On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The quantization of space time has no need to extend to the mathematical > space used to evaluate the amplitude of probability. > That probability is obtained by taking the square of the absolute value of Schrodinger's Wave Function, and normally that wave function has irrational numbers like PI and e in it, but if it turns out that spacetime is quantized then a more accurate probability could be obtained by replacing PI and e by rational numbers. This is what Peter Shore (the man who discovered the superfast quantum algorithm for factoring numbers) had to say when asked why physicists use Real Numbers: "We do it because it matches experiment ... why else? (And actually, strictly speaking, we don't---we use Minkowski coordinates for space-time.) If somebody can think of an experiment which will tell the difference between the reals and the hyperreals or surreals, we may eventually have to change the way we do things. I am actually interested in why we don't just use the the rationals to model things. Although I understand that the Pythagorean theorem demands irrational distances, the fact is that no device ever measures irrational values." John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
