Strange Things.

[murilo]

Could be, Mike, could be like this.
Nutrients are around and will serve nails and hairs base after death.
Strange stuffs... :| M.

[Michael]

Also strange.

By Milton Rothman, deceased.

An example of an incomprehensible observation that relates to pilot
waves is an experiment I did myself in 1976. (It's a rather simple
experiment that can be done in any optics laboratory.) In this
experiment, a beam of light is passed through a half-silvered mirror
inclined at 45° to the beam. Cut down the intensity of the light so that
just one photon wavepacket passes through the mirror at one time.
Quantum theory tells us that half of each wavepacket is reflected while
the other half is transmitted. We know that this happens because if you
bring the packets together in an interferometer, you do get interference
fringes, showing that both transmitted and reflected waves go around the
interferometer. But if you detect the photons with two photodetectors (A
and B), you find that if the reflected wave is detected in one location
by phototube A, the transmitted wave is not detected at the same time by
phototube B, and vice versa. How does one detector (A) know not to
trigger when the other (distant) detector (B) does trigger, even though
both are being hit by exactly the same wave? This is very hard to
explain by classical quantum concepts. To make sense out of this
paradox, Bohm proposed that inside each quantum was a "pilot wave" that
hid within one of the split wavepackets and determined which detector
was going to trigger. For many years physicists believed that pilot wave
(hidden variable) theories were untenable, but later came to believe
they were not so untenable. As a result, the use of pilot waves is a
possible way of explaining the observations associated with the above
experiment, just one of the many experiments that have a bearing on the
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

[Wheeler]

Nutrients are around and will serve nails and hairs base after death.
Strange stuffs.

..

Cut down the intensity of the light so that
just one photon wavepacket passes through the mirror at one time.

Seems like were splitting hairs here. It would be nice to get to the root of this!

[Jonathan]

I hear that the hidden variable theories are disproved by Bell's Theorem. The previous sentence is about the extent of my knowledge about that though.

[ken_behrendt]

Michael...

You quoted Milton Rothman, deceased:

But if you detect the photons with two photodetectors (A
and B), you find that if the reflected wave is detected in one location
by phototube A, the transmitted wave is not detected at the same time by
phototube B, and vice versa. How does one detector (A) know not to
trigger when the other (distant) detector (B) does trigger, even though
both are being hit by exactly the same wave?

The answer to this mystery might be very simple. Due to random quantum effects, either photodetector A or B will be triggered first even if both are simultaneously hit by the same electromagnetic wave.

However, even though the wave was "split" into two beams by the half-silvered mirror, the beams are really still connected to each other. When one of the beams interacts with a particular photodetector, that interaction is relayed back through the beam to the other part that is striking the other detector and somehow absorbs all of its energy and pulls into into the part of the beam that is actually interacting with a triggered detector.

This creates the illusion that the light consists of photons or individual "packets" of light and that a packet can only strike one or the other of the detectors because the packet either passes through the mirror or is reflected by it. In actuality, I think that the entire notion of packets or quanta of electromagnetic energy could be replaced with a more refined electromagnetic theory. Why do we not have such a theory? Possibly, the math might be too difficult and early twentieth century physicists seemed determined to make energy have a "structure" just like matter...

ken

[Michael]

That's probably been contemplated many times over Ken. Then question then is if this is true how are they connected? The answer to this would put physicists in the direction of determining either how the subsratuum really functions or at least would add a new understanding of it. There of course would be the new model.

[Michael]

Double doah post.

[Jonathan]

Ken, that explaination isn't good enough. Part of the mystery is that the device works that way, no matter how big. Information would have to be relayed from one half of the photon-wave to the other, instantly, and this contradicts relativity.

[Michael]

>I hear that the hidden variable theories are disproved by Bell's Theorem. The previous sentence is about the extent of my knowledge about that though.



Your possibly right there Jonathan. I should have said that posting was over ten years old but the experiments are still valid of course.

[Michael]

>Ken, that explaination isn't good enough. Part of the mystery is that the device works that way, no matter how big. Information would have to be relayed from one half of the photon-wave to the other, instantly, and this contradicts relativity.

Concerning the last half of your statement I could be wrong but I don't think so Jonathan, or I am wrong with the model I have in mind. Quantuum teleportation happens intantly. There is no actual movement through space-time. I'm not saying this is quantuum teleportation, I am saying perhaps the photon wave is connected in a way we cannot yet decifer, and the part that hits a detector in the right way, ie; either first, or whatever other variable, does pull the rest with it.

[Jonathan]

You're right, quantum theory and general relativity are inconsistent. So, Ken's idea isn't good, and no one has a better one. :D

[Michael]

>You're right, quantum theory and general relativity are inconsistent. So, Ken's idea isn't good, and no one has a better one. :D

Can you hazard a guess as to what is going on? :)

[Jonathan]

My view is that we'll never be perfectly certain what's going on, because Gödel's first incompleteness theorem indicates that the theory of everything has an infinite number of axioms. Oddly enough, Hawking's changed his spots, having been recently quoted in Discover magazine as supporting something along these lines.

[Wheeler]

Didn't Mr. Hawking's have a bet out that he was right, and lost the bet?

[ken_behrendt]

Jonathan wrote:

Ken, that explaination isn't good enough. Part of the mystery is that the device works that way, no matter how big. Information would have to be relayed from one half of the photon-wave to the other, instantly, and this contradicts relativity.

Assuming that the relay of information is actually instantaneous, then this detail would not perturb me. If photons are massless particles, then the idea of them being able to exchange information/energy between their divided parts at speeds that exceed light velocity does not seem too far fetched to me.

I maintain a belief that when we finally have a complete theory of matter and energy, all of the paradoxical effects now described in quantum physics will all just fade away...

ken