Posted on 11/09/2014 4:39:03 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Two USC researchers have proposed a link between string field theory and quantum mechanics that could open the door to using string field theory—or a broader version of it, called M-theory—as the basis of all physics.
"This could solve the mystery of where quantum mechanics comes from," said Itzhak Bars, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences professor and lead author of the paper.
Bars collaborated with Dmitry Rychkov, his Ph.D. student at USC. The paper was published online on Oct. 27 by the journal Physics Letters.
Rather than use quantum mechanics to validate string field theory, the researchers worked backwards and used string field theory to try to validate quantum mechanics. In their paper, which reformulated string field theory in a clearer language, Bars and Rychov showed that a set of fundamental quantum mechanical principles known as "commutation rules'' may be derived from the geometry of strings joining and splitting...
Quantum mechanics is extremely successful as a model for how things work on small scales, but it contains a big mystery: the unexplained foundational quantum commutation rules that predict uncertainty in the position and momentum of every point in the universe.
"The commutation rules don't have an explanation from a more fundamental perspective, but have been experimentally verified down to the smallest distances probed by the most powerful accelerators. Clearly the rules are correct, but they beg for an explanation of their origins in some physical phenomena that are even deeper," Bars said. The difficulty lies in the fact that there's no experimental data on the topic—testing things on such a small scale is currently beyond a scientist's technological ability.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Hey, you’re not alone; besides me, and maybe some others on the ping list, at least half of the jokers writing the articles don’t seem to know what they’re writing about.
It’s not surprising that this didn’t go off without a hitch, or even a half hitch.
These chips of almost nothing stacked together add up to a great big universe. How deep does the almost nothing go? Would you eventually run into the problem of being too small to have any physicality at all?
It's turtles all the way down. ;)
I think that there are at least two fundamental sets of rules, if you will, which govern the universe. One we are familiar which describes the electromagnetic spectrum, machines, etc.
The other we know nothing about but which describes devices - things that act like and maybe even look like machines, but are not. These devices would exist as solids with no moving parts or circuits as we think of them, yet perform actions and function unattended for extremely long periods of time, since there is nothing to wear out. Commonly, these devices would be made of stone or other solids. I’d go on about this point, but too many would either laugh or stop reading.
String theory and quantum mechanics either attempt to bridge or are part of this second set of rules - which is why both are so convoluted and difficult to make sense of, as we are trying to fit one into the other of two entirely different rule sets. A bit like trying to fit a size 13 foot into a size 8 glove and wondering why the shoe feels odd.
Human beings today want everything to fit neatly into one thing, have everything descend form one event in a linear, gapless, evolutionary progression. But what if that is not how the universe is? That different things came together to create what we see and call the universe?
Newtonian physics describes most of the first rule set, while Einsteinian physics describes still more of the first set, but also begins the path to the second set. And James Clerk Maxwellian physics goes almost wholly to the second set. It was Oliver Heavyside who took Maxwell’s 200 quaternions [Maxwell’s name for his equations] and changed 4 of them from field to vector {while discarding the other 196} which gave us the knowledge to create all the machines we are familiar with today, and upon which Einsteinian physics is built.
It is this wide-spread failure (or refusal) to look at all Maxwell’s physics as fields from which theoretical physics suffers today, creating the difficulties of comprehension and uncertainty, and why the ‘foundation’ looks so shaky.
My 2 bits ...
And even more spooky, they can vote in the past, the present and the future, depending upon how many votes are needed for a demcorat party candidate!
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