The Philosophy Discussion Forum

And how would you set about proving this conscious model?

i think it could be proven by using the double slit ligjt duality exp.

jackles wrote:i think it could be proven by using the double slit ligjt duality exp.

in what way?

Your idea of non locality is at odds with the common idea of what it means.

Blaggard wrote:

jackles wrote:i think it could be proven by using the double slit ligjt duality exp.

in what way?

Your idea of non locality is at odds with the common idea of what it means.

Yes, I agree.

I would have also thought that relativity was at odds with quantum mechanics.

where theres a will theres away ginkgo.

Ginkgo wrote:

Blaggard wrote:

jackles wrote:i think it could be proven by using the double slit ligjt duality exp.

in what way?

Your idea of non locality is at odds with the common idea of what it means.

Yes, I agree.

I would have also thought that relativity was at odds with quantum mechanics.

Only the particle model, field theory unifies gravity and quantum mechanics neatly enough, it becomes problematic only when you try and model the particle interactions as particles rather than waves. With the discovery of the Higgs boson a supposed force carrier of gravity analagous to the electron and photon interaction in EM this objection may become redundant.

Ginkgo wrote:I would have also thought that relativity was at odds with quantum mechanics.

Blaggard wrote:Only the particle model, field theory unifies gravity and quantum mechanics neatly enough, it becomes problematic only when you try and model the particle interactions as particles rather than waves. With the discovery of the Higgs boson a supposed force carrier of gravity analagous to the electron and photon interaction in EM this objection may become redundant.

My understanding of the significance of the LHC results is that discovery of the Higgs boson is evidence for the Higgs field. As far as I can tell, it is the field which is believed to exert drag on 'matter' particles that gives them mass.
For anyone not that bothered by the mathematical physics, it might help if you think of refraction, the bending of waves as they pass between media of different densities (not the diffraction that is responsible for the two slit results). It is usually claimed that General Relativity was 'proved' by Arthur Eddington's pictures of starlight bending around the sun, a phenomenon that is indistinguishable from refraction. It looks as if any field responsible for mass is denser around massive objects. Were that to be the case, then you could imagine that the components of atoms are tumbling over each other and that there is a portion of their motion which is perpendicular to any nearby massive object, and that, just like Eddington's starlight, they are refracted towards the source. Given that they are (partially) moving back and forward in that field, the net result is a small force towards the massive object.

Several predictions have been made and it now seems they are verified,0 or integer spin currently tentatively found to be spinless, chargeless, scalar, guage invariancy has also been confirmed, and also the particle decays to W and Z bosons as it should if there is to be a GUT Grand unified Theory or consequently a ToE Theory of Everything.

There's a shed lead of decent info on the wiki for higgs too, since it's all new stuff I think it's all likely to be pretty reliable, and the citations look good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson



Nice to finally see the Higgs in the picture.

Thanks for the link, Blaggard. (I'm still struggling with Lim, by the way). One thing I've never understood about spin is how is it measured? Given the analogy with angular momentum, I presume it is by deflection in fields.

uwot wrote:Thanks for the link, Blaggard. (I'm still struggling with Lim, by the way). One thing I've never understood about spin is how is it measured? Given the analogy with angular momentum, I presume it is by deflection in fields.

Well its best to think of it as you would orbitals, it is the momentum with which a particle is said to revolve. Hence the measurement is an angle of change related to sin, which is basically a sinosoidal periodicity around the circle anyway. hence sin (x) being extensively used in physics.

It's not hard then to make a differential at time from the sinosoidal periodicity between -1 an 1.



The wave function also can be modelled with sin or with a complex plane representation that relates to sin by i and pi.

Thanks again, Blaggard, but just to remind you, even if I had the same facility with maths as you, I would still be some way off understanding that. What I'd like to know, for now, is what is the observable effect of spin? I don't doubt that it is in some sense real, in the same way that I don't doubt that mass, charge, energy and dimensions 'exist', but I have no idea what any of them are, other than demonstrable effects of there being more than one object in the universe. Basically, I'm just curious about whether you have any ontological hunches, although I note you 'don't believe in anything'; the most sensible epistemological stance in my view.

It doesn't have a classical representation as such it is a complementary function which means basically it only has a quantum value.

That said it is still real because it has been found that even after you account for orbital angular momentum there is still a residual spin associated with a magnetic dipole around the particles axis, hence electro magnetism has spin particles which are related to h bar as they call it, the reduced plancks constant which further equates in the wave function itself. Fermions such as electrons have half spins, bosons 0 or integer spins. The laws for each particle type are different because of these intrinsic non classical irregularities.

I think it's best to imagine the particle is spinning like a top in fermions every second it goes around a half and in bosons it goes around once and leave that analogy as being as close as you are going to get to a classical form of depiction.

Obviously sin is half a circle and then another half circle in the negative direction which essentially is a representation of walking around the circumference of a circle.

Sometimes formulas are expressed in spherical polar co-ordinates for ease of expression, the Gaussian is an example which can be used to model the probability fields in electro dynamics for example. ie in terms of a co-ordinate like the longitude and latitudes are on Earth.

Blaggard wrote:It doesn't have a classical representation as such it is a complementary function which means basically it only has a quantum value.

I'm just asking whether you know how it is measured.

Blaggard wrote:That said it is still real because it has been found that even after you account for orbital angular momentum there is still a residual spin associated with a magnetic dipole around the particles axis,

So is the 'residual spin associated with a magnetic dipole around the particles axis', different than 'spin' and is spin therefore also 'around the particles axis' associated with magnetic dipole or otherwise?

Blaggard wrote:hence electro magnetism has spin particles which are related to h bar as they call it, the reduced plancks constant which further equates in the wave function itself. Fermions such as electrons have half spins, bosons 0 or integer spins. The laws for each particle type are different because of these intrinsic non classical irregularities.

Does any of this mean anything that can be said in layman terms?

Blaggard wrote:I think it's best to imagine the particle is spinning like a top in fermions every second it goes around a half and in bosons it goes around once and leave that analogy as being as close as you are going to get to a classical form of depiction.

Does 'classical' mean 'in some way you can visualise'? Someone once tried to explain the difference between GR and QM with a sponge. They pushed their finger into it and when the edges were drawn together, they said 'That's gravity.' Then they pinched the middle and when the edges were drawn together this time, they said 'That's a quantum field.'

Blaggard wrote:Obviously sin is half a circle and then another half circle in the negative direction which essentially is a representation of walking around the circumference of a circle.

It's not as obvious as you think.

Blaggard wrote:Sometimes formulas are expressed in spherical polar co-ordinates for ease of expression, the Gaussian is an example which can be used to model the probability fields in electro dynamics for example. ie in terms of a co-ordinate like the longitude and latitudes are on Earth.

If I have given you the impression that these words might mean anything to me in that order, I apologise.

uwot wrote:

Blaggard wrote:It doesn't have a classical representation as such it is a complementary function which means basically it only has a quantum value.

I'm just asking whether you know how it is measured.

Well you can't measure it precisely but you can observe the way a particles field behaves and infer the energy system only balances when you include an intrinsic spin to the particles orbital. the maths is really complicated though and I haven't really studied it, suffice to say it's an inductive mathematical property based on observation, which means there is no reason to say it does not in reality rotate about its axis but there is no pictorial way of showing a quantum system per se, but to fully analogise it we would have to have access to things we are already only inferring such as its position and momentum at the same time. Suffice to say you end up with spin as a natural consequence of energy concerns in the system and spin in turn gives rise to certain particle types, which accordingly follow certain laws such as electrons not being able to occupy the same quantum state and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern%E2%8 ... experiment

Electrons are spin-1⁄2 particles. These have only two possible spin angular momentum values measured along any axis, +ħ/2 or −ħ/2, a sheerly quantum mechanical phenomenon. Because its value is always the same, it is regarded as an intrinsic property of electrons, and is sometimes known as "intrinsic angular momentum" (to distinguish it from orbital angular momentum, which can vary and depends on the presence of other particles).

I found this, I am afraid I haven't studied this yet so I can't really say much more than I already have.

Blaggard wrote:That said it is still real because it has been found that even after you account for orbital angular momentum there is still a residual spin associated with a magnetic dipole around the particles axis,

So is the 'residual spin associated with a magnetic dipole around the particles axis', different than 'spin' and is spin therefore also 'around the particles axis' associated with magnetic dipole or otherwise?

No the effect of spin is what gives it its properties its an intrinsic part of the particles energy. Just as colour is an intrinsic part of a gluons attractive force so spin is an intrinsic part of electromagnetic force or whatever force you happen to be talking about.

Blaggard wrote:hence electro magnetism has spin particles which are related to h bar as they call it, the reduced plancks constant which further equates in the wave function itself. Fermions such as electrons have half spins, bosons 0 or integer spins. The laws for each particle type are different because of these intrinsic non classical irregularities.

Does any of this mean anything that can be said in layman terms?

Well it would be pretty hard to explain why an electron has a negative charge and a positron has a positive charge or most things without some understanding of maths. So not really. h bar is one of those constants that jumps out of the equations because it is just so. Just like the fine structure constant and c. I did give an analogy to a spinning top below which is the best I can do at this time.

Blaggard wrote:Obviously sin is half a circle and then another half circle in the negative direction which essentially is a representation of walking around the circumference of a circle.

It's not as obvious as you think.

Look at the graph if you moved peaks over the troughs what would they resemble?

ok now imagine you are walking around a circular bit of grass and start at the exact North, there are times when you are walking East and times when you are walking West in other words there are times when you are going forwards and times when you are going relatively backwards, or times when you are positive and times when you are negative, so -1 periodically becomes 0 and then becomes 1 and then becomes 0 and these times are exactly in a sort of synch or phase relationship, if you have ever seen an oscilloscope that is precisely the sin wave moving in time and when you measure something like noise or eletromagnetic interference it shifts the screen in a manner that mimics the waves of whatever you are measuring. That relationship is essentially just a wave at time t, if you like you can imagine it as a physical water wave, there really is nothing to amazing about circles or trigonometry or sea waves crashing endlessly on a shore.



Wave length. Which relates to frequency by speed. or wavelenght=speed/frequency

Blaggard wrote:Sometimes formulas are expressed in spherical polar co-ordinates for ease of expression, the Gaussian is an example which can be used to model the probability fields in electro dynamics for example. ie in terms of a co-ordinate like the longitude and latitudes are on Earth.

If I have given you the impression that these words might mean anything to me in that order, I apologise.

That's just saying its sometimes easier to express orbitals like we express longitude and lattitude in degrees and minutes. In this case as an angle and a number that denotes position, rather than x,y. It's the same thing they are just different forms that are related by pi.

Very interesting and informative set of posts Blags.

Thanks

P.S We need to have coffee.