the god of physics addresses a basic problem

[bwanaaa]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-on-the-weirdness-of-physical-reality/259718/

I like Feynman because he was truthful about the limits of our knowledge. Listening to this lecture was rejuvenating. I was daydreaming (amazing that I used to daydream in class IRL and now I daydream watching youtube) and imagine the following experiment.

Do the two slit experiment but filter out all the 'negative parts' of the wave. I dont know if there is a real device that can take the 'absolute value' of a light wave. However using polarized light eliminates interference patterns: mentioned here
http://skullsinthestars.com/2009/03/28/optics-basics-youngs-double-slit-experiment/
and explained here:
http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~frioux/two-slit/PolarDoubleSlit.pdf

Or I can use this insight to ask if matter has positive and negative states. When matter interacts with matter, we get the 'bullet curves' as Feynman explained. But if you had a stream of particles and antiparticles and did the two slit experiment, we should get an interference pattern just like light would generate. (can this be observed in nature like in a star far away? obviously not something you want to do on earth unless you want to turn the planet into an asteroid belt)

But electrons (which are supposedly matter) generate the interference pattern. Is it because all really small things behave like waves? Or is it because electrons liberate positrons half the time when they hit matter? The fundamental issue presented in the video is that you dont know which slit the electron goes through. But what if what's really happening is that you know which slit it goes through, you just dont know whether it's going to liberate a positron when it hits matter and annihilate itself. ? Stupid question that a smrt person here can probably answer in a couple of seconds.

BTW, who is the old guy in the audience (at about 39:06 in the video)

 

[Smoblikat]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-on-the-weirdness-of-physical-reality/259718/

I like Feynman because he was truthful about the limits of our knowledge. Listening to this lecture was rejuvenating. I was daydreaming (amazing that I used to daydream in class IRL and now I daydream watching youtube) and imagine the following experiment.

Do the two slit experiment but filter out all the 'negative parts' of the wave. I dont know if there is a real device that can take the 'absolute value' of a light wave. However using polarized light eliminates interference patterns: mentioned here
http://skullsinthestars.com/2009/03/28/optics-basics-youngs-double-slit-experiment/
and explained here:
http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~frioux/two-slit/PolarDoubleSlit.pdf

Or I can use this insight to ask if matter has positive and negative states. When matter interacts with matter, we get the 'bullet curves' as Feynman explained. But if you had a stream of particles and antiparticles and did the two slit experiment, we should get an interference pattern just like light would generate. (can this be observed in nature like in a star far away? obviously not something you want to do on earth unless you want to turn the planet into an asteroid belt)

But electrons (which are supposedly matter) generate the interference pattern. Is it because all really small things behave like waves? Or is it because electrons liberate positrons half the time when they hit matter? The fundamental issue presented in the video is that you dont know which slit the electron goes through. But what if what's really happening is that you know which slit it goes through, you just dont know whether it's going to liberate a positron when it hits matter and annihilate itself. ? Stupid question that a smrt person here can probably answer in a couple of seconds.

BTW, who is the old guy in the audience (at about 39:06 in the video)

This is why when someone says I am smart I tell them that im not Just the question was too much for my brain.

 

[sm625]

Electrons are waves. They are spherical standing waves. This is always true. They are never a particle.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Science-Fair-Projects-Experiments.htm

Scroll down to the "Young's Two Slit Light Physics Experiment" section.

 

[wuliheron]

But electrons (which are supposedly matter) generate the interference pattern. Is it because all really small things behave like waves? Or is it because electrons liberate positrons half the time when they hit matter? The fundamental issue presented in the video is that you dont know which slit the electron goes through. But what if what's really happening is that you know which slit it goes through, you just dont know whether it's going to liberate a positron when it hits matter and annihilate itself. ? Stupid question that a smrt person here can probably answer in a couple of seconds.

Too many questions all at once.

Feynman says it himself: you have got to stop thinking of quanta in common sense terms of waves and particles. After a century of the greatest minds on the planet spending trillions of dollars trying to determine exactly what they are the simple fact is nobody can say. Science is not the business of providing comforting metaphysical views to believers, no matter how secular their beliefs, it is about what you can prove and what is the most useful theory.

All the latest theories are contextual, that is, they suggest it is meaningless metaphysical gibberish to talk about individual quanta. Along the lines of asking if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a noise. To study an electron or any other "particle" you must use another one to interact with it and the combined properties of both are what define both. As far as science is concerned the electron might as well not exist until it interacts with something.

Recent experiments have proven that even entanglement is contextual and subject to Indeterminacy. The strength of the entanglement increases with the number of particles involved and indeterminacy applies the entanglement itself. That puts us right back to square one that nobody knows what the heck individual quanta are or even if the question has any demonstrable meaning or is merely a convenient human abstraction.

 

[sm625]

nobody knows what the heck individual quanta are or even if the question has any demonstrable meaning or is merely a convenient human abstraction.

Dont say nobody!

"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). ... The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. ... Let me say at the outset, that in this discourse, I am opposing not a few special statements of quantum physics held today (1950s), I am opposing as it were the whole of it, I am opposing its basic views that have been shaped 25 years ago, when Max Born put forward his probability interpretation, which was accepted by almost everybody. I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." - Erwin Schrödinger, The Interpretation of Quantum Physics.

Probability in QM is meaningless babble. That is what Schrödinger is saying. He said it a long time ago. The truth has been around for quite awhile. All matter in the universe is just an organization of spherical standing wave centers. All the bull nonsense about probabilities and whatnot is just institutionalized obfuscation, designed specifically for the sole purpose of complicating physics so as to prevent the masses from reaching a level of understanding that would allow them to free themselves or at least makes the world a much much better place. As a result, very few people (less than 1%) understand concepts as simple as gravity. Such a sad state of affairs is science today...

I spent years trying to understand what gravity was. Now I do, and it is simple, simple like riding a bike. But unless you are given the proper tools for understanding, the burden on your mind is an insurmountable hindrance to understanding.

 

[wuliheron]

Dont say nobody!

What a crock. Physicists can spout any nonsense they want about quantum mechanics and do including claiming quanta are Shiva dancing. "Shapes and variations in the structure of spacetime" is meaningless gibberish.

I spent years trying to understand what gravity was. Now I do, and it is simple, simple like riding a bike. But unless you are given the proper tools for understanding, the burden on your mind is an insurmountable hindrance to understanding.

Let me guess, God finally spoke to you and said the answer was 42 and to spread the gospel. No doubt you feel insulted by someone claiming you don't really know what quanta are and consider me to be a religious bigot.

 

[sm625]

If by god, you mean god of simplicity, then yes. Things are so much simpler when you have the right theory. You can go on being an ignorant sheep like all the rest of em, never understanding the most simplest and basic laws of physisc. I really couldnt give two craps. But dont pretend like no one has a clue just because you've allowed yourself to be indoctrinated by the system. Read Schrodinger's Universe, or continue being ignorant.

 

[Blue Shift]

All the bull nonsense about probabilities and whatnot is just institutionalized obfuscation, designed specifically for the sole purpose of complicating physics so as to prevent the masses from reaching a level of understanding that would allow them to free themselves or at least makes the world a much much better place.

You're proposing that all modern theories regarding Quantum Physics are part of a conspiracy to keep people in their place? Seriously?
And so the perpetrators of this conspiracy are... All Physicists and greater scientific organizations, unanimously agreeing to support fake Physics? Give me a break.

 

[wuliheron]

If by god, you mean god of simplicity, then yes. Things are so much simpler when you have the right theory. You can go on being an ignorant sheep like all the rest of em, never understanding the most simplest and basic laws of physisc. I really couldnt give two craps. But dont pretend like no one has a clue just because you've allowed yourself to be indoctrinated by the system. Read Schrodinger's Universe, or continue being ignorant.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. R.W. Emerson

 

[PowerEngineer]

If by god, you mean god of simplicity, then yes. Things are so much simpler when you have the right theory. You can go on being an ignorant sheep like all the rest of em, never understanding the most simplest and basic laws of physisc. I really couldnt give two craps. But dont pretend like no one has a clue just because you've allowed yourself to be indoctrinated by the system. Read Schrodinger's Universe, or continue being ignorant.

Really? To bring us a step back toward where this thread started, let me quote Richard Feynman:

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

Of course, you could be the first...

 

[bwanaaa]

I guess my idea is so crazy that no one wanted to refute it. Well, after some thought, I realized that electron-positron annihilation could not account for interference fringes because of the random distribution of events that might generate positron. For this theory to work, one would have to postulate a periodicity to the events that might generate positrons as the electrons strike the surface.

 

[disappoint]

Electrons are waves. They are spherical standing waves. This is always true. They are never a particle.

Sounds legit.




Oh except one thing, you don't suppose they should start calling particle accelerators which send electrons flying around: standing wave accelerators from now on do you?

One other thing. Electrons have mass. They are not just pure energy. They are not merely spherical standing waves.

Reality is, whether you choose to accept it or not, that electrons have both wave and particle properties.

There are plenty of experiments which show the particle properties of electrons, which you can look up yourself.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Sounds legit.




Oh except one thing, you don't suppose they should start calling particle accelerators which send electrons flying around: standing wave accelerators from now on do you?

One other thing. Electrons have mass. They are not just pure energy. They are not merely spherical standing waves.

Reality is, whether you choose to accept it or not, that electrons have both wave and particle properties.

There are plenty of experiments which show the particle properties of electrons, which you can look up yourself.

Is the Higgs field not the field that creates the effects of having mass ?
Could such a field not be also present in those spherical standing waves giving those spherical standing waves mass ? Thus the illusion of a particle ?

I noticed in the Lecture of Richard Feynman something interesting. He stated that for the example to work, all the ripples in those waves in the wave experiment must have all equal distances. What would happen if those distances were not always equal nor a constant ? That would give a different kind of interference pattern. Far more complex i would think.

 

[serpretetsky]

But electrons (which are supposedly matter) generate the interference pattern. Is it because all really small things behave like waves?

I didn't understand a lot of your post (way over my head :biggrin. However, on this specific question you may want to read about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_wave

It describes the matter/wave duality that all particles have (not just electrons). Similarly to how light was shown to have particle aspects, many mass particles have been shown to have wave aspects.

edit:

Or I can use this insight to ask if matter has positive and negative states. When matter interacts with matter, we get the 'bullet curves' as Feynman explained. But if you had a stream of particles and antiparticles and did the two slit experiment, we should get an interference pattern just like light would generate. (can this be observed in nature like in a star far away? obviously not something you want to do on earth unless you want to turn the planet into an asteroid belt

matter already creates interference patterns with itself, you don't need anti matter. Electrons create interferance patterns. Even massive Fullerene molucles have been shown to create interefernce patterns.

 

[sm625]

Reality is, whether you choose to accept it or not, that electrons have both wave and particle properties.

There are plenty of experiments which show the particle properties of electrons, which you can look up yourself.

It's not that simple. Various experiments do not measure particles directly, only "particle effects". Most of these older experiments would have shown that a laser beam was a stream of particles. But no, you cannot "look that up" because it requires logic and intuition, not flawed and obsolete empirical data.

One must have a theory that is not rife with contradictions and unexplainable anomalies. There are contradictions that cannot be explained unless you dismiss entirely the particle theory. For example, how can mass be measured in two completely different ways? Mass = Force x acceleration, or F= ma. But mass can also be derived from F = Gm1m2/r^2, using the gravitational constant G and another known mass. There are dozens of such contradictions and inconsistencies. The big bang, probability waves, curvature of "space-time", Heisenberg Uncertainty, mysterious interaction between observer and observed, all that meaningless gobbledegook nonsense... it is all wrong. (This "mysterious interaction between observer and observed" is not mysterious at all! Once you dismiss particle theory...)

“It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be characterized in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics.” Professor Carver Mead of Cal-Tech

Let me use Mead's words to describe an electron. From The American Spectator interview with Carver Mead: ( http://laputan.blogspot.com/2003_09_21_laputan_archive.html )

"The electron isn’t the disturbance of something else. It is its own thing. The electron is the thing that’s wiggling, and the wave is the electron. It is its own medium. You don’t need something for it to be in, because if you did it would be buffeted about and all messed up. So the only pure way to have a wave is for it to be its own medium. The electron isn’t something that has a fixed physical shape. Waves propagate outwards, and they can be large or small. That’s what waves do."

Without Mead's work, would we even have 4GHz processors?

From 1945 Wheeler and Feynman: " Absorber charges at a large distance produce spherical waves headed towards the source. At the moment the source is accelerated these waves just touch the source. Thus all the waves from the absorber charges form an array of approximately plane waves marching towards the source. The Huygens envelope of these plane waves is a spherical in-going wave. The sphere collapses on the source, and then pours out again as a divergent outward wave."


It's all right there, even Feynman was onto it decades ago. But they could not dismiss the point particle so they never fully grasped it. Until all these people die off, mainstream science probably wont let go of this idea of a particle.

Understanding the concept of spherical in and out waves is the most difficult hurdle. But nonetheless they are the basis of reality, thus they need to be the basis of all physics going forward, if physics is to go forward...

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

There are dozens of such contradictions and inconsistencies. The big bang, probability waves, curvature of "space-time", Heisenberg Uncertainty, mysterious interaction between observer and observed, all that meaningless gobbledegook nonsense...

What, pray tell, is inconsistent or contradictory about any of these?

Big bang with inflation seems to work fine, nothing wrong with space-time, Heisenberg Uncertainty (a bit of a pet peeve here, there is nothing mysterious going on here, it is a simple mathematical fact that comes entirely from properties of the Fourier Transform and actually has nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics), the interpretation of the observer/observed has largely been dropped by the community.

 

[disappoint]

It's not that simple.

Of course not. It's even more complex than you're willing to accept apparently.

Are you even aware that individual atoms show wavelike properties showing up as an interference pattern through the double slit experiment? How do you explain that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

Sending particles through a double-slit apparatus one at a time results in single particles appearing on the screen, as expected. Remarkably, however, an interference pattern emerges when these particles are allowed to build up one by one (see the image to the right). For example, when a laboratory apparatus was developed that could reliably fire one electron at a time through the double slit,[14] the emergence of an interference pattern suggested that each electron was interfering with itself, and therefore in some sense the electron had to be going through both slits at once[15] — an idea that contradicts our everyday experience of discrete objects. This phenomenon has also been shown to occur with atoms and even some molecules, including buckyballs.[10][16][17] So experiments with electrons add confirmatory evidence to the view of Dirac that electrons, protons, neutrons, and even larger entities that are ordinarily called particles nevertheless have their own wave nature and even their own specific frequencies. This experimental fact is highly reproducible, and the mathematics of quantum mechanics (see below) allows us to predict the exact probability of an electron striking the screen at any particular point. However, the electrons do not arrive at the screen in any predictable order. In other words, knowing where all the previous electrons appeared on the screen and in what order tells us nothing about where any future electron will hit, even though the probabilities at specific points can be calculated.

 

[sm625]

There is a serious problem with reading comprehension plaguing the world nowadays, so much so that it renders most discussions of physics moot and useless. I need to drink my Brawndo and move along.

 

[serpretetsky]

There is a serious problem with reading comprehension plaguing the world nowadays, so much so that it renders most discussions of physics moot and useless. I need to drink my Brawndo and move along.

it's got electrolytes!

 

[pakotlar]

Electrons are waves. They are spherical standing waves. This is always true. They are never a particle.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Science-Fair-Projects-Experiments.htm

Scroll down to the "Young's Two Slit Light Physics Experiment" section.

Wrong, and Einstein showed this to be wrong with experiments on the photoelectric effect.

If light was only a wave, increasing light intensity would ionize those atoms that were not ionizable at lower intensity. Instead we see that reaching the requisite energy is dependent of frequency only, which is only possible if light behaves as a particle.

 

[sm625]

No it is not wrong, and there is nothing in the photoeletric effect experiments that contradicts or requires a particle. Scalar Spherical Standing Wave resonance is the mechanism behind what is incorrectly perceived as a particle effect.

The electron as a particle has actually been disproven:

In a new experiment, Weizmann Institute scientists designed a sophisticated system to measure such fractional electric charges, should they exist. The system makes it possible to measure so-called "shot noise." In day-to-day environment, this noise results from random variations in the number and velocity of electrons and causes popping sounds in radio receivers and snow effects in television pictures. Under special laboratory conditions, "shot noise" can be analyzed to reveal the make-up of the electric current. This is possible because the noise has "ripples" left by the flow of electrons in a conductor. The size of each "ripple" is proportional to the unit of electric charge: the smaller the ripple, the smaller the charge, and vice versa.

The scientists passed an electric current through a semiconductor immersed in a high magnetic field, under conditions in which the fractional quantum Hall phenomenon is observed. They used sophisticated equipment to eliminate all extraneous sources of noise. The "shot noise" made by the current was then amplified and measured. It turned out to be made of charges one-third that of an electron.So this confirms that an electron is not a fundamental particle, since such element should be indivisible, simple and structureless.

The above quote is from http://www.scritube.com/limba/engleza/chemistry/Introduction-to-the-hard-parti94192021.php Read more there, please. That link is a treasure trove of information. Do not take it lightly. The solution is not to invent smaller and smaller particles.

That image should fascinate anyone with an interest in physics. Find that picture in the above link, and read.

 

[sm625]

More on the photoelectric effect and how to explain it in terms of waves rather than particles:

Here's a thought exercise. Think of these spherical standing waves as pendulums. Take two pendulums and attach a string between them so that they pull each other. Now if the pendulums are exactly the same mass and length then it means they have the same frequency. And thus it means the string will never have any pressure on it once the pendulums are swinging in unison. The string will just be carried along with no tension on it. Think of a surface with no light shining on it as a cluster of these pendulums, all swinging together in unison. Like a bunch of identical grandfather clocks all lined up against a wall, with all their pendulums tied together.

Now what happens if one of the pendulum's length is increased? (ie it is hit by an incoming light quanta.) The longer pendulum will tend to want to oscillate at a lower frequency, or its angular velocity will tend to increase, depending on how you look at it. The pendulums will now exert a force on the string. But the string will serve to couple the two pendulums and you will be able to observe an oscillation on the string. (This is resonant coupling, a well known phenomenon.) This oscillation of the string can be perceived as the flow of electrons. It is the pendulums' attempts to resonantly couple that creates the charge transfer, or electron flow we observe. It is just a simple charge transfer that occurs through the process of resonant coupling. One pendulum wants to slow down, and the other wants to speed up. A charge must be transferred in order for them to achieve this. That is where our observed electrons come from.

We know from the experiments that the electrons' kinetic energies increase with respect to frequency of the incoming light, but not amplitude. The standing wave pendulums have their own frequencies, and it is the incoming light that serves to disturb those frequencies and create a charge transfer (energy output) through resonant coupling. Increasing the frequency of the incoming light increases the amount of energy released from the process of resonant coupling, thus increasing the kinetic energy of the electrons. But if you just increase the amplitude of the light without increasing the frequency, you get no increase in charge transfer. You do get more pendulums swinging however. But you do not get an increase in resonant coupling, because resonant coupling doesnt apply to a common mode signal. And that is exactly how a varying intensity light appears to a cluster of swinging pendulums: it is a common mode input. A higher intensity means more pendulums swinging, more are effected due to the increased amplitude. But the resonant coupling between them does not increase; the resonant coupling only occurs around the edges where there is a pendulum that did receive the light wave next to a pendulum that did not receive it. Resonant coupling works best when one pendulum is affected while the one next to it is not. If you're immersed in the world of microwaves then you could think of the standing wave pendulums as common mode filters.

 

[Born2bwire]

Christ, all we need now is a mention of electromagnetic scalar waves and Time Cube.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-on-the-weirdness-of-physical-reality/259718/

I like Feynman because he was truthful about the limits of our knowledge. Listening to this lecture was rejuvenating. I was daydreaming (amazing that I used to daydream in class IRL and now I daydream watching youtube) and imagine the following experiment.

Do the two slit experiment but filter out all the 'negative parts' of the wave. I dont know if there is a real device that can take the 'absolute value' of a light wave. However using polarized light eliminates interference patterns: mentioned here
http://skullsinthestars.com/2009/03/28/optics-basics-youngs-double-slit-experiment/
and explained here:
http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~frioux/two-slit/PolarDoubleSlit.pdf

Or I can use this insight to ask if matter has positive and negative states. When matter interacts with matter, we get the 'bullet curves' as Feynman explained. But if you had a stream of particles and antiparticles and did the two slit experiment, we should get an interference pattern just like light would generate. (can this be observed in nature like in a star far away? obviously not something you want to do on earth unless you want to turn the planet into an asteroid belt)

But electrons (which are supposedly matter) generate the interference pattern. Is it because all really small things behave like waves? Or is it because electrons liberate positrons half the time when they hit matter? The fundamental issue presented in the video is that you dont know which slit the electron goes through. But what if what's really happening is that you know which slit it goes through, you just dont know whether it's going to liberate a positron when it hits matter and annihilate itself. ? Stupid question that a smrt person here can probably answer in a couple of seconds.

BTW, who is the old guy in the audience (at about 39:06 in the video)

Well, obviously the problem with your idea is that it would require the destruction of the electron and the emission of light. Not to mention that the interference patterns have been produced in objects as large as buckyballs.

No, in non-relativistic quantum mechanics you just have to come to grips that matter at small length scales behaves differently. That's not saying that the electron isn't a particle, it's still treated as a point-like charge in the Schroedinger equation. When they talk about its wave properties they are talking about the behavior of the wavefunction that describes how an event (like the emission and subsequent detection of the electron) will occur,not that the particle itself is a wave. The wavefunction is just the solutions to the Schroedinger equation that gives you the probability density of some measurable quantity. In the case of the double slit, we are looking at the probability of where the electron will be detected. The math that describes this probability has wave properties.

Quantum field theory, however, does move the status of a particle toward something that is more intuitive for these phenomenon. That is, in QFT, a particle is described as a field, but any interactions with the field are done in quanta (like a quanta of energy). Hence, the particle like behavior is still preserved. However, by thinking of the electron as a field it becomes more natural to see how such self-interference comes about.

There have been some papers written that have proposed teaching early quantum mechanics from the field picture to avoid the confusion over the wave-particle duality. Take a look at Professor Hobson's papers:

http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/05.03.AJP.pdf
http://physics.uark.edu/Hobson/pubs/07.02.TPT.pdf

Of course the problem with this is also readily apparent, it serves as a good high level explanation but to actually do the physics from a field point of view is a very very indepth process. You can easily take two years of courses at University just to absorb the non-relativistic Schroedinger quantum mechanics before you start dealing with quantum field theory. So while it makes a nice conceptual picture, it doesn't jive with what beginners use to actually calculate. Still, quantum field theory is what is used for quantum mechanics with special relativity and it has provided us with, if I may repeat the cliche, the most accurate physics theory yet, quantum electrodynamics.

 

[bwanaaa]

Perhap's Professor Hobson's papers ARE the simplest explanation. Thank you for the references, I NEVER would have found them with google or any other search engine. I am intrigued by the the idea that The EM field is quantized and it interacts instantaneously and randomly with the screen in accordance with the probability amplitude specified by the EM field.

Quantization even at a human scale is possible. Imagine playing the game of musical chairs where the people are running around the chairs so fast they are a blur. You can only sit on a chair but not in between. The chairs are where your bottom comes to rest. When the music stops you always get a quantized distribution of people. There is a person every chair width but nobody in between, ever. But while the music is playing you have a 'people field'. In real life of course, the chairs represent the wavelength of the particle and it is ridiculously small , lambda= Planck/momentum. But I do like the idea of the field-that a photon can exist anywhere in a cross section of space but that it 'materializes' with its interaction with matter based on its wavelength. And where it happens to materialize is somewhat random.

The problem I have with the idea of a field is that I think of it everywhere - like a gravity field or a magnetic field or an electric field. It is hard for me to envision a field as a model of a laser beam which travels in a well defined region of space.

I also feel weird reading about the "electron-positron field" in Hobson's papers. In post #11 I said that electron-positron annihilation could not account for interference fringes because of the random distribution of events that might generate a positron. For this theory to work, one would have to postulate a periodicity to the events that might generate positrons as the electrons strike the surface. You also correctly rebutted me with "the problem with your idea is that it would require the destruction of the electron and the emission of light. " Hobson's quantized field solves the problem nicely. By talking about a field, we are proposing the existence of the -pre-electron-. A packet of energy that is there but not existing as an electron until that energy interacts with a solid something. Since matter consists of electrons, the -pre-electron-energy excites an already existing electron and pops one more into existence. And where the electron pops into existence depends on its wavelength, lambda= Planck/momentum.

Why the word positron creeps into the discussion is unclear. Perhaps Hobson was trying to describe the quantized nature of the -pre-electron-. What would you call the the energy that is in between the 'crests' of the pre-electron? Well, if this is the 'negative' region of the wave and you are thinking of a negative charge, maybe you'd call it a pre-positron. But it can't be, because we never see positrons popping into existence when we fire electrons at a target. I dont really know any other way to explain why the word positron was thrown into the mix.

A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. The quantized field is that choice that Professor Hobson gave us in these papers.

But I would suggest that it just transforms the wave particle duality into a different duality - two forms of energy- the wave is the transiting form, the particle is the static form. Just like the musical chair example above where there are individual people as well as a people field.

 

[Born2bwire]

Well, I would start off by stating that Professor Hobson's explanation are not the simplest explanation, they represent the most correct explanation that quantum mechanics currently affords. Right now, the most advanced and complete quantum theory we have is quantum field theory. Quantum field theory incorporates quantum theory and special relativity. The next big hurdle is to combine quantum and general relativity. That is the area where you hear about such theories as string theory and loop gravity and so forth. Unfortunately, there has yet to be developed a complete theory. Hobson's papers, which were published in the American Journal of Physics, are discussing the use of quantum field theory as an introductory teaching method of explaining the seeming wave-particle duality which is not as explicitly encapsulated in Schroedinger wave mechanics (though you may hear about an alternative non-relativistic interpretation called Bohm wave-pilot but there still does not exist a relativistic implementation of this interpretation). I like the papers because he gives a nice and simple explanation of the basics of field theory. In fact, I don't really know of any other way of talking about QFT or QED at a low level. Feynman has his QED book but it is so simplified that it is almost unrecognizable from his path integrals. Other introductory works for field theory I know still require a very deep knowledge of mathematics and quantum mechanics. But as a teaching tool, lately I have come to think that it may not be so useful because while it is an excellent way of explaining it conceptually, it won't present a similarly simple introductory way of mathematically working with quantum mechanics. For that, the Schroedinger picture is still probably the best suited.

The interaction of the EM field with a screen is nothing special in terms of quantum behavior. The EM field interacts the same way in classical physics. In fact, the quantum electromagnetic field still has to satisfy the classical boundary conditions.

One problem with your people field is that you are specifying that the position of the people is quantized yet the people field is necessarily continuous. A wavefunction is a continuous function. I can't think of any exceptions where it isn't. So unless the wavefunction is zero over a region, the result of a measurement will not be quantized but show a continuous distribution over the statistically repeated measurement of identical systems. Even when you look at the Young's double slit experiment you will see that there are electrons in the null regions. It is the statistical distribution of these electrons that is predicted by the magnitude of the wavefunction. The quantization, in Schroedinger wave mechanics, deals with the quantization of the eigenvalues of the solutions to the wave equation. This would be a quantization of an observable, though it does not mean that every observable is quantized. This was what I was talking about above, for a particle in a box, the energy of the particle is quantized but its position is continuous. Sometimes it is a very distinct quantity like the energy of the particle or particles. Othertimes it could be a more abstract quantity like the projection of the spin along a certain direction (that is, the direction of spin can be a continuous property but it is quantized along a certain direction, say the z direction). But for Schroedinger mechanics, we only do first quantization and leave other properties as being continuous (i.e. the electromagnetic field). It should also be noted that the quantization behavior gets obscured in reality due to things like temperature effects, coupling of the system with the larger environment, and simply the expansion of the size of the system from a quantum level to a classical one.

With the electromagnetic fields, we have what is called the second quantization. In second quantization, the classical field variables become quantum mechanical operators. This causes the fields to be described by the creation and annihilation of particles, like the photon being the electromagnetic field quanta. So, just as the photon is the quanta of the electromagnetic field, the electron becomes the quanta of the electron field in quantum field theory.

A laser beam is still an electromagnetic field. Directivity of a field is achieved through destructive and constructive interference. The same basic wave principles that allows for the classical electromagnetic wave to be directed apply to the quantum mechanical wavefunctions.

He uses the term electron-positron field probably because, as I mentioned above, the matter field which the electron represents a quanta of requires the ability for the creation and annihilation of the quanta. The annihilation of the quanta (electron) is going to be mediated by the positron, the electron's anti-particle. A typical particle physics event would be that we have a high energy photon. The photon is annihilated and a positron and electron are created as a result. Should these two meet, that would represent an annihilation of the electron-positron field. This is different from the electromagnetic field because the photon is its own anti-particle. So whenever we have a creation of a quanta of the electron field, it requires the creation of an electron and positron to satisfy conservation laws. I would say though that this does not require that every system we look at always have equal numbers of electrons and positrons. We can start out assuming we have an electron field with an excitation of N electrons with X energies and momenta without any positrons. By the way, the way we represent the excitation of the fields using explicit numbers of particles is called the Fock state.

I think that perhaps you are demonstrating one of the biggest misconceptions that people have when it comes to wave-particle duality and what it means to be a particle. In quantum mechanics, whether non-relativistic or quantum field theory, there is only a single treatment of a particle. There is no ambiguity about saying that in this set of circumstances it is a wave, in these circumstances it is a particle, and here it is something in between. There is only a single and consistent mathematical treatment of the particle and its behavior. The idea of wave-particle duality is an abstraction that arises due to the inability of classical physics to describe quantum behavior. In quantum mechanics, a particle has an inherently different set of properties and qualities than how it is described via classical mechanics. So when people talk about wave-particle duality, they are talking about the fact that the quantum particle has qualities of both classical waves and classical particles. But the definition and behavior of a quantum particle does not have such ambiguity.

What you need to understand is that quantum field theory describes matter as a quantized field. The particles represent a quanta, that is an excitation, of this field. The annihilation of particles represents the destruction of a quanta and the lowering of the field. The quantized nature of the field is why we expect the interactions to be "point-like" in that we always deal with a discrete packet of energy and properties when the field interacts. But mathematically, all of these properties are contained in the single quantum concept of the quantized field operator.