10 August 2008
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01 July 2008
A quantum hypothesis - For a general theory of natural organisation
Abstract
Quantum theory has been developed into a Standard Model that has been highly successful in terms of accuracy, prediction and technological developments. Yet attempts to understand what is hidden beyond the experimental results have only led to various and conflicting interpretations. Although there is just one type of hidden variables approach to the quantum findings where a wide range of experimental results are accounted for in a determinate causal interpretation, and which includes a detailed description of quantum objects in motion that are both waves and particles with defined trajectories. Here we present an argument for and then a development of such a causal interpretation where a cause that would have non-local effects is indirectly represented by means of diagrams. We then find that this hypothesis can be supported by available large scale natural evidence of where such a cause could also be thought to act and we relate properties of a non-locally acting cause to Big Bang cosmological theory, observable astronomical findings and evidence of living organisms. We suggest how an experimentally testable prediction follows from the cosmological hypothesis and where this cosmology could be further developed and supported by a mathematically justified argument and further astronomical observation.
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Abstract………………………………..................................1
1. Initial argument for a non-locally acting cause…2
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1. Initial argument for a non-locally acting cause
Despite all the experimental findings of matter and radiant energy on the smallest scale, and all the methods found to describe these findings, from this evidence alone no effects upon quantum objects that may be described as non-local need be thought to occur on the world beyond the experimental results. These being effects that, unlike those of any force, would not vary in any way at any distance between objects. While the thought could be that even if they do occur then no details could be described of any cause of non-local effects. And especially because these effects that are described as resulting from the entanglement of quantum objects in composite states can only be described in terms of correlations between quantum components rather than any measurable strength of effect. And yet we can that consider all these findings imply that a further cause needs to act with a certain general property that would be unlike that of any force.
So the quantum evidence indicates that matter consists almost all of the space between its subatomic components which are each surrounded by powerful forces that act at a distance between these components, and atoms and molecules are also resistant to disruption by the forces of pressure and collision acting upon them. Hence an initial hypothesis can reason that, while these forces act so as to attract or repel these components or push or pull them, a further cause would need to act constantly just so as to conserve or maintain the atomic and molecular form and organisation of these components and despite the action of the forces.
The organisation conserved would therefore include, in particular, that indicated in quantum mechanics by the Schrödinger and Dirac equations and the Pauli exclusion principle, which describe quantum wave and spin behaviour as organisation required of the subatomic components of matter to account for the visible and chemical properties of the various elements and compounds. So that these wave and spin properties would be behaviour produced and conserved by the further cause.
Also, if it acts universally with a form and organisation conserving property, this cause could conserve the subatomic components themselves as discrete material objects given that, according to the equation E = mc², all matter is energy. For the question arises as to how all this energy can be confined in these components of matter.
Then we can also reason that, unlike any force, a form conserving cause would not act by pushing or pulling or
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attracting or repelling objects. Hence if it acted at a distance, the effects of such a cause would possess no measurable strength that could reduce or cease with increasing distance and so could act without varying at any distance between objects. That the mechanical description of quantum behaviour implies such action as an invariable correlation at a distance between subatomic components of matter was first pointed out in detail in 1935 in a paper by Albert Einstein et alia (EPR).[1] For these correlations are describable where the measured property of the behaviour of one quantum component is necessarily related at a distance to the measured property of another component in what are called composite or singlet states. So that in describing atomic and molecular organisation the Pauli principle requires that there should be such states between the subatomic components.
The EPR paper concluded that ‘no reasonable definition of reality’ would allow such a connection at a distance between objects, and so a quantum mechanics that implied these correlations must be an incomplete account of quantum behaviour; whereas in a complete quantum theory there would be no such implications. However, Irwin Schrödinger, who first devised a mathematical equation that accounted for the electron’s atomic behaviour in terms of a wave property, described EPR correlations as resulting from ‘quantum entanglement’ and regarded this as an essential distinguishing feature of quantum behaviour.
Then since 1972 many experiments have been carried out where the correlations could be measured at various large scale distances both between nuclear components of matter and between photons of light in entangled composite states, and just as described in the 1935 paper. These included the first experiments that measured EPR effects to occur at faster than the speed of light between photons at a distance of 18 metres,[2] and a similar experiment where the correlations were measured over 10.9 kilometres.[3] While the thought can be that these composite states can be measured because a relationship of quantum behaviour, such as the ‘spin-up’ in relation to ‘spin-down’ of protons or electrons, or the different directions of polarisation of photons, remain in these relationships despite the effects of experimental measurements.
The details of these behavioural relationships need not be described in this hypothesis. It is sufficient to conclude that the
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Pauli principle is an indication of how for atoms and molecules to possess their visible and chemical properties their subatomic components need to be organised at a distance in relation to one another. So that given our form and organisation conserving causal hypothesis we can propose that such singlet or composite behavioural relationships between or amongst quantum objects can be measured in experiments because a distinct cause acts at a distance so as to conserve them.
But then there is the problem that if EPR effects occur at super-luminary speeds, they would at least appear to contravene the principles of relativity theory. Moreover, there are widely accepted interpretations of the quantum evidence which consider that none of the findings that are detected and measured in experiments need correspond to what occurs in the world beyond the experimental results: the quantum wave, spin and entanglement being behaviour that is both unobservable from objects in motion and indeterminate. Thus such behaviour is actually measured to obey a systematic and universal principle of indeterminacy, often called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (HUP). Also, a mathematically very detailed and successful account of the observable evidence, called quantum field theory (QFT), has been developed without needing to describe any further cause that could only be described from its effects from any of the results of quantum experiments. And then one could just ask: what could cause anything to occur that has no measurable strength, surely any cause would need to have some strength to produce any effect at all?
So these are all factors that can provide reasons to conclude that matter and radiation is just, somehow, self-organising or that, since there seems to be nothing that causes the particular results of quantum experiments, the universe experienced is just one amongst an indefinite number of worlds elsewhere that are organised differently or need not display much or any organisation. Or else, especially in a mathematically detailed development of QFT in a unified theory of the four forces that act at a distance, there could be found hidden properties of these known causes and of quantum objects to sufficiently explain the findings described by quantum mechanics.
Whereas firstly we can hold that from the fact that indeterminacy can be described from the observable and
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measurable results of quantum experiments it does not necessarily follow that the actual unobservable behaviour of quantum objects is itself indeterminate. But rather HUP could just describe a systematic limitation in the accuracy of measurements that can be made from the results of any quantum experiment, while the actual quantum behaviour beyond the experimental results could be determined and of a definite form. Secondly, although several attempts have been made to prove the impossibility of any theory that accounts for the observable results in terms of the unobservable or hidden variable behaviour of quantum objects in motion,[4] such proofs have been shown to be invalid.[5] And third we find that indeterminate interpretations result in a seemingly irresolvable logical and philosophical problem of measurement. [6] Then finally we can point out that a mathematically detailed, determinate, so-called non-local hidden variables account has actually been developed that is consistent with a wide range experimental results, and where no insoluble measurement problem need arise.[7]
This alternative quantum mechanical account has been called the de Broglie-Bohm Interpretation (de B-BI) or Bohmian Mechanics, and which does feature a distinct additional cause that can only be described from its effects, which is called the quantum potential. The term ‘non-local’ is used to distinguish such causation from that of all the forces that act at a distance, which can all be described as acting locally in fields that surround objects. So that gravity and electromagnetism are measured to reduce in strength according to the inverse square of the distance around objects and the nuclear strong and weak forces have no measurable strength beyond the atomic nucleus.
Whereas in de B-BI a non-locally acting cause is described that possesses no measurable strength and so could act without varying over any distance and, as we have deduced, could be true if a further cause acted just so as to conserve the natural form and organisation of matter and radiation. While given the action of such a cause, that could produce the quantum wave and spin properties and the EPR correlations, there need be no such measurement problem as the ‘collapse of the wave function’[8], nor need the jumps between energy levels that can be described of the behaviour of electrons as atomic components be regarded as discontinuous, as in the orthodox quantum mechanics.[9]
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Also, whereas just from the measurable results of various experiments, orthodox quantum mechanics can only describe quantum objects as possessing either wave or particle properties, de B-BI can account for these results by mathematically and diagrammatically describing in detail how each quantum object could be both a particle and possess an accompanying extended wave property while in motion.[10] The conclusion can then be that no measurement, calculation or mathematical formula would be sufficient to definitely show that or, in enough detail, how this quantum potential affects the behaviour matter or radiant energy.
However, this lack of measurable properties could be thought more to account for the fact that QFT could be developed in so much mathematical detail without such a cause being described and as a crucial reason for the existence of such causation not being generally recognised in modern physics, rather than as a sufficient reason to deny that a cause with non-local effects could act so as to conserve the form and organisation of matter and radiation.
So that, in what follows, we shall initially assume that a determinate non-local causal interpretation such as de B-BI is valid to find reasons to consider that a quantum hypothesis can be developed that is found to require, rather than measurement and mathematical formulae, the use of appropriate diagrams to represent the way in which a non-locally acting cause could relate in space in producing its effects and also the form that this causation could take to produce quantum wave behaviour. Then from this hypothesis reasons are found to consider that such a cause acts in the natural world on a larger scale, and firstly by considering various astronomical findings and a currently well developed cosmological theory of such findings, and finally we relate our diagrammatic hypothesis to general evidence of living organisms.
Apart from the geometry of spatial relationships no mathematics is used anywhere in this account, but we consider that mathematical calculations - and more observational evidence - could be used to further develop and support a consistent and comprehensive cosmological theory, and that the account of living organisms given here could be expanded in much more detail.
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