New Law of Physics Could Explain Quantum Mysteries

PhysOrg ^ | 8/17/09 | Lisa Zyga

[DannyTN]

That’s unreal!

That’s my superposition and I’m sticking to it!

[ctdonath2]

[blink] Ok. It took them that long to figure this out? I thought it was pretty obvious.

No, I’m not kidding. I’ve been waiting for quantum computers to get up to mediocre enough performance to actually implement this idea for solving NP-type problems: define a problem space, overlap all possible solution spaces, force the selection of valid states until all others inherently collapse to a single completely valid solution. Porting PROLOG to a quantum computer will yield extremely cool results.

[rarestia]

I’m not a scientist, I’m a student of linguistics. The puffery and big words can be broken down into easier-to-comprehend concepts. I don’t claim to understand the methodology, but I can tell you with some level of assurance that his plan makes sense in some twisted, scientific way.

Hell yeah it makes my head spin, but try to understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle... it’s science, it’s cool, and it’s almost intended to be confusing... that’s why we let scientists do the work.

[milagro]

I once--many many moons ago--took a Quantum Physics class from a professor who also taught Buddhism. Got into reading a lot about Quantum physics--and most it left my little brain "glazed over". But one thing stuck with me--could "Nirvana--and other "states of mysticism" be a kind of "ring" of cognition the human brain is able to reach because of a "quantum leap" into a higher state of energy--perhaps that spiritual state that transcends that state which we call "reality".

Seems to me the article suggests that both "states" DO exist, and that it is only our limited cognition that causes us to RECOGnize one as "real"--and way too casually dismiss the other as "unreal".

Anyway--fascinating article!

[OB1kNOb]

Me not know about Invariant Set Postulate...

[LibWhacker]

All he’s saying is that anyone who claims they understand this stuff is living in a state of unreality. ;-)

[brytlea]

LOL!
I got lost when I started algebra. But, I do love science, even when I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about! :)

[brytlea]

Oh, and here’s some scary news...I taught physical science (9th grade) one year!

[mmichaels1970]

I wish I would have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I could sure use Michio Kaku to break this one down for me.

[FredZarguna]

Unless a great deal has been lost in the translation to lay-speak, this doesn't really seem to explain much of anything; nor is it a falsifiable theory, so it is not really science, simply an alternative metaphysical perspective.

Take the cat paradox: contrary to many nonsensical interpretations, QM doesn't really require the cat to be in a superposition of live and dead states until an observer shows up. What it requires is the existence of an Hermitian operator, in this case a life operator, and the application of the life operator to the cat's state vector in order to do a measurement. Presumably, the cat herself has access to this operator (she knows if she is alive or dead.)

In this allegedly new formulation, the cat was always alive in the Invariant Set. Or... she was always dead in the Invariant Set. The application of the life operator then takes a measurement, which reveals her to be alive (or dead, as the case may be.). This is pretty much the same as Tipler's perspective, it is not new and it is not really particularly interesting. It still does NOT answer the question: "If I perform this experiment on 1000 identical cats with 1000 identical experimtental setups, why do 667 cats wind up dead and 333 of the cats wind up alive?"

The Invariant Set answer appears to be: because the 667 dead cats were part of actual reality, just as the 333 live cats were part of actual reality.

Just so. But why?

[djf]

Doesn’t sound like he can.

The electron might be here. It might be over there.

QM can’t tell us for sure.
Neither can his theory.

[Billthedrill]

These are only words - the math behind them must be awesome.

But if I can dig one implication out of them (highly debatable by itself) it concerns the cat that Shroedinger never really was entirely happy he used for an illustration, and it is this: the cat is perfectly aware whether it is dead or alive, hence has collapsed the wave function from its point of view. It is only uncertain from the point of view of the observer. So any mathematical representation of this that is intended to consider whether it is in some invariate state space must account for both points of view and two different levels of uncertainty.

Somebody who actually does know this stuff - and I know perfectly well you're on FR - just tell me "Bill, yer fulla crap" and I'll shut up... ;-)

[willgolfforfood]

I had a class in college where the textbook read something like this from cover to cover. I realized that I had reached (over-reached?) the limits of my mathematical skills, and made a slight adjustment in my major.

I can STILL feel the relief, baby!!!!!!

[dimk]

I think even if unmeasurable that something belongs to either reality or unreality portion. Observer always discovers the reality portion (which is static?)

[plinyelder]

LOL

[USMCPOP]

Perhaps this will explain why fresh bread gets hard but crispy cereal gets soggy! Could it be that cereal is embedded in a smaller subset of state space (the cabinet)whereas the bread is on the counter?

[Brett66]

and he is now one of the world’s experts on the predictability of climate

So does he perform as a clown at science conferences?

[Alamo-Girl]

Again, thank you for the ping, dear r9etb! I thoroughly enjoyed the article (emphasis mine:)

The theory suggests the existence of a state space (the set of all possible states of the universe), within which a smaller (fractal) subset of state space is embedded. This subset is dynamically invariant in the sense that states which belong on this subset will always belong to it, and have always belonged to it. States of physical reality are those, and only those, which belong to this invariant subset of state space; all other points in state space are considered “unreal.” Such points of unreality might correspond to states of the universe in which counterfactual measurements are performed in order to answer questions such as “what would the spin of the electron have been, had my measuring apparatus been oriented this way, instead of that way?” Because of the Invariant Set Postulate, such questions have no definite answer, consistent with the earlier and rather mysterious notion of “complementarity” introduced by Niels Bohr.

The fractal geometric structure is the key to his postulate, namely the self-similarity but with an invariant state at the root.

The Mandelbrot Set is probably the most famous example of a fractal.

Lurkers: click on any point in the graphic on the link to zoom in and examine the self-similarity.

In the Invariant Set Postulate, one of the states would be real and all the others unreal. He doesn't tell us how he intends to isolate/identify the invariant, but it does appear logical on first blush that one state must be real for all the others to be similar to (or illusions of) it.

[FredZarguna]

See #30. What you say is correct. The Schrödinger's Cat Paradox has been given a lot of mileage by people who don't know what they're talking about, and encouraged by confused Buddhists, Taoists and New-Agers who want to read some kind of subjective reality metaphysics into QM. 99% of what has been written by lay people about Schrödinger's Cat is pure crap.

The experimental apparatus itself in the SCP is designed to collapse the cat into an eigenstate of the life operator. Once that measurement occurs, every observer -- including the first observer, the cat -- will agree that the cat is in the eigenstate. She is definitely alive, or definitely dead, and we all share that same reality.

This "new perspective" doesn't answer the basic question: sometimes the same experiment produces a live cat, and sometimes it produces a dead one. Substitute "Invariant Set" for "Because that's what happened," and you have all that I can see this theory provides (at least on the basis of what's written here.)

[DocRock]

bookmark to read after work