Invisible Foot Prints of Giant Creatures

                                 The Mountain laboured and produced a rat. 

In the Theories of Everything podcast Humans Create the Quantum World? Julian Barbour recalls that quantum mechanics as one of the two pillars of modern physics, is a non-classical mechanics theory for which the experimental evidence has classical mechanics form such as tracks in a cloud chamber or dots on a photographic plate, since this is what we can experience. 

It is possible sometimes to understand classical mechanics, since our experience has such form, but we cannot understand quantum mechanics in the same way since it has a fundamentally different form. More precisely, as expressed by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman: Nobody understands quantum mechanics. 

Barbour then turns to Eddington's 1919 photo of solar eclipse observation with a little dot being shifted, which has come to serve as main confirmation of Einstein's general theory relativity as the other pillar, despite Eddington's own critical view: 

• We have found a strange foot print on the shores of the unknown. 
• We have devised profound theories one after another to account for the origins. 
• At last we have succeed in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. 
• And Loh, it is our own. 

Eddington would probably say the same thing about CMBR as footprint of Big Bang, and LIGO as footprint of gravitational wave from merger of black holes. In both cases the footprint is extremely weak, while the creature is extremely big, which does makes little sense, see this post.

Even more mysterious, the giant creatures of dark matter and dark energy coming with giant effects appear to leave no foot prints at all.  

The lack of progress to resolve any of these mysteries since long, is expressed as a stagnation of fundamental physics.   

The stagnation of quantum mechanics is well expressed by theoretical philosopher Tim Maudlin in a recent long interview about the difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics:

• The Copenhagen Interpretation with its collapse of the wave function, is not a theory, only a set of slogans going in all sorts of directions. Physicists do not understand it. They just nod their heads to criticism.
• Shut up and calculate is not any kind of theory.
• Many Worlds Interpretation says nothing about physics. 
• Bohmian Mechanics is the Schrödinger equation without collapse of the wave function augmented by particles guided by a pilot wave equation (as a hidden variable theory not generally accepted).  

In short: the fundamentals of quantum mechanics are as mysterious in 2024 as in 1924-26 when Schrödinger developed his equation. Schrödinger left quantum mechanics in the 1930s because he could not accept the Copenhagen Interpretation.  

The root of all the trouble is the form of the standard Schrödinger equation as a linear equation in multi-dimensional configuration space without connection to real physical space. To make progress, this equation has to be abandoned for a new type of equation in real physical space, and this is what Real Quantum Mechanics offers. Why not take a look? It makes sense. It is not a rat.

Sabine: Stagnation in Physics 1924-2024

Sabine Hossenfelder has taken up the mission to expose the so called crisis in physics, or rather in her words the stagnation of fundamental physics presented in this long interview starting out

• We haven't really made any progress on the big open questions since they occurred a century ago.
• We still do not understand how Quantum Mechanics QM works.
• QM has a problem of inconsistency.

Here Sabine gives reason for the stagnation of fundamental physics ultimately based on QM as atom physics: 

• If we do not understand QM, how can we understand anything based on QM?
• QM is not understandable, because it does not make sense as a theory of physics. 
• A physical theory which does not make sense as real physics cannot be understood in a real sense. 

In this situation, there are two possibilities: 

1. QM is anyway accepted even if does not make sense. This is the current agreement by the physics community. 
2. QM is discarded (since it does not make sense).  

I have followed 2 by developing a different form of atom physics named Real Quantum Mechanics RealQM, which is fundamentally different from the accepted QM which I refer to as Standard QM or StdQM initiated by Schrödinger in 1924.

RealQM is understandable as a physical deterministic continuum mechanics model in 3 space dimensions. The reason StdQM is not understandable, is that it is a statistical model in many-dimensional configurations space without physical meaning. Compare with John Clauser.

Sabine has emerged as a very successful presenter of science, after giving up a career as fundamental physicist, since quantum gravity did not make sense, with particular mission to expose the stagnation in fundamental physics. This is admirable. What is less admirable (from my point of view) is that Sabine does not show any interest in finding some path to progress away from stagnation, such as RealQM.

Maybe this post can open to some communication.  

"Swedish Brigade" in Ukraine Fights North Korea

                         A soldier tells that tank was hit but it was as if nothing had happened.

Swedish MSM Svenska Dagbladet today happily reports to the Swedish people that:

• Since 2 months the "Swedish Brigade" equipped with Swedish Combat Vehicle 90 and Battle Tank 122 are getting ready near the border in the Kursk/Russia region to fight North Korean Special Forces on the battle field. 
• In another mission a Battle Tank 122 was hit without causing any damage. 
• Denmark together with Sweden buys an additional 205 Combat Vehicles 90 for 10 Billion Euro. 
• Combat Vehicle 90 is produced by Hägglunds in Örnsköldsvik, the main Swedish weapons factory owned by BAE Systems London.    

PS1 The Swedish Embassy was one of the first embassies in North Korea, opening in 1975 and until 2001, Sweden was the only Western country with uninterrupted diplomatic representation in the city. The Swedish embassy serves as the protecting power for the United States and as consular representation for Australia, Canada, Italy, Latvia, Iceland and Finland. What will now happen with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyan?

PS2 Note that the cost of one Combat Vehicle 90 is about 5 million Euro. The total cost of 10 Billion Euro to be compared with a total state budget of about 100 Billion Euro.   

Mystery of Time Resolved?

After millennia of inquiry by most able scientists the concept of time still harbours mystery, which is the theme of these recent podcasts: 

• David Albert: A Masterclass on Time's Arrow
• What is Time? Stephen Wolfram's New Groundbreaking Theory

We all experience that time moves forward from a past over a now to a future, named as the Arrow of Time or 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Why does our life always move forward to a new day, never rewind to yesterday? Why are our lives irreversible? 

In terms of physics the question can be formulated as follows:

• Why can a macroscopical system based on reversible microscopical physical laws, be irreversible? 

Ludwig Boltzmann took on the challenge in the late 19th century opening the door to modern physics and after much struggle came up with an explanation in terms of statistics as a form of statistical mechanics based on Newtonian mechanics augmented with the throw of a dice. Forward motion of time is here favoured by being more probable than backward motion thus showing an Arrow of Time, as discussed by David Albert.

Stephen Wolfram presents another explanation in terms of computational irreducibility.

My own explanation exposed in detail on this blog, connects to Wolfram's in the sense that physics as computation is given preference, rather than the conventional view based on exact laws of physics. The basic idea is:

1. A physical system changes from one state to a next state through a computational process, which has finite precision and so involves some destruction of information (chopping of decimals).
2. If the complexity of the system increases under repetition of the process, the loss of information will be so big that reversal of is impossible.
3. A prime example is the development of turbulence in laminar fluid flow, which is irreversible. The laminar state cannot be recovered from the turbulent.  

For a popular exposition of this idea see The Clock and the Arrow.