“Seismic” new paper on quantum mechanics?

6 Replies to ““Seismic” new paper on quantum mechanics?”

1. 1
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 9:32 am

   Quote that makes my day:

   “The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically”
2. 2
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 10:53 am

   of related interest:

   It is important to note that the following experiment actually proved that information can be encoded into a photon while it is in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, that was/is held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into a entity that is not physically real but is merely abstract? It simply would not be possible!

   Ultra-Dense Optical Storage – on One Photon
   Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.,,, Quantum mechanics dictates some strange things at that scale, so that bit of light could be thought of as both a particle and a wave. As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once, carrying the “shadow” of the UR with it.
   http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html
3. 3
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 12:29 pm

   Here’s the entire article from Nature:

   Quantum Theory’s ‘Wavefunction’ Found to Be Real Physical Entity – The wavefunction is a real physical object after all, say researchers. – November 17, 2011 By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazine

   At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online on November 14 reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents–with an answer that could rock quantum theory to its core. Whereas many physicists have generally interpreted the wavefunction as a statistical tool that reflects our ignorance of the particles being measured, the authors of the latest paper argue that, instead, it is physically real.

   “I don’t like to sound hyperbolic, but I think the word ‘seismic’ is likely to apply to this paper,” says Antony Valentini, a theoretical physicist specializing in quantum foundations at Clemson University in South Carolina.

   Valentini believes that this result may be the most important general theorem relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics since Bell’s theorem, the 1964 result in which Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell proved that if quantum mechanics describes real entities, it has to include mysterious “action at a distance”.

   Action at a distance occurs when pairs of quantum particles interact in such a way that they become entangled. But the new paper, by a trio of physicists led by Matthew Pusey at Imperial College London, presents a theorem showing that if a quantum wavefunction were purely a statistical tool, then even quantum states that are unconnected across space and time would be able to communicate with each other. As that seems very unlikely to be true, the researchers conclude that the wavefunction must be physically real after all.

   David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the theorem is the most important result in the foundations of quantum mechanics that he has seen in his 15-year professional career. “This strips away obscurity and shows you can’t have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic,” he says.

   Historical debate

   The debate over how to understand the wavefunction goes back to the 1920s. In the `Copenhagen interpretation’ pioneered by Danish physicist Niels Bohr, the wavefunction was considered a computational tool: it gave correct results when used to calculate the probability of particles having various properties, but physicists were encouraged not to look for a deeper explanation of what the wavefunction is.

   Albert Einstein also favoured a statistical interpretation of the wavefunction, although he thought that there had to be some other as-yet-unknown underlying reality. But others, such as Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, considered the wavefunction, at least initially, to be a real physical object.

   The Copenhagen interpretation later fell out of popularity, but the idea that the wavefunction reflects what we can know about the world, rather than physical reality, has come back into vogue in the past 15 years with the rise of quantum information theory, Valentini says.

   Rudolph and his colleagues may put a stop to that trend. Their theorem effectively says that individual quantum systems must “know” exactly what state they have been prepared in, or the results of measurements on them would lead to results at odds with quantum mechanics. They declined to comment while their preprint is undergoing the journal-submission process, but say in their paper that their finding is similar to the notion that an individual coin being flipped in a biased way–for example, so that it comes up ‘heads’ six out of ten times–has the intrinsic, physical property of being biased, in contrast to the idea that the bias is simply a statistical property of many coin-flip outcomes.

   Quantum information

   Robert Spekkens, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, who has favoured a statistical interpretation of the wavefunction, says that Pusey’s theorem is correct and a “fantastic” result, but that he disagrees about what conclusion should be drawn from it. He favours an interpretation in which all quantum states, including non-entangled ones, are related after all.

   Spekkens adds that he does expect the theorem to have broader consequences for physics, as have Bell’s and other fundamental theorems. No one foresaw in 1964 that Bell’s theorem would sow the seeds for quantum information theory and quantum cryptography–both of which rely on phenomena that aren’t possible in classical physics. Spekkens thinks this theorem may ultimately have a similar impact. “It’s very important and beautiful in its simplicity,” he says.

   This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on November 17, 2011.
   http://www.scientificamerican......vefunction
4. 4
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 2:34 pm

   a few notes on the ‘Real Physical Entity’ of the Quantum wave Function:

   Wave function
   Excerpt “wave functions form an abstract vector space”,,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.....ctor_space

   Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh
   Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (photon) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1)
   http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/fa.....lPSA2K.pdf

   Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia
   Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,,
   http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....tcomp/#2.1

   Single photons to soak up data:
   Excerpt: the orbital angular momentum of a photon can take on an infinite number of values. Since a photon can also exist in a superposition of these states, it could – in principle – be encoded with an infinite amount of information.
   http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/7201

   It is important to note that the following experiment actually proved that information can be encoded into a photon while it is in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, that was/is held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into a entity that is not physically real but is merely abstract? It simply would not be possible!

   Ultra-Dense Optical Storage – on One Photon
   Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.,,, Quantum mechanics dictates some strange things at that scale, so that bit of light could be thought of as both a particle and a wave. As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once, carrying the “shadow” of the UR with it.
   http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html

   Further notes on the ‘spookiness’ of quantum wave collapse:

   Double Slit Experiment – Explained By Prof Anton Zeilinger – video
   http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6101627/

   Dr. Quantum – Double Slit Experiment & Entanglement
   http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4096579/

   This following experiment extended the double slit experiment to show that the ‘spooky actions’, for instantaneous quantum wave collapse, happen regardless of any considerations for time or distance i.e. The following experiment shows that quantum wave collapse is ‘universal and instantaneous’:

   Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice Experiment:
   Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles “have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy,” so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory.
   http://www.bottomlayer.com/bot.....choice.htm

   Genesis, Quantum Physics and Reality
   Excerpt: Simply put, an experiment on Earth can be made in such a way that it determines if one photon comes along either on the right or the left side or if it comes (as a wave) along both sides of the gravitational lens (of the galaxy) at the same time. However, how could the photons have known billions of years ago that someday there would be an earth with inhabitants on it, making just this experiment? ,,, This is big trouble for the multi-universe theory and for the “hidden-variables” approach.
   http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2.....r.html.ori

   And of course all this leads us to this question. “What does our conscious observation have to do with anything in collapsing the quantum wave function of the photon in the universe?”, and furthermore “What is causing the quantum waves to collapse from their ‘higher dimension’ in the first place since we humans are definitely not the ones who are causing quantum waves of photons to collapse to their ‘uncertain 3D wave/particle’ state?”,,, With the refutation of the materialistic ‘hidden variable’ argument and with the patent absurdity of the materialistic ‘Many-Worlds’ hypothesis (which denies the reality of the quantum wave function altogether), then I can only think of one sufficient explanation for quantum wave collapse to photon;

   Psalm 118:27
   God is the LORD, who hath shown us light:,,,
5. 5
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 2:36 pm

   In the following article, Physics Professor Richard Conn Henry is quite blunt as to what quantum mechanics reveals to us about the ‘primary cause’ of our 3D reality:

   Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry – Physics Professor – John Hopkins University
   Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the “illusion” of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry’s referenced experiment and paper – “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 – “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007
   http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html

   Now, I find all of the preceding, that we have gone over, to be absolutely fascinating! A photon, in its quantum wave state, is found to be mathematically defined as a ‘infinite-dimensional’ state, which ‘requires an infinite amount of information’ to describe it properly , which can be encoded with information in its ‘infinite dimensional’ state, and this ‘infinite dimensional’ photon is found to collapse to each individual point of observation in the universe, instantaneously, and thus ‘non-locally’, to just a ’1 or 0? state, out of a infinite number of possibilities that the photon could have collapsed to instead!!!,,, Now my question to materialistic atheists is this, “Exactly what ’cause’ has been postulated throughout history to be completely independent of any space-time constraints, as well as possessing infinite knowledge and power, so as to be the ‘sufficient cause’ to explain what we see in the quantum wave collapse of a photons to each observer in the universe???

   John 1:1-5
   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

   Centrality of Each Individual Observer In The Universe and Christ’s Very Plausible Reconciliation Of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
   https://docs.google.com/document/d/17SDgYPHPcrl1XX39EXhaQzk7M0zmANKdYIetpZ-WB5Y/edit?hl=en_US

   Jeremy Camp – Walk By Faith
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgWOcYpHm0o
6. 6
   bornagain77 says:

   November 19, 2011 at 4:22 pm

   Intelligent Design Debate Still Raging on Two Decades Later – November 2011
   “Descartes said ‘I think, therefore I am.’ My bet is that God replied, ‘I am, therefore think.'”
   http://www.christianpost.com/n.....ter-61945/