Can Waves and the physical world be separate?

What I'm getting from the world of quantum physics is that waves of energy become particles, particles become atoms, atoms become molecules, molecules become everything that we can see and touch (well, something along these lines anyway).

But, what happens if we try to reverse this process? If we were to take something, say a grain of sugar, place it in a container, and smash the &%$! out of it day after day, year after year...would that grain of sugar ever revert back into a wave?

I'm thinking the grain of sugar will only be pulverized into powder, but I really don't know. If everything started out as a wave of energy, why won't that grain of sugar ever leave the container in the form of a wave?

What do you think?

E=MC2

matter turns to energy then back again

Originally posted by jiggerj
But, what happens if we try to reverse this process? If we were to take something, say a grain of sugar, place it in a container, and smash the &%$! out of it day after day, year after year...would that grain of sugar ever revert back into a wave?

Sugar is a compound made up of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen; wouldn't what you're suggesting make more sense with a raw element? Elements can already be broken up into subatomic particles; that's how nuclear reactions work.

If you want to go deeper than that you have to break the proton into its constituent parts. That's essentially what they are doing at the Large Hadron Collider - accelerating protons around a circular track to near the speed of light and smashing them together so that the bonds that hold the constituent particles of the proton together break apart and they can observe those particles (yeah this explanation is a bit crude but it's the best I can offer with my understanding of physics.) You can always read up on what they've been able to accomplish.

What you said about those fundamental particles being composed of "waves" sounds like a crude understanding of String Theory which, albeit interesting, is a model of the universe that is entirely theoretical and has never been proven empirically.

Originally posted by dashen
E=MC2

matter turns to energy then back again

Then let's see it. Let's see something physical vanish before our eyes and convert into pure energy. I know we use fuel to run an engine, but I'm not talking about changing fuel into a different form of energy. I'm talking about reverting something back into what it was before it became physical.

You've gotten Quantum Mechanics wrong.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Don't do any measuring.
The photon acts as a wave and is able to go through both holes as the same time.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Use a tool to determine which hole the photon will go through, and make that data available for someone to read.
The photon acts as a particle and is shown to go through one hole.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Use a tool to determine which hole the photon will go through, and don't make that data available for someone to read.
I'm not sure what happens, but apparently making the data available for someone to read determines whether of not the photon acts as a wave or a particle, and thus future events were proven to be able to change past events.
And it didn't matter if the particle was measured or not. The only thing that mattered was whether or not that the data / information was made available for someone to see.

reply to post by SilentKoala

What you said about those fundamental particles being composed of "waves" sounds like a crude understanding of String Theory which, albeit interesting, is a model of the universe that is entirely theoretical and has never been proven empirically.

Thanks for the reply, SK. I don't think the double-slit experiment involves string theory. I guess it's a fact that waves turn into particles and particles turn back into waves. The double-slit experiment proves this with photons. So, if a photon particle reverts back into a wave when not being observed, then why can't this happen with more complex matter? I dunno.

Originally posted by DaRAGE
You've gotten Quantum Mechanics wrong.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Don't do any measuring.
The photon acts as a wave and is able to go through both holes as the same time.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Use a tool to determine which hole the photon will go through, and make that data available for someone to read.
The photon acts as a particle and is shown to go through one hole.

Send out a photon to a board of wood with two holes in it. Use a tool to determine which hole the photon will go through, and don't make that data available for someone to read.
I'm not sure what happens, but apparently making the data available for someone to read determines whether of not the photon acts as a wave or a particle, and thus future events were proven to be able to change past events.
And it didn't matter if the particle was measured or not. The only thing that mattered was whether or not that the data / information was made available for someone to see.

Not sure of your point here, DeRage. My point lies in the fact that waves do turn into particles and can revert back into waves. Why can't this happen with that sugar example, or a tire, or a human?

reply to post by jiggerj

What I'm getting from the world of quantum physics is that waves of energy become particles, particles become atoms, atoms become molecules, molecules become everything that we can see and touch (well, something along these lines anyway).

That's not right. Everything is a wave – or rather, everything has a wavefunction. Just as everything is a 'particle', you see – a collection of particles can be treated as one big particle by averaging out the behaviour of its components.

Yes. Some of the sugar will revert to wave if enough pressure is applied in a focused point.


Think of a black hole, constantly shedding matter in the form of X-rays, slowly boiling down to a point when light can once again escape its gravity.

reply to post by jiggerj


You can't argue with Morgan Freeman...

Originally posted by jiggerj
Not sure of your point here, DeRage. My point lies in the fact that waves do turn into particles and can revert back into waves. Why can't this happen with that sugar example, or a tire, or a human?

What makes you think a piece of sugar is actually a piece of sugar? The piece of sugar at it's very smallest building blocks that we know of are saying that the sugar is a wave function of possibilities until observational data is made available to someone. Your grain of sugar is already a wave.

Okay so everything is just a dirge of particlewaves.

How does that help?

The apparent dualistic wave/particle nature of electrons and photons does not have to lead you down the path of assuming that the wave is the default state of physical reality.

I don't think it's logical to say that the wave nature of electrons and photons is the cause of the particle. All known waves, macro and micro, are composed of particles, not the other way round.

If you want a physically grounded and materially realistic hypothesis about why waves don't have any independent existence (i.e the wave can never be separated from the particle) - I think you should consider the fact that a single particle can take on complex stacked spins, thus producing an apparent wave when in motion. Photons and electrons do not travel as field waves, like an ocean wave. They travel as collections of individual particles with quantized physical spins.

Current standard model physics does not allow you to think about it like this ^. In fact, it seems to go out of the way to prevent clarifying simplifications such as that.

reply to post by jiggerj


You would have to pound it hard enough that the friction would burn it up. Then the carbon and hydrogen and water would need some light energy and it's energy would fertilize a cane or beet plant to grow and then some human work fueled by glucose already present would make it into a sugar cube again.
For us Organic creatures, life is a big cycle but I ate too much sugar and got kinda fat.
Hope you don't wanna see the math for that.

Originally posted by hadriana
reply to post by jiggerj

 

You would have to pound it hard enough that the friction would burn it up. Then the carbon and hydrogen and water would need some light energy and it's energy would fertilize a cane or beet plant to grow and then some human work fueled by glucose already present would make it into a sugar cube again.
For us Organic creatures, life is a big cycle but I ate too much sugar and got kinda fat.
Hope you don't wanna see the math for that.

I can't seem to get my basic premise across. I don't want to burn up matter so that it becomes a different form of energy. I want to know if it is possible to revert matter back into (what should be) its basic form. Water is 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. If we can separate the hydrogen from the oxygen, then why can't we release the waves that make up atoms? (Jeez, I still don't think I made it clear enough! Grrrr!)

Originally posted by jiggerj

I can't seem to get my basic premise across. I don't want to burn up matter so that it becomes a different form of energy. I want to know if it is possible to revert matter back into (what should be) its basic form. Water is 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. If we can separate the hydrogen from the oxygen, then why can't we release the waves that make up atoms? (Jeez, I still don't think I made it clear enough! Grrrr!)

Waves do not make up atoms. All quanta are particles. Photons are particles, electrons are particles, protons are particles. That is standard theory.

Quantum Mechanics invents the duality because it can't explain the apparent paradox observed in experiments like the double slit using standard rigid body kinematic math for particle motion. But there is no evidence that waves physically compose the structure of reality. I don't think QM ever says that. All QM says is that you have to use probabilistic math if you want to make predictions about the motions of quanta. I happen to think that's far from correct.

I think you'll find this interesting:

Originally posted by vasaga
I think you'll find this interesting:

Dreadful rubbish. This is not physics. It's some guy trying to sell the falsehood that consciousness creates reality. That is not science, it's spiritualism and has no place in a scientific discussion about particles.

reply to post by yampa


Just some guy?

Robert Paul Lanza (born 11 February 1956) is an American Doctor of Medicine, scientist, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT)[1] and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Source

And it's actually a theory of everything. You can look up Biocentrism. In fact, here's a links.
www.biocentricity.net...

The most important point of his video (my prior post) comes after 4:45, where there's supposed to be different laws for the small and the big, and he challenges that. What exactly is wrong with that?

Also.. Let me leave this to you, since you're promoting scientism, not science.
The Folly of Scientism

Originally posted by vasaga
reply to post by yampa

 

Just some guy?

Robert Paul Lanza (born 11 February 1956) is an American Doctor of Medicine, scientist, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT)[1] and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Source

And it's actually a theory of everything. You can look up Biocentrism. In fact, here's a links.
www.biocentricity.net...

The most important point of his video comes after 4:45, where there's supposed to be different laws for the small and the big, and he challenges that. What exactly is wrong with that?

Also.. Let me leave this to you, since you're promoting scientism, not science.
The Folly of Scientism

edit on 20-1-2013 by vasaga because: (no reason given)

What is wrong with it is that he tries to replace a rocky theory with a fantasy that he has made up in head, rather than offering superior math or physical theory. He has no physical theory and in fact overtly states that he is trying to transcend physical theory by promoting biology as the solution to the structure of reality. That is so assbackwards I can't even say.

The only reason he is able to disguise this babble as science is because of the terrible weaknesses in current quantum theory.

If you're trying to diss me for demanding we use scientific principles to establish the structure of reality, then please continue. Let's see how far you get with any serious intellectual problem without it.