Naty1 said:
Two things wrong with this statement: First, Neither Marcus nor I said 'fields don't exist'. Second, there is no proof that 'fields' are the only way to construct theoretical models. As an example, general relativity is not a field theory, but rather rather a geometrical theory. We use field theory because it provides really good predictions...see below.
In QM the Schrodinger wave equation describes the continuous time evolution of a system's wave function and is deterministic. However, the relationship between a system's wave function and the observable properties of the system appear to be non-deterministic. An early viewed detection involved 'collapse of the wavefunction' upon detection, a more modern perspective newer view is 'decoherence'. There are subtleties between the two that have been at least partially dissected in these forums.
I'm guessing you did not read the link I posted previously to WHAT IS A PARTICLE. If you read that extensive discussion, you will begin to understand how complex and subtle the definition and detection of quantum fields is...in fact one can not directly detect them. One detects 'particles', the local observable quanta.
Than going by your critics, gravity does not exist either because none can detect it, only its effects on surrounding environment/space, Earth electromagnetic field does not exist because none can actually detect it, because you only see/detect its effects, not the electromagnetic field/energy itself!
There is obviously something wrong with this reasoning, because there no doubt there is gravity there, there is no doubt that there are electromagnetic fields including Earth's own EM field (EM=electromagnetic).
Even when you have electrically neutral atoms, there is still energy and electromagnetic energy (and force).
Even our bodies have EM fields, everything basically, and gravity is the reason
Let's have one example: Gravity affects space-that alone directly 100% proves that space alone is not truly empty, something that is truly empty cannot be affected by anything, let alone gravity.
Which means every point of space is full of energy of course, this is only visible/detectable/measurable from sub-atomic level to below that level, the point here there is no such thing a s absolute nothingness (there is always something) and the fact you have space-space itself is something, not nothing, nothing means nothing!
Completely empty space would not be able to create/destroy anything in the first place, because it is completely empty-no energy no nothing, there would be no fuel/energy to start the process and to start activity and to start doing any kind of work in the first place-so no there is no such thing as completely empty space as well as there is no such thing as absolute nothingness!
You always have to have space and energy to start with in the first place.
I'm actually sure that when Lawrence Krauss said that universe came from nothing, he meant universe came from quantum fluctuations (again this is not nothing), and quantum fluctuations did not come from nothing as shown in popular books from Hawking, Greene and similar physicists, the very fact quantum fluctuations (includes virtual particles/anti-particles) are created and annihilated proves they did not come from nothing/nothingness, but from some energy or energy field (even if the quantum field theory is somehow wrong).
The same reason why the Big Bang did not come from nothing:
I took this from another forum:
"It's important to distinguish the philosophical definition of nothing from the scientific definition of nothing. Empirically, nothing means you are talking about non-existence. The quantum vacuum/quantum void is devoid of particles but is a physical object that still has energy, pressure, and also exist in different energy states. The philosophical definition of nothing is a universal negation. This negation includes logic, universal laws, and ideas as well. This means that nothing (philosophically) would include the negation of even the ontology of a quantum vacuum/quantum void.
When Krauss talks about nothing he is speaking empirically about very specific objects non-existence in a space and is not truly talking about nothing.
We don't know and we can't know. There essentially was no "before" the Big Bang as far as we are concerned. Obviously we are concerned about it, because we can speculate and imagine, but that is about all we can do.
As for the universe coming from "nothing" that isn't true in a literal sense. There is absolutely no such thing as "nothing" to begin with. The "the universe came from nothing" stuff is glossing over the details to convey that the time and space we know began with the Big Bang, and other time and other space that existed before the Big Bang that created our universe, that is not part of our universe and is not really operable from within it. Meaning time and space before the Big Bang, it is classified as nothing to us, but it's not literally nothing, because this time and space before the Big Bang is simply, just unknown to us forever.
How that compares with the magazine article mentioned in this discussion, "Getting Around the Uncertainty Principle..", will be difficult to tell because even the title of the article is silly. The language seems pop science rather than science, but maybe there IS something unique and different in their work. If so, it should appear in peer reviewed scientific journals.
As far as I know, Scientific American is serious, scientific magazine, and you do know that every time an article is published in any scientific magazine is peer-reviewed, so Scientific American is trustworthy, however, everyone need to read deep every word in it I bet you'll see that's not what they are saying (the same thing with the temperature with absolute zero thing-which was not really below absolute zero at all).
MPV's post is correct:
HUP says nothing about making two concurrent measurements, it addresses similarly prepared systems and the statistical distribution of the resulting measurements. Here are two other posts from the WHAT IS A PARTICLE discussion which I believe are accurate: [slightly edited by me]Meopemuk:
Stoer:
Ok, big thanks for this, but all I'm saying you can't have nothing, you'll always have some kind of undetectable energy or energy field (and that requires space to exist in the first place because, everything requires and actually has diameter, size and volume to exist/that exists in the first place, no matter how big and how small/tiny something is) as described above, that's all.
However, Casimir's effect irrefutably proved there is no such thing as completely empty space no matter what size does it have.
Cheers and big thanks for this explanation and for the posts that Meopemuk and Stoer posted and explained regarding fields and other hypothetical terms in physics.
That's all, big thanks again.
