Philosophy Now Forum

What Physicists Have Been Missing
An exciting new theory reconciles gravity and quantum physics.
I think it’s wrong. But I may be too.
BY SABINE HOSSENFELDER February 2, 2024
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But today, the foundations of physics are a sleepy place. We’re still chewing on the same problems
that we had a century ago—and all that chewing hasn’t made them any more digestible.
What is dark matter? What does quantum mechanics really mean? And why does gravity
refuse to cooperate with quantum physics? These are problems that, when I can’t sleep,
I like to think have already kept Einstein up at night.
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https://nautil.us/what-physicists-have- ... mVzUsxUcbs
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Problems:
1- What is “quantum gravity"?
/Gravity is an extremely weak force on small scales compared to the EM forces./
2- What is an electron?
To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer,
“It is part of the A B C of physics”. /Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington/
3- Is it possible to cure “incurable infinities”?
'' So we really do not know exactly what it is that we are assuming that gives us
the difficulty producing infinities. A nice problem ! However, it turns out that
it is possible to sweep the infinities under the rug , by a certain crude skill ,
and temporarily we are able to keep on calculating. '' / Richard Feynman/
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The troubling situation in physics was described even earlier (in 2006)
by Lee Smolin in his book “The Problem with Physics”:
“. . . at least one big idea is missing. How do we find that missing idea?”
/ Page 308. Lee Smolin /

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel, said at the time the standard model of physics which underpins the scientific understanding of the universe “rests on the existence of a special kind of particle: the Higgs particle. This particle originates from an invisible field that fills up all space.

“Even when the universe seems empty this field is there. Without it, we would not exist, because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass. The theory proposed by Englert and Higgs describes this process.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... es-aged-94
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1- Book, "Fundamentals":
" The lifetime of a Higgs particle is about 10^-22 seconds, or a tenth of trillionth of a billionth of a seconds." /page 177, by Frank Wilczek/
Higgs bosons are unstable particles and therefore cannot be fundamental particles.
2- This "an invisible field that fills up all space." is cosmic vacuum.
“Even when the universe seems empty . . ." . . . "empty" is cosmic vacuum
3- The humble cosmic vacuum, the source of everything, have been missing by scientists.
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The lifetime of a Higgs particle is about 10^-22 seconds, or a tenth of trillionth of a billionth of a seconds." /page 177, by Frank Wilczek/
Higgs bosons are unstable particles and therefore cannot be fundamental particles.

So far this is only certainly known to be true for the isolated particle in a highly artificial experimental environment. What additional arguments are required to prove that it must also be true on a cosmic or universal scale?

alan1000 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 1:19 pm So far this is only certainly known to be true for the isolated particle in a highly artificial experimental environment. What additional arguments are required to prove that it must also be true on a cosmic or universal scale?

The Higgs particle was discovered "in a highly artificial experimental environment"
of a very pure vacuum, which is similar to the cosmic vacuum on a universal scale.
Without pure vacuum, the LHC is useless machine.

alan1000 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 1:19 pm The lifetime of a Higgs particle is about 10^-22 seconds, or a tenth of trillionth of a billionth of a seconds." /page 177, by Frank Wilczek/
Higgs bosons are unstable particles and therefore cannot be fundamental particles.

So far this is only certainly known to be true for the isolated particle in a highly artificial experimental environment. What additional arguments are required to prove that it must also be true on a cosmic or universal scale?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... s-it-decay

This is a good start for someone who wants to understand why an "elementary particle" can decay - and why decaying doesn't necessarily mean it's not fundamental. I really like what Chiral Anomaly has to say.

socrattus wrote: ↑Tue Feb 06, 2024 3:35 pm What Physicists Have Been Missing
An exciting new theory reconciles gravity and quantum physics.
I think it’s wrong. But I may be too.
BY SABINE HOSSENFELDER February 2, 2024
-------
But today, the foundations of physics are a sleepy place. We’re still chewing on the same problems that we had a century ago—and all that chewing hasn’t made them any more digestible. What is dark matter? What does quantum mechanics really mean? And why does gravity refuse to cooperate with quantum physics? These are problems that, when I can’t sleep, I like to think have already kept Einstein up at night.

According to a Wiki article regarding the collapse of the quantum wavefunction...

Wiki wrote:The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, also described as "consciousness causes collapse", is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is postulated to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement.

That interpretation also played a role in shaping the popular metaphysical assertion that...

..."Consciousness Creates Reality."

Now add to that the fact that if the Copenhagen Interpretation (Niels Bohr/Werner Heisenberg) proclaims that so-called quantum "particles" have no specific attributes (such as spin or position, for example) until a measurement is made, and only exist as spread-out (superpositioned) waves (or fields) of potential particles prior to measurement,...

...it therefore suggests that we are literally creating the particles we find in our measuring devices because our measuring devices are designed in such a way that they literally shape the particles into their specific forms from the waves of what Heisenberg called "potentia."

In other words, instead of our measuring devices "discovering" particles, they literally create them from a nebulous substance that Heisenberg called a ghostly "raw potentia" that isn't actually "real" itself, and can only be designated as something we call "real" after a measurement is made.

And the point is that if human consciousness mentally designs and then creates the measuring devices out of the same nebulous (non-real) substance that the particles are then created from by the measuring devices,...

...then it can be logically concluded that consciousness (mind) really does seem to be creating what we call "reality."
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seeds wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:41 pm ..."Consciousness Creates Reality."
_______

..."Mathematics Creates Reality."

socrattus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 5:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:41 pm ..."Consciousness Creates Reality."
_______

..."Mathematics Creates Reality."

That's almost like saying that, all by its lonesome, this stuff...



...created this...



Or this stuff (again, all by its lonesome)...



...created these things...



How about we compromise and say that a mathematically (informationally) based substance is what consciousness uses to create reality out of.

And if you can't agree with that, and still insist that "mathematics" (all by its lonesome) "creates reality,"...

....then how about you provide us with a mathematical formula, not for the tangible and measurable quantum constituents that comprise the grey matter of brains, but for the mind and consciousness that "emerges" from the special arrangement of those measurable quantum constituents.

And while you're at it, how about explaining what it is that instigates the collapse of the quantum wavefunction...

...(and, no, it's not "decoherence").
_______

seeds wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 7:03 am

socrattus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 5:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:41 pm ..."Consciousness Creates Reality."
_______

..."Mathematics Creates Reality."

That's almost like saying that, all by its lonesome, this stuff...



...created this...



Or this stuff (again, all by its lonesome)...



...created these things...



How about we compromise and say that a mathematically (informationally) based substance is what consciousness uses to create reality out of.

And if you can't agree with that, and still insist that "mathematics" (all by its lonesome) "creates reality,"...

....then how about you provide us with a mathematical formula, not for the tangible and measurable quantum constituents that comprise the grey matter of brains, but for the mind and consciousness that "emerges" from the special arrangement of those measurable quantum constituents.

And while you're at it, how about explaining what it is that instigates the collapse of the quantum wavefunction...

...(and, no, it's not "decoherence").
_______

I like your comment
A small set of colors creates different beautiful world of things
Probably the same situation is in the microcosm

The Large Hadron Collider simulates the Cosmic Vacuum.
The LHC is a small copy of the Cosmic Vacuum.
The Large Hadron Collider can create new particle.
For this reason the LHC needs pure vacuum conditions. Without vacuum, LHC is useless machine.
But these pure vacuum conditions have the cosmic vacuum. The cosmic vacuum (itself) creates new particles.
And how the Cosmic Vacuum (by itself) creates new particles is an unknown process.
So, first we need to understand "what is cosmic vacuum?" Unfortunately we ignore this subject.
Book ''The Fermi Solution'': ''. . . : something seems wrong with our idea of the vacuum.
It is we who abhor a vacuum, who recoil from the stillness of the void as from an open grave.''
/page 37-38, by Hans Christian von Baeyer/
“Somehow, the energy is extracted from the vacuum and turned into particles...
Don't try it in your basement, but you can do it.”
/University of Chicago cosmologist Rocky Kolb/
‘'The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
is the basic problem now before physics.
Really, if you can’t correctly describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect
a correct description of something more complex?''
/Paul Dirac/
#
Vacuum for physics research
11 Sep 2024 Sponsored by Agilent Technologies
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Your research can’t happen without vacuum! If you’re pushing the boundaries of science
or technology, you know that creating a near-perfect empty space is crucial.
Whether you’re exploring the mysteries of subatomic particles,
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mastering ultra-high (UHV) and extreme-high vacuum (XHV) is necessary.
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https://physicsworld.com/a/vacuum-for-physics-research/
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September 9, 2024. A New Quantum Cheshire Cat Thought Experiment Is Out of the Box
The spin of a particle seems to detach and move without a body—
a strange experimental observation that’s stirring up debate
/By Manon Bischoff/
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The Cat is a photon, while the grin is its circular polarization.”
“It seems a bit bold to me to talk about disembodied transmission,” says physicist Holger Hofmann
of Hiroshima University in Japan. “Instead we should revise our idea of particles.”
A Grin without a Cat
“Nobody understands quantum mechanics. It’s so counterintuitive. We know its laws,
but we are always surprised,” says Sandu Popescu, a physicist at the University of Bristol in England,
. . . they claimed the property of the particle could be measured on one path even though
the particle itself took the other—as if the grin and the cat had come apart.
“Ultimately, the paradoxical behaviors are related to the wave-particle duality,” Saldanha says.
But in the papers that report evidence of the quantum Cheshire cat, he asserts,
the findings “are processed in a sophisticated way that obscures this simpler interpretation.”
“You think the particle has a spin and the spin should stay with the particle.
But the spin crosses the box without the particle.”
------.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... dU4fcZ32Bw
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A quantum 'spin' is impulse without a body.
A quantum particle has no geometric shape, and so when physicists use the name
"spin" (integer h or half-integer h*), they are talking about the smile of the cat in Wonderland,
not about the cat itself. To understand reality, a "cat" must have some geometric shape.
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socrattus wrote: ↑Fri Sep 13, 2024 8:02 am September 9, 2024. A New Quantum Cheshire Cat Thought Experiment Is Out of the Box
The spin of a particle seems to detach and move without a body—
a strange experimental observation that’s stirring up debate
/By Manon Bischoff/
-----.
The Cat is a photon, while the grin is its circular polarization.”
“It seems a bit bold to me to talk about disembodied transmission,” says physicist Holger Hofmann
of Hiroshima University in Japan. “Instead we should revise our idea of particles.”
A Grin without a Cat
“Nobody understands quantum mechanics. It’s so counterintuitive. We know its laws,
but we are always surprised,” says Sandu Popescu, a physicist at the University of Bristol in England,
. . . they claimed the property of the particle could be measured on one path even though
the particle itself took the other—as if the grin and the cat had come apart.
“Ultimately, the paradoxical behaviors are related to the wave-particle duality,” Saldanha says.
But in the papers that report evidence of the quantum Cheshire cat, he asserts,
the findings “are processed in a sophisticated way that obscures this simpler interpretation.”
“You think the particle has a spin and the spin should stay with the particle.
But the spin crosses the box without the particle.”
------.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... dU4fcZ32Bw
------.
A quantum 'spin' is impulse without a body.
A quantum particle has no geometric shape, and so when physicists use the name
"spin" (integer h or half-integer h*), they are talking about the smile of the cat in Wonderland,
not about the cat itself. To understand reality, a "cat" must have some geometric shape.
-----.

Before observation, the Quantum Cat can be in any place (superposition),
and at the moment of measurement (according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
(Δx Δp ≈ h/4π, ΔEΔt ≈ h/4π) it simultaneously changes its position.
This is life in Quantum Wonderland.
----

socrattus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 5:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:41 pm ..."Consciousness Creates Reality."
_______

..."Mathematics Creates Reality."

"Consciousness" means 'with sense" or simply, "sensed" which is just an alternative way of saying that "Observing reality creates reality", given the actual understanding of the meaning of 'consciousness' is not in universal agreement.

Mathematics is just the logic that uses numbers as inputs and output, which to many seems disconnected to reality if no object exists before being 'counted' (or 'accounted') for.

I think the best way to interpret 'reality' is to begin by presuming absolutely everything and/or absolutely nothing as a foundation We can grant the label, "Totality" to this concept and then ask how our local part in Totality 'exists' in a subset of some "Universe". We beg time as an essential part of the meaning 'existence' and so whatever is 'real' refers to the subjective perspective of existence relative to some local part within this universe in time and space.

With time being something we reference as being necessary to existence, ask what it might mean for something that has occurred in the past or that will occur the future relative to the present? Do those things 'exist' as real? We can question the limit of 'now' in the same way we do with mathematical Calculus and then ask whether 'now' exists too (?)

I interpret reality as inferred by this to mean whatever is 'factual' to an ideal observer (like a 'gods' perspective) because the past and future would have to be dismissed as not 'real' given it is not presently available. The 'fact' of the events are themselves not literally physical as we experience locally but Totality, as an abstract reference to absolutely all, would have all facts contained in it as a 'record' that cannot be changed.

Reality is similarly related to the term, 'existence' but from different perspectives. Existence is that which we describe as anything 'outside of our subjective stance' and reality is the 'outside factor(s) acts that impose our perception of what exists.'

If absolutely everything exists within Totality, this still implies that what is relatively "impossible" also exists,....they are just segregated into distinct universes. It also implies that even absolutely nothing is included. So what is 'real' is just what is relatively possible or probable within some domain (ie 'universe').

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2024 12:33 am

socrattus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 5:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:41 pm ..."Consciousness Creates Reality."
_______

..."Mathematics Creates Reality."

Mathematics is just the logic that uses numbers as inputs and output, which to many seems disconnected to reality if no object exists before being 'counted' (or 'accounted') for.

Mathematics is just logic that uses numbers as inputs and outputs that cannot be separated from reality

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2024 12:33 am I think the best way to interpret 'reality' is to begin by presuming absolutely everything and/or absolutely nothing as a foundation

"absolutely nothing as a foundation" is the cosmic vacuum

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2024 12:33 am With time being something we reference as being necessary to existence, ask what it might mean

Time is necessary for existence, so ask; "how did time come into being?"