Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sri-unix!mikes@AMES-NAS.ARPA From: mikes@AMES-NAS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: none Message-ID: <414@sri-arpa.ARPA> Date: Tue, 16-Jul-85 15:00:33 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.414 Posted: Tue Jul 16 15:00:33 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 19-Jul-85 02:24:45 EDT Lines: 57 From: mikes@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Peter Mikes) I am certainly not griping about the succes story of the QM. If you want to calculate UV spectrum of C - etc etc go ahead and do not tell us about it - It as become too mundane and boring by now. I am interested in the frontier. I do object to a strait-jacket called Copenhagen Interpretation ( and I do not see Many-Worlds as significantly different (I am willing to expand that)) which may have had some function during the time of con- solidation of QM but which is getting less and less comfortable as new facts are coming in. Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) solved the existing persistent mismatch between the concept of space and dynamics (which the theory uses and needs) and experiments by series of tabu's and pro- hibitions: Consider the double slit experiment: There was one electron who got from source S to detector D and as I am asking :" OK which slit A or B it went thru?" there is a ghost of Bohr slapping my wrist saying "You are not supposed to ask that!" and my former professor and bunch of the net replys are screaming:" Haven't you read Faynman's lectures? Dont you know that if you try to detect that - the interference goes away?" But I am not rearanging the experiment - I am looking at the interference pattern and assume that the electron is real and it did not break in tousand pie- ces and reconstituted itself just before hitting the detector - and if that is so - I would like to know how it got from S to D. I do not accept the dictum that 'only phototubes and their cliks are real' and I do not think this is question of PR or futile philosophy. I appreciate Mark's bringing in the articles on Bell's inequality - they are highly relevant - I suspect I interpret their implications diffe- rently. It seems to me that until Aspect's experiment it was possible to ignore the problem presented by EPR ( remember that we did bring in the question of the collapse of PSI just as a short preview of what EPR is about) - so it was possible to sweep the question of the QM reality under the rug and just going on with calculating your spectrum of C or whatever are you are doing. The Bell inequality and excellent article in Phys.Today ( I suggest that somebody writes a computer model of the experiment (any volunteers??) and Stapp's analysis in Am.J.Phys and EPR all form a circle which seems to me to lead to inescapable conclusion " It just does not makes sense - ergo something must give". I am simply curious what that 'something' could be. In brief - I see Aspect's experiments as historical analogy of Michelson's experiment and the question ' why do you gripe (about the Maxwell equations) it just so happens that Ether moves with Earth and does not moves with Earth so grind your teeth and bear it' as expression of fear of what we can find if we really look.: Of course, If there is no interest in discussing this - I will sure drop this or send it to dev/null but to me this seems to be a fascinating question : Are we sure there is no alternative? Stapp lists about 5 assumptions - all quite reasonable - Are they really inevitable ?? What's wrong with talking about that? ( if one can tolerate red wrist?). To be more specific - I want to suggest an interesting article a friend just passed on me: D.J.Bohm,C.Dewdney & B.H. Hiley: A quantum potential approach to the Wheeler delayed-choice experiment. NATURE. Vol 315 pp 294-297 ( May 85) It talks about future choice of measurement affecting 'past state' of the system. It bothers me. How do you feel about that?