It seems we have some physics buffs here, perhaps even a professional, lets have some fun with Quantum Mechanics.


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Here are two of the more common competing explanations, but NOT all of the explanations that are out there.



Lets have all those physics buffs weigh in . . . perhaps I will get to see some interesting comments, also please provide a source if you can, I love quotes or books I can read.

##Just a quick note, its the measurement problem that leads to this typical false dichotomy of explanations.

Now even if we accept a given explanation what does it really say about what can be known about the nature of particles at the Quantum level?

Is it really deterministic, and only appears to be probabilistic, or does nature only appear to be deterministic?

This is the better explanation, because we can twist this around into all kinds of crazy parallel reality fantasies. Truth is what we want it to be.

You asked for it, redonkulous!

Now, forget about going to work -- get ready to siff through pages and pages of definite (although possibly conflicting) answers...

You might, as well, request the site-management for a fee -- for introducing the most-answered topig that will become the source of the most heated debates!!!

I think I will have to dig out my college physics books, hopefully the rats didn't get to them last winter to make stuffing for little rat beds.

For what parts I can understand of this, which isn't much, I can only ask questions...Why just two slits? Is it because we only have two eyes? And have we smoked so much weed so far? That our comprehension of the universe has been reduced to two little slits?

I could wade into the duality nature of matter but it has been covered a lot on Mingle. At the quantum level matter really does act as a wave just as the double slit experiment would indicate. However, let's go in a different direction.

When we study matter at the quantum level in the lab, we tend to think small and just want to know what is happening to one or a few atoms at a time. Maybe we are concerned where a single electron is going, how it gets there, what makes it do whatever it is doing (like the double slit experiment.

Few people talk about what really happens in the real world when engineers are studying material science or electronics to build "stuff". One can place odd materials in close proximity to exchange electrons (as opposed to share them) and calculate the eigenvalues, eigenfunctions, eigenvectors, and potentials necessary to set up the linear differential equations to perform linear matrix math to solve locations and vectors (with the help of transfer theorems). You then put the material in the lab and guess what? The material acts like all the electrons are everywhere in the stinking shells all the time.


In the slit experiment, the electrons act as though they are everywhere they can be and give a wave pattern. Everywhere is not the same as "somewhere" or "anywhere". The problem is not of "how can they be two places at once?". The real question is "Why can't we accept and understand that they are everywhere they can be at once?"

The same non deterministic math of an electron applies equally well to a bowling ball. The level of uncertainty of it's position is just smaller relative to it's size following Einstein's special theory of relitivity.

BTW, the double slit experiment with light is different from the double slit experiment with electrons. Using light (a massless particle known to act as a wave) gives a more trivial result. Using electrons which have a calculated mass puts the particle in the position of acting as a wave also which is what makes the experiment interesting in the first place.

Oh boy, this should be interesting...

"Although the double-slit experiment is now often referred to in the context of quantum mechanics, it is generally thought to have been first performed by the English scientist Thomas Young in the year 1801 in an attempt to resolve the question of whether light was composed of particles (Newton's "corpuscular" theory), or rather consisted of waves traveling through some ether, just as sound waves travel in air. The interference patterns observed in the experiment seemed to discredit the corpuscular theory, and the wave theory of light remained well accepted until the early 20th century, when evidence began to accumulate which seemed instead to confirm the particle theory of light.[13]

The double-slit experiment, and its variations, then became a classic thought experiment for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics."

...

"A Young double slit experiment was not performed with anything other than light until 1961, when Clauss Jönsson of the University of Tübingen performed it with electrons[15][16], and not until 1974 in the form of "one electron at a time", in a laboratory at the University of Milan, by researchers led by Pier Giorgio Merli, of LAMEL-CNR Bologna.

The results of the 1974 experiment were published and even made into a short film, but did not receive wide attention. The experiment was repeated in 1989 by Tonomura et al. at Hitachi in Japan. Their equipment was better, reflecting 15 years of advances in electronics and a dedicated development effort by the Hitachi team. Their methodology was more precise and elegant, and their results agreed with the results of Merli's team. Although Tonomura asserted that the Italian experiment had not detected electrons one at a time—a key to demonstrating the wave-particle paradox—single electron detection is clearly visible in the photos and film taken by Merli and his group.[17]

In September 2002, the double-slit experiment of Claus Jönsson was voted "the most beautiful experiment" by readers of Physics World.[18]"


1801 to 2002 ... That's quite a spread of head scratching.

Its interesting to me the idea that particles such as electrons are everywhere until an observation, whats more interesting is that Bohmian mechanics seems to do away with this notion quit easily.







I think its not accepted becuase it seems to breaks from the identity logic (we should hesitate when logic has been so violated) and when a very simple explanation is presented and then tossed away for no empirical reason I feel the better question is why do we not embrace the deeper explanation that does not present logical absurdities?

I think Tolstoy said it best.

There appear to be several apparently unrelated (but obviously related) aspects of the "two slit" event that partially explain the ability to "be all they can be" (occupy all statistically available locations simultaneously). The first is quantum tunneling.

Again, the difference between the two slit experiments with light and massed particles stands out. Quantum tunneling, which explains how particles can overcome the nuclear repulsive forces to make the Sun shine happen by causing particles to occupy quantum statistically probable space; in spite of the necessity to pass through solid matter to get there. If they can overcome a strong electromagnet force to magically appear in close proximity to the nucleus of another atom, it isn't much of a stretch to magically appear on the other side of a metal barrier beyond the range of the "slit".

The second factor is "field effects". Once again it is not much of a stretch to think that an electromagnet particle such as an electron could have a time delayed signature of electromagnetic energy that lasts just long enough for the particle, like Santa Claus, to make it's appointed rounds of everywhere to return to leave another disintegrating smell of attractive/repulsive force.

Of course the big problem with field effects is that the slit experiment works on neutrons also. However, one must accept the fact that a neutron is a traveling show of a charged electron, a charged proton,an anti neutrino, and a healthy quantum's worth of energy about the size of a gamma ray. The charged particles, attached to the hip as they are, may in some way be able to leave their mark.

Empirical evidence shows that a stray electron approaching solid matter will not obey any calculated position or probability of position in the solid matter. It simply acts like the little electron shells are filled to the brim with all the electrons they can hold and set up an unbroken electromagnetic barrier to send the errant traveling fool electron back along a new path in strict accordance with the laws of reflection, absorption, or refraction. The laws of quantum mechanics that predict where the electron might be in the assaulted shell do not even come into play. They are everywhere they can be.

Former particle physicist and now multi dimensional space proponent Lisa Randall of Harvard :

"Along with Raman Sundrum of Johns Hopkins University, she published two papers in 1999 that have changed how physicists think about the structure of space. Randall proposed that the universe has more than four dimensions (three of space and one of time) and that these extra dimensions could be infinitely large.

Randall has influenced string theorists, who also claim that extra dimensions exist. String theory is a model of physics in which building blocks are one-dimensional objects called strings instead of zero-dimensional particles like electrons.

Until now, string theorists have accounted for the fact that we can detect only three dimensions by claiming that the extra dimensions are curled up into infinitesimal loops and thus imperceptible.

Randall claims that these dimensions could be infinitely large provided that space has a warped geometry. In effect, we could be living in a three-dimensional pocket of higher dimensional space. Randall refers to these pockets in space as branes. Like a bead on a wire that can only move along one dimension, a brane may restrict our motion to three dimensions although other dimensions exist.

With branes, Randall discovered a way to explain how extra dimensions could be hidden and infinitely large. Because the math behind her theory works, theoretical physicists have paid close attention to her research.

In an article profiling the most influential people of 2006, Newsweek calls her “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation.” From 1999 to 2004, she was the most cited theoretical physicist in the world."

Extra, large (not extralarge) dimensions allow matter to occupy multi locations while satisfying all the apparent restraints of our measly three. The intuitively disturbing slit experiment may just be a perspective that we cannot see.

It is more fun when the interference pattern shifts!

The Aharonov–Bohm effect, sometimes called the Ehrenberg–Siday–Aharonov–Bohm effect, is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an electrically charged particle shows a measurable interaction with an electromagnetic field despite being confined to a region in which both the magnetic field B and electric field E are zero.



with two slits.

Running the slit experiment with neutrons is similar in that the particles exhibit electromagnetic wave effects and neutrons are not electromagnetic.

It would be interesting to run the slit experiment with neutrinos except they probably wouldn't know where the slits were.

Seems like anyone remotely connected to the field of Quantum Physics tends to pride him/er-self as somebody who knows "Everything"! But,even according to the world's leading scientists, the field is much too complex for the ordinary person to undestand. No wonder, those same world-renown scientists cannot explain many mysterious phenomena that the field is "overcrowded" with -- that's why they've come up with such labels "Quantum Uncertainty", or "Quantum fuzziness", or EVEN "Quantum Weirdness"!!!

In other words, people, who pride themselve as knowing everything, operate with such values as ucertainty and fuzziness. Yet, most of them dare claiming to know everything!!! Boy, those falks are really weird -- in the quantum sence, of course!

Thus, I'd suggest they better ZIP IT before criticizing others from the scientific point of view!!! (because everything they know is either long outdated or quite Uncertain!)

_______________________ BESIDES_______________________
At the "10th International Conference on Science and Paranormal Phenomena" that took place 2 days ago at the Technical University in Moscow, it was concluded that Quantum Mechanics -- developed in 1925/6 -- is incapable of explaining much of the paradoxes and phenomena, the existanceof which requires the overhaul of the whole doctrine!!! (adding a temporal componnent, non-local interaction between the matterial objects, the info-bio-energetic interaction between the objects)

the quantum physicists may not know everything but they may know more than those who don't know quantum physics....



it takes no great talent to recognize that you don't know something. on the other hand - just honesty, it does take a lot of talent and
hard work to understand quantum mechanics so it would seem....



nobody ever learned a thing by pointing and yelling
"we don't know this!" "we don't know this!!"

of course there are all sorts of things we don't know. the trick is
to learn more about all those things and advance our knowledge!

Woot!

Absolutely AGREED!

So what would happen if one ran the slit experiment with neutrinos?


(trick question)

Imagine trying to setup the detector . . . oh yea and let me know when you get done building your neutrino emitter.

it's been done.
they oscillate

http://www.ph.utexas.edu/propagator/view.php?issue=200905&section=res&number=1

" Somewhere between Illinois and Minnesota, the federal government lost some neutrinos.

No matter...."

-Foxnews

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190084,00.html

Yep! It has been done, which is why it was a trick question. The hardest part of the experiment IMHO is the difficulty is making a slit. The neutrinos pass effortlessly through solid matter so making a slit is difficult, at best. Just looking for wave behavior is difficult.

The detector has already found evidence of exploding stars and helped separate the different types of neutrinos.

Fun things are happening in the world of physics.