gravity 101

[xelasnave]

Thanks Steven
As always you help gell what I have been reading.
Yesterday I spent too much time reading when I was not comprehending, but something remains.
I do think quantifying nothing is impossible because from my humble view re numbers even if taken from the simplest experiment are really infinite and the only way you could manage the numbers was by probability related to time and well a multitude of things...but I wondered does our rounding off the numbers to manager amounts hide something.
My point is can we really ever describe the quantum reality with maths.
I am really going to think about this.
Up side..although I don't do the math I am starting to understand a few things and how maths works.
This must do me good, I mean at my age 68 reading what I find demanding must help the old grey matter.

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Thanks Steven
As always you help gell what I have been reading.
Yesterday I spent too much time reading when I was not comprehending, but something remains.
I do think quantifying nothing is impossible because from my humble view re numbers even if taken from the simplest experiment are really infinite and the only way you could manage the numbers was by probability related to time and well a multitude of things...but I wondered does our rounding off the numbers to manager amounts hide something.
My point is can we really ever describe the quantum reality with maths.
I am really going to think about this.
Up side..although I don't do the math I am starting to understand a few things and how maths works.
This must do me good, I mean at my age 68 reading what I find demanding must help the old grey matter.

The mathematics allows us to define the probability of a particle existing in a particular state which is basically what Quantum Mechanics is about.
While Quantum Mechanics is counter-intuitive, the "reality" of the theory can be gauged by the technological advances made.

As Steven Weinberg the Nobel Prize Winner for his work in Electroweak theory once stated, if Quantum Mechanics suddenly "stopped working" our technology would be driven back into the late 19th century.

Steven

[xelasnave]

How many cats did or did not suffer at the hands of quantum mechanics

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

But he was only a drummer.

Generally Classical mechanics is way more complicated mathematically than Quantum Mechanics. The issue with Quantum mechanics is its counter intuitive physical implications.

Also many people think Quantum Mechanical effects only apply to the microscopic or atomic world - this is a miss reading of the theory. QM effects apply at all scales, but at large scales these effects are not noticeable and "drowned out" by other effects such as Gravity etc.

It will be interesting to see if human creativity and genius can discover a deterministic theory of the atomic domain. As it stands the experimental evidence in support of Quantum Physics is vast and as yet contains no counter evidence (tmk).

The field of Physics is very fortunate in that it deals with the simplest aspects of reality. Physics is by far the most idealistic and simplistic of scientific endeavors. Physicist often tend to hide behind mathematical axioms and dogmatic rhetoric which isn't necessarily a negative thing - but it does result in a very simplistic and easy scientific discipline. The jump in complexity from Physics to Chemistry is huge - and an equally huge jump occurs when one moves into Biology (and forget about trying to understand Psychology or economics - these are the realms where educated guess work becomes equally important as theory)

[xelasnave]

I find the simplest thing complex.
We talk about a photon giving it a simple description but how complex may it be. We treat it as an elementary particle but I wonder what are it's parts. We treat it like a
Like a simple cell..simple at one level..a single cell small etc....but when we really look at a cell we find a complexity that engaged some scientists for their lifes work.

[xelasnave]

I think even if one knows everything humans know it is a small fraction of what is reality..whatever that is.
Back to the cave for me.

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

Alex,

Einstein thought that equations and relationships that were messy, complex and ugly looking were probably wrong - he preferred simplicity and beauty in natural forms and processes (probably explains his long opposition to the fundamentals of QM - not sure if he changed his stance by the time he retired).

(I recall a German Physicist named Peter Bergmann who visited our University in the early 1990s. He gave several public lectures on the various Unified Field Theories that were floating around at the time. Many of the questions that were fired at him after his talks related to his relationship with Einstein. He told the audience that Einstein never stopped working on these ideas - it must be a tough nut to crack )

[xelasnave]

Yes but he was just a clerk.

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

...his parents also thought that there was something wrong with him because he didnt speak until the age of 4

[bojan]

Alex,
The problem is the way our brain works.
Our firmware (layer one) is tuned/adapted for own survival as individuals and as species.. The second layer is tuned for interaction among ourselves in a groups (family, pack, nations).

So.. we simply do not have intuitive tool to "understand" the behavior of individual electron, photon.. because they are too tiny for the scale of things we live in and therefore outside our world, so to speak.
What we can percieve though is the group behavior of huge number of those indivudal particles, this is what we can "understand' and see as rock, air, water.. other people..


You can find the same (quite broadened actually) answer, put in other words in Peter's reply (and very illustrative, and actually spot-on):

Originally Posted by Eratosthenes

....
The field of Physics is very fortunate in that it deals with the simplest aspects of reality. Physics is by far the most idealistic and simplistic of scientific endeavors. Physicist often tend to hide behind mathematical axioms and dogmatic rhetoric which isn't necessarily a negative thing - but it does result in a very simplistic and easy scientific discipline. The jump in complexity from Physics to Chemistry is huge - and an equally huge jump occurs when one moves into Biology (and forget about trying to understand Psychology or economics - these are the realms where educated guess work becomes equally important as theory)

Photon is not a complex thing at all. It does certain things, under certain conditions.
This behaviour can be precisely described by math.
And that is all there is.

[xelasnave]

My point is ...math is unavailable in my reasoning.
I think however I can visualise very well.
When I visualise what I create is complex.
Once the atom was considered differently and viewed as a single unit but as time saw more research the atom is found to have many parts.
I always think this way such that even when I wonder about a photon say my imagination presents pictures of what it may look like etc.
When I imagine nothing, space, I see something very complex, such that I have trouble fitting all I imagine is found in an empty part of space.
Anyways that's not at all important and I am sorry that I comment upon it.
And I understand and accept how useful and important math is in helping us quantify reality. I think there is more than we can describe.

Thanks for the wonderful input.

[bojan]

The attempt itself to visualise is actually a huge problem..
Because, in order to see clearly the electron inside atom, you have to shine a ligh on it, right? And that light must be of a short wavelength.. to be able to see clearly wher ethe electron is..
And our "visualization" firmware in our brains totaly relies on the assumption (almost fact!) that the light reflects from object without changing the object itself.... which can't be further from the truth.
The moment the light is supposedly "reflected" from the electron (which never happens in reality, thi is experimental fact), it is not there any more. So what you see is NOT what you get

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by Eratosthenes

Generally Classical mechanics is way more complicated mathematically than Quantum Mechanics. The issue with Quantum mechanics is its counter intuitive physical implications.

You obviously know very little about the mathematics of either subject.
At what level of Quantum Mechanics does your comparison with Classical Mechanics end?
If you include relativistic Quantum mechanics or Quantum Field Theory in the picture there is absolutely no doubt the mathematics is vastly more complicated than Classical Mechanics.

Given the mathematics of Classical Mechanics is contained within Quantum Mechanics through Hamiltonian physics (advanced Classical Mechanics) the comparison is pointless anyway.

The field of Physics is very fortunate in that it deals with the simplest aspects of reality. Physics is by far the most idealistic and simplistic of scientific endeavors. Physicist often tend to hide behind mathematical axioms and dogmatic rhetoric which isn't necessarily a negative thing - but it does result in a very simplistic and easy scientific discipline. The jump in complexity from Physics to Chemistry is huge - and an equally huge jump occurs when one moves into Biology (and forget about trying to understand Psychology or economics - these are the realms where educated guess work becomes equally important as theory)

Physicists use mathematical models, mathematicians use mathematics.
You fail to see the distinction. Mathematical models by their very nature are far less rigorous.
Einstein summarized it perfectly when he stated the left hand side of his field equations were made out of stone but the right hand side out of straw.
The left hand side is based on Riemannian geometry, the right hand side on brilliant physical insights that could not be derived through axiomatic mathematics.

The idea that physics is "simple" because the mathematical axioms automatically take care of it is so patently wrong as is demonstrated by Ed Witten.
Witten is the only physicist to have won the Fields Medal in Mathematics has found many concepts in Quantum Field Theory which were originally developed as ad hoc ideas can be proven mathematically.
In this case the physics preceded the mathematics not the other way around.

If physics "deals with the simplest aspects of reality" then why is Quantum Mechanics counterintuitive?
A contradiction in terms.

[bojan]

Steven,
IMO "intuitivness" is related to the higher functionality of our brains.. which evolved in a world we live in (in other words, the scale larger than atom, smaller than universe).

"Simplicity" (IMO again of course) actually means the lower position of processes on the hierachical ladder of human affairs.. ( it goes like this: QEM, classical phisics, chemistry, phychology, economics, politics).
So I don't think the statement that QEM is counterintuitve is actually a contradiction in terms.. it just reflects the way human animal thinks.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by Eratosthenes

...his parents also thought that there was something wrong with him because he didnt speak until the age of 4

Maybe his parents just hadn't said anything interesting to him until then!

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

Originally Posted by bojan

Photon is not a complex thing at all. It does certain things, under certain conditions.
This behaviour can be precisely described by math.
And that is all there is.

Only if you interfere with it as an observer (ie collapse the wave function). Until then you know very little about a single photon. You dont even know if it's a particle or wave or both or neither. This is the beauty of Quantum Mechanics - its an extreme form of philosophical cowardice

What does the mathematics say about a photon entering a black hole/singularity?

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

My point is ...math is unavailable in my reasoning.
I think however I can visualise very well.
When I visualise what I create is complex.
Once the atom was considered differently and viewed as a single unit but as time saw more research the atom is found to have many parts.
I always think this way such that even when I wonder about a photon say my imagination presents pictures of what it may look like etc.
When I imagine nothing, space, I see something very complex, such that I have trouble fitting all I imagine is found in an empty part of space.
Anyways that's not at all important and I am sorry that I comment upon it.
And I understand and accept how useful and important math is in helping us quantify reality. I think there is more than we can describe.

Thanks for the wonderful input.

You raise a very important point Alex.

Amongst mathematicians/Philosophers etc, there is even disagreement as to whether numbers themselves exist - numeracy being one of the more simpler forms in the field of mathematics. Generally there are 3 broad groups where mathematicians and philosophers fall into on the issue of whether numbers are real and exist in the sense that a cricket bat or coin exists.

Platonism, Nominalism and Fictionalism. Platonists view numbers as abstract entities that basically exist outside time and space - the numbers don't interact with reality like a car would for example. So the Platonic stance is that numbers exist but they are more interested in their context and location and that location is not in our reality.
Nominalists are a little bit more practical in that they view and use numbers to describe things in our reality - they kind of attach or couple numerical values to real objects. They are sort of practical Platonists in that they arent concerned pedantically about whether numbers are abstract or exist outside our reality. Fictionalists dismiss numbers as real and prefer to think of numbers as not existing anywhere at all. They also claim that mathematics itself is inherently FALSE. The way fictionalists deal with the success of mathematics/science in our practical world, is that they merely contend that success or efficiency is NOT a reflection of truth.

The Platonists do have an advantage when dealing with imaginary numbers (i), zero, infinity and transcendental numbers (like pi and e) - they merely treat them as abstract objects that exist outside out normal space-time regime (no different to the number 57 or the fraction 1/3).

There are many mathematicians, scientists and even philosophers who really aren't concerned about these issues - if it works and pays the bills and keeps the board of directors happy, then that's all that matters. Sort like Corporatised puppets dangling in the profit winds of the pseudo free market regime. Sadly, most of today's scientists, mathematicians and in particular physicists are disappointing corpocratic puppets who are dishonoring the great feats of the giants who came before them.

It's really sad to see the great discipline of Physics in particular collapse into a pathetic dogmatic cult religion.

[xelasnave]

Thank you Peter for taking the time to construct your post.
I am not sure in which box I should go in...other than t
he one in which I shall be buried.

It occurred to me maybe my early career in law makes me think differently.
One is often looking for "what else" and always trying to get around an established law or custom which stands in the way of victory.

In any event I am happy with my abilities for my age and grateful so many wonderful people indulge my ignorance and help me understand the world of science , it's results andsystems.
.

[Eratosthenes (Peter)]

interesting Alex that you hovered amongst lawyers.

I have always considered lawyers close to the most important profession in society along with medicine and education. And it's for this reason that I suspect that the profession of Law is the most corrupted. The consequences of a legal system that is applied equally amongst its citizens is just way too threatening for the Oligarchical power structures to endure IMO.

I recall story about a defendant, after being sentenced severely by a judge screaming out the words "You call this a court of Justice" - and the judge replied, this is not a court of Justice, it is a court of Law.

I wonder at what point in history did Justice and the Law diverged into unrecognisable phenomena?

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the Law protects YOU KNOW WHO, and for YOU KNOW WHAT.

...back to the issue of gravity - some describe gravity as an illusion

[xelasnave]

Peter could you expand upon and explain your last sentence.