by Doug Coulter » Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:07 pm
I don't have a complete argument that disproves the randomness of quantum theory, and I can't easily think that one exists at all, though some of the math does cause me some distress -- the loss of the complex phase and just keeping an amplitude probability is verboten in practically every other use of complex numbers -- there has to be a problem there, and I've never seen that justified to suit me (or really, at all). Information is thrown away when you only take the magnitude of a complex number and ditch the phase, but that's just what the wavefunction math does at the end. If you did that with say a frequency spectrum (such as from a fourier transform) you'd find you couldn't inverse transform and get your data back as the same waveform anymore. It would look "probabilistic" in that case, depending on whether you plugged in zeros for the imaginary parts, or randomized the phase -- but in both cases, this arises due to something you did, not nature. Seems to me the derivation of the wave function does just this, then complains about not having all the info. Well the step where it's tossed in the trash is quite obvious to someone who's done a lot of signal processing. Oh and by the way, in nearly all cases -- an inverse transform with missing phases gives just the same probability density function as getting it correct does...another hint of how something can be "almost right, but not really right". Only in the case of certain waveforms is this not true -- think square waves. We used this in electronic intelligence to compute SNR on unknown signals, actually and the type of modulation didn't matter and the thing was accurate, helping the crypto guys a lot to know when the data might be garbage due to low SNR so their code breaking was a lot easier.
I do have this experimental data that seems to show that certain reaction pathways are favored under different conditions over what seems like eons on that timescale. That data I showed where for awhile, the neutron counters were going nuts, but not so much the gamma spectrum, then the reverse, for around 250 milliseconds at a time, back and forth. That's quite some hint. You might not believe my data -- but I do, I saw it and more than once, and I will replicate it when I feel the need to, particularly now that I have better gear to quantify it with more accurately. I can't whine if someone doesn't believe my report of one experiment, or a couple, but having built all the gear and knowing what its strengths and weaknesses are, I believe it myself. This was shown during an exceptionally stable run, which makes sense, else I'd never have seen it. With nuclear frequencies in the 1020 to 1022 range, anything lasting a quarter of a second means that things were drifting extremely slowly to get in or out of phase conditions to last a perceptible length of time, or so one would have to assume. So all the observations do make a little sense when taken together. Further, the oddball pulse mode we've seen super high Q in also indicates that when things are kind of coherent, we see something that would tend to indicate that things are different before thermalization sets in, another hint.
Randomness is invoked far too often to excuse ignorance. For example, Brownian motion isn't random, just looks that way because you don't know all the vectors of motion of every molecule in that cup of tea. (and it was recently observed with a quick enough camera to even see the individual impacts and reported on all the science boards) Uranium can be photo-fissioned due to stretching the nucleus into an unstable shape with EM energy. The cross section is low (we think) because perhaps it's hard to get a photon in the right polarization to hit a U nucleus which is in the complementary vibrational state to absorb it, since that is "random" because we can't control that (so far as we know) YET. Although Brownian motion tends to follow the "drunkard's walk" in a hot liquid, that doesn't mean you couldn't carry a particle along in a laminar flow -- it's just a different thing, and the existence of one doesn't make the other impossible, or even unlikely.
I won't say god never plays dice, though I think of it a good bit differently than either Einstein or Schroedinger - I like the idea that it's space-time that's quantized better, and when you play with the gravity math, so does Planck, or it seems so - this is where the string theory guys are heading now; but I think all too many lazy thinkers use that as an excuse inappropriately, and get away with it because for example, only recently has it been possible to even think about orienting particles this way or that, and by then all the money was going into sub-nuclear studies. Even a D nucleus is large and energetic enough to have some classical attributes outside of the "probability" stuff from the wavefunction alone. It can be hard to see the quantum effects on a large body like a baseball, but they're there. Ditto classical effects on a small one -- they're still there, just muted under the circumstances. The thing is, unless you consider a D to really be a fuzzy ball with net charge of one but mass of two (roughly) then it does have a discrete proton and neutron at least some of the time, and acts like it. This is certain in larger nuclei.
There is plenty of evidence this matters. MRI wouldn't work if you couldn't do this at some level, for example. At the molecular level, it's obvious that molecules and rotate, bend and stretch and we can measure the resonances that this produces. Of course molecules are much bigger than nuclei, and subject only to EM forces (we think at present), but then many models of nuclei that work out well are based on the same things -- the liquid drop model and the shell models are examples, and the latter is so terribly like the same situation as the electron shell model it's not funny -- magic numbers and all. This is all in physics books that I wish more would read -- I'm neither making it up nor taking credit for it. Halliday is probably the simplest one for that.
Though we think of the strong force as having asymptotic freedom within a nucleon, that doesn't utterly invalidate the possibility of the spring-mass model either. And if we assume that at least some times a D looks like a joined proton an neutron (as the wave function photo from the book review seems to show), not just a fuzzy ball, we could consider that a classical explanation would cover it at least somewhat.
Various nuclear transitions have "selection rules", and have transitions all the way from disallowed to hyper-allowed. That should be a big hint it's not all random at all.
And in fact, all I'm doing is saying it would be nice to take all the known rules into account, and by going backwards, figure out how to do it going forwards. Although He is almost too simple for this, it's the one of interest in the current case. It's very unlikely for example that an He would be strung out in a line ppnn, but globed together in a more compact way, as the lower energy state in normal conditions. Ditto especially a U atom. It's possible in the latter case for the protons not to be uniformly distributed, and for it to have dipole, quadrupole and higher moments. Hf (one of the isotopes) is reputed to be able to stay in an excited, but metastable state for long periods of time, then finally emit a gamma much later.
So, if these selection rules exists, and they sure seem to do so, then going backwards to take a look makes a lot of sense to me. If an He only has certain ways to break up into deuterons, for example, you'd only get fusion to He from deuterons if the states of the inputs were correct -- and the fact that this is unlikely explains the low cross section with random inputs quite neatly.
To say it's all utterly random is to fly in the face of a lot of worked out standard model science, something I'm not willing to do at this point, because I believe that most of the experimenters haven't told me lies or been dead wrong. I think this area is merely not well enough explored yet, and that doing so might lead to good things -- and that in hindsight, if I'm correct, it will all fit into the current models just fine, in hindsight. No magic, or any vast enhancement to the existing theory would be required for me to be correct here, in other words.
And yes, I understand Jon was just trying to make an illustration for newbs to understand what's going on (might be better if you showed the gluons, but then again, that'd make it pretty complex and faze them), but it seems three of us -- myself, Curtis, and Jon have all been thinking along very similar lines here for awhile, and where there's smoke....you just never know, and I think it's worth investigating in more detail -- to prove it either way. If we get "lucky" then there's the keys to the fusion kingdom, if not, well, it's still better to know than spend endless time working with various slight refinements in technique and configuration until we find a "casino edge" that makes us win despite even odds.
How could you say something can't be so if it's never even been looked at? I'm not now and never did say I surely have the answer. What I have is a tantalizing hint(s) that there's something here worth investigating, and the beginning of an experimental program to do just that. If and when it proves out, or not, of course it will be reported. That's the basis of science to me -- hypothesize, then prove or disprove.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.