Your links to and use of weak measurement as some kind of support for your beliefs, was describing a photon traveling through a fiber optic cable, not empty space or an imagined ether.
The double solution theory, a new interpretation of Wave Mechanics
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Your links to and use of weak measurement as some kind of support for your beliefs, was describing a photon traveling through a fiber optic cable, not empty space or an imagined ether.
Aether exists where particles of matter do not. Aether exists where the quarks do not within a proton. Watch the video starting at 0:47. The mechanism keeping the two droplets orbiting about each other is likely the same physical phenomenon keeping the quarks orbiting each other causing there to be a proton. It is likely the pressure differential in the aether which causes quarks to form protons.
Particles of matter are discrete mass and aether is continuous mass.
Of course the photons are traveling through the aether as they travel through the fiber optic cable. It's the aether which waves.
In further response, the FTL signaling that you refer to is based on the theory that the various states of a particle are in superposition when they are not being observed, and until a measurement is made. Then, the theory goes, when you measure one of the "entangled" particles and determine its state, decoherence occurs, and each of the particles immediately takes on one or the other of the two possible states. You then theorize that the corresponding state of the other particle, at the instant of measuring the first particle, takes on the other state, i.e. suggesting communication at faster than light.
One of the hidden variables explanations for that phenomenon is that the two particles were entangled in such a way that one must have one of two possible states, say up spin, and the other must have the other state, say down spin. Therefore, though neither particle is observed, each of them is already in one or the other of the two states, i.e. the states are not superimposed at all. Then the knowledge of the state of either automatically discloses the state of the other by a process of deduction; no faster than light communication is involved.
Exactly, except it doesn't need to be called a "hidden variables explanation". It's just the explanation.
Once again, I strongly urge you to read the article on Bell's inequalities, because it completely invalidates the objections/explanations you're referring to. From an experimental standpoint, local hidden variables are a bust, plain and simple, and good luck finding a nonlocal hidden variable theory that doesn't make a complete mess out of Relativity.
So now if you're reduced to simply preaching and recycling your idiosyncratic interpretations, I take it you concur that none of the experiments you refer to are inconsistent with the Copenhagen viewpoint in which well-defined trajectories don't exist?
I'm saying the Copenhagen interpretation is inconsistent with physics as you aren't allowed to ask where the particle physically exists during its trajectory in a double slit experiment.
"Steinberg says that physicists have been taught that "asking where a photon is before it is detected is somehow immoral""
I'm saying you have been brainwashed into thinking particles are not always particles and waves are not always waves. If you had common sense you would understand the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.
I cannot criticize anyone for attempting to explain complicated things in simple language, I do that almost all of the time, but it is a crude tool and often leads to misunderstandings. Keeping that in mind, using "common sense" does not mean that everything has any direct analog to our classical everyday experience. You seem to be attempting to read lay oriented comments, from an everyday perspective, as though they are a complete and accurate description of the science.
It seems to me that you are guilty of the same "brainwashing" (though that is a bad way of describing the psychological context of belief), that you are accusing others of. An ether filling space is an attractive classical way of attempting to explain things that are not fundamentally, consistent with our classical everyday experience. That does not make it an accurate description of reality.
ALL OF THE FOLLOWING IS SPECULATION INTENDED TO PRESENT A MEANS TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN THE IDEA THAT PHYSICISTS BELIEVE IN A RELATIVISTIC ETHER LIKE, SPACE OR SPACETIME. IT IS NOT INTENDED AS A DEFINITIVE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IS REAL.
Part of the problem is that most of the time in discussions like this, space or spacetime, mass and energy are treated as inherently fundamental. When in reality they are all more complicated and may be either emergent or a composite of two or more, more fundamental components. Take space/spacetime (just as an example and not with any intent to claim the following is reality): QM describes space as an empty box, very Newtonian.., which is filled with an ever present interaction of fundamental fields (zero-point energy and the associated zero-point field, ZPF). GR does not inherently distinguish between that empty box and the zero-point energy within it, one could even imagine that the spacetime of GR is an empty box space and the dynamic ZPF of QM filling it. The two making up one thing. Since charged particles and through them the matter composed of charged particles, does interact with the ZPF, the two together become a dynamic spacetime, where the dynamics of changes in the ZPF from one location to another in space is only observed or measured over time. Does this mean that the ZPF is an ether, no but it does suggest that as a composite, space together with a dynamic ZPF, could be thought of as interacting with matter like a relativistic ether.
However, as described above the either like space/ZPF composite would not wave! Though some of the classical relationships (but not all), GR describes, between space/spacetime and matter, could be explained by the dynamic interaction between massive objects and the ZPF, where each has a dynamic affect on the other.
This however does not even begin to address the behavior of photons and particles at the level associated with QM and wave particle duality... That is a subject for QM not any ether like classical interaction(s)...
What occurs physically in nature in a double slit experiment is fundamentally, consistent with our classical everyday experience.
In a double slit experiment the particle travels a well defined path that takes it through one slit. The associated wave in the aether passes through both. As the wave exits the slits it creates wave interference. As the particle exits a single slit the direction it travels is altered by the wave interference. This is the wave piloting the particle. Detecting the particle strongly exiting a single slit destroys the cohesion between the particle and its associated wave and the particle continues on the trajectory it was traveling.
I suppose you imagine you are providing me with my first exposure to the Bells inequalities in that link, but I have seen a variety of links, papers, books, on the subject. The statements I made about how the thought experiments that represented the Hidden Variables interpretations in Bells work were developed is in the link below. Also, in paragraph X. (10) Mermin conveys the position of John Bell in regard to the open possibilities of hidden variables.
If you want the issue settled in your own mind, then ignore the concept that there can be aspects of reality that are not accounted for in QM as it stands. I'm OK with you thinking that.
http://lin25.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~wetzel/qm2005/protected/hidden_var_mermin.pdf
I had to assume you weren't familiar with Bell's work, because the hidden variables explanation you gave me in your previous post was precisely what was disproved by Alain Aspect et. al. 20+ years ago. Last-minute changes to the detection apparatus cause action-at-a-distance correlations that can't be accounted for if all of the entangled photons' properties are decided in advance before detection.
Why would I care about a statement of open-mindedness made 15 years before new experimental facts sealed the discussion?
I firmly believe there are plenty of things QM doesn't account for, but as I've told you countless times, I see absolutely no reason why there has to be an unexplained Newtonian clockwork with unexplained and poorly-described mystery forces and interaction rules underlying everything in the universe just to make you happy. I think your skepticism regarding the philosophical and metaphysical implications of QM is directly proportional to your lack of knowledge about precisely what QM says in the language of mathematics, and the details of the actual experiments which support it. You don't even know what it is you're dismissing, and yet you're completely confident that it's still wrong anyhow.
So you say.
You responded to my first point about how the hidden variables interpretations that Bell used were formulated by saying you don't think I understood your link. Do you want to respond to the point that all of the hidden variables interpretations falsified by Bell had to be formulated within the formal structure of QM. There were no intrepretaions based on the structure of QM being incomplete. And yet that is the point; QM may not yet be complete. But I'm not intending to convince anyone, I'm just conveying my position.
A number of pages back, I exposed a series of errors made by some posters here, namely they were attempting to say we can measure space-time.
I told them, we cannot, in fact time was not an observable, meaning it had no corresponding Hermitian Matrix.
Some complained, said they couldn't check this. I said don't be silly, you can check these things easily online. I came across a paper today after reading something else, and this paper also explains, time cannot be measured
http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Prati_08NatureOfTime_FQXiEs.pdf
I told them, we cannot, in fact time was not an observable, meaning it had no corresponding Hermitian Matrix.
Some complained, said they couldn't check this. I said don't be silly, you can check these things easily online. I came across a paper today after reading something else, and this paper also explains, time cannot be measured
http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Prati_08NatureOfTime_FQXiEs.pdf
The paper you linked to was an entry in an FQXi essay contest. It was in a 10 way tie for 4th place. The contest is open to the public so anyone can post their ideas there. Using it as a reference in a debate is probably not the best idea.
Other entries are here: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10
Winners here: http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1
I think you'll find FQXI tends to gather some of the best minds in physics, especially those which are concentrated on pivotal questions concerning how to develop a quantum theory of gravity, if one exists.
Don't knock it back, just because he never won first place, very notable names have crossed the FQXI path and never got first place.
On the contrary, if people want to discuss the top idea's on the minds of physicists, these are exactly the kind of papers we need to be reading. Not outdated physics papers which have clung onto false propositions.
But the point is that it was just an essay in a contest open to the public. Not a paper in a peer reviewed journal. Some of the essays there are outright nutty. One of our favorite cranks here on sciforums has a essay there on how to build a gravity beam. He got the idea from his telepathic communication with space aliens. So FXQi essays are not the best support of your cranky ideas. Have you heard of Time Cube?
http://www.timecube.com. It has a much authority on the subject.
You don't think FQXI establishes itself as a peer reviewing system?
Of course it is... in fact, all the papers submitted to FQXI will have to undergo extreme scrutiny of the scientific public. To even enter within 4th place runner up is an achievement in itself. These papers... are not just wild idea's that are being put forward. They are the forefront of what physicists consider hot subjects.
No, I don't. Maybe the winners selected by the Jury are. But the paper you cited was a community selected winner. I believe I could have voted on contest that if I wanted to.
Well, you know what, there is nothing wrong with the paper. Instead of attacking FQXI, you might want to draw some discussion from the paper linked. That might be more productive, because the paper is absolutely fine. It draws some fascinating and very important points.