Question about results of double slit experiment

[KyrieEleison17]

When you were at school and worked out the position of the Earth around the Sun in physics class, you would have treated the Earth and Sun as point particles, because all you need to know are their centers of gravity for most calculations.

No we just treated the Earth’s position as a point.

Inocente I have to ask you at this point - how old are you? You consistently show an incapacity to differentiate between your imagination or mental visualizations and an intellectual concept that can’t be visualized by it’s very nature. You keep collapsing the two.

A point has no dimensions; if it ever did, then you could posit points on a point. This is not hard to figure out. That you went to a school where your teachers didn’t know the difference didn’t mean everyone did. I was taught that a point has no dimensions. This is why if we divide a line at, say, its mid-point, we don’t lose any total length.

It’s more difficult to get with an elementary particle because the world at that tiny scale is outside our everyday experience.

And so are cells. But we don’t see cells doing things that require fundamental concepts to be chucked out the window for a bunch of nonsensical woo-woo.

But the chips in your computer and mobile phone could not be designed, and certainly wouldn’t work, if the knowledge didn’t work so it’s a bit freaky to see you using a computer to say it’s an evasion.

Guess what inocente - you could also give the times and dates of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena using the Ptolemaic model of the universe; so it’s a bit freaky to see you talking about calculating the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

 

[KyrieEleison17]

Yes there was a reason. I was trying to explain, to myself, why something happens the way it does. Which was Everything.
The vibrating string explains einsteins ‘spooky effect at a distance’. Because the string is ‘non-elastic’ it provides the vehicle to produce the spooky effect. The photons are separated by a distance, say from the sun to the earth, but the characteristics of the photon on the sun are transferred to the photon on earth instantly. No time is required for the two photons to communicate with each other.
So the string provides that instant communication between them. Tap one end of the string and the other end instantly responds, no time passes. And the string goes on to provide the vehicle for the traveling photon energy packets and their wave-like property.
The vibrating string also explains why there is light at all. As light is now just the result of the imparting of extra energy into a system of subparticles connected by strings. The extra, un-needed, energy vibrates continually between all particles.

The strings, annoyingly are both analogy and a real part of the mechanics of the idea. But it would be a mistake to see them as substance. And a mistake to see them as a metaphor because they have a real effect.
I think the idea of detecting vibrating tensions at the extremities of the strings is valid. It might be that you’d find that photons and other ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum are the detectable results of the vibrating tensions at the extremities.

1. Where they came from is answered by saying they are the mechanical reason for sub-particles. If you can imagine two strings directly opposite each other, then, where they have joined there is a sub-particle.
2. The question of how they got there is the same question as why does the universe expand, the strings extend to the edge of the universe and are rushed along away from their opposite number by the expanding universe.
3. what generates them is the rate of acceleration of the expansion of the universe. As well as the fact of the geometric expansion of the universe itself, as in, its surface increases with distance.
4. Some of these questions have received on and off attention for some time. Destroying them would be problematic as its in their very nature to exist. But I think that sticking a particle to the surface of the universe, though that sounds strange, I think that that might result in those related strings collapsing and ceasing to exist.
   Can the strings be altered, you ask? Every time you add energy to a system of atoms, as in if you hit something with a hammer, you are in effect speeding up the expansion of the universe for those particular strings because they are now vibrating with extra energy which means that technically they are longer because the vibration moves the string while the atoms must remain in the same place. So to get rid of this potential anomaly of increasing the speed of the expanding universe the imparted extra energy is pushed throughout the wider system instantly first as the spooky effect at a distance and a little later the actual extra energy wave manifests itself as, lets say, a photon of light emitted from the nearest particle to be excited by the wave.
   Incidentally this also explains how a photon can be detected through a slit screen by passing through the slits to the side of the screen when the direct and shortest route for the photon through the center slit is blocked. The photon apparently has to turn at the offset slit and search for the detector.
   But in Paddy’s theory all particles are always connected by strings so that even when the direct shortest line of sight path for the photon is blocked it, the wave packet traveling along the string between the particle, will then choose the next shortest route to the detector. This is because the particles are still connected by strings even though there is a screen between them. The photon travels on strings between particles.

That is a good deal to mull over! Thank you for sharing and explaining the idea. Sounds very interesting.

What seems to be the crux here is this observation of apparently FTL communication between photons. Therefore there seems to be some need for some mechanism in the universe that can facilitate this granting Einstein’s arguments that nothing can travel faster than light without violating it.

Paddy’s Theory of Everything goes on and on to explain Everything, including; What is gravity?; What is the electroweak and electrostrong force?; What is an electron? What is the electrons magnetic moment? and, What is the Grand Theory that explains Everything, altogether? plus any questions relating to the above.

Lol now that is quite an undertaking!

 

[Aloysium]

. . . The photons are separated by a distance, say from the sun to the earth, but the characteristics of the photon on the sun are transferred to the photon on earth instantly. No time is required for the two photons to communicate with each other. . . .

If it were not for free-will, I might agree. The strings could be 4+D features of the universe. Things would take place instantaneously in the sense that all moments were one. A photon leaves the sun and its path is determined by everything that is going on influencing course. It leaves, the track is set - instant connection - 4D string.
But I can choose to step in the way of the light and it will land on me.

 

[weller2]

I was wondering how this was supposed to work also. I was a little worried that it was like another machine purporting to detect or take pictures of individual atoms

It’s called an atomic force microscope. You’re probably referring to work from IBM Zurich: zurich.ibm.com/st/atomic_manipulation/pentacene.html

• like the machine that presupposes a sharp tip that is a single atom at its end and that enables us to detect single atoms. I wondered how they managed to confirm their instrument’s tip was filed down to a single atom

Because they aren’t filed

chem.agilent.com/Library/slidepresentation/Public/AFM%20Probe%20ManufacturingNanoworld_tip_technologyPRussell07.pdf

 

[powerofk]

Honestly, I remember reading that the double-slit experiment was done not only on photons, but also on electrons. It was shown to prove the particle-wave duality of matter, IIRC. Of course, since electrons can teleport themselves (which is what an “electron jump” really is)… ugh. The thing with the law of quantum mechanics is that the “Why” can never really be known - and the field of quantum physics actually admits that. Honestly, that’s why it relies on probability waves - and the results match the mathematical equations. But how it works continues to be a mystery.

 

[weller2]

What seems to be the crux here is this observation of apparently FTL communication between photons.

But it does not allow for transmission of usable information curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=612 so Einstein’s postulates are not violated.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

If it were not for free-will, I might agree. The strings could be 4+D features of the universe. Things would take place instantaneously in the sense that all moments were one. A photon leaves the sun and its path is determined by everything that is going on influencing course. It leaves, the track is set - instant connection - 4D string.
But I can choose to step in the way of the light and it will land on me.

An analogy might be those old executive toys, you know the ones with the steel ball-bearings in a line each attached by a string to a rod above them. You pull one back on one end let it go and as soon as it hits instantly the bearing on the other end jumps away by much the same distance. A string between particles could transmit information to another photon in much the same way with no time passing…

Yes you can step in the way… it does not matter. The photon only transmits its information via the string initially, but the actual energy wave of the photon has not yet arrived at the other photon because of the vast distance between them, relatively speaking. So the second photon is just a ‘virtual’ photon in one sense but it is also a ‘real’ photon in another sense because it really does take the exact characteristics of the first photon instantly, before the first arrives.
The actual photon in itself is the wave of energy that passes along the string through time. But it can land anywhere that is connected to it by strings. Where the actual photon wave lands, is simply the closest particle to it which can accept its energy.
The reason that the actual photon wave is not transmitted instantly as opposed to the instant communication of the actual photons characteristics is that no energy is transmitted by the string until the photon wave actually arrives. And without that extra energy in the atom which is receiving the strings information no extra energy, in the form of a real photon, can be released from the atom. The atom, even though it now has the information instantly, must wait for the actual extra energy wave of the photon to arrive. And so, you can put your body in its path and the closest available atom in your body will receive that extra energy wave, namely what we call the photon.

…Its terribly simple…

 

[inocente]

Did I say he never made mistakes? Who are you talking to in your post? Certainly it’s not me. People can’t have a conversation with you if you are just talking to yourself the whole time. Please actually read the substance of my post. I actually criticized you for a superficial reading of Saint Thomas and then you prove your habit in your response right here by doing the same thing to me.

Please stop wagging your finger in my face, we’ve not met before and this is not a wild west barroom. Read the stickies if you’ve not done so.

You went to great lengths (my word-processor tells me 550 words) to make excuses for Thomas, but while you may personally wish to be pious over him, he was a philosopher and this is a philosophy forum.

Now let’s rewind and start again. Hi, I’m inocente, pleased to meet you.

Okay. But ultimately they have to be responsible for the macro level of evidence or else there would be no point in studying them if they had no bearing on daily life or reality. Scientific theories are supposed to provide explanations for how the world works and the phenomena we experience.

I don’t see what that has to do with what I said, that “elementary particles are so tiny that their behavior is completely outside our normal experience”.

*This is like saying that because something is super, super, super big … like bigger than Texas, then you can’t think of how big it is, conceptualize it or even visualize it. But we can visualize or imagine objects on any scale. It’s quite easy actually. I can’t visualize something that is infinite as that would immediately mean giving it some finite form; but it is possible to grasp the concept and implications of the infinite or something’s being infinite.

We can mentally picture or represent any bodily thing on any scale. *

Some species of birds see more colors than us. We can’t imagine what those extra colors look like. This is kind of basic stuff about philosophy of mind here.

That’s nice inocente but I will leave it to the scientists actually studying the phenomena to determine how they should be properly conceived based on their behaviour as demonstrated in experiments and based on evidence. Presently photons are seen to sometimes act like waves and other times like particles.

What’s with the patronizing condescension?

It appears you can’t know much about this topic if you don’t even know that what I said is how scientists speak of these phenomena.

Here’s the introductory chapter on quantum behavior from a standard undergraduate text: “Quantum mechanics” is the description of the behavior of matter in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen."

This is one of my concerns about modern dogmatic science. It will attack the Church for frustrating scientific development but then they will turn around and dictate how you must think about any scientific problem when the evidence is open and inconclusive because it makes them uncomfortable to draw conclusions or speculate outside their box.

You think there are no Catholic scientists?

Thomas could understand the basics of elementary particles, atoms or corpuscules. He was a trained philosopher and familiar with the concepts at least from the history of philosophy. Maybe if you bothered to know a thing or two about Saint Thomas rather than making caricatures of his thinking or arguments you wouldn’t utter such patent nonsense.

More ad hominem. What is it with you and these unwarranted personal attacks?

Learn something, anything, of physics and you will see that there’s no way Thomas could have understood anything at all about elementary particles.

More dogma and now you’re even on the verge of superstition. But I suppose it depends on what you understand by common sense. I understand rational and logical by it. I understand that however the microscopic layers of physical reality work, they have to conform to and explain what we actually see and experience, otherwise they would have no connection to reality and couldn’t possibly serve any practical use or purpose. But I can’t keep you from thinking reality is magical and illogical but I certainly don’t have to personally accept it. This is not a Disney movie.

Ask yourself a question: to learn something, do you think it is better to be arrogant and have a closed mind, or to have some humility and an open mind?

Now you obviously know next to nothing about this topic and I don’t have the time to fix your many misconceptions, so I’ll meet you on another thread. Merry Christmas.

 

[inocente]

No we just treated the Earth’s position as a point.

Inocente I have to ask you at this point - how old are you? You consistently show an incapacity to differentiate between your imagination or mental visualizations and an intellectual concept that can’t be visualized by it’s very nature. You keep collapsing the two.

A point has no dimensions; if it ever did, then you could posit points on a point. This is not hard to figure out. That you went to a school where your teachers didn’t know the difference didn’t mean everyone did. I was taught that a point has no dimensions. This is why if we divide a line at, say, its mid-point, we don’t lose any total length.

And so are cells. But we don’t see cells doing things that require fundamental concepts to be chucked out the window for a bunch of nonsensical woo-woo.

Guess what inocente - you could also give the times and dates of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena using the Ptolemaic model of the universe; so it’s a bit freaky to see you talking about calculating the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

Read the stickies, you’ll get yourself reported if you can’t post with civility and charity.

 

[inocente]

inocente;11520139:

Paddy’s Theory of Everything goes on and on to explain Everything, including; What is gravity?; What is the electroweak and electrostrong force?; What is an electron? What is the electrons magnetic moment? and, What is the Grand Theory that explains Everything, altogether? plus any questions relating to the above.

Lol now that is quite an undertaking!

I never said that. Paddy said it.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Did I say he never made mistakes? Who are you talking to in your post? Certainly it’s not me. People can’t have a conversation with you if you are just talking to yourself the whole time. Please actually read the substance of my post. I actually criticized you for a superficial reading of Saint Thomas and then you prove your habit in your response right here by doing the same thing to me.

Okay. But ultimately they have to be responsible for the macro level of evidence or else there would be no point in studying them if they had no bearing on daily life or reality. Scientific theories are supposed to provide explanations for how the world works and the phenomena we experience.

This is like saying that because something is super, super, super big … like bigger than Texas, then you can’t think of how big it is, conceptualize it or even visualize it. But we can visualize or imagine objects on any scale. It’s quite easy actually. I can’t visualize something that is infinite as that would immediately mean giving it some finite form; but it is possible to grasp the concept and implications of the infinite or something’s being infinite.

We can mentally picture or represent any bodily thing on any scale.

That’s nice inocente but I will leave it to the scientists actually studying the phenomena to determine how they should be properly conceived based on their behaviour as demonstrated in experiments and based on evidence. Presently photons are seen to sometimes act like waves and other times like particles.

This is one of my concerns about modern dogmatic science. It will attack the Church for frustrating scientific development but then they will turn around and dictate how you must think about any scientific problem when the evidence is open and inconclusive because it makes them uncomfortable to draw conclusions or speculate outside their box.

Thomas could understand the basics of elementary particles, atoms or corpuscules. He was a trained philosopher and familiar with the concepts at least from the history of philosophy. Maybe if you bothered to know a thing or two about Saint Thomas rather than making caricatures of his thinking or arguments you wouldn’t utter such patent nonsense.

More dogma and now you’re even on the verge of superstition. But I suppose it depends on what you understand by common sense. I understand rational and logical by it. I understand that however the microscopic layers of physical reality work, they have to conform to and explain what we actually see and experience, otherwise they would have no connection to reality and couldn’t possibly serve any practical use or purpose. But I can’t keep you from thinking reality is magical and illogical but I certainly don’t have to personally accept it. This is not a Disney movie.

Pssst. Inocente thinks he/she is talking to me. He/she has a thing about Thomas, she thinks we ( me and those like me ) give him too much credit. Certainly he made mistakes but nothing major - well, perhaps his opinion of women was a little " Middle Ageish. "
But after the way his Mother treated him, perhaps that is excusable.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

Pssst. Inocente thinks he/she is talking to me. He/she has a thing about Thomas, she thinks we ( me and those like me ) give him too much credit. Certainly he made mistakes but nothing major - well, perhaps his opinion of women was a little " Middle Ageish. "
But after the way his Mother treated him, perhaps that is excusable.

Blaming his misogynism on a woman could be construed as misogynism.

But whatever the cause, a man who makes such huge errors in one area of reasoning could easily make them everywhere else.

“woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence;” - ST 1, 92, 1.

 

[Ben_Quincy]

Keep it charitable