On Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 7:09:43 AM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote: > > > > 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* >
There is no preferred basis in QM, and decoherence makes no reference to that. Einselection says there is some basis that is stable on a large scale for the emergence of classicality. This is not a well understood process. This is in some sense beyond QM or where QM is in some ways incomplete in its postulates or physical axioms. LC -- 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.
