On Friday, May 1, 2020 at 6:37:16 AM UTC-6, John Clark wrote: > > On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 8:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > *Firstly, concerning the postulates of QM and the UP,* >> > > Mathematics has postulates. Science doesn't. The nearest equivalent for > Science is experimental results. So it doesn't matter where you originally > got an idea, if the idea allows you to make better predictions than anybody > else (astronomically better in the case of virtual particles) then > scientists will take your idea very very seriously indeed. > > *> There's an axiomatic approach to QM* >> > > No there is not, like every other branch of science there is only an > experimental > approach. > >> Haven't you ever taken a course in QM? Since QM "works", we accept the postulates, but you can't have a theory without postulates. Or take GR; one of its postulates is that space-time can be modeled as a smooth pseudo-Riemannian manifold. AG
> > *which does NOT include the UP. This is what's presented in texts on >> QM. Those postulates include, for example, the operators for position and >> momentum, and so forth. The UP is definitely NOT one of these postulates, >> and the UP can be derived from them. It's done in any decent course in QM. >> Do you agree or not? AG* >> > > I neither agree nor disagree because I don't know what the hell you're > talking about. > Really? QM associates an Hermitian operator with every observable, such as X and P. That's a POSTULATE! You never heard of that!? AG > All I know is if Virtual Particles or the Uncertainty Principle or even > Quantum Mechanics itself couldn't make predictions that could be confirmed > experimentally no scientist would pay them any attention. And the Virtual > Particle idea can make better predictions than anything else in all of > Science. Full stop. > Of course; we accept the postulates because of excellent experimental predictions, but to deny the existence of postulates is a total non-understanding of QM and physics in general. AG > > * > your virtual particles are just terms in a perturbation expansion >> which helps in a calculation. This doesn't mean they actually exist in >> violation of energy conservation. * >> > > Hmmm...I wonder if that's why they're called VIRTUAL particles and not > just particles. > They're called virtual because they violate conservation of energy, aka "off shell". but you think they're actually real and can borrow (and return) energy. That's why you can't explain the justification for the time-energy form of the UP. AG > > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c44d2ba0-176a-4cd6-88df-06265e9f04bf%40googlegroups.com.
