Ask any question you want about Physics

I dont doubt that the model works. I doubt that the model and those who understand the model, understand reality as it exists in an of itself. The model is a tool, an application, to play with reality, it is not attempting to fundamentally comprehend reality, partly because so far we cant. Uncertainty principle and virtual photons are models that both say "we cant know vital information about reality but if we consider all possibilities and approximate it is useful".

OK then why do you continue to bash us over and over and over again with violations of Alder's Razor: "what cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating".

I don't see how you can advance physics by saying "I know your model works, but it's wrong, though I can't prove it". If all experiments prove it right, and you can't prove it wrong, why not use the model, even if you're right that it's not an exact depiction of reality? Scientists admit we don't fully understand fundamental interactions which is why we call them fundamental, and you apparently agree we don't understand them, so why the bashing of mainstream views when apparently you're really in agreement on this point?

All models are not reality, they are models. I think every model I've seen breaks down at some point or range of observations, because none of them are reality. As George Box put it, "All models are wrong, some are useful". That's a given to me, so what I want to know is, what is the range of observations for which the model is useful?

Even if you take these Alder's razor violations to the metaphysics/philosophy forum where they would be more on-topic, I still don't see the point. You say one thing, another person says something else, but until you have an experiment to prove which of your statements is correct, I must agree with Alder since I don't see how a debate is productive with no experiment to settle who is right.

To put it another way, if somebody came up with a better model, how would you know it was better? It would have to be through experiment/observation, wouldn't it?

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

I dont doubt that the model works. I doubt that the model and those who understand the model, understand reality as it exists in an of itself. The model is a tool, an application, to play with reality, it is not attempting to fundamentally comprehend reality, partly because so far we cant. Uncertainty principle and virtual photons are models that both say "we cant know vital information about reality but if we consider all possibilities and approximate it is useful".

OK then why do you continue to bash us over and over and over again with violations of Alder's Razor: "what cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating".

I don't see how you can advance physics by saying "I know your model works, but it's wrong, though I can't prove it". If all experiments prove it right, and you can't prove it wrong, why not use the model, even if you're right that it's not an exact depiction of reality? Scientists admit we don't fully understand fundamental interactions which is why we call them fundamental, and you apparently agree we don't understand them, so why the bashing of mainstream views when apparently you're really in agreement on this point?

All models are not reality, they are models. I think every model I've seen breaks down at some point or range of observations, because none of them are reality. As George Box put it, "All models are wrong, some are useful". That's a given to me, so what I want to know is, what is the range of observations for which the model is useful?

Even if you take these Alder's razor violations to the metaphysics/philosophy forum where they would be more on-topic, I still don't see the point. You say one thing, another person says something else, but until you have an experiment to prove which of your statements is correct, I must agree with Alder since I don't see how a debate is productive with no experiment to settle who is right.

To put it another way, if somebody came up with a better model, how would you know it was better? It would have to be through experiment/observation, wouldn't it?

If we were not arguing about, attempting to know, learn about and discuss reality my last 200 or so post on this thread, I wish you would have told me. I was never saying the models dont work. I have not once said a model is not useful tool. I have only been arguing when a person believes that a model = reality. And then I used my comprehension of the laws of reality, to say, if your model says x, according to my comprehension of reality, logic, reason, physics, then what your model says reality = x, cannot be true, because of y and z and a and b and c too. For someone who believes their model = reality, when I argue these points as I have been, they cannot handle the questions, they cannot handle the insight. I am asking a ton of great questions, non stop, where if physicists truly cared about reality, they could take model x, which i have many questions and reasons to believe it does not equal reality, take those questions, and use them to with their model, refine their comprehension of reality, and what they do not know. There is Truth = Truth, absolute, perfect, actualness. And then there is the only thing that has distanced man from animalhood; learning laws to use laws to make tools and tech. The classical world of learning laws (if I throw this rock at that turkey, it doesnt move anymore. If I drink this water its good for my body, if I drink this poison its not) is much simpler and easier, and there are many many scales and different quantities and qualities of substances and how they interact, those are all the laws on the surface, think of how many years and how many scientists it has taken to even get such a majority of information about all the surface things that exist, basic biology, chemistry, materials science etc. I am most interested in the absolute most fundamental essential substance nature of the smallest most purest existence of reality... reality is entirely composed of the small, is there anything large that is not composed of the most fundamental? So my interest lies in not what is known, but what is not known at this moment, the mystery, the ignorance. If someone thinks they know something, and I can ask questions to show them that what they are saying does not equal sense and correctness, then we can either work forward asking questions enlightening how it might actually be, or that person can get defensive and pretend that I am wrong and there is no reason for them to exert effort dispelling the ignorance they believe is knowledge of truth.

All models are not reality; But it is easier to relatively equal reality on the more classical scales; consider a map of a neighborhood drawn by the most talented artist in the world, as a person walking in the neighborhood, the map might contain so much of the correct relationships between materials, so many details of road signs and trees and roads and houses, that we might be extremely satisfied in feeling comfortable that the map is quite the perfect representation of reality. It is abstract and not to scale and physically equal, but symbolically and through our minds as the mediator, relating the map to the reality, as ourselves in the middle traversing both, we can say that the map is 100% accurate and completely embodies a real reality. The problem with fundamental is that it is one of the final frontiers which escapes our knowledge. The problem with the fundamental is that we are built of so much and exist at such a high and complex scale, that we have solved everything relative to our perspective, and it is very difficult to work all the way down and comprehend how the fundamental operates, especially when it is literally seemingly impossible to do an experiment like "experiment to find the EM field energy density at every point in space without using a charged particle which would not create an average energy density as there are not charged particles at every point in space but would create above average energy density which we call photon". Where as everything else classically is an analogy of other things, or can be compared and contrasted, the fundamental is not only fundamental at this time, but might not be fundamentally the same over infinite time. But there is one constant, that something exists, so there must always be a relation of the fundamental to the fundamental at any given time, and what follows is there must be a relation between what the fundamental produces as scales scale up at any given time.

a reply to: ImaFungi

You want find any real things in any theory. Those theories just try to describe what can't be observed as such.

Two magnets attract or repel, right ?

All those drawings of magnetic lines is nothing more than a concept in our heads.
There is no vectors between two magnets, those vectors are directions we picture as we imagine,
we somehow could see a force or potential difference in case of charges.

There is nothing someone could touch directly, no way to influence it besides with other charges,
it exist in our heads only as a picture.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: ImaFungi
Virtual photon theory, like uncertainty theory is bunk, and not knowledge, it is pure approximation tools. It is the theory of "we dont know, but these tricks help us make tools".

Approximation?

van.physics.illinois.edu...

The combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics allows calculations of things that can be measured. For example, it gives a prediction for the electron gyromagnetic ratio. Experimentally, the value is 2.00231930462, with a little uncertainty in the last decimal place. "The QED prediction agrees with the experimentally measured value to more than 10 significant figures..." en.wikipedia.org...

What value does your model give?

Accuracy to 10 significant figures is not what I'd refer to as an approximation. Do you have a better model? What value does it predict?

I'm open to a better model if you or anybody else has one they can demonstrate is a more accurate model. This is how science works.

I see just Wiki talking...

The QED prediction agrees with the experimentally measured value to more than 10 significant figures

any details on this experiment maybe ??
How was it made up, what hardware was used, what software...

originally posted by: KrzYma
a reply to: ImaFungi

You want find any real things in any theory. Those theories just try to describe what can't be observed as such.

Two magnets attract or repel, right ?

All those drawings of magnetic lines is nothing more than a concept in our heads.
There is no vectors between two magnets, those vectors are directions we picture as we imagine,
we somehow could see a force or potential difference in case of charges.

There is nothing someone could touch directly, no way to influence it besides with other charges,
it exist in our heads only as a picture.

Yes, but the picture is trying to capture something real, it just fails at this point in history.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, the other side of this coin is causality. Causality is the fact that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so energy is always somewhere, being something, doing something, and that is what causality is, energy A causes energy B to do x.

The fact that a magnet can hover repulsed above another magnet, implies a physical reason for this fact. There is substance, the magnets; there must be real physical causal reasons as to how and why the magnets can possibly interact with one another without their bodies touching.

The attempted theory and depiction, utilizes lines between the magnets, that have different arrow directions. Obviously because the nature of attraction and repulsion, implies differences of energetic directions. The lines are an attempt at creating a map of the neighborhood of repulsing magnets. If a person admits that in between two repulsing magnets, there does not exist physical lines, then the person is admiting that they do not understand what exists and occurs between two repulsing magnets. A person not understanding the physical reason as to how nature works, does not mean that there is no physical reason an aspect of nature works. It is absolutely and eternally most accurate and logical to be completely convinced that there is always physical reasons as to why and how nature works. Nature is physicality working, eternally.

originally posted by: ImaFungi

originally posted by: mbkennel

The lines are visual aids and representations of the vector field.

What is the term used to call the substance of which the vector field is made of? What is the average energy density of the vector field at every point in space?

The substance of which the vector field is 'made of' is called the field. Electromagnetism is considered an elementary field because there is no additional underlying substrate with different physics, in contrast to for example, classical fluid mechanics and acoustics, which are field theories that are approximate, derived from more fundamental microphysics (the substrate) when you average over large enough numbers of moving atoms.

The energy density of EM is in Gaussian units (|E|^2 + |B|^2)/8pi in classical physics where E(x,y,z,t) is a vector, likewise with B, and |E|^2 is the squared magnitude of the vector. There is an equivalent formula which is fully relativistic, stress energy tensor which gives momentum & energy all in one.

In QFT you take expectations over the wavefunctions and then use essentially the same formula (when photon number is large enough).

originally posted by: ImaFungi
If we were not arguing about, attempting to know, learn about and discuss reality my last 200 or so post on this thread, I wish you would have told me.

I said nobody can agree on the reality in the very first post of the thread:

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
there is no scientific consensus about the underlying reality of the model.

I posted the video of Physicist Sean Carroll explaining why this is so. It's not that nobody has an interest in knowing. The problem is that so far, nobody has been clever enough to design experiments to define which idea we have of the underlying reality might be correct.

However, to be blunt, your repeated refusals to learn more by for example reading Feynman's lectures put your line of questioning into a state of practical irrelevance because you're not familiar with the vast amount of experimental evidence which your questions implicitly deny. So once again, learn more about what experiments have already been done, and what they tell us.

I am asking a ton of great questions, non stop, where if physicists truly cared about reality, they could take model x, which i have many questions and reasons to believe it does not equal reality, take those questions, and use them to with their model, refine their comprehension of reality, and what they do not know. There is Truth = Truth, absolute, perfect, actualness.

You're basing that on some kind of philosophical idea. The one thing that everybody can agree on are the experimental results. That's the truth, the reality. We are constantly seeking better explanations for those. If you think your questions are at the cutting edge of science, sorry to disappoint you, but the quality of questions is related to your basic understanding. By your own admission, you don't seem to have much interest in really advancing your knowledge about what you know. Until you do, I must be frank that your questions aren't as great as you seem to think they are.

Propose a new experiment to your professor that gives your professor new insights into reality via the experimental results and then you'll be contributing to the advancement of science. Asking ontological questions that show you don't even understand what's in Feynman's lectures doesn't really help advance science, at least not that I can see.

a reply to: KrzYma
I'm starting to get some insight into why you're finding it difficult to follow mainstream science.

You apparently see he linked to the wiki source, found it in the wiki with a linked [5] source, but you somehow found it too difficult to click the 5 to see the source?

Understanding mainstream science is a lot harder than clicking that [5] link, so maybe you should back off on your objections to mainstream science, and start with more basic things, like how to follow links?

originally posted by: ImaFungi

Did I say they werent? Define energy.

Yes indirectly I thought you did when you said where do photons come from or what are they before becoming a photon. To be stricter in defining this I would say they are only potential photons in the EM field before the energy is used to excite a quanta of the EM field, creating a real photon. No one understands how things exist as "potentials" in a literal sense. It is a mystery. The only thing understood is they obey mathematical rules of probability. They also obey the uncertainty principle, there cannot be a zero energy state, there has to be some fluctuations in the vacuum.
Or you could say there cannot be any zero energy states in the quantum fields. This energy fluctuation was predicted to have an effect on the electron jumping states and was confirmed, see the Lamb shift for more on that.

You can find the definition of energy yourself but I will tell you what the definition of energy in physics actually is, at the most basic level. It is simply an abstract thing, there is no actual thing that you can call it. We use numbers to define it and even though it will change it's form in many ways in the end the numbers will be the same.
It can switch into heat, kinetic, gravitational, electrical, chemical, mass, whatever, and go in and out of systems.
And that's really it.

All the energy in/of the universe existed before the big bang. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, an exact finite quantity of energy has always existed and always will.

You will have to take that to the metaphysics forum, it's meaningless to talk about "before" the big bang like you actually know or like our current rules still apply. Energy conservation works in our universe. It's fine to speculate but making definite statements doesn't get us anywhere.

Depends how you define 'physical'. My definition of physical is 'that which is not pure nothingness'. The only purely abstract but real quality is movement, and the purely empty distance between substance.

It depends on how I define 'physical' in some weird abstract philosophy discussion, not here in a science discussion. We already have an idea of what is physical in the physics sense. I can't just make stuff up as I go and insist everyone play along.

I never said it was relative, but to an observer measuring it can be. Objectively to the ultimate truthful reference frame there is no relativity, only pure truth, objects that are in exact positions with exact momentum at all times. To observers moving every which way depending on interpreting collective light in space and time, theres a whole lot of relativity to consider.

Oh, excuse me, I was just saying acceleration isn't relative for the sake of the general discussion, not to any one person.

I don't know where you get this "exact position and momentum" thing? Again, maybe in some boring philosophy thread but if you accept energy conservation and even consider it to be valid beyond the big bang then why not accept the uncertainty principle to exist beyond the big bang also? As it is, the more position you know the less momentum you know. It's not a limit to our understanding, they don't exist together in our reality. That subject has different ways to arrive at the relationship between the two.

originally posted by: mbkennel

originally posted by: ImaFungi

originally posted by: mbkennel

The lines are visual aids and representations of the vector field.

What is the term used to call the substance of which the vector field is made of? What is the average energy density of the vector field at every point in space?

The substance of which the vector field is 'made of' is called the field. Electromagnetism is considered an elementary field because there is no additional underlying substrate with different physics, in contrast to for example, classical fluid mechanics and acoustics, which are field theories that are approximate, derived from more fundamental microphysics (the substrate) when you average over large enough numbers of moving atoms.

The energy density of EM is in Gaussian units (|E|^2 + |B|^2)/8pi in classical physics where E(x,y,z,t) is a vector, likewise with B, and |E|^2 is the squared magnitude of the vector. There is an equivalent formula which is fully relativistic, stress energy tensor which gives momentum & energy all in one.

In QFT you take expectations over the wavefunctions and then use essentially the same formula (when photon number is large enough).

What is the average energy density of the EM field if no photons were to exist? If you would say that photons with greater than 0 energy density do not exist at all points in space at all times.

Lets say the pixels on your screen represent the most fundamental quanta of your screen universe. From our classical view not seeing single fundamental pixels, we can see many classical geometric and in a qualitative dimension (which I suppose I could say all quality is derived from quantity, but that may not be true because and this is a reason we argue a lot, is because the fundamental energetic essence of nature reality is more than our comprehension of abstract and separate quantity, it is substance, it is more than geometry, and relating geometry by area....maybe... well I suppose because mass is not a quality of area)... Ok, so pixels on your screen, you see letters and such classically and images and videos even, many different qualities made from the fundamental pixels, but wait, theres more, the depending, well other hardware to make the computer but also the code/software, all can be compared to scales of laws and rules, very complex, to create out of fundamentally such little (the quantity and quality of pixels, quantitatively and qualitatively so much.

To me this is something confounding, and perhaps to me suggests that the fundamental quanta and aspect of reality is not most primal, but that the upper natures of law also influence it, so the system is both top down and bottom up, maybe also side to side and stuff. But my instincts tell me that it is impossible for reality to ever escape from the most fundamental substantial essence which must in part be a part of whatever larger scale structures exist. Like the liquid example you give, which started me on these thoughts. Is it ever or could it be that when classical structures do exist, that they do come into a realm completely of their own, as a brand new reality exitant and concept, that water is as fundamental as fundamental quanta, if water and all things, are nothing other than fundamental quanta, fundamental quanta arranged in the form of water, might be enough to classify it and accept it as being fundamentally its own substance. This is an intriguing idea, and I wish I can come to some comfort in a conclusive answer, any thoughts?

originally posted by: joelr


Yes indirectly I thought you did when you said where do photons come from or what are they before becoming a photon. To be stricter in defining this I would say they are only potential photons in the EM field before the energy is used to excite a quanta of the EM field, creating a real photon. No one understands how things exist as "potentials" in a literal sense. It is a mystery. The only thing understood is they obey mathematical rules of probability. They also obey the uncertainty principle, there cannot be a zero energy state, there has to be some fluctuations in the vacuum.
Or you could say there cannot be any zero energy states in the quantum fields. This energy fluctuation was predicted to have an effect on the electron jumping states and was confirmed, see the Lamb shift for more on that.

You can find the definition of energy yourself but I will tell you what the definition of energy in physics actually is, at the most basic level. It is simply an abstract thing, there is no actual thing that you can call it. We use numbers to define it and even though it will change it's form in many ways in the end the numbers will be the same.
It can switch into heat, kinetic, gravitational, electrical, chemical, mass, whatever, and go in and out of systems.
And that's really it.

In order for there to be a wave in the ocean there must be an ocean. You are saying that there is no sort of photon ocean, that a photon wave appears due to one substances interaction with nothing. Everything that is intelligentce goes against this idea.

You will have to take that to the metaphysics forum, it's meaningless to talk about "before" the big bang like you actually know or like our current rules still apply. Energy conservation works in our universe. It's fine to speculate but making definite statements doesn't get us anywhere.

What I said is correct, truth, seeing as you do not have an argument saddens me, because I love arguing truth and my knowledge of it, but I do remember when I was ignorant and scared of thinking, so I have sympathy with you.

It depends on how I define 'physical' in some weird abstract philosophy discussion, not here in a science discussion. We already have an idea of what is physical in the physics sense. I can't just make stuff up as I go and insist everyone play along.

Oh darn, I asked you to define physical, I wasnt suggesting for you to make it up, I was suggesting for you to present me with the definition you agree with.

I don't know where you get this "exact position and momentum" thing?

Objective reality and truth.

You cannot know the position and momentum of a particle.

What kind of stupidity is required to conclude that a particle does not have an exact momentum and position, then using that comprehended ignorance to make a statement for reality in and of itself about itself.

if you accept energy conservation and even consider it to be valid beyond the big bang then why not accept the uncertainty principle to exist beyond the big bang also?

Why dont you accept energy conservation beyond the big bang?

I accept that the uncertainty principle exists as the best tool humans can create to organize data about reality, I do not accept that uncertainty principle is a statement about how reality exists; specifically that in and of reality objectively, a particle does not at the same time have a momentum and location. This is where physicists mess up, and I do hope it is only a fringe who actually make these mistakes I am aware of.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

So, tell us your heart felt theoretical belief whether or not the CERN is insane.

originally posted by: ImaFungi


Are the electrons in magnets stationary? No? Well then they are 'emitting' photons.

An accelerating electron can. At a constant velocity it can't. A magnetic field is a classical field. What we were talking about was particle interactions which is mediated by virtual photons and is in the quantum realm of QED.

I dont doubt that the model works. I doubt that the model and those who understand the model, understand reality as it exists in an of itself. The model is a tool, an application, to play with reality, it is not attempting to fundamentally comprehend reality, partly because so far we cant. Uncertainty principle and virtual photons are models that both say "we cant know vital information about reality but if we consider all possibilities and approximate it is useful".

How else would one understand reality? Why is it not an attempt to understand fundamental reality? That understanding probably comes in small steps. This is one step.

In the Newtonian mechanistic, deterministic era, science led philosophers to think reality was like a big machine.
If one knew the proper initial conditions one could predict the future. Determinism was shown to be a part of reality.

Now in the quantum age we understand that indeterminism and chaos and such are written into reality. Probabilities as well.
Science is what it is, why is QED supposed to comprehend anything other than particle interactions using vacuum fluctuations anyways? You said virtual particles are false and others said QED shows it to be a good model. Now you are saying it's not explaining reality fundamentally, whatever that means?

Philosophy?

speaking of QED the electron bare mass is negative. the positive mass owes it's existence to components of the electrons properties summing to a slightly positive value. it has a magnetic moment component, an angular spin component and a gravitational inertial component if i remember correctly. the negative bare mass disappears during the renormalization of the sources and fields equation. This is elaborated on in the ADM model of the electron and some other models. The sources and fields components are considered to be supported by virtual exchange processes. but recently in entanglement experiments components of an electron's properties have been "teleported." this suggest to me that maybe the components of sources and fields can be accessed by an appropriate procedure. If that is true it may be possible to "uncover" the electron bare mass of an electron or heavier leptons. the upper transient bare mass for an electron is not limited to multiples of C^2 but by C^4. the exotic mass is thus humongous. If one could interdict the field components prior to the divergence/renormalization one would have access to enormous negative mass/energy.

So... I have seen the teleportation of individual properties of electrons. does this mean that the other sources components are accessible/interdictable as opposed to just existing in a mathematical model? or does teleportation amount to cloning such that true manipulation of individual properties of a lepton is impossible?

there is an awful lot of negative energy/mass on the line with the answer.

originally posted by: joelr


An accelerating electron can. At a constant velocity it can't. A magnetic field is a classical field. What we were talking about was particle interactions which is mediated by virtual photons and is in the quantum realm of QED.

If an electron is moving, yet staying around a nucleus, it must be accelerating. Not necessary circular, but related to this "Uniform circular motion, that is constant speed along a circular path, is an example of a body experiencing acceleration resulting in velocity of a constant magnitude but change of direction. In this case, because the direction of the object's motion is constantly changing, being tangential to the circle, the object's linear velocity vector also changes, but its speed does not."

How else would one understand reality? Why is it not an attempt to understand fundamental reality? That understanding probably comes in small steps. This is one step.

I am not throwing out science, cool your britches. I am asking questions to supposed knowers of models and supposed knowers of more and/or less reality.

In the Newtonian mechanistic, deterministic era, science led philosophers to think reality was like a big machine.
If one knew the proper initial conditions one could predict the future. Determinism was shown to be a part of reality.

Now in the quantum age we understand that indeterminism and chaos and such are written into reality. Probabilities as well.

Indeterminism can only be faked, symbolically, via mind or mind like system. My mind can say; "I am going to eat a cookie because the moon just forced a snake to fly into a rainbow volcano which produced the gold letters that made me eat a cookie right now"...Completely illogical, unphysical, unreasonable, quanta, albeit symbolic, can truly force me to physically act. This is the only sense in which indeterminism can exist. Because I assume it is more likely that fundamental structure and substance of reality is not a mind which thinks in layers of symbols, and can think in ways which break the laws of physics, causally, I assume the concept of indeterminism is nonsense.

Chaos is another story, I dont comprehend too much about its full fundamental essence, but have thought a bit about it. As it is the polar opposite of order. If the most complete order could be imagined as all substance, packed together as densely as possible and no point of the substance would be moving at all; absolute chaos would be the absolute opposite of that. I would say that reality is substance interacting with itself in differing scales, in differing ways, in differing sections, with differing motions, with differing amounts of stability, with differing levels of chaos and order, regularity and not.

There are only probabilities to and of mind and mind like systems. Without mind and mind like systems, there is just conscious less substance obeying the causality of its interactions with the different parts of it its ultimate self.

Science is what it is, why is QED supposed to comprehend anything other than particle interactions using vacuum fluctuations anyways? You said virtual particles are false and others said QED shows it to be a good model. Now you are saying it's not explaining reality fundamentally, whatever that means?

Philosophy?

Does virtual particle theory suggest that between two magnets being repulsed, there is a substance field which is being continuously and/or discretely altered via the electrons of the magnets collective movement? Or does it suggest that there is no substance field in between the magnets, but that the electrons collectively oriented and vibrating in the magnet are rubbing up against pure absolute nothing, and them rubbing up against pure absolute nothing creates 'photons' that come from nothing? And how does it explain that these photons that come from nothing, force the magnets to stay apart?

a reply to: ImaFungi

You are still stuck in trying to map physics to reality imho. Virtual particles are a concept, an idea. They allow you to calculate stuff, make predictions about how things behave.

There is reality and there is the mathematical/logical description of reality aka science. There are other ways to describe reality like art or mysticism. Their predictive power and precision is much lower though.

I'd suggest to look in basic science courses, do some experiments yourself to get a better idea where this stuff comes from, try to derive the laws yourself from the data you have measured.

a reply to: ImaFungi

www.youtube.com...


www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: ImaFungi


In order for there to be a wave in the ocean there must be an ocean. You are saying that there is no sort of photon ocean, that a photon wave appears due to one substances interaction with nothing. Everything that is intelligentce goes against this idea.

There is a background ocean, it's even called an ocean (Dirac Sea) making your metaphor as wrong as it could possibly be.
The EM field has a sea of fluctuations and the electron has a cloud of the same surrounding it. Call them virtual particles or uncertainty principle fluctuations or whatever. Those are how the particles interact.

What I said is correct, truth, seeing as you do not have an argument saddens me, because I love arguing truth and my knowledge of it, but I do remember when I was ignorant and scared of thinking, so I have sympathy with you.

Your sad are you. You can tell me why you think energy conservation exists in all realities, it would be more constructive than passive-aggressive ad hom attacks. That is just insecurity.
You should change this: " because I love arguing truth and my knowledge of it"

To this: "because I love arguing truth and my version of it"

Oh darn, I asked you to define physical, I wasnt suggesting for you to make it up, I was suggesting for you to present me with the definition you agree with.

There is no one definition I agree with. Some things are obviously non-physical like some mathematical concepts while other things exist in a grey area. Like quantum fields. Some physicists say the fields have local areas of energy and therefore carry energy and are physical. Some say it is just a mathematical structure. Or they say the virtual particles are to subtle to be considered "real" and therefore fields are non-physical.

A 2D object could be both also. Without a 3rd dimension it would be infinitely thin and unable to ever interact with a 3D world.
I have no need to place a flag on one particular side

Objective reality and truth.

You cannot know the position and momentum of a particle.

What kind of stupidity is required to conclude that a particle does not have an exact momentum and position, then using that comprehended ignorance to make a statement for reality in and of itself about itself.

Maybe it's the same stupidity that allows one to bring back arguments from 1920, before quantum mechanics caused people to re-think ideas about reality. It's believed now (or from 1926 to now) that boolean logic may actually fail when we get to deeper levels of reality. You might want to look into that.

Why dont you accept energy conservation beyond the big bang?

I didn't say I don't accept it. I said I don't know. How would I know that?

I accept that the uncertainty principle exists as the best tool humans can create to organize data about reality, I do not accept that uncertainty principle is a statement about how reality exists; specifically that in and of reality objectively, a particle does not at the same time have a momentum and location. This is where physicists mess up, and I do hope it is only a fringe who actually make these mistakes I am aware of.

Okay you don't accept it. Can't force the horse to drink.

You really don't know that all of physics understands that in the quantum world there is no position and momentum and all sorts of other non-intuitive things that people have tried like crazy to disprove for the first 50 years but experiments continue to confirm it all to higher degrees of accuracy?

Unfortunately all physicists are ignorant and scared of thinking and need sympathy.

originally posted by: joelr
You really don't know that all of physics understands that in the quantum world there is no position and momentum and all sorts of other non-intuitive things that people have tried like crazy to disprove for the first 50 years but experiments continue to confirm it all to higher degrees of accuracy?

That's true. Quantum mechanics wasn't a pill easily swallowed. Karl Popper didn't believe in uncertainty either and in 1934 he proposed an experiment to prove it false but Einstein convinced him that his idea was flawed.

So Popper worked on a better experiment which he finally published in 1982. He died in 1994 but the first time I know of where his proposed experiment was performed was in 1999. It didn't disprove quantum mechanics though Popper apparently didn't really understand all the implications of the experimental setup.

So I don't fault Popper or ImaFungi for questioning whether scientific interpretation is correct, however, what Popper appreciated more than ImaFungi is that experiments are the way to demonstrate truth. My guess is everybody learning physics has that moment when they realize that the subatomic world is not like what we know, and it does take some getting used to. Allan Adams, while teaching the quantum mechanics course on MIT opencourseware talks about his personal shock at how experiments seem to defy logic, and eventually had to accept that the universe doesn't behave like a classical ball on a spring. He also fully expects his students to go through some kind of denial phase like he did, but for most physicists it's probably just a phase, and they finally accept experiment and get over it.

If someone can't prove their assertion through experiment, it has limited value, and I give Popper credit for realizing that, and trying to prove his assertion through suggesting an experiment, though he never really got past the denial phase. I'm not too hopeful ImaFungi will either but there's always a chance.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I put an S down magnet over an S up magnet and they repulse. This is the experiment. Noone is arguing while a magnet is hovering over another magnet that a magnet is not hover over a magnet. I asked specific questions about your interpretations of reality. I am asking a question about how the objects exist in reality, I am questioning your understanding of all of experiments data, and what experiments data forces you to force your self to interpret the data as. I will answer Joels questions a bit later. I am doing nothing but asking questions. Either someone can attempt to answer my questions, and expect me to question their answers, and repeat this process until we can question and answer no more. Or, someone will respond to me without interest in my questions, in which their response is yet another response equal to that sort of response, a waste of everyones attention and this threads space.