Seriously thoughtful In science we Trust.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Experimental results which don't match what you expected are what lead to advances in science. A classic example is the 1887 Michaelson-Morley experiment, the completely unexpected results of which triggered a revolution in physics.

I think it's a particular itch for sciences that proceed by means of statistical modelling. A statistically significant effect is observed and then that effect is further explored. However, I wonder whether the statistical significance that is attached to the effect is sometimes an artifact of the research process which excludes anomalous results - or explains them away. A particularly good example is brain research using fMRI scanning. The nice sexy pictures that get in the journal articles that appear to show particular bits of the brain "lighting up", are the result of filtering and manipulating thousands of data elements - if you put someone in a fMRI scanner and ask them to do anything at all their whole brain is activated and "lights up" - and it is the particular statistical manipulations the "reveal" the significant activations. If you run different statistical manipulations on the data you get different "activations".

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Absolutely. But that's what being a good scientist is all about. You come up with a theory, make predictions from it, and then perform experiments to see if those predictions are accurate. If they aren't, you revise your theory.

I imagine it must be more difficult in fields like neuro-science. Experiments are probably less reproducable than those in fields like physics.

Even physics these days...particularly in the String Theory area.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Well, with all due respect, what you've done so far is not science, so perhaps that's why nobody's taken you seriously.

What you need to do is to say "IF my theory is correct, THEN the result would be..." ie, use your theory to make a prediction that is experimentally testable, and then propose an experiment to test it. That is science.

The problem you'll face is that there are centuries of experiments which appear to indicate that the speed of light in vacuo is, in fact, constant. Among the simplest is something that you can do with any small telescope - time the mutual events of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter. The four major satellites of Jupiter all orbit in the plane of the planet's equator and are subject to a complex and ever-changing pattern of eclipses, occulations, transits of their shadows across the face of the planet, etc. These events can be easily predicted, but the time that we see them occur on Earth depends on long it takes the light to travel from Jupiter to us, which depends in turn on how far away Jupiter is from the Earth, something that's constantly changing as Jupiter and the Earth move in their respective orbits. Demonstrate convincingly that these events are not being seen "on schedule" due to a variable speed of light, and you've won a Nobel Prize for Physics.

So really, Ralph, the ball's entirely in your court. If you think that Maxwell's equations are incorrect, make an experimentally verifiable prediction.

With all due respect, I don't have a theory. I merely note that the mathematics of Maxwell's equations boundary conditions allow the possibility of C not being invariant. I also note that historically, the close correlation between Maxwell's boundary condition calculation of C and the measured value of C was considered a fact in favor of relativity (prior to the 1919 eclipse experiment).

I fully note that the natural universal background (permeability and permittivity) are constant. I merely note that since 1999, we have figured out a way to alter the permeability and permittivity artificially. Can this have an effect on C? The mathematics imply it. Should they not be tested? No matter what the experiment revealed, the result would be interesting.

If I had a few million on the side, I'd fund the experiment. as it is, I merely note it.

You know, from 1800 to 1895, everybody was certain light was a wave. It has been experimentally proven, again and again...

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

What about those particle pairs that change to match each other, so if one goes left, the other goes right (or something like that) regardless of how far apart they are - would that not work if they were either side of an event horizon? If it did would that not be considered transmission of information?

Preamble: Although (or maybe because ) I'm studying to be a physicist, I'm far from being an expert on this.
Intuitively and without having a look at the math involved, I'd guess that, since no information is permitted to escape the black hole, the entanglement would break the moment one of the particle passes across the event horizon.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Preamble: Although (or maybe because ) I'm studying to be a physicist, I'm far from being an expert on this.
Intuitively and without having a look at the math involved, I'd guess that, since no information is permitted to escape the black hole, the entanglement would break the moment one of the particle passes across the event horizon.

Wouldn't that contravene conservation laws - once the particle outside the event hoizon has been observed, collapsing it's probability into something definite (e.g. left spin); there would be nothing to neutralise it - there'd be a net energy gain?

Not that I know much about it - so I may be talking rubbish.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Wouldn't that contravene conservation laws - once the particle outside the event hoizon has been observed, collapsing it's probability into something definite (e.g. left spin); there would be nothing to neutralise it - there'd be a net energy gain?

Not that I know much about it - so I may be talking rubbish.

Entanglement is not about conservation of anything- it states, in short (and not absolutely correctly phrased), that, if you measure a quantum state of one of two entangled particles, the other particle will correspondingly collapse it's waveform. In laymans terms, if you measure something about the one particle, you can state, without measuring, what property the other particle is going to have.
Also, it's important to note that the act of measuring a quantum system doesn't change it's energy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

You know, from 1800 to 1895, everybody was certain light was a wave. It has been experimentally proven, again and again...

That's really not changed, though. Quantum mechanics describes a photon as an "energy function", but it can still perfectly satisfactorily be described as a wave, when you want to talk about its wave-like properties.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Entanglement is not about conservation of anything- it states, in short (and not absolutely correctly phrased), that, if you measure a quantum state of one of two entangled particles, the other particle will correspondingly collapse it's waveform. In laymans terms, if you measure something about the one particle, you can state, without measuring, what property the other particle is going to have.
Also, it's important to note that the act of measuring a quantum system doesn't change it's energy.

The Wikipedia artice says:
"When particles decay into other particles, these decays must obey the various conservation laws. As a result, pairs of particles can be generated that are required to be in certain quantum states."

If the entanglement breaks when one particle traverses an event horizon - wouldn't that mean one particle can be resolved while the other isn't?

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

The Wikipedia artice says:
"When particles decay into other particles, these decays must obey the various conservation laws. As a result, pairs of particles can be generated that are required to be in certain quantum states."

If the entanglement breaks when one particle traverses an event horizon - wouldn't that mean one particle can be resolved while the other isn't?

At the time of their creation, the particle duo must, of course, observe the conservation laws. At that time, to borrow from the example Wikipedia uses, you have two particles (= waveform functions) that posess an observable (which could be described as the quantum mechanical representation of a physical property), continuing to borrow from the example, let's consider spin. At this time, you cannot make a statement about the ((eigen-)value of the observable) spin of either particle. Now, if you measure just one of the particles, that particle's waveform will collapse into one of the states it's allowed to, let's say it is a particle with two spin eigenvalues (up and down), and it collapses into up. So, in short, we measured one particle to have a spin oriented up. Now, because these particles, at their creation, had to obey conservation laws, the second particle's wave function will, simultaneously with the first one's, collapse into a corresponding wavefunction in a way that all relevant laws are honored. Let's say the particles were created from a situation in which the total spin was zero, then you could, without making a second measurement, state that because you measured the first particle's spin to be up, the second particle's spin must then be down.

Edit to answer the second question as well: I'm actually not too sure about what would happen to the particles if the entanglement breaks. I think that, on one hand, the conservation laws still apply, but then you couldn't break the entanglement without collapsing both wavefunctions. If we apply this to the case of pushing one particle over the event horizon of a black hole, that would, I believe, constitute an information transfer, which is prohibited. The caveat is that I didn't think about what constitutes information, which is a little more complicated in these cases and is, I suspect, extremely relevant in this case.

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

What about those particle pairs that change to match each other, so if one goes left, the other goes right (or something like that) regardless of how far apart they are - would that not work if they were either side of an event horizon? If it did would that not be considered transmission of information?

No, because the "information" is not being transmitted.
You are talking about Bell's Inequality.

A superficial reading of the situation would fool one into thinking this could be used to transmit information faster than light, or from inside a black hole's event horizon to the exterior. Sorry, that turns out not to be the case.

Say you have a source of quantum entangled particles. One particle goes off to your friend at Alpha Centauri. You measure the polarization of the particles pair you have, which instantly changes the polarization of the particle pair at Alpha Centauri. FTL communication, right?

Nope.

What you get at your end is a stream of random numbers. No information there. Your friend at Alpha Centauri has a stream of random numbers. No information there. However, if your friend sends you his stream of random numbers (either at the speed of light via radio, or slower than light by traveling by rocket), then you can compare the two sets of random numbers.

Which will tell you that, yes, sometime in the past, FTL information was transmitted. But the only way to get the information out of this is to compare the two lists, and the only way to compare the lists is to re-send the information slower or at the speed of light. Which sort of defeats the purpose of FTL.

It is even worse with the black hole situation, since it is impossible to transmit the second list out of the event horizon by slower or at the speed of light rates.

So no, you cannot use Bell's Inequality to send information out of an event horizon.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

This topic is quite a significant issue (for some of reasons expressed above). It was also addressed in a different sort of way in
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin where in part he more or less compares the scientific research community and peer publication process to a kind of "group-think" process that preserves the status quo and prevents new idea and approaches from being seriously considered.

http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physic...7316986&sr=8-8

For another opinion on The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin, read "All Strung Out," the American Scientist review of the book by Joseph Polchinski. Here's a sample:

Smolin presents the rise and fall of string theory as a morality play. He accurately captures the excitement that theorists felt at the discovery of this unexpected and powerful new idea. But this story, however grippingly told, is more a work of drama than of history. Even the turning point, the first crack in the facade, is based on a myth: Smolin claims that string theorists had predicted that the energy of the vacuum—something often called dark energy—could not be positive and that the surprising 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (which implies the existence of positive dark energy) caused a hasty retreat. There was, in fact, no such prediction. Although his book is for the most part thoroughly referenced, Smolin cites no source on this point. He quotes Edward Witten, but Witten made his comments in a very different context—and three years after the discovery of accelerating expansion. Indeed, the quotation is doubly taken out of context, because at the same meeting at which Witten spoke, his former student Eva Silverstein gave a solution to the problem about which he was so pessimistic. This episode also goes to show that, contrary to another myth, young string theorists are not so intimidated by their elders.

As Smolin charts the fall of string theory, he presents further misconceptions. For example...

To read the full review, go to http://www.americanscientist.org/boo...all-strung-out.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

On the same topic, there's also the "Rutherford's gold foil" experiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%...den_experiment ) which completely shocked them.

"""It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you"""

Rutherford's quote is one of the most memorable in all of physics. That was a gem.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Preamble: Although (or maybe because ) I'm studying to be a physicist, I'm far from being an expert on this.
Intuitively and without having a look at the math involved, I'd guess that, since no information is permitted to escape the black hole, the entanglement would break the moment one of the particle passes across the event horizon.

That's fascinating, because, to my mind, if entanglement does hold, it presents the possibility that at least some information could be had about what's inside a black hole. I can't conceive of a way to discover experimentally if that's the case, however. As I understand it, entanglement isn't subject to distance, but I have no idea about how gravity could affect it.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by nyrath

No, because the "information" is not being transmitted.
You are talking about Bell's Inequality.

A superficial reading of the situation would fool one into thinking this could be used to transmit information faster than light, or from inside a black hole's event horizon to the exterior. Sorry, that turns out not to be the case.

Say you have a source of quantum entangled particles. One particle goes off to your friend at Alpha Centauri. You measure the polarization of the particles pair you have, which instantly changes the polarization of the particle pair at Alpha Centauri. FTL communication, right?

Nope.

What you get at your end is a stream of random numbers. No information there. Your friend at Alpha Centauri has a stream of random numbers. No information there. However, if your friend sends you his stream of random numbers (either at the speed of light via radio, or slower than light by traveling by rocket), then you can compare the two sets of random numbers.

Which will tell you that, yes, sometime in the past, FTL information was transmitted. But the only way to get the information out of this is to compare the two lists, and the only way to compare the lists is to re-send the information slower or at the speed of light. Which sort of defeats the purpose of FTL.

It is even worse with the black hole situation, since it is impossible to transmit the second list out of the event horizon by slower or at the speed of light rates.

So no, you cannot use Bell's Inequality to send information out of an event horizon.

Alrighty, then. Thanks for that, it explains a lot.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

For another opinion on The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin, read "All Strung Out," the American Scientist review of the book by Joseph Polchinski. Here's a sample:

Smolin presents the rise and fall of string theory as a morality play. He accurately captures the excitement that theorists felt at the discovery of this unexpected and powerful new idea. But this story, however grippingly told, is more a work of drama than of history. Even the turning point, the first crack in the facade, is based on a myth: Smolin claims that string theorists had predicted that the energy of the vacuum—something often called dark energy—could not be positive and that the surprising 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (which implies the existence of positive dark energy) caused a hasty retreat. There was, in fact, no such prediction. Although his book is for the most part thoroughly referenced, Smolin cites no source on this point. He quotes Edward Witten, but Witten made his comments in a very different context—and three years after the discovery of accelerating expansion. Indeed, the quotation is doubly taken out of context, because at the same meeting at which Witten spoke, his former student Eva Silverstein gave a solution to the problem about which he was so pessimistic. This episode also goes to show that, contrary to another myth, young string theorists are not so intimidated by their elders.

As Smolin charts the fall of string theory, he presents further misconceptions. For example...

To read the full review, go to http://www.americanscientist.org/boo...all-strung-out.

That may or may not be true in general. But the specific issue I was directing this at has to do with how research is funded currently, who decides and who holds the purse strings and I really think he is right on about that piece and it is of concern.