Nassim Haramein solves Einstein's dream of a unified field theory?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

The model of quantum mechanics is one of the best models ever because it makes so many accurate predictions. However it's a model:

faculty.wwu.edu...

* Models of Science are useful maps which approximate Nature....

If you've seen an experiment where a wave-like behavior is observed when a large object like a human is fired through the double slit, please cite the experiment, because I'd like to see it.

The nuances of how these three models of quantum mechanics, Newtonian mechanics versus relativity overlap with each other can be described both verbally and mathematically, but it's no more appropriate to try to say quantum mechanics is a good model at all scales than to say that Newtonian mechanics works well at the speed of light.

That's a great list, Arbitrageur - I really like that. I think it hits the nail on the head. It's important to see models as models, and recognise their limitations.

I think you may be underestimating QM though. The correspondence principle is integral to quantum mechanics. I think it's much much more than a description of how the models overlap. Once the principles of quantum mechanics are understood, the whole of Newtonian physics follows from them absolutely, via statistical mechanics, chaos theory and other such methods of analysis of complex systems. I would argue that there is no 'overlap' at all. Newtonian physics is precisely the special case of quantum mechanics applied to large objects.

In your question about firing humans through double slits, you're asking "why has nobody yet observed at large scales the phenomena that QM describes as being observable at small scales?" If instead you asked "what does QM describe as being observable at large scales", you'd get precisely what you see.

More generally, the whole of QM and the whole of relativistic mechanics and field theory is predicted by quantum field theory. QFT is the daddy.

The scope of quantum theory does not reach any fundamental limitations (or, for that matter any notable discrepancy between theory and experiment) until it meets the cosmic scales at which General Relativity is important. And even then, the mismatch between QM and GR are theoretical. There are no measurable phenomena to give us insight into anything about their nature.

With one rather notable exception - the coming into existence of the universe!

Returning to firing humans through slits: you need only calculate the de Broglie wavelength of a human to see why this could never be observed. The phenomenon must become less pronounced and less observable as size increases. But the experiment has nevertheless been done with large molecules such as bucky balls, and the race to perform the double slit experiment successfully using a live virus is very much on:

www.newscientist.com...

But yes, it is still just a model. Making sense of it, and interpreting the paradoxes that appear to crop up in any philosophical analysis (but far, far less in the quantitative predictive analysis), is a very tricky business, and I'm sure it's still in its infancy. The hubris (and the idiocy) of What the Bleep was to present opinions with varying degrees of flakiness as if they were all real and significant insights. The result was a seriously misleading pile of tosh.

The structure of the quantum field theory is currently best approximated by the Standard Model, which certainly has its limitations. Again they're theoretical - even these still not been definitively observed. The LHC reaches right up to the top end of the SM. Most physicists hope it reaches beyond, but it's only a hope.

Finding a better model will be an extremely difficult job. The list of criteria you've given is a good one to judge them by. I just wanted to add that I think it's easy to underestimate the scope of quantum theory.

My personal feeling is that when the experimental limits of the Standard Model are found, its successor will be another QFT. There are many brilliant and promising QFTs (and QFT-like things) waiting in the wings, being nurtured to reveal their special talents.

The architecture of quantum field theories in general is astonishingly simple for the power of what they can describe. I think it'll be a long while before we can honestly rely on anything deeper and more faithful in its role of reflecting the way things are.

Those of you who are looking into the wave/particle duality may be interested to know that many consider the duality to have been transcended long ago when quantum field theories arrived. In short - it's all fields.

If you investigate these fields thoroughly enough, you find that they appear to us as "particles" in certain conditions, and as "waves" in others, depending on how we interact with them.

That doesn't mean the wave/particle duality is solved. It's still just as strange even if you do understand a bit of QFT, and it certainly doesn't help you if you don't. And there are many leftover philosophical peculiarities of the wpd, most significantly the measurement problem.

Two timeless truths I believe you can absolutely rely on:

1. there's no danger of anyone with any sanity believing that we're close to having ultimate answers
2. there's no danger of there ever being any shortage of nutcases who believe they've figured it all out

Originally posted by Bobathon
The scope of quantum theory does not reach any fundamental limitations (or, for that matter any notable discrepancy between theory and experiment) until it meets the cosmic scales...

Returning to firing humans through slits: you need only calculate the de Broglie wavelength of a human to see why this could never be observed.

Yes of course, you're right, as usual, and I wasn't trying to imply that the model was invalid at larger scales so much as not useful at larger scales since as you said the wave nature of larger objects becomes unobservable at some point, reinforcing the notion of the useful range of a model, from my previous post:

* There is always some limited range over which a Model is a useful predictor of Nature.

So if larger objects like humans have a wave nature, which hasn't been observed, I'm not sure how useful it is to model the wave nature of those objects. I also am not volunteering to be fired through a double slit, because it could be painful if I behave more like a particle than a wave.

In part I was trying to answer Mary's question about wave-particle duality, and also in part as you surmised to criticize the various misapplications of quantum mechanics (like the bleep movie).

I think you may be underestimating QM though.

I admit that's possible, I already said it makes great predictions and I admit it will be hard to improve upon, but I wouldn't say impossible.

there's no danger of anyone with any sanity believing that we're close to having ultimate answers

Yes, that was part of my point. We're not complacent, we don't think we have the ultimate answers and we're always looking for better explanations.

However, we have to be rational about how we decide which alternate explanations or models might be better than our current thinking, so that's why I thought that list of criteria for evaluating models might be relevant to comparing alternate models like Haramein's or any others. Some people (like Haramein) apparently think that they can point to a list of unsolved problems in physics, and proclaim "see, those mainstream guys don't know everything" so therefore any alternate model is just as viable. He's right about mainstream folks not knowing everything, but he needs to study that list I posted on how to show an alternate model is better, because he doesn't seem to have a clue how to do that.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
I wasn't trying to imply that the model was invalid at larger scales so much as not useful at larger scales since as you said the wave nature of larger objects becomes unobservable at some point, reinforcing the notion of the useful range of a model, from my previous post:

* There is always some limited range over which a Model is a useful predictor of Nature.

Ah! I didn't home in on the word useful - of course you're right to say that QM is much less useful than Newtonian mechanics at large scales.

More accurate, and more fundamental... but yes, far less useful. Because of one of the points on your list:

c. Simplicity. A subjective and practical property that makes a Model easier to both understand and manipulate.

Here's a little investigation of Haramein by well-loved, world-famous, actual real astrophysicist Phil Plait:
It's from a podcast dated 11th Jan. The Haramein section starts at 50:00, ends 57:30

Podc ast featuring Phil Plait

Some browsers / plugins don't show the time - if you get this, try it with a different browser.

So, Haramein's theories are finally being addressed by serious scientists. He should be very proud now! I hope he puts this on his website.

reply to post by Bobathon


Thanks for the link. Brilliant.

Rough transcript:

"I'm actually ticked at you that you made me watch Haramein. It's worse than 10 minutes of my life that I'm not getting back. It's 10 minutes of my life when a part of my brain melted down and ran out of my ear. It's hard to find a grip on the amount of weirdness. He just says stuff, and it doesn't matter what he's saying, he just says it.
....
It's not even wrong. It's so bad it's not even wrong
...
404: Reality Not Found
...
At least Hoagland has the cojones to make up his own stuff"

Yep - thanks to Fequals Force for bringing it to my attention.

Gotta love the 404

reply to post by buddhasystem


Bobathon, you're a moron and I'm very sad for you. It's clear to me you have no idea how this universe works at all.
BUT, I still love you.

Click here for more information.

reply to post by royykim


credible scientists looking up on nassim? maybe only for laughs or find a reason
to put him out of his misery

reply to post by royykim


Your response is typical of ATS. People blindly cheerleading and defending to the hilt concepts they have absolutely no understanding of, even though anyone with so much as a cursory understanding can see the wild claims for what they are: bunkum. Utter bunkum. It must be some deep seated psychological thing, the need to believe in something "different". Sadly, belief does not cone into it, good solid evidence and reasoning does (which this nassim has neither, only words and concepts that sound sciency to the uninitiated). Still, keep chasing that rainbow.

Originally posted by royykim
reply to post by Bobathon

 

Arbitrageur, you're the biggest moron on this site. If you knew any better, you wouldn't call people liars and hoaxers. Seriously? You think if Nassim Haramein was wrong, that all of this was an intentional hoax? Remember people who kept denying that the earth was wrong?

You reply to a post by bobthon, but then address me instead, and you call ME a moron?

By the way, I still deny that the Earth is wrong, I never admitted that. I think the Earth is exactly as it should be, and if there's anything we don't understand about it, it's just a gap in our current understanding and not any proof the Earth is "wrong".

Do you realize how stupid are really are?

I don't know who "are" is so I can't say how stupid "are" really are. I know who Haramein is, the topic of this thread, and he's either not very bright, or a hoaxer, and possibly both.

REALLY? 9 doesn't equal 18?! OMG! Thanks, Arbitrageur. If it wasn't for you, I would have confused myself watching Rodin/Powell.

I don't get your point? Are you claiming that 9 does equal 18? Someone trying to defend Rodin claimed that was in base 9, but that can't be the case because there is no symbol 9 in base 9. Are you claiming Rodin isn't wrong when he says 9=18? Maybe post that answer in the Rodin thread since it's kind of off-topic here.

Have you any idea how this universe works? Clearly not. Maybe you shouldn't go around calling people hoaxers.

There are plenty of gaps in my understanding. Dark matter, and dark energy are called "dark" because nobody understands them. But that doesn't open the floor to claims that if I drop an apple, I don't know which way it will fall. Even though there are things I don't know, I do know what I do know, like an apple will fall down, not up. And a proton doesn't have more mass than Mt Everest like Haramein claims.

The theories I don't know what to think of, are theories like string theory. They haven't been proven either true or false, so I can admit I don't know if string theory is right or not. But in contrast to string theory, I can prove Haramein's claims to be false, because they disagree with observation.

The moral of the story is, you don't have to have answers to every question in the universe, to make a simple claim that if a theory disagrees with observation, it must be wrong, as Richard Feynman explains in this short clip:



I don't really need to know what dark matter is, to say Haramein is wrong.

reply to post by Bobathon

In short - it's all fields.

This is what Schrödinger intended. He interpreted the wave function as describing something like 'electrical' density in space, not the probability of finding a 'particle'.

A standing wave 'corpuscle' is a much better way of looking at it. Especially when we consider volume/geometric changes under pressure:

Neutrons Become Cubes Inside Neutron Stars

Certainly this wouldn't happen if there was actually an 'elementary' or 'fundamental' piece of something(like a particle), but it would happen if that something was a fluid, or field-like system behaving according to wave mechanics and fluid dynamics.

It is becoming increasingly evident that there are no "elementary particles" and that both the atoms and the sub-atomic particles belong essentially to the same class: a class that should be called "primary" rather than "elementary," in that these are the entities which are formed directly from the basic substance of the universe, the permissable forms, we might say, into which the basic clay can be shaped.

After all, much of this should have been suspected long before the advance of experimental knowledge actually forced us to such conclusions. In retrospect it is clear that serious consideration should have been given many years ago to the possibility that the atom is not constructed of "parts." - DBL

The absurdities abundant in speculative new age religiosity(such as in What the Bleep) are a direct result of the inability of modern physics to come to terms with its most basic flaws.

For example, simultaneous amplitudes or values existing before decoherence (or the collapse of the wave function) is not a property of a discrete particle. It is a property of a standing wave system.

If we try to apply our ideas of a discrete particle to that phenomenon, we get crazy speculation as to how the particle can achieve such a feat. Instead, if we realize there is no particle, only a constant field with constant values until we interfere... it makes perfect sense.

Therefore it makes sense to advance the standpoint that a wave-only model is the most comprehensive and most logical explanation.

It is only when we try to ascertain the details of something that does not exist and conjure up all manner of explanations of wholly imaginary happenings, that we enmesh ourselves in the kind of difficulties characteristic of modern physics. - DBL

Originally posted by predator0187
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

I agree.

Although the majority of physicists would love to find the UFT, if there was a thought that someone had discovered it, it would not be going to computer techies before the high end physists.

People would be dying to get their name on it, or even just to review it before it went to publication.

The mathematics involved in the TOE are beyond our understanding at this point, as for our best theory, M-theory, they do not even have an understanding of the basics.

That was such an epiphany sure'nuf.


""I heard if we stay at the level of mathematics we are at now that it would take over 400 years to figure out the equations.""


I heard if we stay at the level of mathematics we are at now that it would take over 400 years to figure out the equations.

Makes me think that the mostest powerfullestest computers, will have to much more powerfuller, like about a hundred times more, or even more'n that. If'n you could do them complex computations real real fast and get to the end quicker, you could put them ta'work right now. instead of the future.

reply to post by Plotus


I have no idea what you're talking about regarding computers taking a long time to calculate an equation. They are pretty fast.

The limitations I see with computers aren't so much related to the math, they are related to the size of the models. Modeling things like global climate change requires lots of elements in the model, and it seems to me like it's the sheer number of elements in the model that bog supercomputers down.

This article explains some of the current computer limitations: Berkeley Lab Researchers Propose a New Breed of Supercomputers for Improving Global Climate Predictions

We won't know what the Theory of Everything looks like until it's found, but so far I haven't seen any computer limitations related to that search.

Originally posted by Zules
Hello everyone,

I just got a posting from Facebook that Nassim Haramein's paper "The Schwarchild Proton" has just passed peer review and is being published in the American Journal of Physics. The paper proves that every point in space is a black hole/white hole, that contains an infinite amount of energy. The next level tech will hook into the very fabric of reality itself. Here is the paper from his website. I imagine new developments will roll out shortly. We live in interesting times.

theresonanceproject.org...

Z

edit on 16-12-2010 by Gazrok because: Added question mark, as the title is a bit misleading, otherwise, would have to move thread (as it's a statement without it)

This description of his theory makes me think of Jean Charons theory of the eons. Does it have anything to do with it?

Originally posted by Sinibaldi
This description of his theory makes me think of Jean Charons theory of the eons. Does it have anything to do with it?

Nassim Haramein and Jean Charon have both made claims not supported by, and in some cases directly contradicted by evidence, so they have that much in common. Haramein pretends to be pseudoscientific in his proton paper, but it seems in his book, Jean Charon doesn't even attempt to be pseudo-scientific:

Jean Emile Charon

Charon muses in his book The Spirit: That Stranger Inside Us (2004): “There are microscopic individualities inside every human. They think, they know, and (they) carry Spirit in the Universe.”[1] Charon chooses to call these individual beings of intelligence, “eons.” They are otherwise known as electrons. Each electron or “eon” is an enclosed space, a thinking entity, intelligence, and even a micro-universe.

We have seen this kind of writing before from science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard who tried to promote a similar idea as the secret of his scientology religion, except he called all the individual beings inside of us "thetans", claiming they were disembodied souls of beings from another world. But we have to give Hubbard more credit than Charon...the word "thetans" wasn't already in the dictionary so he could assign whatever meaning to it he wanted.

Charon on the other hand, used the word "eon" meaning "electron" which already has a definition. Electrons have demonstrated some interesting properties, but being "a thinking entity, intelligence" is not among those, even if you call them eons instead of electrons.

Haramein's claim is that a single proton has more mass than Mt' Everest, this is different than saying electrons are intelligent, though both claims are pretty wacky.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I once read a book on his theory and there he stated that every electron was a tangent of an enormous "black holish" energy with our universe. I was convinced that he had some kind of mathematical theory to support part of his claims as well, but I can't seem to find it anymore on the net...

At the time, it seemed like an interesting point of view to me, but then again, farfetched too.

reply to post by Bobathon




en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Soupornuts
Cool - a one-word response fourteen months later. Thanks.

And no, it wasn't a "sophism", it was an honest attempt to clarify something. I'm not devious enough for sophisms.

Just saying.