Warp wrote:
>   My relevant point was, however, that electric charges are quantified.

But not every quantity is like that. Three are, three aren't, basically.

And while a positron with +3/3'rds charge appears to be fundamental, a 
proton with +3/3rds charge appears not to be. Which kind of opens up 
some obvious questions about fundamentalness.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
>   You are the one saying that wave interference somehow must imply that
> sometimes it cancels itself out. That's just not true. Basic math.

Except there *are* spots in the interference pattern between two slits 
(if you place them properly) where no electron lands.

The electron isn't interfering with itself (or other electrons) in the 
same way a wave interferes with itself. And there's no medium to be waving.

You're looking at a pattern of events, seeing that its mathematical 
equation matches in some ways the mathematical equation of the height of 
a wave, and you're saying "hence, the phenomenon must be a wave." There 
are other things that also match the mathematical equation of a wave, 
and those aren't waves either.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New wrote:
> You're looking at a pattern of events, seeing that its mathematical 
> equation matches in some ways the mathematical equation of the height of 
> a wave, and you're saying "hence, the phenomenon must be a wave." 

More specifically, it's not that the electron interferes with itself. 
It's that there's an interference-like pattern (i.e., a convolution) in 
the *probability* that an electron goes to a specific place.

The electron isn't a wave, because you don't see a wave even when there 
*is* an interference pattern. Instead, you see an interference pattern 
in the *probabilities* that an electron will show up at some particular 
point on the screen.

The electron always shows up at one point, every time you measure it, 
including when it has "been through both slits".   You never, ever see 
an "electron wave" even when both slits are open and you're getting 
"interference". The interference of the electron isn't with itself. The 
"interference" pattern comes from the probability of the electron being 
at one place convolving with the probability of the electron being at 
other places.

An electron isn't a wave. It shares none of the properties of waves.

A whole bunch of electrons share a bunch of properties that waves have. 
That doesn't make individual electrons waves any more than it make 
individual water molecules waves.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
>   You and your mythical "copious experimental evidence". The only evidence
> which you have mentioned is 

Or, or a better-written opinion on this concept...


http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/conjunction-con.html

"""
I emphasize this, because it seems that when I talk about biases 
(especially to audiences not previously familiar with the field), a lot 
of people want to be charitable to experimental subjects.  But it is not 
only experimental subjects who deserve charity.  Scientists can also be 
unstupid.  Someone else has already thought of your alternative 
interpretation. Someone else has already devised an experiment to test 
it.  Maybe more than one.  Maybe more than twenty.

A blank map is not a blank territory; if you don't know whether someone 
has tested it, that doesn't mean no one has tested it.  This is not a 
hunter-gatherer tribe of two hundred people, where if you do not know a 
thing, then probably no one in your tribe knows.  There are six billion 
people in the world, and no one can say with certitude that science does 
not know a thing; there is too much science.  Absence of such evidence 
is only extremely weak evidence of absence.  So do not mistake your 
ignorance of whether an alternative interpretation has been tested, for 
the positive knowledge that no one has tested it.  Be charitable to 
scientists too.  Do not say, "I bet what really happened was X", but 
ask, "Which experiments discriminated between the standard 
interpretation versus X?"

"""

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New wrote:
> not know a thing; there is too much science.  Absence of such evidence 
> is only extremely weak evidence of absence.  So do not mistake your 

	Note that you're quoting this, and it's contradicting your statement in 
this very same subthread.
	
	I have to say that, quite unlike you, you've been somewhat unclear in 
your position on this whole thing. I initially thought you were saying 
time travel is a possible explanation, but you weren't saying that was 
how it happened. IOW, you didn't know of any data contradicting that 
theory, but you did that contradicted the notion that an electron went 
through both slits.

	But now I'm not sure - so let me ask explicitly:

1) Do you actually believe the time travel theory? If so, can you cite 
experimental evidence supporting it? I have not yet looked at the links 
you've provided thus far, but will later.

2) My view, as stated earlier, is that we have a formalism that 
accurately describes the results, but does not address (or care about) 
questions such as whether particles traveling through time or go through 
two slits. My understanding (based on what is typically taught in 
introductory grad courses on QM - I've not studied QED or anything more 
advanced) was that this is still the "state of the art". There may be 
interpretations that explain things further, but none that have been 
well tested enough to put serious stock into it. If you know otherwise, 
I'd love to read about them.
	

-- 
Fax me no questions, I'll Fax you no lies!


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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Warp wrote:
>   My relevant point was, however, that electric charges are quantified.

	I can accept that - I was merely correcting one assertion. However, 
here is your original statement:

"Actually "quantum physics" means that everything is quantified. That 
is, there's a minimum amount of everything (for example electric charge 
and mass), and everything is an integer multiple of that amount. You 
just can't have eg. half of the electric charge of an electron, for 
example."

	I believe quantum physics asserts that a number of quantities are 
quantized based on the *system* they're in. An example I often use and 
as Darren pointed out is that of frequency. Frequency is a continuum.

	You can also have any energy you desire - no matter how small. Just 
create a photon with the corresponding frequency.

	However, when you have a certain system, like a harmonic oscillator or 
a finite/infinite well, the energies get quantized, with there being a 
base energy - of which all energies are multiples. The important point 
is that the base energy itself is not a fundamental quantity. If I 
change the dimensions of the system slightly, that base energy will be 
different.

	Also, in case of a finite well, you can get a continuum of energy - 
once the particle has more energy than the strength of the well. A free 
particle can have any energy. We can quibble about whether a particle 
can ever be truly free, but QM allows for this.

	The notion of there being a fundamental unit of charge, etc, is, AFAIK, 
a notion that exists independently of quantum mechanics. QM did not 
introduce it, and nor is it fundamental to QM. In the original 
formulation, and even as it is taught today, space is not quantized (not 
sure if there is universal agreement on there being a fundamentally 
small unit of space).

-- 
Fax me no questions, I'll Fax you no lies!


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Also not sure what Mueen means, but the m in E=mc^2 is the m that was 
>> used by einstein. IIRC the current definition would require a division 
>> by sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). The old definition was certainly not quantified for 
>> arbitrary velocities.
> 
>   I really can't understand what you are talking about. The 'm' which
> Einstein used (and others before him) is what is currently used. There's
> no "current definition of m".
> 
>   Don't confuse the 'm' in the E=mc^2 with 'm0' (m subscript zero), which
> is the rest mass of an object. 
Confuse implies that I don't know what I am talking about, so be careful 
with that word.
> The 'm' in E=mc^2 is the relativistic mass,
Correct.
> and equal to m0/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). That was the definition back then, and
> that's the definition today. It hasn't changed.

Not entirely true. If we talk about the mass of a particle we mean the 
mass at rest, not the relativistic mass. Also when I studied physics we 
did nearly always write m where you would claim that we should have used 
m0. It is one of those cases where physicists are too lazy to use 
subscripts (at the minor expense of having to write various powers of 
that square root thing ;) ). The only time we used m0 is in exactly the 
equation that you quoted. After that it was 'and from here on m means 
the rest mass'. So we did write Einsteins formula as 
E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) and I still would do that, even if you think that 
is wrong.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   I'm getting tired of your straw men.

> It wasn't a straw man. It was a question.

  Yes, sure. When you accuse me of using straw men, that's always correct
(and no matter how much I try to explain my arguments, it doesn't change
the fact). When I accuse you of making straw men, that never is the case.
How convenient.

> There is none, zero, zilch 
> evidence of an electron ever being in two places at once. If you think 
> an interference pattern shows this, you're mistaken.

  I'm not the only one who has this "mistaken" notion. From the very
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment article itself
(emphasis mine):

"In the path integral formulation, a particle such as a photon takes
every possible path through space-time to get from point A to point B. In
the double-slit experiment, point A might be the emitter, and point B the
screen upon which the interference pattern appears, and a particle takes
every possible path, including paths ***through both slits at once***, to
get from A to B."

  Ergo, I am not making this up.

  (I'm not saying that's the correct explanation. Sure, it may be
incorrect. However, that's not really the point. I'm just saying that it
*is* an existing explanation, and one which makes even a little bit of
sense to me.)

  As for what happens when a detector is added, the same paragraph continues
(still emphasis mine):

"When a detector is placed at one of the slits, ***the situation changes***,
and we now have a different point B. Point B is now at the detector, and a
new path proceeds from the detector to the screen. In this eventuality
there is only empty space between (B =) A' and the new terminus B', no
double slit in the way, and so an interference pattern no longer appears."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   You are the one saying that wave interference somehow must imply that
> > sometimes it cancels itself out. That's just not true. Basic math.

> Except there *are* spots in the interference pattern between two slits 
> (if you place them properly) where no electron lands.

> The electron isn't interfering with itself (or other electrons) in the 
> same way a wave interferes with itself.

  I honestly don't understand. It looks a lot to me like your two
consecutive paragraphs are saying the exact opposite things.

> And there's no medium to be waving.

  Medium? Are we back to the luminiferous aether era? I thought it was
demonstrated almost a hundred years ago that waves don't necessarily
need a medium.

> You're looking at a pattern of events, seeing that its mathematical 
> equation matches in some ways the mathematical equation of the height of 
> a wave, and you're saying "hence, the phenomenon must be a wave."

  Actually no. What I'm saying is "it behaves like a wave".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 1) Do you actually believe the time travel theory?

I believe that QED is time-invariant, such that there's nothing in the 
math that can explain why time goes one way and not the other direction. 
I.e., an electron going forward in time is precisely a positron going 
backward in time. To call such "absurd" or "a creator of paradoxes" is 
inaccurate.

I.e., you can't measure that something has gone back in time, but you 
can't measure that something has gone forward in time either.

> 2) My view, as stated earlier, is that we have a formalism that 
> accurately describes the results, but does not address (or care about) 
> questions such as whether particles traveling through time or go through 
> two slits.

I've seen lots of descriptions of experiments ruling out "going thru two 
slits at once".  The formalism, as I understand it, is that it goes thru 
one slit or the other, but if you look at which slit it goes through, 
you are now doing a different experiment so you get different results. 
And that this is explained without any reference to "waves" or the 
particle being in multiple places at once. (*Possibly* being in multiple 
places at once, yes.)  Of course, if you don't look, maybe it *is* in 
multiple places at once, but then you didn't look, so asserting you have 
the right (or only) explanation is not scientific.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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