Yesterday, we noted that researchers demonstrated quantum effects in giant molecules, showing that the 2000 atom giants could be in two places at once.
Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on why it matters:
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The point of this experiment is to test the Copenhagen interpretation of QM that says: “Newtonian physics is for big objects, QM is for small ones.” The question, of course, is “how small is small?” Evidently 25000 Dalton molecules with 2000 atoms (H,C,F,Zn, & S) is still small.
One QM theory variation on Copenhagen called “Continuous Spontaneous Localization” says that classical Newtonian physics arises from QM if an object has many, many modes or states, and when all these states “decohere”, they reduce QM statistics to classical statistics. By measuring a hot stream of molecules with billions of states, this experiment may rule out CSL. If so, it would be the first time an interpretation of QM was actually invalidated, suggesting we have entered a new era of testing theories of the foundations of QM. Perhaps we can soon test the wild theories such as Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation.
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Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent, Vols 1 and 2.
See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide
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As to “Continuous Spontaneous Localization”.
First off, to say that something occurred ‘spontaneously’ in quantum mechanics is, in effect, to say that it happened randomly or by chance:
And, as was pointed out the other day, for a Atheistic materialist to say something happened spontaneously by chance, or that it happened randomly, is basically no different than his saying that it happened miraculously.
As Wolfgang Pauli himself pointed out, chance, as it is used by materialists, is more or less synonymous with the word ‘miracle’.
Likewise, as Talbott points out in the following article, the way in which Darwinists use the word ‘random’ is also more or less synonymous with the word ‘miracle’.
Thus in effect, the appeal to “Continuous Spontaneous Localization” is, in reality, no different than saying ““Continuous Miraculous Localization”.
And though some people may quibble over the details of equating the word Spontaneous with the word Miraculous, I hold that there is no empirical evidence that can be put forth that can differentiate between the two words. And indeed, in so far as the Atheistic materialists would seek to define the word spontaneous to mean something along the lines of “a ‘natural’ inherent inclination of the particle/wave itself to do something completely free from outside influences”, I would hold that there is much empirical evidence that can be brought forth against that specific reductive materialistic presupposition.
To go a bit further, besides quantum effects now being shown for ‘2000 atom giants’, quantum effects are now also shown to be present in protein and DNA molecules
Besides protein and DNA molecules, quantum effects are also now shown to be at play on the macroscopic level of our bodies by the following fact. The following paper found that the human eye can detect the presence of a single photon, the researchers stated that “Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,,
In fact, since the human eye can detect a single photon, there are plans to use humans observers themselves as actual detectors in quantum mechanics so as either confirm or disconfirm the predictions of quantum mechanics.
I firmly believe, once these experiments are eventually conducted, that conscious observation will, (once again), be confirmed to central to any coherent understanding and/or ‘interpretation’ of quantum mechanics:
Question:
Are physicists going to insist that we can’t measure the position and velocity of these huge molecules?
PaV, don’t know if it will answer your specific question or not, but you may find this to be of interest:
as well
Also of interest, in the following experiment ‘knowledge of the particle’s position’, (aka Maxwell’s demon), enabled the researchers to turn information into energy.
In other words, information is now empirically shown to be a physically real entity that is separate from matter and energy. A physical real entity that has, as the following researcher put it, a quote unquote ‘thermodynamic content’
These ‘Maxwell’s demon’ experiments demonstrating the physical reality of immaterial information have now been further refined to the point of building an ‘information engine’:
But what is most striking about this engine that is powered by immaterial information is that it is the ‘knowledge of the particle’s position’, aka Maxwell’s demon, that enables information to have an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. As Professor Renato Renner states, “Now in information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
Hope that helps answer you question PaV. If not, I hope that it at least gives you some food for thought.
BA77:
Thanks for the response, but I’m afraid it doesn’t answer my question. BTW, information, and what physicists call phase space, are pretty much the same thing. Physicist’s use of ‘information’ is simply a codification of entropy–as one of your remarks points out.
No, what I was after was focused on the Copenhagen Interpretation, and, specifically, Neil Bohr’s response to the Einstein-Rosen . . . the EPR paper. Bohr’s way around Einstein’s assertion was to say that a ‘measurement’ system can be ‘chosen’ to either measure the momentum, or, the location of a particle (let’s say an electron). Of course this is tied to the uncertainty relationship. Bohr’s position is that you can’t do both at the same time, and essentially because any attempt to measure the ‘location’ of a particle will inevitably affect its momentum, and vice versa. This is certainly true of small particles, like an electron; however, when you have a massive particle that they’re experimenting with, any photon used to observe its position is very likely not powerful enough to affect the massive particle’s momentum in any substantial way.
That was the point I was making. I’m hoping some professional physicist might comment on this since I see this as a kind of rejection of Bohr’s interpretation—which is still much in vogue these days.
Thanks again.
PaV, okie dokie, sorry I don’t exactly know where the cutoff is, or even if there is a cutoff, for macro objects at this moment
From my notes:
I also know that Zeilinger holds that “superposition is not limited to small systems,,,”
I even remember that Zeilinger once quipped that demonstrating superposition for larger and larger objects was only constrained by the fact that he did not have an unlimited budget.
Also of note, you might get a kick out of this:
IF you accept the statistical critique of the new-Darwinian synthesis
AND you accept the POSSIBILITY of a many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics,
THEN you can put MWI to an empirical test by looking at fossils and DNA sequences.
MWI offers a solution to the otherwise-statitiscally-impossible problems that have been so elegantly identified by Discovery Institute and other researchers. If “everything that is physically possible happens in some timeline,” then there is no statistical problem with a timeline existing in which complex conscious life exists. The “weak anthropic principle” (any timeline in which a being can ask “why am I here” will be timeline in which such a being is possible) plus “all physically possible timelines exist” literally guarantees that conscious life will appear in an MWI cosmos.
This solves the statistical argument against the existence of an intelligent “observer” in a given timeline. BUT it does absolutely nothing to explain the existence of any OTHER statistically-impossible species. All the ancestors of “Adam” must exist for the descendants of Adam to ask “why are we here,” but NONE of the other irreducible-complex biology on this planet have any reason to exist.
To use an analogy, if I want to write a story about a man who wins the lottery and becomes a billionaire, I am welcome to do so. It’s my story, I can start with any premise I wish. BUT if my hero’s entire family ALSO wins the lottery and ALSO becomes billionaires, I am more or less obligated to explain WHY this happened. Likewise, if humans exist and are “observers,” MWI can do explain that. But it can’t explain why birds and octopuses and dolphins are so smart—none of them are direct ancestors of the human observer.