The ontological status of the vacuum is a separate issue. Virtual particles or their energy-momenta are just dummy variables of summation or integration. There is nothing to really suggest these are real.
LC On Monday, August 30, 2021 at 8:00:35 PM UTC-5 [email protected] wrote: > Spacetime cooks along however we describe it, from my reading of several > articles the essence seems that QFT = the essence. Beyond the testing of > the last 30 years is the true vacuum being overlaid by the "false vacuum" > constitutes, at least, the Hubble Volume. In this way the true vacuum is > (drumroll) the essence of foundation of reality. Maria Filipova had this > nice (related) article earlier thus year- > > https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/faculty-of-natural-sciences/department-of-physics/MariaFilippova.pdf > > One advantage of the false vacuum being foundational is that the true > vacuum may not have a single pizza in it, or if it does contain the pie(s) > they may all be virtual. However, if we were virtual ourselves, then the > pizza would satisfy and therefore any complaints would arise from only true > vacuum observers. The true vacuum complainers may simply be > thermodynamically fluctuated boltzmann brains and we should ignore them > unless they're buying our pies for us? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> > To: Everything List <[email protected]> > Sent: Mon, Aug 30, 2021 6:03 am > Subject: Re: there is no ultimate essence > > Virtual particles are not real. In fact off-shell particles or their > mass-energies are just dummy variables of integration in the computation of > Feynman diagrams. In the BCFW formalism off-shell condition can be > dispensed with entirely. These integration variables are in effect removed > and they signify massive gauge redundancies. > > LC > > On Sunday, August 29, 2021 at 8:40:57 AM UTC-5 [email protected] wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 10:23 PM spudboy100 via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > > *> So, if there is no computational or physical back drop to the vacuum or > false vacuum, then what of the effects of Virtual Particle observations? I > am looking at an article astronomer article by Ethan Siegel, indicating the > reality of virtual particles. The have to initiate from somewhere, correct?* > > No, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle you can sneak in > under the radar of the law of conservation of mass/energy and create stuff > from nothing, but only for a very short amount of time, and the larger the > amount of mass/energy there is the shorter the amount of time you are > allowed to violate that law. So virtual photons can pop into existence from > nowhere, they can't be detected directly but they do produce changes in > things that we can detect, such as in the detailed examination of the > spectral lines of hydrogen, an even better example is the Casimir effect. > > If you place two flat uncharged mirrors close together then there can NOT > be virtual photons of every wavelength in the vacuum between the mirrors as > there are outside, only a wavelength equal to the distance between mirrors > are allowed, or half that wavelength, or a third or a fourth etc (it's the > same reason a organ pipe will not make any sound but only sounds that > resonate inside the pipe). But outside of the mirrors there is no such > restriction and the virtual photons can be of any wavelength. Thus there > are more virtual particles in the vacuum outside the mirrors pushing them > together than there are between the mirrors pushing them apart. So the > mirrors will attract each other. > > This attractive force was predicted to exist in 1948 but it wasn't until > 1997 that it was confirmed in the lab to actually exist with just the > strength Casimir said it would have. If the Vacuum outside the mirror has > zero energy then the space between the mirrors must contain negative > energy. > > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > gop > > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4d04f5b7-b7ee-431b-881c-3c3208845135n%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4d04f5b7-b7ee-431b-881c-3c3208845135n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > > . > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20414f27-b3b9-45d6-94ca-a78a3eb54e2bn%40googlegroups.com.
