Posted on 06/11/2021 3:50:22 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Must be a White plot against Black people.
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
This topic reminds me of decades ago, when I read
“The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra.
He explains and diagrams many of the priciples discussed here, but it was still difficult to wrap my mind around these processes. He even discussed how theorectically, one could move forward and backward in time, or at least a proton and electron seemed to be demostrating this feat.
From my layman electrical engineering read this seems to be a well written article on a very deep subject. Thanks.
I stick by the rule that a theory that can’t be communicated in plain language to an average 12 year old is pure crap.
Math requires symmetry. The universe is not symmetric.
One of my old professors used to say ‘Physics is the supreme court of all science. And Math is the lawyer’.
Shhh!
QFT was built on QM which created much of the math difficulties. QFT define creation and anihilation operators expressed as matrices that modeled the raising and lowering of energy states from the ground vacuum state. These operators form the nodes of the quantum field and their time evolution is known as the Schroedinger wave equation of the Universe.
QM was born when Einstein demonstrated that energy was not continuous like every classical scientist believed but came in packets called quanta. Because these packets were the product of a constant (Plank’s) and a wavelenth (change in the angle of a unit circle/time) the mathmeticians used trig substitutions to define the basic units in QM. Rather than do everything in sines and cosines they leveraged the work of the mathmetician David Hilbert and simplified the equations using complex numbers.
What this did was it changed the way classical physicts treated objects with single sets of parameters into objects with two parameters (real and imaginary). This took QM from classical set theory logic to its own algebra of squaring the two parts to get a part that we can measure in the world of real numbers where we live.
The problems with infinities comes in because there is theoretically no limit to how short a wavelength can be and the shorter the wavelength (higher frequency) the higher the energy it models. Since we can’t measure these energies yet scientists simply define a “cutoff” point beyond which we ignore frequencies which is called renormalization. This is why we call QFT an “effective field theory” because its good enough without being the whole explanation.
Common Core Math where 2+2=5.
“And Math is the lawyer”
Here’s how I see it. Math is used to predict observed behavior. An object speeds up when dropped. Math predicts such behavior with v=at give or take relativistic effects which are measurable and make the behavior-predictig formulas more complicated.
Missing from the article are the behaviors that mathematicians are trying to describe.
A mathematician told me math doesn’t really explain anything.
Great post, LibWhacker.
I have been struggling for decades with the basic concepts involved in quantum physics.
I think that some concepts from QFT were used to explain rogue waves out in the oceans. Everything is just waves interacting and sometimes they interact in ways that are not “ordinary”.
Cool stuff but completely beyond my comprehension.
#Me-2
Early in my college career, I thought I wanted to be a Physics major; I had done well in Classical physics (f=ma types of stuff).
Got into the first class in the actual physics major (Modern Physics, I think they called it), and it rapidly became obvious that I was not going to be a physicist.
This article confirms that many times over.
My impression was that math gives physics the tools it needs to work. This article seems to suggest that physics create mathematical analogs of phenomena. Those analogs mathematicians then systemize.
Likely this is not a correct characterization of the relationship between physics and mathematics.
Can you properly characterize their relationship.
My other impression from the article is that whenever the mathematicians do systemize quantum field theory—they will enable physicist to develop warp drive.
Math major, here. I agree with you 100%. It isn’t only physics that has driven mathematical advancements over the centuries. Even a careful reader could get that impression from this article.
But mathematicians have done pretty well on their own, no? Physics has been important, no doubt about that. But more important than math has been to physics? No. Definitely not.
I’d say it’s about even: Each has greatly benefitted the other.
Bookmark.
A money and power grubbing defendant such as Mr. Anthropomorphic Global Warming would be better served representing themselves than hiring a lawyer that can't lie with a straight face. Math is more the law than a lawyer.
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