Imagine taking a small child for a
walk into a wide-open field surrounded by trees. A leaf starts to blow off the top of one of those trees and
swirl. It travels quite a distance
before finally flittering softly to the ground. During this observation, the child excitedly points it out and
asks why it's doing that. The typical
conversation that ensues goes something like this:
"Because the wind blew it off the top of the tree then kept
blowing it around."
"Why?"
"Because of air currents and the Coriolis Effect."
"Why?"
"Because air molecules tend to travel from north to south,
but since the earth spins on its axis the result is wind that also blows east
to west, and at times it carries the air molecules in spiraling circles. The air currents here are heated up just
enough to move with a speed great enough to blow the leaf around and twirl it
in its air currents."
"Why?"
At this point, it does get quite
annoying, especially when you don't have all the answers, so typically we'd
respond at that point with, "That's just the way it is," and hope
that the child will be satisfied with that answer. And she/he may even seem to be at that point. But the problem is, for them, their game of
the iterated why is now over by a foul.
They honestly wanted a bottom-line answer, they truly did want to
understand everything about this phenomenon, they are absolutely amazed by the
whole thing, but in the end the child is left with a less mesmerizing answer.
Now, having a young child of my own,
I'm certainly not pointing an accusatory finger at anyone who's ended a
conversation like this with this response.
The problem with the child's game of the iterated why is that, even if
you did have all the answers to every why, you'll notice that the answers become
far more complicated as the why is increasingly asked. It's not even a linear progression it jumps
far more erratically! So how could you
explain it to such a young child who's still technically learning the language
and hasn't had a single dose of a scientific context on which to base the
information? You'd be inundating and
confusing her/him unnecessarily. It
becomes a matter of efficiency to simply end it with such a response. But perhaps a more efficient answer would
be, "We'll have to go over that another time." That leaves a door open for the child to
continue exploring.
I know, I know - it's a whole lot
easier to end it there, because at this point the child would tend to divert
her/his attention to the new statement and ask a whole new slew of whys, but
I'm building up to a point here. This
sort of response won't do in scientific exploration, at least not without just
cause. But something odd happened on
our way to Quantum Physics that bears pointing out. We suddenly stopped playing the iterated why game, for apparently
no good reason. And when a few
continued to ask why, they simply received a pat on the head and a response of,
"Because that's just the way it is."
I'll develop this history further in
the first few chapters of this book.
But, suffice it to say that a few of us never stopped asking why, and
the answers we've received thus far have been quite astounding. One of the largest proponents of this mode
of thinking was Richard Feynman. One of
John Wheeler's most promising students, Feynman had stepped outside the bounds
of typical scholarly thinking. To put
it in his own words, “I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts'
opinions". He even went so far as
to define science as, "…the belief in the ignorance of the
experts". Together, Wheeler and
Feynman, working out a few kinks in Quantum Field Theory, an extension of
Quantum Electrodynamics, developed a model they eventually shelved, out of
necessity at the time. This model was
later picked up, some 30 years later, by John Cramer and was utilized to
develop a whole new interpretation of Quantum Theory. His Transactional Interpretation will be presented in detail
later.
This is just one small example of the
alternatives to standard theory that have been proposed to get some of the
kinks out. It might occur to you at
this point to ask, "All these kinks you keep referring to... why do we
stick so tightly to the standard if they're there?" A very good question, and I'm glad you
asked. After the development of Occidental
(in colloquial terms, we call it Copenhagen in reverence of the location its
early research was centered) Quantum Physics, nothing was unpredictable within
the model. These early successes led to
the myth that Copenhagen has never failed to predict accurately any Quantum
Phenomena. This is only a half-truth,
at best. The reality of the situation
is, the further we delved into this realm, the more we studied, the more
obscure it became. Copenhagen has
always had the rare ability to adapt, but at times this adaptation required the
presentation of something new. And at
times, this something new was not entirely predictable within the model, nor
were they observed. For example, P.A.M.
Dirac, the first to generalize Schroedinger's Wave Equation to Relativistic
terms, was trying to find a way to explain quantized charge in QED (Quantum
Electrodynamics). He found that the
only way to get around the problems he was seeing was to present a whole new
animal of a "particle" which was later termed a "magnetic
monopole". Now, so far as we knew,
up to that point, after Maxwell had unified the Electrical and Magnetic forces,
magnetic poles always came in two, regardless of the size of the point. In
other words, if there was a north sitting up there at the top, there had to be
a south sitting down there at the bottom.
The oddity of this (so it initially seems) is that an electron is a
particle of negative electric charge and the proton is a particle of positive
electric charge, yet the motions of both generate an entire magnetic field,
indicating they also consist of magnetic dipoles. So, Dirac reasoned, why couldn't the magnetic poles be separated
as well? In a sense, on the surface,
this is a brilliant deduction, and his theory did play out on paper. However, though some may argue that we have
seen a few magnetic monopoles floating around (nobody is really sure that we
have), we certainly have never seen enough to justify Dirac's work. Some continue to argue that we simply
haven't looked in the right place yet, and my hat is off to you all. Good luck in your endeavors. But the bottom line is, Dirac's proposal
doesn't line up at all with electrodynamic observations, not prior to him and
not since. As a humorous side-note
Dirac's Relativistic version of Schroedinger's Equation clearly predicted
antiparticles, which he summarily dismissed as nonsense. As it turns out, just as his equations
predicted, every particle has an antiparticle associated with it; more on that
later. To be fair, Dirac was delving
into deep waters of abstract thought at this point of our iterated why game,
and that within the context of a paradigm that clearly stipulated the whys stop
here. So, he did the best he could under the circumstances and his theory was
logistically sound. But, as with any
logic, if we build it upon an axiom that is contrary to axiomatics, the logic
eventually breaks apart.
Dirac's mistake is not the sort that
Feynman succumbed to. Not that he and
Wheeler didn't go out on a limb, but the limbs they went out on were already in
existence. Don't get me wrong; you have
to admire Dirac for his attempt. But
the lesson should be profound. Just
because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't there. But if we continuously haven't seen it, and
it simply doesn't make much sense for it to be there elsewhere, then it's time
to reevaluate the theory at hand under more scrutiny. And that is the gist of this book.
So often we can pick up a book on
physics and read about the standard model and perhaps one or two extensions. But the alternatives are rarely reported
upon. As Robert Anton Wilson once put
it, there are 8 models of quantum physics and only one of them is being taught
in our classrooms. Since he's said
that, there are now 12, and we haven't even touched on the number of string
theories available, which will not be presented at all in this volume.
This is an homage to those men and
women of science who have stepped outside of the lined box; those who have
turned the valve of the iterated why, without disrupting the basic tenets of
observable facts within the standard model.
Those who dared to go beyond the normal ways of thinking and ask the
hard questions. Questions inherent
within the Copenhagen Interpretive Model, but denied access to by its very
formalism. And this leads to my next
point. I've noticed a general confusion
regarding this issue of the formalism.
Some may even be asking, as you're reading this book, where exactly is
it that the standard model denies this access.
Well, it might be easier to show you than to tell you.
The
Formalism of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics is, as follows:
I.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
In
essence, this states that the observer's knowledge of the canonically conjugate
variables is impossible simultaneously.
For example, if one knows the entire momentum of the wave-particle
entity at a given, one can never know at all the position, and vice-versa. It also allows for a nice way around
this. If one were to give up a bit of
knowledge of the momentum, one could gain more knowledge of the position. To understand this, consider a system that
can act like a wave (be spread out over space) or act like a particle (be
localized very specifically in space).
For the momentum of the wave to be found, the system must be spread out,
specific locality, then, is lost in the measurement. On the contrary, in order to find position, the system needs to
be specifically localized. This cuts
off quite a bit of the wave, and information regarding the momentum is cut
off. It's easy then to see just how a
compromise can be made, if you only spread it out a bit, you can retain just
enough information to narrow down the localized position particle-nature, but
you also can retain enough of the wave to gain a glimpse of the momentum data
inherent in the wave-nature. This
concept led to the next formalism,
II. Born's
Statistical Interpretation.
Max Born
noticed that analysis of the Schroedinger waves led to a square amplitudinal
probability density, which he took literally.
That is to say that when squaring wave amplitudes classically we find
the energy of the wave, but down there the energy is found to be directly
proportional to the frequency of the wave.
So, when squaring the results of the Schroedinger amplitudes, that is to
say the equation itself by its own complex conjugate, the graph that ensued was
equivalent to a Gaussian Distribution of Standard Deviation. In other words, according to this formalism,
we can never predict to precision, but only in terms of probability, the
outcome of an event in terms of particle-wave dualistic systems.
III.
Bohm's Complementarity Principle.
When Bohm
thought of the wave-particle duality, as found in Heisenberg's Uncertainty, he
noticed that the wave-nature and the particle-nature of the system complement
each other in a very profound way. As
he put it, there is a "wholeness" of the microscopic system and the
macroscopic measuring apparatus, and this would include the observer. In this context, Heisenberg's Uncertainty
becomes a very real, physical manifestation of reality, and not simply a
flickering obscurity in the measurement process itself. Speaking of complementarity, you can see
just how well these first three formalisms complement each other. But we're not quite finished yet, there are
two more formalisms that were somewhat tacked on later by Heisenberg to get
around certain supposed paradoxes of further studies.
IV.
Heisenberg's equating of the wave function (or wave vector or state vector, if
you prefer) with the observer's "knowledge of the system".
The issue
of nonlocality arose. Now, Albert
Einstein wasn't big on the idea of nonlocality, because it stood against
everything he'd specified within his Relativity Theory. Nonetheless, in a very long-winded, and
fairly famous debate he, Podolsky and Rosen presented, what is now known as the
EPR Paradox. In a nutshell, they
proposed that, according to Copenhagen Quantum Theory, a pair of photons could
be generated and sent apart a distance where light-speed couldn't reach them in
time, yet any change to the one would cause an instantaneous change to the
other. This is impossible, according to
his Relativity, because no signal could travel faster than light to reach from
one photon to the next to inform it of the change. All this being the case, it made no sense to Einstein that any
measurement done to one of these pairs could affect the other, and if it did
there must be a set of locally hidden variables in the foray. Therefore, one could conceivably do a
measurement for momentum to one photon of the pair and a measurement for
position of the other of the pair and know everything about both
simultaneously. It should be noted at
this point that John S. Bell has since developed a proof of inequality that is
always violated that leads to the conclusion that in Quantum Physics, no
locally hidden variables could ever exist, but any amount of nonlocally hidden
variables could. Several experiments
have backed this by violating it as much as 15 standard deviations. That's impressive proof of nonlocality! But at the time, there was no real
workaround, so Heisenberg decided to tack this bit of formality onto the
interpretation. If the wave collapse is
directly associated with the observer's knowledge, as an extension of Bohr's
Complementarity, then nonlocality is explained. It's right here that things begin to break down. But there's one last formalism to cover
before we get into that.
V.
(Heisenbergian) Positivism
This was the nail in the coffin of the iterated why game of Quantum Physics. Basically, Heisenberg's final tack-on stipulated that we refrain from speaking in terms of "reality" or "meaning" and only deal with observables. As genius as all of this was, and it most certainly was - for it systematically ensured that this interpretation could never be questioned, so long as it continued to predict quantum phenomena with high degrees of accuracy - I have to take certain umbrage to it. You see, it's alright for Heisenberg to say that knowledge of the system is what causes the wave function to collapse, but we can go no further than that. Knowledge, consciousness, idealism, meaning, reality - these are all supposedly unobservable phenomena, and now are no longer to be discussed beyond being the cause that saved nonlocality. The iterated why stopped, we were all nonchalantly and condescendingly patted on the head and told, "That's just the way the universe works". To make it even more convenient to themselves, most modern physicists, who cling so tightly to this standard model, insist that consciousness and knowledge lie within the realms of metaphysics. Let the biologists and psychologists work that one out, we don't need to define our cause for nonlocality, it's not within the range of our scientific endeavors. Some even believe they're simply above all that. As Hawking once put it, to his audience, "I don't answer God questions." In my opinion, this is nothing more than laziness and passing the buck, and it should be finally addressed in plain terms.
Hence the need for this book: a cataloguing of alternative
theories to Copenhagen, most of which aren't afraid to delve into these aspects
of further questioning. Why do the air
currents go from north to south? Why
are electric charges separated, but not the magnetic poles? Why does a bumblebee fly? And yes, even, why does knowledge affect the
outcome of quantum phenomena? This
exploration has taken us to vastly strange territories, and I actually even
feel a bit sorry for those who left themselves out by sticking so stubbornly to
their modalistic viewpoints. But, as
you'll see, these questions are leading, slowly but surely, to a far simpler
model of reality (oops, can I say that here?).
So, come join me on a wondrous trip down the rabbit hole, and let's see
just how far down it really might go.