Can Quantum Mechanics Be Taught Without Relying on Representations?

[SpectraCat]

This paper is mostly about the selection of data in 1919/20 and whether Eddington intentionally fudged the data, and argues that the latter was not the case.

On the other hand, my statement, and that of von Kluber, does not claim anything negative about Eddington. Acting in good faith, his final data (a few points on a curve) supported general relativity.

The point of von Kluber is that the data themselves were subject to inaccuracies depending on observational conditions, whose magnitude is of the same size as the effect itself, as subsequent repetitions of measurements at other eclipses show. This is a very different point hardly considered in the paper you cited. From the point of view of subsequent data analysis, these inacccuracies are noise, though as von Kluber shows in the first plot quoted before, the few points used by Eddington accidently didn't show this noisyness, while the many more points in subsequent measurement clearly revealed it.

Indeed, the paper mentions on p.25 a quote from Stephen Hawking's ''A brief history of time'' that says essentially the same as von Kluber and my book; thus I am in good company:

The subsequent discussion in the cited paper only refultes the second alternative offered by Hawking, ''or a case of knowing the result they wanted to get, not an uncommon occurrence in science'', not the first one, ''Their measurement had been sheer luck''. Indeed, on p.26 they mention that even in 1969, the data from eclipses were inconclusive:

and on p.23 that only data from radio astronomy are fully convincing:

Oh I know .. my suggestion was just that DA should familiarize himself with that paper before casting too many stones in your direction. I am quite familiar with the anecdotal representation of Eddington's experimental "confirmation" of general relativity being due to a fortuitous cancellation of errors in the analysis, since certain assumptions about the accuracies of the measurements were overly optimistic in the original analysis. However, I did not have a source for this information, but only the memory of the anecdote, which cropped up several times in different physics classes in college and grad school.

 

[SpectraCat]

This is just amazing and completely new info, I had never heard of H. von Kluber before.

I’m trying real hard to understand this... you and von Kluber are saying that the measurement in the picture below is just noise, right?

Since you are highly skilled in mathematics, what is the probability for the photons to (completely at random) form this kind of trail (in an exposure of 28 seconds), to be in perfect agreement with the general theory of relativity? That must have been a major fluke, doesn’t it??

DA, I missed this in your original post, but upon re-reading I think you are making a serious error in your interpretation of Eddington's photo. I don't think the "trail" in the photo has anything to do with the experiment, but is most likely a flaw in the original plate which was intensified during digitization of the image.

The experiment was all about comparing the relative positions of the stars in photos taken "simultaneously" at two distant locations on the Earth's surface. The star positions are indicated by the fainter horizontal lines that can be seen at various positions in the photograph. These positions correspond to the relative positions indicated in diagram 1 in Eddington's original paper. The "trail" that you are so focused on is also not nearly so evident in the plate reproduction in that paper. Certainly the curvature of that "trail" is not indicative of any gravitational lensing due to the sun.

 

[unusualname]

Could you please substantiate your claim? I am too curious how Zeilinger's experiments (with whcih I am familiar, being from Vienna) should contradict the thermal interpretation.

Please reply in the thread https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=490492
which exists just for these discussions.

Unable to reply there (it's locked), but a simple refutation of the 'thermal interpretation' is that your fields propagate at the speed of light so can't hope to explain experiments where detectors are placed outside future light cones of the other relevant apparatus, I posted a link to a particularly explicit experiment of this type in another thread Experimental realization of Wheeler's delayed-choice GedankenExperiment , but there are many others by people like Zeilinger etc

Standard QFT doesn't suffer since it doesn't naively associate the field with the particles 'ontologically' like you do.

 

[A. Neumaier]

Unable to reply there (it's locked),

Ah, yes, I had forgotten the precise date where they wanted to close down the forum on independent research...

but a simple refutation of the 'thermal interpretation' is that your fields propagate at the speed of light so can't hope to explain experiments where detectors are placed outside future light cones of the other relevant apparatus, I posted a link to a particularly explicit experiment of this type in another thread Experimental realization of Wheeler's delayed-choice GedankenExperiment , but there are many others by people like Zeilinger etc

I think you misinterpret the implications of such experiemnts.

The arXiv paper you cite contains nothing about superluminal effects. Delayed choice does not contradict relativity. (Read papers by Peres on classical interventions in quantum systems.)

Moreover, every quantum aspect of _single_ photons (as opposed to entangled pairs of photons) can be modeled in full quantitative detail by classical stochastic Maxwell equations; see http://arnold-neumaier.at/ms/optslides.pdf

Finally, Zeilinger didn't do any experiment allowing superluminal information exchange. Thus detectors are placed outside the future light cone of a source will not respond to that source.

Standard QFT doesn't suffer since it doesn't naively associate the field with the particles 'ontologically' like you do.

It doesn't suffer because, in agreement with experiment, it does not describe acausal dynamics.

 

[unusualname]

[quote="A. Neumaier]Moreover, every quantum aspect of _single_ photons (as opposed to entangled pairs of photons) can be modeled in full quantitative detail by classical stochastic Maxwell equations; see http://arnold-neumaier.at/ms/optslides.pdf[/quote]

No it can't. What you'll find is that your model ignores the non-classical aspect of the experiment but still claims to faithfully model the experiment.

You see, you'll model the experiment using maxwell's equations assuming no apparatus is outside the future light cone of any other apparatus. Then when I move my interferometer, polarizer, detector or whatever off to alpha centauri you'll just use the same analysis to still model the experiment. You'll claim something like sub-sampling explains it, ignoring the fact that the sub-samples are chosen by apparatus outside the future light-cone of the source.

I've been through this a dozen times, I'm pretty sure mainstream science agrees with me that maxwell's equations don't correctly model delayed choice experiments.

And in particular your ontological fields are ruled out by such experiments.

In any case, modern quantum physics is all about entanglement and even multi-particle entanglement, your interpretation is even more hopeless in explaining these experiments.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

In any case, modern quantum physics is all about entanglement and even multi-particle entanglement, your interpretation is even more hopeless in explaining these experiments.

Many thanks unusualname, very well said.

(Why on Earth would anyone spend time on "single particle entanglement"?? )