Absolute Quantum Theory Now On InfoGalactic

Back in July, 2016, I posted a thread (available here) concerning a derivation of an absolute quantum theory. The theory starts with the empirically determined relationships E = hbar omega, p = hbar k and E = [p^2c^2 + m^2c^4]^(1/2) + V. Then, I assume an underlying plane-wave wave-function and derive relationships between the differentials of the wave-function and E and p^2. I then combine those relationships through the energy formula to arrive at a new quantum mechanical treatment. Importantly, the primary reason this approach was not done long ago is because it is in violation of relativity. However, if we simply return to Absolute Space and Time, one flavor of which was the philosophy that predated relativity as championed by Lorentz, then the quantum mechanics I propose is viable. A second reason my approach has not been pursued is the presence of the Laplacian inside of an expression within a radical. However, for the interesting cases of stationary states, it is easy to rearrange terms appropriately and square them so that the expression containing the Laplacian is no longer within a square root.

The absolute quantum theory has the advantage of not being perturbative, but rather, it is exact. Yet even though the equations are exact, the equations are complex, so it is likely that numerical techniques will be required to arrive at solutions. Nonetheless, numerical techniques are quite well known, so I believe the new approach has considerable value.

I got some good comments here on the original posting, and then I worked up a paper and sent it out for review. I got more good comments during the review process, some of which were similar to those I got here back in 2016. I used all of the comments to add additional explanations to further clarify my thinking, and the paper was then accepted for publication. (Thanks to all of those who helped with comments earlier.) Six months have now passed since publication, and the editor of the journal has kindly allowed me to republish on encyclopedia websites. I have recently posted the paper in an article on InfoGalactic.

You can access the Absolute Quantum Mechanics article by clicking here.

One thing I didn't fully appreciate when I sent my paper out for publication was the importance of vacuum quantization to the status quo. I submitted the paper to Physical Review Letters first. I got a few rejections that were nonsense (such as them telling me that they assumed the work was correct, but it wasn't important enough to physics even though they assumed it was correct). I confronted them about the nonsense and they agreed that their earlier response was in error, but eventually they settled upon rejection without even sending it out for review because it didn't address quantization of the vacuum.

But the fact that Absolute Quantum Theory does not include quantization of the vacuum is likely more of an asset than a detriment. Quantization of the vacuum leads to what has been called the largest discrepancy between theory and experiment in all of science, and of course, a theory that does not include quantization of the vacuum won't have that problem.

Also, an Absolute Quantum Theory is consistent with a well defined simultaneity in all frames, since it is based upon an Absolute Theory of Space and Time. And once simultaneity is well defined, an instantaneous quantum collapse is allowed, solving the philosophical puzzles related to the Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen challenge such as Shrodinger's cat, Bell's theorem, and an understanding of quantum entanglement.

I wish to invite you all to take a critical read through the Absolute Quantum Mechanics article on InfoGalactic. (It is not overly long.) I certainly am not perfect, and so I'd greatly appreciate learning of any errors or typos you may find so that I can make corrections.

Here again is a link to the article.

I look forward to your comments.

I am so dismayed. I know you are writing in English, which is the language I speak, yet what you write is like a foreign language to me and as much as I truly want to understand, it is just impossible

a reply to: delbertlarson

Great Job! A congratulations is most definitely in order. It's good to see someone on ATS achieve such heights.


So, a very big congratulations to you!

I'll have one for ya

Wow a lot of flags and barely any responses, kind of feel like I should add a post now. I've always had some very deep concerns regarding the issues around simultaneity in the theory of relativity, a few years back I wrote a thread where I discussed what seemed like an apparent paradox when considering a slightly extended version of the common thought experiment involving a train going through a tunnel: Relativity Paradox.

However I'm not sure I really buy into this idea of absolute space and time, rather than a relativistic space-time. Although the idea of absolute space and time does appeal to me, all our experiments show that reality appears to be built upon a relativistic space-time fabric. Now that we've detected gravity waves it's clear that Einstein was correct on some very fundamental level. However I don't really know enough about these theories you are presenting to really say how well they stand up to scrutiny.

a reply to: CthulhuMythos

Thanks for the kind post, which indicates that it might be useful to frame things for the intelligent layman. Here goes:

For quantum mechanics, a useful model is to start by thinking of particles as small strings. (They're not really strings, but this is a good model to start with to explain the ideas.) These strings can have waves on them, like when you crack a whip. The wave will move from one end to the other, then be reflected, and continue to move back and forth.

An even better example is to pin down the ends of the small string and pluck it, so it vibrates up and down - this is called a "standing wave", and since it can go on like that forever (if there is no friction), it would be called a "stationary state". If we start with a flat string, when we pluck it we will pull the middle up to some positive height. When we let go, the forces on the string pull it back to the flat position, but since it has energy of motion it keeps going until it has a negative height equal in magnitude to the original positive height. At that point it has zero velocity, and the forces pull it back up to the flat position. And then the cycle repeats. The height can be named the greek letter Psi, and we can write a mathematical "wave-function" that describes the height at each position for any specific time. We can define a potential energy that is zero when the string is flat and maximized when it is at full height, and if we do so we will notice that the total energy of the string as a whole (which is the sum of the kinetic and potential energies) is always the same - it is a constant of the motion.

Now you could have a string that not only has its ends pinned, but also vibrates in such a way that the middle point never moves. When the left part goes up, the right part goes down, and vice versa. This middle point is called a "node". Or, you could have two interior nodes, or three, and on and on. But the point is that you can't have one and a half nodes, or a third of a node. You can only have 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. (We start at 2 because we have end nodes in this example.) This is an example of quantization - our changes come only in quantized steps. And that is what is meant by "quantum mechanics" because it isn't the continuum mechanics of your car. Your car can go 60 mph, or 50 mph, but it can also go at any speed whatsoever, like 59.987654321 mph, and it doesn't have to speed up in quantized steps of 10 mph. Now there are quantum steps even with your car speed - but the steps are so ridiculously small that we never notice, nor can we even measure them. But in atoms and elementary particles, the quantum effects dominate.

Experiments have shown that particle energy and momentum are related to the frequency and the inverse of the wavelength, respectively, of the waves in our "strings". Although for particles, we actually no longer have strings, but rather, we have three-dimensional entities. We still have a wave-function, but rather than height, the magnitude of the wave-function represents the square root of the intensity of the particle at any given point.

What the InfoGalactic article shows is that we can start with the equations of the simple energy and momentum observations and then manipulate the math to arrive at equations that describe things like the density of a three-dimensional electron surrounding a proton (the hydrogen atom). But the principle is the same as the string example - we have some wave-function that exists only in quantized states. In the case of the hydrogen atom the conditions of the boundary are not a pinning of two ends like we had in the string, but rather we have zero at infinity, and the total integrated density of the electron must be one whole electron. By once again assuming that the total energy is a constant within and throughout the system, the equations accurately predict the radiation emitted as the hydrogen atom transitions from one stationary state to another.

I hope the above explanation is helpful!

a reply to: StallionDuck

Thanks!

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Thanks, I have started reading your thread, and plan to read it all and then respond.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

a few years back I wrote a thread where I discussed what seemed like an apparent paradox

I read your thread and all the comments and left a rather detailed comment. Bottom line is that relativity paradoxes often involve three events but focus on only two, and that is what seems to create a paradox. Once you realize there are actually three events, the analysis becomes clear and there is no paradox.

I'm not sure I really buy into this idea of absolute space and time, rather than a relativistic space-time. Although the idea of absolute space and time does appeal to me, all our experiments show that reality appears to be built upon a relativistic space-time fabric. Now that we've detected gravity waves it's clear that Einstein was correct on some very fundamental level.

The experimental data is indeed consistent with the Lorentz equations. However, the Lorentz equations were derived before relativity, and premised on an absolute space and time. Einstein derived what were two ad hoc proposals (time dilation and length contraction) from his two postulates (relativity and a constant speed of light). Deriving two things from two postulates, especially since both postulates were already well known, should not have been all that surprising. (Poincare proposed the relativity principle, and the fact that the Lorentz transformation led to a constant speed of light between frames was also known in advance of Einstein.) Also, E=mc^2 was known for a long time before Einstein, as were the Maxwell Equations and the Lorentz Force Equations.

This is not to say that Einstein did nothing - quite the contrary. His embrace and championing of the relativity principle revolutionized physics philosophy and thinking. To my knowledge, it was his work that originated the idea of relative simultaneity. He is the one who took curiosities and raised them to a fundamentally different way of looking at our world. To my knowledge his general relativity work - a work of pure genious - was from a physics standpoint all his. (Although we should note that Riemann provided the mathematical underpinning for that great work.) Science advances through the work of many, yet there is no doubt that Einstein's contributions were seminal.

However, almost* all of the experimental record remains consistent with both the absolute and relative theories for the special case of no gravity and no acceleration, and that is where the lion's share of experimental evidence is. For general relativity, I am not an expert. My belief is that rather than having a curved space-time, we might accomplish the same ends with a warped aether, but that is just a speculation at this point. The main observation is that one can have more than one explanation for experimental results. The key is to find experiments that distiguish between the explanations.

And there are experiments that enable a distingushing between absolute theory and relativity. Ironically, those experiments follow from a paper by Einstein, which he co-authored with Podolski and Rosen (EPR). EPR proposed that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because in certain circumstances it disagrees with relativity. Bell refined the EPR argument and Aspect, Dalibard and Roger showed that it was quantum mechanics that agreed with experiment. Hence, in that critical test relativity failed. (*That is the reason for "almost" two paragraphs up.)

Hence, absolute theory should again be considered.

Wow a lot of flags and barely any responses

The lack of responses is a problem. Discussions would be helpful about things people think are wrong. The ideas could be wrong, or perhaps not, but without discussion we won't make progress. Discussions would be helpful to make things clearer for those who don't understand (see the reply to CthulhuMythos above). But for discussion to occur some comments are needed to respond to. It is the silence that kills. For an idea to take root, it must be discussed.

On the other hand, it was very heartening to get a lot of flags. Perhaps there is some interest brewing and in time more comments will come!

Thanks again for the comment!

erm... don't mean to rain on your parade but it's basically an alt-right blog..

Mitt Romney Demands More Immigration
Cucks Have Learned Nothing, Forgotten Nothing

13 Russians Charged With #posting
Vast Slavic Conspiracy Just A Dozen Guys On Facebook

Jews 'Scared' Of Resurgent Polish Nationalism
Not Wanting Muslim Immigration Is Basically Another Shoah

Turkey Jails Six Journalists For Life
Finally, Something We Can Agree On With Erdogan

Comey Held Secret Obama White House Meeting Before Trump's Inauguration
Not Disclosed To Congress

Trump To Unveil $1.5 Trillion Infrastructure Plan
Fulfills A Number Of Campaign Goals

And here:

Infogalactic is a wiki encyclopedia project created by alt-right staple figure Theodore Beale in 2016[1] that "aspires to be more objective" than the allegedly crooked and bias-ridden Wikipedia,[2] while simultaneously giving power to "corelords", corporate professionals who have purchased the ability to oversee the editing of pages related to their industry.[3]

rationalwiki.org...

And here:

Vox Day thinks that Wikipedia is the worst. But the things that bug him aren’t the typical complaints you’ll hear about the crowd-sourced encyclopedia—that it’s plagued by trolls, say, or that its pages on Pokémon lore are overly comprehensive.

Day is bothered because he believes that Wikipedia is a Democratic tool, run “by the left-wing thought police who administer it,” he tells me over email. Yet the millions of articles and stubs that make up the end product are used as fact. And that makes the science fiction writer and alt-right personality, who uses Vox Day as his pen name, angry.

www.wired.com...

a reply to: delbertlarson

Absoutly amazing ! I'll give it a read .

Try sending this to lennard suskind . The bad boy of physics!

Ty for this!

a reply to: GetHyped

I was aware that InfoGalactic leaned right, but I read some pretty decent reviews, saying they were not extreme and that they were more open to posting things than Wikipedia is. They have been fair and helpful to me.

I wanted to post at Wikipedia, and in fact did so twice now. Even after working to get approval first, the ABC Preon article was deleted after three months. Then, after getting good feedback from the scientists on Arbitraguer's AMA thread here on ATS, I posted a different article on a subject Wikipedia specifically asked for, but it was quickly removed.

So I've gone with InfoGalactic. I see you quote rationalwiki.org - would that be a possibility too? And do they lean left? I really think science should not be political at all - just hypotheses, followed by logic, followed by tests to find truth. But these days everything seems to be infected by politics one way or another. In such a world it would be great to have things posted on sites from each side. The truth may only have one side, but to see it we might need to look at it from every angle.

Let me know if you have any advice on what Wiki's might be best. And thanks for the comment and information.

a reply to: Kapusta

Thanks for the positive comment. I tried to find Susskind's email address. At Stanford almost all of the faculty has either a phone number or email address listed, but not him. Once physicists reach a certain level of fame, they can be deluged with requests, so maybe he had to turn off the contact points.

a reply to: delbertlarson

For general relativity, I am not an expert. My belief is that rather than having a curved space-time, we might accomplish the same ends with a warped aether, but that is just a speculation at this point. The main observation is that one can have more than one explanation for experimental results.

This does not fill me with much faith I'm afraid, when people start resorting to an Aether as a solution I get very skeptical. I admit it's very hard to accept the existence of space-time curvature, for a long time I believed space-time was absolute, I held a view very similar to Nikola Tesla:

I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.

~ Nikola Tesla

I find this to be quite a convincing argument but ultimately I think it's wrong and in fact space-time does have some properties which allow it to be curved and manipulated, making such things as a warp drive possible. Btw I responded to your post on my relativity thread. I find it kind of funny in that thread we're arguing the opposite positions, here I'm defending relativity and you're saying it's wrong, in that thread you're defending relativity and I'm saying it's wrong. One thing is pretty clear, relativity is wrong in some way, but it wont be clear how until we can unify QM with Relativity.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

I find it kind of funny in that thread we're arguing the opposite positions, here I'm defending relativity and you're saying it's wrong, in that thread you're defending relativity and I'm saying it's wrong.

I am being consistent on both threads. Relativity, properly understood, does not have a problem with any thought experiment paradox. It has an EPR/Bell's theorem problem with the results of actual physical experiments.

This does not fill me with much faith I'm afraid, when people start resorting to an Aether as a solution I get very skeptical.

Prior to relativity the aether was the widely accepted way to understand light waves, and if we return to absolute theory it still is. This article goes further, where it is shown how all of Maxwell's Equations can be derived by assuming an aether with some very simple properties.

originally posted by: delbertlarson
a reply to: Kapusta

Thanks for the positive comment. I tried to find Susskind's email address. At Stanford almost all of the faculty has either a phone number or email address listed, but not him. Once physicists reach a certain level of fame, they can be deluged with requests, so maybe he had to turn off the contact points.

sorry for that late reply . Man that's unfortunate ! . I would really like to see what he has to say about your work .
Have you any updates since ?

a reply to: delbertlarson


Here is the Physics department contact info . Maybe start here and ask how you can get in contact with him .

physics.stanford.edu...

hi delbertlarson.

i dont comment often these days, and am not inclined to get lengthy here.

won't your proposal return to us Laplace's demon, and crush the dangerous hopes and dreams of those that enjoy the peculiarities of nondeterministic and nonlocal reality?

i enjoy the danger.... and even though you have the technical jargon well scripted, you appear to be lacking the artistic sensibilities that will give the common man an understanding as simple a kicking a soccer ball. your conceptualization cannot work, because you have not BEEN to the place which you describe.... because it is not a place, and there are no people there. you merely jave it "worked out". remember Godel's Theorem?

anyone can kick a soccerball. likewise, all people are experts of the dynamics of quantum theory (even though they may not know that they are).

come at me with your VISION, friend.
reality is NONcalculable.
anything less just doesnt FEEL right.


congratulations, and good luck!


dkp

a reply to: delbertlarson

Wow. Del, this is some pretty impressive work, impressive indeed.

Quantum Mechanics has always had rather strange propositions that were just so dissonant. Your ability and success in bringing it closer to a classical system is not only an impressive feat, it also solves many of the intuitive irregularities that the QM was plagued with. Thanks to your work, it is now possible to model reality using a QM that is NOT absurd.

Pretty awesome stuff mate.

originally posted by: Kapusta
a reply to: delbertlarson

Here is the Physics department contact info . Maybe start here and ask how you can get in contact with him .

physics.stanford.edu...

Thanks for checking back in. I went to the Stanford page you linked to and I could not find an email address.

Many years ago I had the pleasure of corresponding with the great John Stewart Bell by written letters concerning my early thoughts on absolute theory. However my recent results have been very poor when I attempt to contact physicists to discuss my theories. So poor, in fact, that I don't wish to put much time into it. (Some months ago I sent two emails to Dr. Arkani-Hamed and got no response.) So I've been publishing in reviewed journals, posting on InfoGalactic, and contributing here on ATS. While I don't get a lot of feedback, I do get some, and I am always grateful for it. Perhaps word will get out one of these days.

Have you any updates since ?

For now I am working on my aether model in an attempt to derive the Lorentz force equation from the same aetherial postulates that I used to arrive at Maxwell's equations. I have made good progress, but portions of the Lorentz force expression still escape me.

-

a reply to: tgidkp

won't your proposal return to us Laplace's demon, and crush the dangerous hopes and dreams of those that enjoy the peculiarities of nondeterministic and nonlocal reality?

We are safe from Laplace's demon. Quantum theory allows for random collapse of the wave-function. My work simply provides a basis for understanding the underlying wave-function in classical terms - it is a real physical wave with a finite extent and magnitude that collapses instantaneously during momentum exchange. But even with that classical understanding for the wave-function itself, the collapse of that wave-function during interactions still involves randomness.

remember Godel's Theorem?

My aim is to calculate things based on an assumed underlying physical model. If those calculations agree with experimental tests, then I believe the assumed underlying physical model should be considered an accurate approximation of our world. I make no claim about full exactitude. Of course there may be further refinements in our modeling as we learn more.

a reply to: swanne

Thanks for the positive feedback, John! Always great to hear from you!