Quantum Physics says Good-bye to "Reality"

The photon doesn't 'split'

Originally posted by albie
Two slits and one particle being fired at a time still gets you interference patterns. which is illogical, unless the particle is splitting before the slits!

Why does the single photon split? That's the problem.

If you 'split' a photon, it would cease to be a photon and become some other kind of particle instead. It would no longer be light. So this is not what happens in the double-slit experiment with one photon.

What actually 'happens' is that the single photon 'passes', in some sense, through both slits. Or to put it differently, it is present throughout its probability range until detection causes the wave function to collapse.

Yes, I know it's illogical, but we'll just have to get over that.

And by the way, this is nothing new. The double-slit experiment is older than quantum mechanics itself -- said to go back to a Victorian scientist named Thomas Young who was trying to prove the 'corpuscular theory' (a sort of primitive particle theory) of light. As for the Austrian experiments on entangled photon pairs that got this thread started, there's nothing new there either. All those experiments did was bear out Bell's inequality, which is generally accepted as 'true', anyway.

Some amusing stuff on this thread -- people talking about how this proves that consciousness creates the universe and so on. What it really proves is that quantum mechanics is not for everyone.

Kudos to blue bird for quietly discharging the thankless task of Voice of Sanity on this thread. I wish I had a tenth as much patience. And hey, man, I really love the idea of rhyming 'new age' with 'sewage'. I can see I'm going to be using that consonance a lot.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Some amusing stuff on this thread -- people talking about how this proves that consciousness creates the universe and so on. What it really proves is that quantum mechanics is not for everyone.

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”Max Planck

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."Albert Einstein

Funny how some of the greatest physicist in the world thought otherwise.

Check my New Theory Of Light thread in the science section.
It has a way of explaining how this occurs...its two particles.

quote: Some amusing stuff on this thread -- people talking about how this proves that consciousness creates the universe and so on. What it really proves is that quantum mechanics is not for everyone.

While it is true that not everyone (in fact hardly anyone) understands quantum mechanical theory, I don't think it is an elitist subject reserved for the few.


If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
Stephen Hawking

Originally posted by liquidself

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
Stephen Hawking

Thanks for adding to my previous post.

It seems many dont want to think outside the box when new discoveries are made or old discoveries are interpreted in a new light (pun intended).

I find the ones most against these interpretation that have been discussed in this thread all adhere to a mechanical process for life and creation. Whereby consciousness randomly arises from matter.

I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice." Albert Einstein

Yet it seems they all believe in the dice game.

Consciousness is not a factor in their beliefs its a byproduct of mechanical and chemical processes.

Its the holy grail of Alchemy.

To paraphrase Max Plank a Nobel Laureate physicist, consciousness creates matter.

And for those that dont believe that is so I ask you to show me anywhere in nature where matter creates consciousness.

Or phrased another way how can a mechanical or chemical process cause consciousness?

Please show me.

Edit to add:

When you take the success of movies like 'What the bleep' I think it means we are indeed coming closer to Hawking's explanation of what a complete theory would mean.

Yeah I know there are many out there especially hard core science types that dont like the movie but they are also the same ones that hold to mechanical-chemical theory of the universe and consciousness.

For those that dont like the movie or agree with it there is still an impressive list of PHYSICISTS, NEUROLOGISTS, ANESTHESIOLOGISTS & PHYSICIANS that signed up to do the movie.

PHYSICISTS
William Tiller, Ph.D.
Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
John Hagelin, Ph.D.
Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.
Dr. David Albert
Dean Radin, Ph.D.

NEUROLOGISTS, ANESTHESIOLOGISTS & PHYSICIANS
Dr. Masaru Emoto
Stuart Hameroff M.D.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover
Andrew B. Newberg, M.D.
Dr. Daniel Monti
Dr. Joseph Dispenza

www.whatthebleep.com...







[edit on 9-5-2007 by etshrtslr]

Originally posted by Astyanax


And by the way, this is nothing new. The double-slit experiment is older than quantum mechanics itself -- said to go back to a Victorian scientist named Thomas Young who was trying to prove the 'corpuscular theory' (a sort of primitive particle theory) of light. As for the Austrian experiments on entangled photon pairs that got this thread started, there's nothing new there either. All those experiments did was bear out Bell's inequality, which is generally accepted as 'true', anyway.

Some amusing stuff on this thread -- people talking about how this proves that consciousness creates the universe and so on. What it really proves is that quantum mechanics is not for everyone.

Kudos to blue bird for quietly discharging the thankless task of Voice of Sanity on this thread. I wish I had a tenth as much patience. And hey, man, I really love the idea of rhyming 'new age' with 'sewage'. I can see I'm going to be using that consonance a lot.

Thank's Astyanax!

You make great point bringing up Young!


Off course "What the Bleep Do We Know?" and the "What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole" are NEW AGE INFOMERCIAL!

Is this movie promoting cult?

As it turns out, What the Bleep was made by adherents of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Washington. This fringe group follows the "teachings" of a 35,000-year-old warrior called Ramtha - an ascended "Master" from the lost continent of Lemuria as it happens - whose thoughts are "channelled" by a woman named J Z Knight, one of the film's gurus

Scientist with heavy credentials like David Albert of Columbia University physics department was more than angry:

David Albert, a professor at the Columbia University physics department, has accused the filmmakers of warping his ideas to fit a spiritual agenda. "I don't think it's quite right to say I was 'tricked' into appearing," he said in a statement reposted by a critic on "What the Bleep's" Internet forum, "but it is certainly the case that I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed."

"I certainly do not subscribe to the 'Ramtha School on Enlightenment,' whatever that is!" he finished.

Or you have a 'scientist' like John Hagelin from movie is part of Maharishi cult and presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, and "Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace".


David Overbye critic in New York Times sums it up perfectly:

But hours and hours spent watching the two films and navigating their splashy Web site have tempered my enthusiasm. These films and the quantum mysticism industry behind them raise a disturbing question about the muddled intersection between science and culture.Do we have to indulge in bad physics to feel good?

And there is, although a Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner ( 50 years ago) but author of the books with titles: "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"/

And of course Deepak Chopra father of 'quantum heeling' ( whatever this means) with his school of parapsychology and stuff like telepathy, telekinesis - 'manipulation of the formless quantum potential".

This two boring new age documentaries just play their stuff :cultists mix of quantum physics - consciousness - healing!

Bottom line is - it has nothing to do with great human achievement like quantum physics. In a fact it is outright antiscience.

Consciousness as a cause of wave collapse is just a crackpot theory.
If a tree falls in the forest - does it make sound. Of, course it does - coz sound is vibration that propagate through air. If nobody is present at the event of tree falling down - means nothing. THE LAW OF PHYSICS ARE NOT TO SUDDENLY STOP WORKING! You just did not observe it. And observing reality doesn't create reality.

Some scientists observe our dear Nature and come up with cures for illness, computers, put Spirit and Opportunity on Mars - and some are good at making stuff up. YOU KEEP THINGS MURKY AND VAGUE - YOU DO NOT NEED TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING BASED ON SCIENTIFIC STANDARD!

Like I said, not for everyone

Originally posted by etshrtslr

Originally posted by Astyanax
What it really proves is that quantum mechanics is not for everyone.

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.” -- Max Planck

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein

Funny how some of the greatest physicist in the world thought otherwise.

Originally posted by liquidself

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
-- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

I find it interesting -- and yes, amusing -- that the scientific content of my posts passed without comment, but one small aside managed to provoke all these responses.

etshrtslr, re-read your two quotes. Neither of them mean what you seem to think it does.

Planck was making an apology for religious faith, certainly not suggesting that human consciousness shapes reality. The 'conscious and intelligent Mind' he refers to is that of God. Planck was a conservative old buffer (Max Born said of him that 'he was by nature and by the tradition of his family conservative, averse to revolutionary novelties and sceptical towards speculations') who stuck firmly to his Christian faith throughout his life. He was greatly hostile to the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, a science he helped father but could never understand. He despised the Copenhagen Interpretation (which is what you and some others on this thread have been deriving your ideas from, whether you know it or not) and called Heisenberg's ideas 'disgusting'. Oh, and you're talking about a man whose best work was all done by 1902, three years before Einstein published his Special Relativity paper. Hardly cutting-edge, then.

The Einstein quote has no relevance to the subject whatsoever. And if you'd read more widely in Einstein, you would know that he believed strongly in an objective, independent reality underlying the world of appearances -- so much so that he, like Planck, couldn't bear the Copenhagen Interpretation -- it was what prompted his better-known outburst about God and dice.

Good quote, liquidself. Last passage, final chapter of A Brief History of Time, though I notice you didn't attribute it. Now ask yourself: why should such a 'final theory' be comprehensible by anyone except the most advanced scientists? Neither relativity nor quantum mechanics nor any of their monstrous children have been so comprehensible. Hawking may be the cleverest man in the world but that statement is simply untrue. And believe me: Stephen Hawking knows this.

Have you considered, my friend, just how high-maintenance someone like Stephen Hawking is? I'm not talking about the sentient wheelchair and the speech synthizer; I'm talking about the army of inferior scientists whose work is needed to sustain his, and the hideously expensive research facilities -- large hadron colliders and so forth -- neeeded to sustain them, and so on and so forth... Where do you think the money for all this comes from? It comes from taxpayers. Stephen Hawking knows this, so he helps governments raise taxes to pay for scientific research by writing books to help popularize science. Now, just how popular do you think he's going to make physics if he told his readers the truth. Just imagine: "This stuff is vital to the future of humanity as a whole so we need to be getting on with it, but it's conceptually beyond 99 percent of the human race -- which probably includes you -- and you're never really going to have a clue about what we're up to and what it all means." How many taxpayers is that going to milk?

And you forgot to quote the last bit of that passage: "perhaps then we shall know the mind of God". Apart from its dramatic value, why on earth do you think an evident unbeliever like Hawking would end a book -- a book in which he amply demonstrates the superfluity of the God hypothesis -- with a line like that? It has nothing to do with Higher Purpose. It has to do with Bottom Line.

By the way, I embrace with delight your suggestion that my position is elitist. I am all for elitism; heaven preserve us from a world run by the hoi polloi.

Off topic, but then, you did ask

Originally posted by etshrtslr
I ask you to show me anywhere in nature where matter creates consciousness.

Go look in a mirror. See that big round thing between your ears? That's where.

Or phrased another way how can a mechanical or chemical process cause consciousness?

I'd be delighted to explain it to you in detail, especially if you happen to be a nubile young woman, but I am reminded that this is a family web site.

Originally posted by etshrtslr


consciousness creates matter.

And for those that dont believe that is so I ask you to show me anywhere in nature where matter creates consciousness.

Can your consciousness, please, be so kind ,and collapse some of that quanta and create nano computer for me....... and you can and ad some free energy.

Originally posted by Astyanax
Off topic, but then, you did ask

Originally posted by etshrtslr
I ask you to show me anywhere in nature where matter creates consciousness.

Go look in a mirror. See that big round thing between your ears? That's where.

Or phrased another way how can a mechanical or chemical process cause consciousness?

I'd be delighted to explain it to you in detail, especially if you happen to be a nubile young woman, but I am reminded that this is a family web site.

Where is the scientific data that proves the brain or more precisely the chemical reactions or processes in the brain is the cause of consciousness?

"Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. This however is impossible." Werner Heisenberg

[edit on 10-5-2007 by etshrtslr]

as a person with a masters in anatomy and physiology there are many interesting things to consider.
May I refer you to my Biophysics and Consciousness thread?


[edit on 10-5-2007 by junglelord]

Originally posted by etshrtslr
Where is the scientific data that proves the brain or more precisely the chemical reactions or processes in the brain is the cause of consciousness?

Try to extract brain - and there is no you, any more.

Take any chemical substance that can alter your brain - like heroin for example, and momentarily there is difference - resulting from change of regular chemistry in your brain.

Originally posted by blue bird

Try to extract brain - and there is no you, any more.

Take any chemical substance that can alter your brain - like heroin for example, and momentarily there is difference - resulting from change of regular chemistry in your brain.

That does not explain the results of this research.

www.iands.org...

www.healthsystem.virginia.edu...

veritas.arizona.edu...

Originally posted by Astyanax
Off topic, but then, you did ask

Originally posted by etshrtslr
I ask you to show me anywhere in nature where matter creates consciousness.

Go look in a mirror. See that big round thing between your ears? That's where.

Wow, and you think the idea that consciousness rises from the brain isn't controversial? Hmmm, last time I looked that was still very much a matter of debate.

[edit on 10-5-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

I'm glad you liked my quote Astyanax; I have another one:

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
Richard Feynman

Now Feynman really disliked new age type stuff from what I gather; but even he remained open-minded enought to visit the Esalen Inststitute, home of wierdness and new age thought.

I was actually finding your quantum physics-related posts quite informative (I had not heard about decoherance before, and read some articles about it; also; i have to admit here that in an earlier post I confused the Copenhagen interpretation with hidden local variable stuff) but then you made that comment about the "few"; which I think is more inflammatory than you realize.

Now what you say about Hawking is quite cynical. But if you look at the wording of the quote I used, he was being quite careful. He said "in principle" and "a broad understanding" - not an in depth understanding.

Now I want to quote Feynman again -CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman

Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
:

"...I would like to add something that's not essential to the science,
but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool
the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to
tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your
girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be
a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll
leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about
a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending
over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to
have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology
and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the
applications of this work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any."
He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of
this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're
representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to
the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you
under those circumstances, then that's their decision. (...)"

If Hawking is lying at the end of his book, then I'm with Feynman here. However, I dont think is being as disingenous as you make him sound. He has all that support whether or not he writes a book or not. When he talks about the mind of god, I believe Hawking literally aims for absolute knowledge; not a literal god but the mind of god - he is quite particular with his terms; seems naive to think he is using the term god in order to coax the general public into funding him. He is on the Faustian quest.


Now whether or not one wants to be elitest is certainly their choice, but the process of science is not an elitist enterprise - it is an attempt to obtain public knowledge of truth - this is why science is peer reviewed. If the general concepts of a theory and especially its proofs cannot be explained to the intelligent layman I wonder whether that theory is true or whether the circle of a particular coterie of scientists is closing and becoming a priesthood protecting its knowledge domain.

It seems to me that quantum physics by itself can niether prove nor disprove either materialism or idealism. Materialistic assumptions are just as fatuous as idealist ones if you look at the basic axioms. If a scientifically minded person wants to dismiss as unscientific mystical idealism then they should quit making mystical materialist assumptions.

Originally posted by liquidself


Materialistic assumptions are just as fatuous as idealist ones if you look at the basic axioms.

Amen!!! I completely agree with you on that one. I Completely agree.

[edit on 10-5-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Originally posted by liquidself

If a scientifically minded person wants to dismiss as unscientific mystical idealism then they should quit making mystical materialist assumptions.

Great post.

As I stated in one of my previous post the materialistic-mechanical-chemical explanation for consciousness is in reality just a repackaged form of alchemy.

Originally posted by Astyanax

What actually 'happens' is that the single photon 'passes', in some sense, through both slits. Or to put it differently, it is present throughout its probability range until detection causes the wave function to collapse.

Yes, I know it's illogical, but we'll just have to get over that.

And by the way, this is nothing new. The double-slit experiment is older than quantum mechanics itself -- said to go back to a Victorian scientist named Thomas Young who was trying to prove the 'corpuscular theory' (a sort of primitive particle theory) of light. As for the Austrian experiments on entangled photon pairs that got this thread started, there's nothing new there either. All those experiments did was bear out Bell's inequality, which is generally accepted as 'true', anyway.

The idea of the photon splitting I got from a book on physics. Not my idea.

engr-sci.org...

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trimmed quote

[edit on 11/5/07 by masqua]

Split or no split?

Originally posted by albie

Originally posted by Astyanax
The photon doesn't 'split'

The idea of the photon splitting I got from a book on physics. Not my idea.

This looks like one of those questions on which even the experts differ

Originally posted by Astyanax
A word to the wise

Originally posted by albie
I wonder if the photons arent leaving a trace in the air, that the next photon connects with and hence interference is created.

No, this has nothing to do with the medium through which the photon is being propagated. The same thing would happen in vacuo.

The EPR paradox arises from the fundamental properties of sub-atomic particles as predicted by quantum mechanics. Altering the spin of one photon in an entangled pair *has* to alter the spin of its partner because this effect is predicted by the equations. It has nothing to do with any kind of Newtonian interaction; it's not about photons crashing into air molecules or anything like that. The surprise is that the counterintuitive mathematics is actually supported by real-world experimental results like this.

Don't even think of trying to explain it in terms of classical interactions (which is what you were doing). You can't understand quantum mechanics like that. Its processes are counterintuitive and not susceptible to visualization.

There is only one way to begin to understand quantum mechanics and that is to study it as a scientific subject. This involves being handy with some very advanced mathematics. It's not for everyone; in fact, it's hard even for physicists. One of the greatest of them all, Richard Feynman, once said (I paraphrase) 'If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.'

I wasn't suggesting that the photon leaves a trace in the actual air but the space.In a vacuum. An electromagnetic trace. It depends on how fast these single photons are being put out. Does anyone know how fast? hundreds per second?

Certainly time for some potential trace to interact with a real photon.

Not that I'm saying they do leave a trace. Just an idea.

More logical than the results suggest so far. That we can change a wave to a particle with a couple of slits in paper.

[edit on 11-5-2007 by albie]