Popular Standard View of stdQM

Philip Ball is a writer of popular science and in his latest contribution in Aeon he propagates yet another time the standard view that quantum mechanics does not make sense, as vividly witnessed and acknowledged by all great physicists:

• Why, then, is it still so common to find talk of quantum mechanics defying logic and generally messing with reality? 
• We might have to out some of the blame on the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. He was probably the deepest thinker about the meaning of quantum theory among its founding pioneers, and his intuitions were usually right. 
• But during the 1920s and ’30s, Bohr drove a lasting wedge between the quantum and classical worlds. They operate according to quite different principles, he said, and we simply have to accept that. 

Ball then starts out to fix this major defect of modern physics, something all the great physicists failed to do:

• Now we have that theory. Not a complete one, mind you, and the partial version still doesn’t make the apparent strangeness of quantum rules go away. But it does enable us to see why those rules lead to the world we experience it allows us to move past the confounding either/or choice of Bohr’s complementarity. 
• The boundary between quantum and classical turns out not to be a chasm after all. A ball has a position, or a speed, or a mass. I can measure those things, and the things I measure are the properties of the ball. What more is there to say? 

Yes, there is more to say, and that is said as realQM.

Restart of Icarus Simulation AB

My consulting company Icarus Simulation AB together with Johan Jansson is now being restructured  to take on new challenges in computational simulation.

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realQM: Helium Ground State -2.9036 = Success

Computation with realQM in spherical coordinates with azimuthal symmetry on a mesh with 200 points in radial direction and 100 in polar angle (on my iPad), gives the value -2.9036... (Hartree) for the ground state energy of Helium in good agreement the observed value and benchmark computations with stdQM (here and here):

• Pekeris (1959): -2.903724376    (best stdQM/Hylleraas with 1078 parameters)
• Koki (2009): -2.9042 (in supposedly better agreement with observation).

realQM offers a new model of the atom, which has a physical meaning in classical continuum mechanical terms and which is computable. The first test of realQM, beyond the one-electron Hydrogen atom where realQM coincides with the standard Schrödinger equation, is Helium with two electrons, and it seems that realQM passes this test successfully! The step from one to two is huge while the step from two to many may be smaller...so if realQM works for Helium, then...

Wikipedia gives the observed value −2.90338583(13) with reference:

• Kramida, A., Ralchenko, Yu., Reader, J., and NIST ASD Team. "NIST Atomic Spectra Database Ionization Energies Data". Gaithersburg, MD: NIST. 

The difference with Pekeris is significant: stdQM does not appear to fit better with observation than realQM...maybe less... Wikipedia handles the discrepancy by the following hand-waving:

• It should be noted that one needs to include relativistic and quantum electrodynamic corrections to get full agreement with experiment to spectroscopic accuracy.

PS1 1st ionisation energy as observed is supposed to be 0.903569881854.

PS2  Nakashima and Nakasuji reports -2.903 724 377 034 119 598 311 159 245 194 404 446 696 905 37 with 40 correct decimals, still different from observation -2.903385...

Trumps Reason to Withdraw from the Paris Accord

When President Trump declared that the US will pull out from the Paris Climate Accord, he did not repeat his earlier analysis that CO2 climate alarmism is a hoax without scientific support.

He could have done that on very good grounds, but he did not get into the question whether CO2 emissions from human activity is a real threat to the planet or not, which some climate skeptics regret.

Trump simply referred to the fact that even if all commitments of a Paris Accord where fully fulfilled, or more, the total effect according to the very dogmas of CO2 climate alarmism, would be at most 0.2 C reduction of global warming at the end of the century, that is zero effect. His logic was that it would be immoral to deliberately deny poor people access to cheap fossil fuel and keep them in poverty, if the effect on climate would be zero.

This shows the true dilemma of climate alarmism: If there is a real threat, then the planned measures to avoid catastrophe are totally inadequate and thus meaningless and then immoral by causing human suffering.  If there is no real threat, then the planned measures are even more meaningless and immoral.

This dilemma is covered up by main stream media selling climate alarmism, but comes out in the  true face of climate alarmism as expressed by Joachim Schellnhuber, climate advisor to Merkel and the Pope, asking for a "great transformation" of human civilisation. This is something completely different from buying an electrical car.  Think of that.

PS When Scott Pruitt as new Director of EPA and chief architect together with Mylon Ebell of Trumps CO2 agenda and decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord, was asked if he knew what  Trump was "thinking about climate",  Pruitt responded that frankly he did not know and that he had not discussed this question with Trump. To Pruitt and Ebell (and to the world) it is enough to know that their agenda is supported by Trump. This fits with Trump's decision to refrain from repeating his claim that climate alarmism is a "hoax" (which is impossible to prove), because the Paris Accord is meaningless, "hoax" or not.