How does science progress? An assessment from the twenty-first century

The twentieth century was the century of change, as technological innovation created unparalleled progress. Science came to be viewed as the only possible tool capable of solving the problems of modern man. Radical and groundbreaking ideas, such as general relativity or quantum mechanics literally started a new framework of understanding and a wave of discoveries. But even for physicists, it was difficult to accept these radical concepts at first. Even Einstein and Schrodinger have struggled with quantum mechanics, and an experimental proof was necessary for a full acceptance of general relativity.

But how does science progresses? Accumulation of scientific data prepares the stage for rare conceptual jumps. However, uncertainty in a field often leads to consideration of unreasonable solutions. For example, in the nineteen-century aether was invented to explain the spread of gravity and electromagnetism. Radical ideas test the accepted vision of reality, which attracts few practitioners. The Pioneers have to fight against the old ideas at every level to get their voice heard. However, once accepted, the theory becomes a magnet. Scientists eagerly flood to the field to explore and develop it further. The new approach can be cross-examined against accepted traditional understanding, exponentially increasing its applicability and importance. With concerted effort, a more detailed picture of the field emerges, and lead to new discoveries. The new field develops in leaps and bounds, as the hypothesis is exploited in countless applications within related disciplines. As the theory becomes a common understanding among scientists, the field stabilizes around its rules, and methods, which gradually reduces the field's flexibility. Here and there some experiments begin to question the basic understanding of the theory. However, the well-developed field shows rigidity to new ideas and resist change. Tests that do not support, or might contradict the theory, are packaged with increasingly fantastic, extravagant explanations. 

The ideas that led to great jumps in scientific thinking have often come from outside, from someone who is not bound by the restraints of a traditional understanding of the field. For example, Galileo was a college dropout, Goldbach was an amateur mathematician, Einstein a patent clerk and Michael Faraday, a pioneer of electromagnetism, was a bookseller. Satyendra Nath Bose, a mathematician, published in theoretical physics and made deep studies in chemistry, zoology, and anthropology. Bosons are named in his honor. Leibniz was a lawyer and a diplomat but remembered from his studies in mathematics, physics, and technology. Green's theorem is named after George Green, who introduced and formulated a mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism with only one year of formal education.  

The beginning of the twenty-first century is a chaotic time in physics. Quantum mechanics is still just as unapproachable toward traditional logic as it was in Einstein's day and its mysterious implications became the more baffling, the more one tries to understand it. Unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics is still nowhere in sight. An increasing number of problems cannot be explained by the Standard Model. The Higgs boson was the answer to Standard Model's inability to explain particle mass. The 40 years search culminated in finding an enormously massive a bump, but even after five years, nothing more (such as mass) has been found out about the particle. However, inconsistencies with the Standard Model was not remedied by this hugely publicized finding. The Higgs boson is a particle (or particles) of a Higgs field that grants mass via interaction. The proposed operation is immensely complex and hard to understand even for physicists. Do we really need such a complicated mechanism in the twenty-first century, when people's attention span is short even for television? The twenty-first century is beginning to look like the end of the nineteen century, where an aether-like medium is now called the Higgs field. Theoretical physics is waiting for a new, radical idea.

Some new ideas about physical reality and a possible path toward unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics are presented in my book, find it on Amazon.

Copyright © 2017 by Eva Deli

Emotions are the elementary forces of the mind

In the words of French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucauld, "if we resist our passion, it is more due to their weakness than our strength." Emotions also play a significant role in intellectual abilities because feelings-based decision-making is far superior to artificial intelligence. Yet, while the essential function of recognizing a person is within a range of artificial capabilities, emotions remain elusive. 

For example, the emotional nature of memories enables a dog to stay away from someone who mistreated him. Emotions are subjective, but their extraordinary decision-making power can help distinguish the perpetrator's face from the police lineup, recognize our childhood home, or the overture of a classical opera. Feelings make consciousness an incomputable process, utterly different from the physical processes accompanying it. Therefore, not only the blind but all emotional creatures 'feel' their way around.

Of course, what is scientifically very difficult to propose and prove, philosophers and artists intuitively knew for a long, long time. For example, music is an international language that communicates emotions. We can identify with a Chinese folk song or an Italian opera aria via the feelings they convey. Because music expresses sentiments, it can talk about love but never about the stock market or the global economy. 

Emotions are not evolutionary accidents but the primary motivation and survival tools of the animals that have them. With them, dangers can be overcome, and opportunities found. We are good, generous, and trusting because of our emotions. On the other hand, we betray others, commit a crime, and feel remorse because of them. Emotions are much more powerful than we acknowledge, and we cannot even recognize the extent they play in our lives because we identify with them. Therefore, emotions are the fundamental forces of motivation. The book the science of consciousness discusses the many consequences of this fact for mental operation. 

Sign up for my mailing list to never miss a post. 

Copyright © 2014 by Eva Deli

The nature of entanglement and Schrodinger's cat

Schrodinger's cat by Dhatfield

Quantum mechanics is unapproachable for traditional logic, and its mysterious implications become the more baffling, the more one tries to understand it. The phenomenon of interference has proven the particle's existence as a wave, but when someone tries to spy on it by measurement, the particle behaves like a stiff ball, losing its every ability for interference, as if the fact of our stepping into the bathtub would turn the water into ice! For a meaningful discussion about these mind-boggling behaviors the basic qualities, such as the spin of matter particles need to be examined. Spin is a unique, conserved quality reflecting the energy balance of the particle during measurement. For this reason, only up or down spin direction can be distinguished. Particles form one energy state, one common wave function, even if they appear separated over great distances, even millions of light years. Sister particles polarize to become complementary and separate spins states due to measurement (examination). The Bell theorem states that faster-than-light communication would be necessary to connect distant entangled particles. Einstein resisted the idea and he sought a more in-depth explanation in the particle's wavefunction. According to string theory, particle waves occupy an energetically separate, microdimensional space, which is insulated from gravity. The shared wave function of the particle now can exist across the whole universe and form entanglement over the vast distances of space. Such particles are connected as umbilical twins, who depend for their own state on their entangled twin. However, this connection does not permit the exchange of instant messages. Being insulated from the outside, the information of entangled particles is hidden until the time of the measurement. As a consequence, during a quantum process, unknown information is transmitted and manipulated until analysis. Unknown information has no ‘information’ value.

Entanglement between remote systems has been verified in many and increasingly complex experiments. In 2012 Israeli scientist could even produce entanglement between photons that never coexisted. By entanglement swapping, they entangled one of each photon pair, which was separated in time. By creating the second pair of photons only after detection of the first one, temporal entanglement was achieved. Just like our email can be checked from any computer anywhere in the world thanks to the internet, the particle exists in limitless freedom can be quickly recovered at any part of the universe. The information embedded in the particle is conserved until interaction, which is the particle’s next time moment. By disturbing the particle, you reformulate the wave function and bring forth the next time moment....ending entanglement.

Shrödinger’s cat is a mind-bending puzzle of physics. Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought-experiment takes a cat as a stand-in for a quantum particle. Schrödinger’s cat, just like a particle seems to be in a quantum limbo, until the box is intact. The box indeed plays the most critical role in these experiments, only the size of the box is mistaken. The box is none other than the particle's insulated wave function! The particle’s standing waves hide their energy until “measurement” (interaction) takes place. As if these waves were frozen in time until prodded into existence, standing waves do not transfer energy and cannot be experienced until measurement, or interaction. Interaction translates the microdimensional powers by depolarizing the particle into up- or down-spin. Out of infinite possibilities, measuring brings forth the most frugal (stationary) action.

In everyday life, things seem to be around all the time. Even if we do not look at it, we know that the moon is there. Existence, however, is dependent on the exuberant activity of the micro world. The moon and everything else continually reformulate itself in the violent, incessant interactions of the quantum world. The Pauli exclusion principle forces the continuous, endless interaction on the material world. The net result of these activities is constant aging due to change, making growing old an inherent and inalienable part of existence.

The slit experiment entails a photon (or any other particle) that has to pass through one or several slits on its way to a screen. It has been found that a single photon can pass through several slits at the same time and thus interfere with itself. How is it possible? For a time-independent quantum wave, it is possible to spread widely to pass through the slits and interfere. However, a detector, which is placed at one of the slits triggers interaction and ushers in the next time moment (decoherence). The next time moment instantly terminates the whole particle's ability for interference. To get more mind-bending ideas, sign up for my mailing list or find my book on Amazon.

 

Copyright © 2017 by Eva Deli