 |
| Reflection photograph by Michael C Coldwell |
A Mirror of Reality at the Quantum Level?
For example, there isn't, nor could there be, any intrinsic human capability for addressing such questions - for Mankind was, initially at least, merely a clever ape, which for over 97% of its existence, as Homo sapiens, never got beyond the purely pragmatic tenet of "If it works, it is right!", as their only "intellectual" tool. Indeed, all of Mankind's congenital capabilities were selected-for only by Evolution, and, therefore, determined solely by Darwinian Natural Selection, involving just those capabilities enabling the species' overall survival and effective reproduction. Everything else has been only very recently attained - entirely socially - which only began within that last 3% of Mankind's total existence, and which could never be based upon the Full and Real determining Truth of the situation, as it wasn't then, and still isn't now available!
How on earth could this species of ape actually access such things? They only, and very-slowly, invented just a subset of the necessary words, and even that only over the last 1% of their existence, and as the History of Human Thinking, since then, has shown, every single gain has been, at its very best, approximate, and certainly never wholly sufficient. Nevertheless, though the bulk of their socially-created-language has always been exclusively descriptive, attempts at Explanation have been gradually improving, especially since the advent of Science.
But, the engine of Explanation has, unavoidably, always been Description. They could only start with Analogy!
For, though it does NOT deliver why things behave the way that they do: it does deliver how things behave, and in very different contexts that can at least begin to move the task towards common or similar causes.
Even thereafter, they could only proceed with natural and evidently-connected sequences of events. But, the actual reasons, or causes, for those connections were not usually evident.
So, in the early stages, such conceived-of causes were initially invented! And, it was only with the advent of a scientific search for actual, physical causes, that the process could be improved beyond the supernatural and the purely speculative.
Now, this contribution is evidently NOT an adequate treatise upon such questions, though they have been, and will continue to be, addressed fully elsewhere.
But, the above few points were clearly going to be indispensable here, if only to demolish the myth, that we already have all we need to Understand Reality: we are still a long, long way from that!
After all, it took almost 2,300 years for the more significant of the errors initiated by the Ancient Greeks, to at last be addressed by the German Philosopher Hegel. And, we still have, a further 200 years later, to comprehensively extend those crucial contributions to materialist Science - for they were in Hegel's hands entirely idealist!
So, in this paper, I will limit my objectives to a celebration, as well as a critique, of a certain PBS Space Time release on YouTube, which, I believe, shows where we are at in Modern Sub Atomic Physics at the present time!
Its topic is Virtual Particles.
And, it is remarkable how both that idea, and the alternative one that I have been pursuing (an undetectable Universal Substrate), perhaps surprisingly, actually appear to resonate-analogistically with each other, as attempted explanations of Reality at The Quantum Level!
First, the presenter tells of phantom particles appearing and disappearing in Space "literally in-and-out of nowhere"- the famous cases of Pair Productions and Pair Annihilations, involving one Electron and one Positron, present, perhaps, the best examples.
Now, elsewhere, similar virtual matter and antimatter pairs are also said to be created out of nothing, by "cheating the Universe", achieved by borrowing sufficient energy to do this, and paying it back by their almost immediate annihilation! And the Source for the energy required?
"It is the invisible Quantum Field!"
And also, near Black Holes, virtual matter and antimatter pairs of units are said to be split by the surrounding Event Horizon, to leave one IN, and the other OUT, consequently, overtime, delivering appreciable Hawking Radiation.
But, my own alternative explanation, for the former case, assuming an undetectable Universal Substrate, is achieved by involving, as crucial part of that Substrate, an undetectable joint-Unit, produced by the mutual-orbiting of the very same two sub-particles as are considered above. And, though these can absorb energy by the promotion of their inner orbit, too much energy will dissociate the union to deliver the two particles - free once again. Yet also, as part of that same stance, an appropriate encounter between two such free-moving, potential partners - of those same kinds - could cause their joint-capturing into a mutually-orbiting pair, and, therefore, become undetectable, apart, of course, from their effect as an energy-supplying Photon.
Indeed, all the Units of the undetectable Universal Substrate are conceived-of in that same, mutually-orbiting-pairs form, so energy can be internally held, and so will be generally available throughout the Substrate, from the promoted orbits of all such Units.
With such ideas, many problems consequently vanish!
And, with regard to the latter case, the suggested undetectable Universal Substrate will be absolutely Everywhere, and will both be affected by, and itself-affect the situations it encounters, including majorly transforming ones, where Substrate perturbations will cause all sorts of very different structural Phases, along with their differing consequent Effects.
Now, this contribution is evidently NOT an adequate treatise upon such questions, though they have been, and will continue to be, addressed fully elsewhere.
But, the above few points were clearly going to be indispensable here, if only to demolish the myth, that we already have all we need to Understand Reality: we are still a long, long way from that!
After all, it took almost 2,300 years for the more significant of the errors initiated by the Ancient Greeks, to at last be addressed by the German Philosopher Hegel. And, we still have, a further 200 years later, to comprehensively extend those crucial contributions to materialist Science - for they were in Hegel's hands entirely idealist!
So, in this paper, I will limit my objectives to a celebration, as well as a critique, of a certain PBS Space Time release on YouTube, which, I believe, shows where we are at in Modern Sub Atomic Physics at the present time!
Its topic is Virtual Particles.
And, it is remarkable how both that idea, and the alternative one that I have been pursuing (an undetectable Universal Substrate), perhaps surprisingly, actually appear to resonate-analogistically with each other, as attempted explanations of Reality at The Quantum Level!
First, the presenter tells of phantom particles appearing and disappearing in Space "literally in-and-out of nowhere"- the famous cases of Pair Productions and Pair Annihilations, involving one Electron and one Positron, present, perhaps, the best examples.
Now, elsewhere, similar virtual matter and antimatter pairs are also said to be created out of nothing, by "cheating the Universe", achieved by borrowing sufficient energy to do this, and paying it back by their almost immediate annihilation! And the Source for the energy required?
"It is the invisible Quantum Field!"
And also, near Black Holes, virtual matter and antimatter pairs of units are said to be split by the surrounding Event Horizon, to leave one IN, and the other OUT, consequently, overtime, delivering appreciable Hawking Radiation.
But, my own alternative explanation, for the former case, assuming an undetectable Universal Substrate, is achieved by involving, as crucial part of that Substrate, an undetectable joint-Unit, produced by the mutual-orbiting of the very same two sub-particles as are considered above. And, though these can absorb energy by the promotion of their inner orbit, too much energy will dissociate the union to deliver the two particles - free once again. Yet also, as part of that same stance, an appropriate encounter between two such free-moving, potential partners - of those same kinds - could cause their joint-capturing into a mutually-orbiting pair, and, therefore, become undetectable, apart, of course, from their effect as an energy-supplying Photon.
Indeed, all the Units of the undetectable Universal Substrate are conceived-of in that same, mutually-orbiting-pairs form, so energy can be internally held, and so will be generally available throughout the Substrate, from the promoted orbits of all such Units.
With such ideas, many problems consequently vanish!
And, with regard to the latter case, the suggested undetectable Universal Substrate will be absolutely Everywhere, and will both be affected by, and itself-affect the situations it encounters, including majorly transforming ones, where Substrate perturbations will cause all sorts of very different structural Phases, along with their differing consequent Effects.
 |
| E C Stoner Building reflected by Michael C Coldwell |
Now, the main purpose of this paper is to compare Virtual Particles (particularly as described in the video above) with the Units of a suggested undetectable Universal Substrate.
For, the video's presenter describes Virtual Particles as - not being physical, but, instead, being our simplified and idealised mathematical representation of the quantum mechanical behaviour of Fields.
This is clearly the crux!
For, as physicists, we always have to explain things physically. The clue is in the name!
And, the Universal Substrate as defined by this theoretical physicist is entirely physical. The natures of its Units are such as to actually physically supply Fields as useable energy, both held-within and delivered-from, various structural re-organisations of the Substrate's mutually-orbiting-pair type units. Though, these Units, all of which being such mutually orbiting pairs of exactly opposite matter and antimatter Lepton sub-units, deliver either individually or over-local-populations, no obvious means of passive detection, they, nevertheless, are both effecting-of and being affected-by, conducive interlopers within their various different physical Phases or "Fields"
Problems
Now, the problem for consensus physicists has always been the clear existence of Wave-like effects when no Substrate capable of producing them is considered to be present.
The infamous Double Slit phenomena caused by, say, moving particles seems to be totally inexplicable.
So, particles were given Wave/Particle Duality to explain such phenomena.
But clearly, another alternative could be to re-instate a Substrate, like the Aether, but for it to be wholly undetectable due to its unique, though still entirely material, composition.
And, such a Thought Experiment was conducted, and surprisingly solved all the various anomalies of the full set of Double Slit Experiments. Undetectable or not, it would still both affect situations, and itself be affected by occurring phenomena within it.
But, physicists rather liked Totally Empty Space! It greatly simplified, and also made possible, all kinds of experiments - for attaining a vacuum, which was eminently possible, also "delivered" Totally Empty Space too. The presence of such a Substrate, especially as it wasn't detectable, would greatly complicate ALL experiments! For, all the usual perturbations as of other detectable substrates would occur here too.
And, in addition, the initial assumption of Plurality, at the very beginning of Mankind's intellectual concepts, had forced the absolutely essential, pragmatic farming of experimental situations, to greatly simplify, as well as select-for a particular targeted context with a single dominant factor, that would both clearly display, and then allow-the-extraction of that sought-for relation. And this was best achieved by pragmatists, who had learned how to do it effectively over a couple of millenna.
The theoretical physicists thus left it to their experimental colleagues to achieve the appropriate conditions, and, sometimes, to even extract the necessary data! Only then, did the theoreticians move in, armed increasingly with their "solve-all" discipline - Mathematics, to then find-a-form which they could fit-up to the acquired data.
So, with generations of such processes of simplification and idealisation, no-one wanted to reverse direction, and have to holistically juggle with multiple simultaneous varying factors, which had prevented development so completely in the distant past.
And finally, this technique had been justified by the assumption of the Principle of Plurality. which made the so-extracted relation into an eternal Natural Law-which isn't ever true!
Plurality may hold in Ideality, but never in unfettered Reality.
There are also many fundamental areas of Reality, which are still totally unexplained, particularly to do with Charge, Direction and Energy in Fields!
Now, the ever-present, yet never-explained properties of Attraction and Repulsion (usually linked to Charge) are clearly the major problem, for both my alternative explanations, and those based upon Virtual Particles.
They must attempt to provide the bases for a substitute to those non-physical, entirely-formal descriptions, at the very heart of the whole Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.
For, that is a very old trick, indeed, and uses not a single causal explanation, but, instead, a whole range of probabilities, including counter-intuitive cases, to smuggle-in outcomes as selections from that range.
NOTE:A related argument is often proffered to counter supposed direction in the Evolution of Living Things, by purely random damage to Genes, certain cases of which, counter-intuitively and by-chance lead to development.
NOTE 2: To counter such "fixes" requires a philosophical discourse upon the opposing Principles of Plurality and Holism, which has been exhaustively pursued elsewhere, but would deflect us here from a more reachable and understandable, yet important objective for this paper.
Now, I will not pretend to be able to fully explain Attraction and Repulsion, but, once given an evident Force and its clear Direction, obviously evident by its affecting of a given entity, but I will deliver a full detailed Field, composed of of physical particles, with every single one containing, both the exactly correct amount of energy along-with-its-direction, sufficient to power the Field Effect at that point onto the affected interloper. and absolutely nothing will be taken from either the usually-supposed cause, or from the affected recipient: for they will both be totally unaffected in their prior-properties, by the actions of the Field! So, the active agent in establishing the Field, and supplying all the requisite energy, and its necessary direction, will be entirely due to the Units of the Universal Substrate alone.
Now, we must compare this with the Quantum Mechanical "explanation" supplied here as the consensus alternative, by this video.
Let us also attempt to deliver that alternative.
It is very different!
It involves an infinite number of possible amounts and directions, which are involved literally everywhere in the assumed Field, and are even simultaneously-present in every single, individual position, but this set includes every single possible option, including both Directions, but unlike this alternative Substrate version, the Copenhagen versions all have no physical container, nor are they specific: they instead are an immaterial infinite set - present everywhere!
And this appears to be an underlying vibrational(?) set of possibilities throughout the Quantum Field.
BUT, a real Physical Explanation can never really be even attempted: the best that can be delivered is a description of a kind of parallel universe, in purely mathematical forms!
In abandoning Explanation, these theoreticians are also abandoning Reality, for a parallel, merely-reflected world of Ideality- the realm of Pure Forms and absolutely nothing else.
But, physicists rather liked Totally Empty Space! It greatly simplified, and also made possible, all kinds of experiments - for attaining a vacuum, which was eminently possible, also "delivered" Totally Empty Space too. The presence of such a Substrate, especially as it wasn't detectable, would greatly complicate ALL experiments! For, all the usual perturbations as of other detectable substrates would occur here too.
And, in addition, the initial assumption of Plurality, at the very beginning of Mankind's intellectual concepts, had forced the absolutely essential, pragmatic farming of experimental situations, to greatly simplify, as well as select-for a particular targeted context with a single dominant factor, that would both clearly display, and then allow-the-extraction of that sought-for relation. And this was best achieved by pragmatists, who had learned how to do it effectively over a couple of millenna.
The theoretical physicists thus left it to their experimental colleagues to achieve the appropriate conditions, and, sometimes, to even extract the necessary data! Only then, did the theoreticians move in, armed increasingly with their "solve-all" discipline - Mathematics, to then find-a-form which they could fit-up to the acquired data.
So, with generations of such processes of simplification and idealisation, no-one wanted to reverse direction, and have to holistically juggle with multiple simultaneous varying factors, which had prevented development so completely in the distant past.
And finally, this technique had been justified by the assumption of the Principle of Plurality. which made the so-extracted relation into an eternal Natural Law-which isn't ever true!
Plurality may hold in Ideality, but never in unfettered Reality.
There are also many fundamental areas of Reality, which are still totally unexplained, particularly to do with Charge, Direction and Energy in Fields!
Now, the ever-present, yet never-explained properties of Attraction and Repulsion (usually linked to Charge) are clearly the major problem, for both my alternative explanations, and those based upon Virtual Particles.
They must attempt to provide the bases for a substitute to those non-physical, entirely-formal descriptions, at the very heart of the whole Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.
For, that is a very old trick, indeed, and uses not a single causal explanation, but, instead, a whole range of probabilities, including counter-intuitive cases, to smuggle-in outcomes as selections from that range.
NOTE:A related argument is often proffered to counter supposed direction in the Evolution of Living Things, by purely random damage to Genes, certain cases of which, counter-intuitively and by-chance lead to development.
NOTE 2: To counter such "fixes" requires a philosophical discourse upon the opposing Principles of Plurality and Holism, which has been exhaustively pursued elsewhere, but would deflect us here from a more reachable and understandable, yet important objective for this paper.
Now, I will not pretend to be able to fully explain Attraction and Repulsion, but, once given an evident Force and its clear Direction, obviously evident by its affecting of a given entity, but I will deliver a full detailed Field, composed of of physical particles, with every single one containing, both the exactly correct amount of energy along-with-its-direction, sufficient to power the Field Effect at that point onto the affected interloper. and absolutely nothing will be taken from either the usually-supposed cause, or from the affected recipient: for they will both be totally unaffected in their prior-properties, by the actions of the Field! So, the active agent in establishing the Field, and supplying all the requisite energy, and its necessary direction, will be entirely due to the Units of the Universal Substrate alone.
Now, we must compare this with the Quantum Mechanical "explanation" supplied here as the consensus alternative, by this video.
Let us also attempt to deliver that alternative.
It is very different!
It involves an infinite number of possible amounts and directions, which are involved literally everywhere in the assumed Field, and are even simultaneously-present in every single, individual position, but this set includes every single possible option, including both Directions, but unlike this alternative Substrate version, the Copenhagen versions all have no physical container, nor are they specific: they instead are an immaterial infinite set - present everywhere!
And this appears to be an underlying vibrational(?) set of possibilities throughout the Quantum Field.
BUT, a real Physical Explanation can never really be even attempted: the best that can be delivered is a description of a kind of parallel universe, in purely mathematical forms!
In abandoning Explanation, these theoreticians are also abandoning Reality, for a parallel, merely-reflected world of Ideality- the realm of Pure Forms and absolutely nothing else.
 |
| Reflected World of Pure Forms by Michael C Coldwell |
They can use their Mathematics, along with pragmatism - based upon experience - to deliver usable predictions, without any idea of what is actually going on, and why!
This is termed Technology! Science must attempt to actaully explain phenomena.
In working with Mathematics, they are exploring the truly infinite world of Forms available in Ideality, hoping to find appropriate patterns for everything that occurs in Concrete Reality. But, of course, that is impossible, as Reality is holist and consists of many sets of simultaneous factors all acting together, and influencing one another, in many different situations.
But, Physical investigations of these can be, at least partially, uncovered - that is what real investigative experiments are for!
In Ideality, you can't possibly know which of them: so you substitute, mathematically, all possibilities and hope, by a very different kind of experiment, to get enough multi-possible sets to pragmatically confirm, in each case, a particular probabilistic formal model.
But it will deliver useable Predictions ONLY.
It is, of course, an admission of Defeat for their chosen version of "Physics", and will only be ousted by the Creation of a Holist Physics to replace the dead-theoretical-end of current Pluralist Physics.
This article has now been published in SHAPE Journal, Special Issue 64
No comments:
Post a Comment