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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Einstein described quantum physics as "Spooky action at a distance" and didn't believe in it.

The issue is as follows:

Exhibit A: We know the theory of relativity is true.

Exhibit B: We know quantum theory is true.

Exhibit C: Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are contradictory to one another and can't both be true at the same time.

[Lagslayer]

Einstein described quantum physics as "Spooky action at a distance" and didn't believe in it.

The issue is as follows:

Exhibit A: We know the theory of relativity is true.

Exhibit B: We know quantum theory is true.

Exhibit C: Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are contradictory to one another and can't both be true at the same time.

Maybe the problem is being approached from the wrong direction. Perhaps it's not a question of logic or measurements, but a question of perspective. If you look at it from a certainpoint of view, it means one thing, but from another PoV, it's completely different.

Maybe we've hit the bottom of where we can go with the data we currently have, and it's become a philosophical question.

edit: mistype

[Darvi]

IIRC, relativity is used every day in GPS and other satellites, to compensate for how fast they move in orbit. It's fairly well-documented.

And IIRC, when they launched the satellites, some people weren't sure if the relativity compensations (also, the not-being-so-deep-in-the-gravity-well ones) were necessary, so they built in a switch to turn them off, if they needed to.

They didn't.

IIRC the had to turn it on first.

Exhibit C: Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are contradictory to one another and can't both be true at the same time.

Isn't that the whole point of quantum mechanics? Schrödinger's cat etc.?

[Leafsnail]

The issue is as follows:

Exhibit A: We know the theory of relativity is true.

Exhibit B: We know quantum theory is true.

Exhibit C: Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are contradictory to one another and can't both be true at the same time.

I don't think they're completely contradictory - you just need a lot of complicated stuff to unite them.

[alway]

There are two basic tenets of human rationality: Math and logic.

Math is 1 + 1 = 2. Quantum mechanics breaks this with the introduction of randomness, ie, "God doesn't play dice." Quantum equations don't always end up with the same result, they end up with a range of results with certain probabilities. 1 + 1 sometimes equals 3, essentially. My understanding is this is due to things being quantized; the equation isn't really 1 + 1, but rather 1.2 + 1.7 (or something like that), and since the quantum object in question can't handle fractions, it spits out only values that it can. It might be 2 sometimes, 3 others.

Logic is A = B, and B = C, then A = C. With relativity, that breaks; A = B to some observers but not others.


We can graph the results and come up with "rules" that govern this behavior, but we won't really ever be able to understand the "why" since that's not how our minds work. There's a speed of light for no other reason than because there is. We can still make use of this knowledge, of course, for the same reason you can use a computer even if you don't know how a CPU works. You just need to understand the outward behavior, that pressing a button causes a certain result. Same here.

That's what I mean by it being whacked and not making sense

It only doesn't make sense because you aren't looking at it the right way. QM doesn't break math any more than any other statistics does.

Relativity makes just as much sense as any other transformation. That's really all it is; mathematical transforms from one space to another, just as you would take one graph and plot it on another with a rotation. Saying things are different with relativity is like saying things are different because the observers are rotated differently relative to on another; it's all just geometric transformations.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't think they're completely contradictory - you just need a lot of complicated stuff to unite them.

That's the thought, but no one has successfully united them thus far.

[Leafsnail]

That's the thought, but no one has successfully united them thus far.

String Theory is a successful merging of the two, isn't it?  It's hardly proved or anything but it at least suggests it's possible to reconcile them.

[MonkeyHead]

Its also a misquote...

The quote should read "The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.", and it is how Einstein expressed his belief that Quantum Mechanics was not absolute truth (with the idea of "God" as the absolute truth in terms of the properties of the universe, not some beardy guy on a cloud) and simply a suffienctly complex and accurate way of modelling behaviour on a quantum scale. It is often erronosly used in an effort to show that Einstien did not agree with Quantum Theory, which is wrong. He was simply arguing that whilst Quantum Theory was a powerful analytical tool it is not a direct observation of the properties of the universe on the smallest scale, and instead is our best way of describing it yet formulated... saying he did or didn't believe in it is not quite getting to the crux of his argument.

The main reason why they wont occur is that Quantum Mechanics is based around probablilities and discrete quantities. Relativity deals with systems so large in scale that probabilities become meaningless and quantites are continuous. Think of them as two seperate tools capable of doing a specialized job. The first step in either combining the 2 ideas or coming up with a third all encompssing theory will most probably be a quantised explanation of gravity, but good luck detecting a graviton/gravity wave without string theory equation featuring infinities.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's the thought, but no one has successfully united them thus far.

String Theory is a successful merging of the two, isn't it?  It's hardly proved or anything but it at least suggests it's possible to reconcile them.

No. String theory is a bunch of nonsense pushed by Michael Kaku as true when in reality he has no basis for it whatsoever while he peddles it on the "History" Channel.

There are a lot of believers in it, but I'm not one of them.

EDIT: I don't mean to imply that Kaku invented String Theory, because he didn't by a long shot, but his handling of science in general is inflammatory to me.

[alway]

The reason they are hard to unify is because their effects only overlap in extreme energies. Gravity is too small to have much effect on the quantum level. Time and space have less meaning on the quantum level, and the probabilistic (and overlapping) nature of both forces and things makes a theory of quantum gravity difficult, to say the least. And this is where the Higgs Boson comes in. Something on the quantum level which has the traits of quantum mechanics, while simultaneously creating a field of a quantum mechanical nature which propagates the forces necessary for gravity. I believe we've now come full circle.

[MonkeyHead]

Still, some experiment to verify string theory would be nice, not that I have any idea how you could construct one (though quantum entanglement does have some mathematical similarites to black holes if approached from a string theory perspective IIRC). It would be very useful to know how many dimensions a string theory should have to model the observable universe, which really cant be determined by theory alone as there are many such viable solutions.

[alway]

Einstein actually didn't much like QM; there are a lot of tales involving his great reluctance to accept some of its principles. Unlike his theory of relativity, in which everything was nice, tidy, and discrete, QM was weird because it was sort of a polar opposite in terms of its traits.

String theory is one of several attempts at unification into a Theory of Everything. Or rather, string theory is one category of attempts. There's also M theory, which is a category which generally involves an 11-dimensional sort of meta-structure, of which our universe is a part. There are many variations on that one too. However, one thing the theories are generally converging towards is 11 dimensions, as apparently that is where the math leads. And many of these theories combine aspects of one another as they migrate through the mathematics.

The problem is, most of these theories are extraordinarily difficult to test simply because of the high energies testing requires. String theory is in fact testable in theory, we just don't know how to find the energies required in practice yet; similar to the story for the Higgs Boson in that it was theorized decades before a machine capable of discovering it was conceived of. IIRC, the numbers on a particle accelerator to test string theory came out to something like requiring a diameter the size of Pluto's orbit. And so one major hurdle they are looking to figure out is a practical way of testing it. It is backed by mathematics and other theories of physics, but as those are themselves incomplete, tests are required to fully flesh out string theory if it is to become an accepted theory. At the moment, it's more along the lines of 'things that need investigation.'

[Karlito]

That's the thought, but no one has successfully united them thus far.

String Theory is a successful merging of the two, isn't it?  It's hardly proved or anything but it at least suggests it's possible to reconcile them.

No. String theory is a bunch of nonsense pushed by Michael Kaku as true when in reality he has no basis for it whatsoever while he peddles it on the "History" Channel.

There are a lot of believers in it, but I'm not one of them.

EDIT: I don't mean to imply that Kaku invented String Theory, because he didn't by a long shot, but his handling of science in general is inflammatory to me.

Michio, not Michael .

String theory is interesting in that it appears to make a consistent mathematical unification of relativity and quantum theories, but at our current level of technology, we are unable to perform experiments to determine it's truth. I suppose you could make the argument that unfalsifiability makes it pseudoscience, but really it's a solid mathematical/theoretical idea, it's just untestable.

EDIT: Man, you guys type fast.

[alway]

It must be noted that it isn't untestable, it's just that we don't know how to test it at the moment. Testing is also synonymous with the ability to make use of something; if something has a practical use, it can be practically tested. That we can't test it probably doesn't say as much about the theory itself as it does our understanding and how well we have worked through it. They essentially need to comb through all the mathematical formulas and try to predict some sort of emergent phenomena resulting from within these incredibly complex interactions which is both obvious enough to detect and not explained by theories on which string theory is built. Sort of like deducing chemistry from quantum mechanics: you can do it, but without any pre-existing idea of the existence of such a thing as chemistry, it would be really hard to see its existence from the quantum mechanical formulas alone.

[Starver]

so they built in a switch to turn [the relativity compensators] off, if they needed to.

They didn't.

IIRC the had to turn it on first.

Not sure if you're contradicting me.  Obviously they had to be on to be turned off, but the story I heard (and I'm sure that a quick trip to Wiki would disabuse me if I've been a victim of a Chinese Whisperer[1]) was that they were put in as default because enough people thought they should be on, but because of enough people with doubts about it, had a disabling command ready to kick in if the initial tests of the system showed that they shouldn't.

I've no doubt that they've had the ability to patch the software (or even firmware), and of course send up later satellites in the constellation (and any replacements) with the "it works this way" situation firmed up, so I don't think we're in any danger of someone doing a The World Is Not Enough-type manoeuvre and making the system go all wrong.

Exhibit C: Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are contradictory to one another and can't both be true at the same time.

I think of it as similar to "A: Light is a particle; B: Light is a wave; C: Light can not be both a particle and a wave".  Insofar as we're pretty satisfied that we know that light is neither a particle or a wave, but that quantum thing that gives particle-like results when looked at one way and wave-like results when looked at another.

So, when looking at the (next level out) set of ideas that "The world is Quantum" or "The world is relativistic", it's likely that "The world is <A. N. Other>", where looking at the <A. N. Other> theory makes the world look Quantum in some circumstances, and yet look relativistic in others...

It's all layers upon layers of understanding, on the way (probably in futility) of discovering the ToE...

["God does not play dice..."] is often erronosly used in an effort to show that Einstien did not agree with Quantum Theory, which is wrong.

Interestingly, it's also used to show that he believed in God.  Similarly erroneously, as far as I can gather.

Oh, and I'm still (as prior discussions on these boards have already painted me) a devout Determinist.  The old Hidden Variable version of Quantum Theory (or whatever it is that's actually governing the world).  And I find it even more likely that the arguments given against this state of affairs do not actually contradict reality, if the apparent disproofs are not counting upon upon QT (and Relativity) being Not The Entire Truth.  Although that fortuitous link between two of my conceptualised 'truths' (which gives me the wiggle room to consider either, knowing all along that there's no conceptual proof) has never actually been factored into my general stubbornness regarding the one, or the pondering that the other might be the case.


Finally, IIRC, Einstein considered it "his gretest mistake", including the Cosmological Constant (or whatever he called it, I think I'm mixing up my terminology, in my haste to not be ninjaed with further replies while logic-checking) to keep the Universe from collapsing, before we knew how the universe was expanding...  But if Dark Energy is true, we might well have something very similar anyway.  The chances that it's the same thing is small, but if Einstein had more than just the vague idea of "it keeps the Universe from collapsing" in mind, when he thought of it, he might have been onto the right track.  Sorry, being a bit rushed in my explanations, so I can bet my bottom dollar that someone's going to tell me I've misremembered this. 



(Karlito, yup, they do.  I type not-so-slow, but I waste it on too many words for too much constructiveness, I feel. )


[1] Like a Horse Whisperer, but more tonal.