Japan. (ref)  I have since seen the article reproduced in several forms and I regret to see the harm that this alarmist nonsense is causing. The dramatic graphics and the breathless updating themselves every hour or so only fakes the appearance of events too fast to handle. The extensive use of the verbs “would” and “might” and the capital "IF" in the title all serve to indicate the deep level of speculation in the article. 

One of the advantages of coming here from the 20^th century is that I seem to remember a lot of crap that many people in this century don’t know or have forgotten. The story of Chicken Little seems to have gone by the wayside. For those of you who want to brush up on the reference, Wikipedia continues to be the collective memory which I use. Wiki’s entry pretty much sums up my attitude toward the present reporting on the situation in Japan:


"The names of the main characters in the fable - Chicken Little/Chicken Licken and Henny Penny - and the fable's central phrase - The sky is falling! - have been applied to people accused of being unreasonably afraid, or those trying to incite an unreasonable fear in those around them. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary records the first application of the name Chicken Little to 'one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification’ as dating from 1895,^[2] although idiomatic use of the name significantly predates that attestation.^[3] Because of this association, the tale has become politicized.


Fear mongering - whether justified or not - can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as 'inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis.' ^[4] It has also been defined as 'a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions.' ^[5] The term began appearing in the 1950s^[6]and the phenomenon has been noted in many different societal contexts." (ref)

Googling it, I did find one person who recognized the reference…immediately dismissing it and continuing to squawk about the immanent fall of the sky (ref). Note that this is the same article that links to “Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan”(ref). Oy.

Before I marshal my points, let me ask you to review the articles you’ve been seeing and think how you would feel about the reporting style if this were an official release from the government or the mainstream media: the breathless style, the references to people lying to us, and the need for us to panic. We’d immediately accuse the government of propaganda and manipulation. Yet when some blogger we’ve never met uses the same tactics, we think that they may be right? Comment back, “Get over yourself."

1) First of all, it is not a nuclear bomb. Explosions there are largely steam explosions of the plant itself. The mechanisms of a meltdown are well understood and have nothing to do with a nuclear explosion (ref) 

2) This animation showing streaming gobs of radiation crossing the Pacific to reach us is getting a lot of play. But it is only a simulation of the path that something MIGHT take if it came our way (ref) . In fact, the scale on it, in "arbitrary units” still only shows levels at tenths and hundredths of one percent. Their own arbitrary scale still can’t even show anything significant. The heavier elements and ash from fires and explosions at the plant will stay close to the ground, the lighter elements will disperse in the winds and even more so by the jet stream.

3) The amount of radiation that MIGHT reach this far is going to be too small and too diffuse to be of much significance especially compared to our daily dose. According to Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, “ ‘As for radiation drifting through the air across the ocean, it will be too diluted to cause harm,’ Brawley said. ‘For those in the U.S., a typical day of sunbathing would probably result in more radiation exposure than the Japanese accident, he said.’” (ref).  Bloggers would serve us better going bananas and nuts about actual bananas and nuts than worrying about what might come from Japan. (ref)

Selling fear is an industry and its purveyors gain viewers, readers and Internet hits so their self-interest is blatant and uncontrolled. And don’t get me going on the Internet hoaxes coming online phonily claiming to cure the radiation sickness you are not about to get. 

0.0000001%

Years ago, there was a billboard you could see while driving along the Mass Pike outside Boston. It read "We don't know one-millionth of one percent about anything. - Albert Einstein"

That's not true.

It was originally said by Thomas Edison (ref ).

The part about how little we know IS true and this can be proven. I recently viewed this video showing the large scale structure of just a small chunk our little universe:

Entire galaxies are mere points of light in this depiction and we see them forming into even larger universe-spanning alignments.Yet, despite the vast amount of matter and structure we see in this video, it still represents only what we can see and measure in the universe. We know there is also what we call dark matter and dark energy (Just because we name them does not mean we know what they are. We don’t.) which comprise 95% of the universe (ref). All we are seeing in that video is our universe like foam on the waves of an ocean we can’t see. Even if we knew everything about the visible universe, we’re at 5% tops.

Lastly, a current model of the universe posits that everything we know as existence is likely only a multidimensional “skin” or membrane/m-brane formed between two “bubbles” (of something) intersecting outside in the wider multiverse, well beyond anything we know. (http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-could-universe-originate-from.html ). That easily brings us in under 0.0000001%.

In my first class in physics in my freshman year at college, Professor Milton Stecher taught that we would not begin to learn physics until we learned how much we did not know. I immediately put down my pen and started not knowing. I almost failed that course. But, thirty years later, I think I am finally beginning to learn. 

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation on Vimeo

There is little that I can add to this except to say that when you fly by the "Death Star" moon. Mimas, shout out, "That's no MOON!"

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation on Vimeo

Don't underestimate the danger

When a friend on Facebook shared the link to this article (California unlikely to see a quake like Japan's), my skeptical alert was triggered. The ability of earthquakes to occur outside our models has been demonstrated multiple times. Large earthquakes have occurred in southeastern Missouri and Charleston, SC the origins of which have been difficult to explain with our models. (ref) 

But things have moved forward in the present day as stated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS):

"Whereas specific information about the relatively immediate future is desired, whether it can be provided with much reliability is debatable. However, numerous models exist whose purpose is to make estimates of earthquake probabilities," (ref)

That's pretty much what I found in the article. The thrust fault model we use for Japan, where the Pacific Ocean floor slowly thrusts down under Asia, does predict to deeper and higher energy events than in California. Here, the strike slip fault model, where Los Angeles slips slowly to the northwest on its way to becoming an island, does not support the amount of energy needed for a > M 8.0 earthquake.

But my skepticism was redeemed, that danger still lurked, as this distinction is largely of scientific interest. Other factors in California, such as the way certain soils will act like a liquid when shaken, will unfortunately lead to catastrophic consequences even with lower energy events.