Recent content by bhobba

Those who have studied Weinberg's three-volume Quantum Theory of Fields would likely disagree. Yes, there is much we do not know, but we certainly know some profound and surprising things, for example, that everything, as far as we can tell today, is a Quantum Field. Thanks Bill

On some forums (eg the QM interpretations forum), it is recognised that some leeway is sometimes needed. One can always send a note to a mentor and see if an exception can be made. We discuss STEM here, and rules are meant to help with that, not hinder it. Thanks Bill

Well, picked up Peter. Of course, you are correct. Thanks Bill

Any interpretation could be true. The reason there are so many is that QM is outside everyday experience, so we have no intuition to fall back on. That said, my suggestion, and I know beginners and those with an interest in what QM is telling us don't like, is not to worry about...

There certainly is. Well worth one's time. Thanks Bill

Your name here, renormalize, holds the key, as I think you probably know. In QFT, early on, there was a deep problem. We kept getting infinity. Okay - we examine the math and see that improper integrals lead to the problem, i.e., an integral to infinity gives infinity. You can get a finite...

You miss the point of why I started this thread. Particles are not fundamental; they emerge from fields. For fields, the question is meaningless. While not directly related to the position question, another point was that QFT is more or less inevitable once certain general assumptions, such...

They are. But before undertaking that journey, learn QM to the level of Ballentine. Then, when examining interpretations, you will find many, while not wrong, that miss the point. According to Ballentine, you only really need two postulates (there are others, but they naturally follow; it is...

This is not, strictly speaking, a discussion of interpretations per se. We often see discussions based on QM as it was understood during the early days and the famous Einstein-Bohr debates. The problem with this is that things in QM have advanced tremendously since then, and the 'weirdness'...

Indeed. We now know the real issue is how the classical world of everyday experience emerges. Once the chain in the thought experiment is commonsense classical, there is no issue, and that occurs prior to the detector. After that, there is no mystery. To be fair, it is a good thought...

Hi All SSDs have become incredibly fast and are now really affordable. My dirt-cheap (I have seen it as low as $78.00 here in Aus when on sale) Silicon Power 1TB SSD, as tested with CrystalDiskMark, achieves over 7 GB/s read and slightly less write speed. Their reliability, however, is not...

Renormalisation was once seen as mathematical trickery, but several physicists, such as Wilson and Weinberg, clarified what was happening in the effective field theory approach. I have posted it before, but that new paradigm has changed how physicists look at combining QM and GR...

With my moderator's hat on, please no 'd**k measuring' contests. Let's discuss the physics. These things can often be found in the person's profile. Thanks Bill

It is simply that we know standard QM is wrong, eg it predicts the hydrogen states are stationary, so can't jump between them. Yet they do. Interpreting it may be fun and help with interpreting the correct theory (which, as far as we can tell these days, is QFT that explains why the hydrogen...

You need to become acquainted with Wigner's No-Interaction Theorem. It explains both why fields must exist and why they most definitely are local. The correct setting to discuss all this stuff is QFT, and it is a fruitful area of active research - but difficult and complex with several open...