On Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 11:57:09 AM UTC, Lawrence Crowell wrote: > > On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 5:13:22 PM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote: >> >> >> >> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 10:13:37 AM UTC, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >>> >>> On Thursday, June 21, 2018 at 6:48:53 PM UTC-5, [email protected] >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thursday, June 21, 2018 at 11:18:25 PM UTC, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >>>>> >>>>> The emergent nuclear interaction occurs on a time scale of >>>>> 10^{-22}seconds. The superposition of a decayed and nondecayed nucleus >>>>> occurs in that time before decoherence. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Is that calculated / postulated if the radioactive source interacts >>>> with its environment? Can't it be isolated for a longer duration? If so, >>>> what does that imply about being in the pure states mentioned above? AG >>>> >>> >>> Quantum physics experiments on nonlocality are done usually with optical >>> and IR energy photons. The reason is that techniques exist for making these >>> sort of measurements and materials are such that one can pass photons >>> through beam splitters or hold photons in entanglements in mirrored >>> cavities and the rest. At higher energy up into the X-ray domain such >>> physics becomes very difficult. At intermediate energy where you have >>> nuclear physics of nucleons and mesons and further at higher energy of >>> elementary particles things become impossible. This is why in QFT there are >>> procedures for constructing operators that have nontrivial commutations on >>> and in the light cone so nonlocal physics does not intrude into >>> phenomenology. Such physics is relevant on a tiny scale compared to the >>> geometry of your detectors. >>> >>> LC >>> >> >> *I've been struggling lately with how to interpret a superposition of >> states when it is ostensibly unintelligible, e.g., a cat alive and dead >> simultaneously, or a radioactive source decayed and undecayed >> simultaneously. If we go back to the vector space consisting of those >> "little pointing things", it follows that any vector which is a sum of >> other vectors, simultaneously shares the properties of the components in >> its sum. This is simple and obvious. I therefore surmise that since a >> Hilbert space is a linear vector space, this interpretation took hold as a >> natural interpretation of superpositions in quantum mechanics, and led to >> Schroedinger's cat paradox. I don't accept the explanation of decoherence >> theory, that we never see these unintelligible superpositions because of >> virtually instantaneous entanglements with the environment. Decoherence >> doesn't explain why certain bases are stable; others not, even though, >> apriori, all bases in a linear vector space are equivalent. These >> considerations lead me to the conclusion that a quantum superposition of >> states is just a calculational tool, and when the superposition consists of >> orthogonal component states, it allows us to calculate the probabilities of >> the measured system transitioning to the state of any component. In this >> interpretation, essentially the CI, there remains the unsolved problem of >> providing a mechanism for the transition from the SWE, to the collapse to >> one of the eigenfunctions when the the measurement occurs. I prefer to >> leave that as an unsolved problem, than accept the extravagance of the MWI, >> or decoherence theory, which IMO doesn't explain the paradoxes referred to >> above, but rather executes what amounts to a punt, claiming the paradoxes >> exist for short times so can be viewed as nonexistent, or solved. AG. * >> > > You seem to have backed yourself into an intellectual corner. What you say > is a bit like creationists who say they "just can't imagine ... ." > > LC >
*My pov has no relation to, or anything in common with creationism. I don't believe Joe the Plumber can do a simple quantum experiment and create Many Worlds, each with a copy of himself, some with uncountable copies. Do you? I don't believe there are preferred bases in linear Hilbert vector spaces. Do you? But that's the claim of decoherence theory. My questions aren't rhetorical. I look forward to your answers. AG* -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
