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I don't believe any of the possible interpretations of QM have a clear path to being proven, so are they pseudoscience as well? If Hawking Radiation can never

by platz 7y ago

I don't believe any of the possible interpretations of QM have a clear path to being proven, so are they pseudoscience as well? If Hawking Radiation can never be observed till the heat death of the universe, is that pseudoscience, or just really hard to test? At this regime, all of physics is very hard to design an experiment for on ranges we have access to.

nwallin 7y ago
> I don't believe any of the possible interpretations of QM have a clear path to being proven, so are they pseudoscience as well? The characterization is a little bit harsh, but yes. The Copenhagen interpretation is non-falsifiable, (relative to MWI) so while I don't know what it is, I know it isn't science. There's a reason most reputable scientific journals don't accept papers dealing with interpretations of quantum mechanics. There's no "there" there. Hawking radiation is interesting because a proof of lack of Hawking radiation is a proof of the falsehood of quantum mechanics. Which is really interesting; any time you can falsify something like quantum mechanics every physicist should be paying attention. Also, if certain models of string theory are correct, particle accelerators like the LHC should be able to produce micro black holes, which will then evaporate in detectable ways. So Hawking radiation is of observational interest as of 2010 as a possible way to provide evidence to support string theory. (spoiler alert: we didn't find any)
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  It feels like you are way too quick to kick things out that aren't on a path to being proven. String theory forever has had the problem that it didn't make experimentally verifiable conclusions. A quick web search finds recent articles discussing apparently discussing this. Aren't people still working on string theory? Or why is mwi impossible to verify.
  - mrpara 7y ago
    The difference is, string theorists are trying. Everyone knows that it is a major problem that we cannot currently design experiments to falsify ST or other quantum gravity theories, and everyone is working towards it in the hope that one day we may. When it comes to interpretations of QM, there is not only nothing on the horizon, people don't even speak in these terms. No one is insisting on falsifiablity, and indeed every new interpretation seems completely hell-bent on just providing a "story" around the equations in a way that does not - and fundamentally cannot - make any predictions that contradict basic QM. I can count on one hand the number of interpretations I can think of that make experimentally testable assertions, and for those I have plenty of respect[1]. But the majority of interpretations and their proponents seem to deliberately stay within the comfort zone of non-falsifiablity, writing paper after paper whose actual impact on either physics or philosophy can be summed up with "yeah well, that's just like, your opinion, man". I did my MSC in physics under a professor who is a well-known proponent of MWI (though my master's thesis was not directly related to the subject). Two years of working side by side with him proved to me that the detractors of work on interpretations are, by and large, correct in their assertions about the proponents of them. [1] There is this one theory whose name I cannot remember, where each particle in the universe gets their wavefunction multiplied by a delta function or very thin gaussian at random intervals, and whose sudden localization also causes a sort of chain reaction and localizes all particles it is entangled with. This theory is interesting because it helps set a (statistical) limit between microscopic and macroscopic interactions; basically, when you go past a certain number of entangled particles, everything will be well-localized virtually all of the time, but for small numbers of particles we'll see quantum phenomena. Unfortunately I recall this theory having too many holes, and perhaps it has already been falsified, but the point is that at least it made an effort to address inherent problems in QM (namely, wavefunction collapse) in a way that physicists actually should; by making testable claims.
    - MauranKilom 7y ago
      This was linked above and sound like the theory your footnote describes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%93Weber_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...
      - mrpara 7y ago
        That's the one! Thanks.
- krzat 7y ago
  Maybe particles and black holes are the same thing. They behave differently due to quantum gravity mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron
cletus 7y ago
> If Hawking Radiation can never be observed till the heat death of the universe That's a pretty big "if". As I suspect you know, how much Hawking radiation a black hole generates is inversely proportional to its size (it's probably an inverse square function to be precise, I forget). A consequence of that is that supermassive black holes, the kind at the center of galaxies that we are most likely be able to indirectly (or even directly) observe, will generate almost none and whatever is generated will likely be outshone many orders of magnitude by the accretion disk anyway. But... small black holes should shine extremely brightly, albeit briefly. A black hole resulting from a supernova will take a stupendous amount of time to lose enough mass (from Hawking radiation) to get this small and the window of time is so small we're unlikely to ever directly observe this. But if we can ever figure out a way to lase gamma rays we can construct so-called Kugelblitz black holes (that some call the ultimate battery or even the ultimate computer). Granted there's no theorized let alone practical way of lasing gamma rays, which is a problem. But nevertheless, the theory of Hawking radiation makes testable predictions so yes, it's unlike Many Worlds (or even, honestly, string theory).
- platz 7y ago
  Yes that is accurate, but I feel doesn't detract from the main point, which is about whether to do theoretical physical at in these regimes. We might decide a theory isn't testable even on principle, or discover that a theory we thought that wasn't testable actually is testable, but we'll never know until we do the work.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  How would it make the ultimate computer?

by platz 7y ago

nwallin 7y ago

> I don't believe any of the possible interpretations of QM have a clear path to being proven, so are they pseudoscience as well? The characterization is a little bit harsh, but yes. The Copenhagen interpretation is non-falsifiable, (relative to MWI) so while I don't know what it is, I know it isn't science. There's a reason most reputable scientific journals don't accept papers dealing with interpretations of quantum mechanics. There's no "there" there. Hawking radiation is interesting because a proof of lack of Hawking radiation is a proof of the falsehood of quantum mechanics. Which is really interesting; any time you can falsify something like quantum mechanics every physicist should be paying attention. Also, if certain models of string theory are correct, particle accelerators like the LHC should be able to produce micro black holes, which will then evaporate in detectable ways. So Hawking radiation is of observational interest as of 2010 as a possible way to provide evidence to support string theory. (spoiler alert: we didn't find any)

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
It feels like you are way too quick to kick things out that aren't on a path to being proven. String theory forever has had the problem that it didn't make experimentally verifiable conclusions. A quick web search finds recent articles discussing apparently discussing this. Aren't people still working on string theory? Or why is mwi impossible to verify.
- mrpara 7y ago
  The difference is, string theorists are trying. Everyone knows that it is a major problem that we cannot currently design experiments to falsify ST or other quantum gravity theories, and everyone is working towards it in the hope that one day we may. When it comes to interpretations of QM, there is not only nothing on the horizon, people don't even speak in these terms. No one is insisting on falsifiablity, and indeed every new interpretation seems completely hell-bent on just providing a "story" around the equations in a way that does not - and fundamentally cannot - make any predictions that contradict basic QM. I can count on one hand the number of interpretations I can think of that make experimentally testable assertions, and for those I have plenty of respect[1]. But the majority of interpretations and their proponents seem to deliberately stay within the comfort zone of non-falsifiablity, writing paper after paper whose actual impact on either physics or philosophy can be summed up with "yeah well, that's just like, your opinion, man". I did my MSC in physics under a professor who is a well-known proponent of MWI (though my master's thesis was not directly related to the subject). Two years of working side by side with him proved to me that the detractors of work on interpretations are, by and large, correct in their assertions about the proponents of them. [1] There is this one theory whose name I cannot remember, where each particle in the universe gets their wavefunction multiplied by a delta function or very thin gaussian at random intervals, and whose sudden localization also causes a sort of chain reaction and localizes all particles it is entangled with. This theory is interesting because it helps set a (statistical) limit between microscopic and macroscopic interactions; basically, when you go past a certain number of entangled particles, everything will be well-localized virtually all of the time, but for small numbers of particles we'll see quantum phenomena. Unfortunately I recall this theory having too many holes, and perhaps it has already been falsified, but the point is that at least it made an effort to address inherent problems in QM (namely, wavefunction collapse) in a way that physicists actually should; by making testable claims.
  - MauranKilom 7y ago
    This was linked above and sound like the theory your footnote describes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%93Weber_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...
    - mrpara 7y ago
      That's the one! Thanks.
krzat 7y ago
Maybe particles and black holes are the same thing. They behave differently due to quantum gravity mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron

cletus 7y ago

> If Hawking Radiation can never be observed till the heat death of the universe That's a pretty big "if". As I suspect you know, how much Hawking radiation a black hole generates is inversely proportional to its size (it's probably an inverse square function to be precise, I forget). A consequence of that is that supermassive black holes, the kind at the center of galaxies that we are most likely be able to indirectly (or even directly) observe, will generate almost none and whatever is generated will likely be outshone many orders of magnitude by the accretion disk anyway. But... small black holes should shine extremely brightly, albeit briefly. A black hole resulting from a supernova will take a stupendous amount of time to lose enough mass (from Hawking radiation) to get this small and the window of time is so small we're unlikely to ever directly observe this. But if we can ever figure out a way to lase gamma rays we can construct so-called Kugelblitz black holes (that some call the ultimate battery or even the ultimate computer). Granted there's no theorized let alone practical way of lasing gamma rays, which is a problem. But nevertheless, the theory of Hawking radiation makes testable predictions so yes, it's unlike Many Worlds (or even, honestly, string theory).

platz 7y ago
Yes that is accurate, but I feel doesn't detract from the main point, which is about whether to do theoretical physical at in these regimes. We might decide a theory isn't testable even on principle, or discover that a theory we thought that wasn't testable actually is testable, but we'll never know until we do the work.
mrfusion 7y ago
How would it make the ultimate computer?