What is Real? Quantum Physics for Real Dummies.

[Loisenman]

June 28, 2008
Intuition In Depth: Bridging Science and Spirituality

Let's warm up with this one. Do you know how radio works? I can't say I really do, but I know this. Signals from a radio broadcast, like any other electromagnetic signals, are waves that travel in the atmosphere. Somehow recording a radio show sets a series of electromagnetic waves in motion that radiate out into space. They can be picked up by radios in the viewing area tuned to waves of that frequency. So all of space is packed full with electromagnetic magnetic waves, some from Garrison Keillor, some from Adolph Hitler, and some from the Big Bang.

‘snip’

So much for the warm-up--- which is actually a bit of priming. Here comes the quantum physics. Our physical experience is dominated by objects that have more or less clear boundaries, that are separate from each other. Also causality reigns. If I so choose, with my arm I can knock the folder next to my computer off my desk. This follows the laws of classical physics.

But at the quantum level, the level of subatomic particles, most scientists think that it is all chance and randomness. Probabilities rather than certainty or causality are supposed to rule. It is only when an observation is made that the function that determine these probabilities, the wave function, collapses into specific state. Before that all possibilities are said to coexist or are superimposed.

‘snip’

Not everyone was happy with the randomness that the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics enshrines at the core of reality. Einstein famously said, "God does not play dice." He was not willing to give up the elegant determinism of classical physics. So he proposed that there must be hidden factors, what he called hidden variables, which really control events at the quantum level. http://intuition-indepth.blogspot.com/2008/06/quantum-physics-for-real-dummies.html">READ MORE including very new information...

[panader0]

1. Reading this is giving me an acid flashback...................

[Fridays Child]

2. Bookmarking.

Gotta run into work, for a bit. Will read later. :)

[ananda]

3. Wow.

Very interesting.

[Th1onein]

4. None of this information is new

sorry.

[Loisenman]

5. Quite to the contrary---

New data, if confirmed, would support Bohmian Mechanics.

[Th1onein]

6. WHAT "new data"?

What are you talking about?

[Name removed]

9. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Loisenman]

11. Check This Out

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080515/full/news.2008.829.html

'snip'


Almost all measurements of the cosmic microwave background seem to fit well with the predictions of quantum mechanics, says Valentini. But intriguingly, a distortion that fits one of Valentini’s proposed signatures for a failure of quantum mechanics was recently detected by Amit Yadav and Ben Wandelt at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (see 'Deflating inflation?'). That result has yet to be confirmed by independent analyses, but it is tantalizing, Valentini adds.

“It’s far too early to say that this is definite evidence of a breakdown in quantum mechanics — but it is a possibility,” he says.

Hiranya Peiris, an expert on the cosmic microwave background at the University of Cambridge, UK, is impressed by the new work. “This is a pretty cool new idea,” she says. “Nobody has ever thought of using the cosmic microwave background to look into really fundamental quantum questions — cosmologists just assume that quantum mechanics is correct,” she says.

But Peiris adds that Valentini must now come up with more detailed predictions about the types of distortion that will arise in the cosmic microwave background to convince cosmologists that they are really caused by a breakdown of quantum mechanics. “He has thrown some really exciting ideas out there, but now he needs to do the nitty-gritty calculations,” she says.

[FirstLight]

7. I love this stuff!

...and the implications on our reality. I have definately seen it at work in an individual's life choices/probabilities.

Like if one speaks negatively about something, it seems to limit possibilities.
And. Yes, I am one of those New Age folks who agrees with the connetions between "reality" and the quantum level. I remember the first time I understood the amount of empty space in an atom...it made just walking on the floor and whole different experience. Was Jesus able to walk on water because he understood these concepts, that matter is just empty space with "will" behind it?

I seem to remember somewhere hearing a prophecy (Native American) that there would be the disovery of a 5th element - AEther - could this be the explanation of how the particles communicate? Is it possible that our consciousness is inextricably interwoven into creation? why not?

Perhaps if we could practice a little less cynicism and a little more common generosity in our relations with our earth and fellow beings...we could actually turn this planet around? why not?

after all, if it is just a matter of probability
why can't it be equally probable that we AREN'T gping to hell in a handbasket?

'jus sayin...

:)
thanks for this info, bookmarked for sure!

[cyborg_jim]

12. No

I seem to remember somewhere hearing a prophecy (Native American) that there would be the disovery of a 5th element - AEther - could this be the explanation of how the particles communicate?

The fifth element is Boron - it's a bit late in the day to be returning to notions of Earth/Air/Water/Fire as elements.

I remember the first time I understood the amount of empty space in an atom...it made just walking on the floor and whole different experience. Was Jesus able to walk on water because he understood these concepts, that matter is just empty space with "will" behind it?

No. I never get why one assumes that if "our consciousness is inextricably interwoven into creation," that would mean that control over any and all parts of creation in an arbitrary fashion would be possible - as if you asked nicely things would behave differently.

after all, if it is just a matter of probability
why can't it be equally probable that we AREN'T gping to hell in a handbasket?

Because it's not as simple as "anything is possible," - that is entirely the wrong message to take away.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Thank you, Lois.

And welcome to DU.

I find your work fascinating. I think that we are on the edge of putting a gigantic puzzle together that will revolutionize the way we see and think about the universe and the life and consciousness within it. The quantum physicists have some of the pieces (I especially like Amit Goswami's way of standing the consciousness issue on its head). There are more pieces in the new epigenetic findings. My own entry point into this wonderland is through some of the newer modes of psychological healing modalities such as neurotherapy and EMDR, that seem to work at a level that involves shifting whole patterns of mind-states, letting the "biology" (e.g. neurochemistry) follow along behind. I'm currently being drawn to energy psychology (TFT,EFT, etc.), & by extension the whole of energy medicine.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. A prior/higher, "universal time" is perfectly consistent with the Scriptures and traditional

Christian theology.

Traditional Christianity teaches that the people of Heaven will have bodies which are glorified in some extraordinary way; much more extraordinary even than Christ's resurrected body, which could consume ordinary food and could be touched, yet could nevertheless walk through or by-pass locked doors, etc. So that seems to predicate that some form of time will exist in eternity.

Moreover, in one of Paul's epistles, he states that there are three things that last, Faith, Hope and Charity - the so-called theological virtues; and of course, the first two explicitly predicate a dimension of time. The Hindu "samadhi" always struck me as a very beautiful, indeed sublime, but mysteriously static, a kind of state of inertia.

The Mystical Body of Christ, with Christ as its Head, animated by the Holy Ghost/Spirit, would, itself, be something other than a ghost, albeit divine.