8 ms·

Closed loophole confirms the unreality of the quantum world (2018)

45 points by gyosifov 6y ago

choeger 6y ago
QM is obviously very true in the sense that it makes useful predictions (in that sense, truth is somewhat a quantity). But it is arguably very inelegant in its seemingly ad-hoc introduction of probability. Naturally, one would hope to one day get a more principled explanation of this randomness. What would be needed to make physicists search for such an explanation? Some kind of pattern in the "randomness"? Say, photons behave more like particles on Monday mornings?
- AgentME 6y ago
  If you go with the Many-Worlds Interpretation, then trying to remove the randomness is nonsensical: the world just branches (in proportions as described by the Schrodinger equation), people on every branch have experience, and "randomness" is just what branch you find yourself on. The randomness of what branch you find yourself in is just like the randomness of what person you find yourself born as. All classical theories and interpretations of QM already have indexical uncertainty (the randomness of what person you find yourself born as). MWI avoids adding any new kinds of entities not implied by the Schrodinger equation and effectively explains away quantum randomness by implying that it's the same thing as indexical uncertainty, instead of being a separate kind of randomness.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    On the contrary, it is still an open problem to rigorously derive the Born rule probabilities in MWI just from this perspective. Either way, the response will be equivalent to the Born rule: instead of positing that a measurement'outcome is proportional to the amplitude of the state, we posit that the number of branches in which an outcome happens is proportional to the amplitude of that outcome. Not sure why these are fundamentally different. Also, the MWI idea of branching is no more satisfying or intuitive than the wave function collapse, which at least doesn't require an infinity of universes out of which some are much more probable than others. Note also that there is only 1 of you in MWI, you just exist with different amplitudes in different states, but when interacting with another object, you become entangled with a single outcome and thus can no longer perceive the other states that other versions of you perceive. This is important, as otherwise physical quantities would not be properly conserved.
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      The Born rule is statistical distribution, and statistics is certainly computable in MWI. It's a matter of converting the wave function into distribution basis, where it will have the Born rule distribution with amplitude close to 1, which means that observations have the Born rule distribution in most cases.
  - kanzenryu2 6y ago
    This is one thing I love about MWI... it has at least some kind of explanation for randomness. For every other interpretation they do some stuff and then choose a random outcome, and I want to ask "and how does that random step happen?"
  - l33tman 6y ago
    But it isn't that simple. There isn't a "proportional split" that can depend on the Schrödinger Equation. This is exactly why QM behaves non-intuitively in the first place - you can't add up probabilities from individual events, you have to add complex numbers and only at the "end" you square them and get probabilities. So it's would be a nice analogue in MWI that the world just splits up and that's why probabilities arise, but it doesn't fit.. :/
- diegoperini 6y ago
  > What would be needed to make physicists search for such an explanation? I'd say confirmation of a failed prediction by QM is what's needed.
- vecter 6y ago
  What you want is a theory of local hidden variables. [0] They are at odds with what quantum mechanics predicts (and what we have observed). On a semi-related note, I might be reading too much into your comment, but I very much dislike when people imply that scientists haven’t thought outside or the box or tried other non-mainstream theories. They try all the time, but fail because those theories often aren’t true. What we’re left with are the best extant theories, even if they’re obvious incomplete. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory?w...
  - zackees 6y ago
    No. Correct theories are suppressed all the time by oligarchs. See the electric car. This assumption that the best is chosen is part of the problem of the scientific institution - the assumption that corruption doesn’t play a major role in what is allowed through the gate keepers.
  - choeger 6y ago
    It is true that at my level of understanding I would intuitively prefer hidden variables. But that's not my point. My point is that the notion of "measurement" or "wave function collapse" simply don't seem to explain anything. Instead they are just different words for what we observe. So yes, that is certainly useful but it also seems to be limiting. A simple question would be: What is "measurement", i.e. what is the fundamental thing that forces a probability distribution to yield a concrete value? And why does it exist separately from said probability distribution? Edit: to make things even clearer: I am not lamenting that there is no one working on mathematically consistent interpretations of QM. I know people are doing that and I know that this is difficult. Instead I am asking what would be a clearly visible limit of QM. Where would we, as a society, encounter a situation where we say: "We really need to explain the reasons behind QM or we won't get that problem here solved."
- chii 6y ago
  > explanation of this randomness what if randomness is an inherent property of nature?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The problem is that QM doesn't allow randomness at the fundamental level. The Schrodinger equation is a linear differential equation, systems that evolve according to it evolve just like classical mechanics. However, when you measure the state of such a system after however many steps of perfectly deterministic interactions you want, you find the system takes only one of the many possible states predicted by the Schrodinger equation, with a probability that depends on the amplitude of that state. It is this discrepancy between the deterministic nature of the quantum world and the classical world, but the probabilistic nature of the crossing between them, that people find disconcerting. MWI even does away with this to solve extent, explaining it as a kind of observation bias: as a particle interacts with a very independent system, it loses its ability to interact with itself (decoherence), and so we get many versions of the system each interacting with a single version of the particle, which stimulates classical physics for each version. From the perspective of any particular version of this system it is random with which particular version of the particle it interacts, even though at the universal level there is no randomness.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  The probabilities spawned QM, not the reverse. The modern interpretation of QM is a reification of those probabilities - an insistence that they aren't the results of a process, but are just probabilities, irreduceably.
  - AgentME 6y ago
    And it's not just like people found these probabilities and then decided to stop trying to explain things and said "what if these are just how physics worked". Instead, people found that any attempts at removing the probabilities (through local hidden variable theories) ended in contradictions, and then accepted that they must be fundamental.
- nojs 6y ago
  Local hidden variables as an explanation has been experimentally refuted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
- pishpash 6y ago
  This is a misunderstanding of QM. Probability isn't what's unusual, it's the Born rule and the fact that the world doesn't use probability laws over real numbers but over complex numbers. That's what gives waves some sense of reality.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    The probability waves may be regular real waves, it's just convenient to describe amplitude and phase at every point with a complex number. We could describe water surface the same way, but it wouldn't mean water is complex.
    - pishpash 6y ago
      The point is that waves are inherent in the description, whether it's complex numbers or amplitude + phase.
frongpik 6y ago
QM is the new Ptolematic system: it makes good predictions, but because it puts Earth in the center, the orbits become needlessly complex and artificial.
- vecter 6y ago
  Explain how QM metaphorically “puts Earth in the center”.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    That's the thing we don't know yet. It's probably a good bet that we are going to discover that to rectify the complexities of QM, there is some assertion most people have fundamentally accepted and is quite uncomfortable to let go but is necessary to simplify the equations. I can't really guess what it's going to be though.
    - frongpik 6y ago
      Plato and a few others told about the world of ideas and the world of matter: both exist and are connected somehow. I wonder if QM is this bridge between the two worlds and the wrong assumption we make is that QM describes the world of matter. In other words, the probability waves may actually exist, but they exist in the world of math, and the real question is how exactly the two worlds are connected.
    - vecter 6y ago
      That's not good enough. I want a specific claim about how one or more of the postulates of QM are likely to be incorrect (or even stranger, how they have to do with "putting Earth at the center", whatever that means, or some anthropomorphism baked into the postulate). Saying "we don't know what we don't know" is both a tautology and completely useless. It's like my saying: "I believe that you committed a crime last week." You ask for more details about why I think that and what the crime was, and I reply "we just don't know." I hope you see how ludicrous that is.
      - 6y ago
withinboredom 6y ago
Has anyone ever considered that perhaps the particle/wave actually goes back in time?
- DennisP 6y ago
  Yes, that's the "transactional interpretation" of quantum mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation
- sam_goody 6y ago
  There was an Israeli team that "proved" quantum particles can go back in time by linking groups of entangled particles that didn't exist in parallel. Would have to look for the link, and don't know if that was ever rejected, but.. maybe? By extension, spooky action may be ignoring time entirely.
- mjfl 6y ago
  Quantum mechanics definitively contains nonlocal effects (entanglement), which does seem to imply some kind of time traveling information, at least when combined with special relativity.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    I thought nonlocality was the obvious answer to "no hidden variables" but instead so many prefer to hidden multiverses instead. ;-)
  - nabla9 6y ago
    Kind of. Quantum states don't have on place or time. Only objects that share those states have locations. The concepts like locality and physical object have become more specific over time. Before QM, principle of locality in physics matched the common sense of locality in every sense. Object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. Objects have locations. Field must mediate the action over distance. After QM was developed, principle of locality in physics became more refined. Quantum states don't have location in space and time. They are not 'physical objects' themselves. Quantum states is everywhere in time and space where objects sharing that state are, and everything correlates perfectly over time and space. Before QM, something like quantum-state would have been called a non-local thing. In current more refined meaning it's not breaking locality. Non-local instant quantum state 'hovering over wast distances of space and time' is OK as long as causality is local and moves at the speed of light.
fungiblecog 6y ago
The problem is the insistence on the existence of particles at the quantum level. We know that quanta propagate like waves, but interact with classical level systems in discrete units. So we need to stop believing in discrete particles with distinct properties at the quantum level and come up with an explanation of why quantum waves appear particle-like at the classical level. Probably the answer will involve the way in which de-coherence occurs when a large number of quanta are involved.
- deertick1 6y ago
  Lori Gardi, widely believed to be a crackpot, in my opinion has made a breakthrough in our interpretation od quantum mechanics. If I understand her correctly, she proposes that the reason waves behave like particles is because they transfer energy essentially every zero-crossing : for example a photon is just one half of a wavelength of light. She has a much more interesting explanation of what i am very poorly tryingto spit out here on youtube. Bear with, because honestly she is a whackadoo but she is a smart whackadoo. Lemme know if you want a link to the video
  - jamiek88 6y ago
    Why is it always YouTube videos with these (let’s generously say)esoteric ideas and never a link to a paper or essay?
    - millstone 6y ago
      Not GP but since you asked, here it is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325462944_Planck%27s_Constant_and_the_Nature_of_Light https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325462944_Planck%27... The argument is: Planck's relation says that a photon's energy is in proportion to its frequency. But a higher-frequency photon oscillates more times per second. If you look at the energy of a single oscillation, you get a constant, regardless of frequency. This is remarkable and so we should reframe Planck's constant as the fundamental "energy per cycle." The problem is that "energy of a single cycle" cannot be related to other measures of energy, e.g. the binding energy of an electron in the photoelectric effect. Basically it seems like unit sophistry.
karmakaze 6y ago
Here are the easy-viewing Wikipedia pages on Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment[0], and my favorite the Delayed-choice quantum eraser[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed-choice_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed-choice_exp... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
miika 6y ago
https://hiup.org/publications/ https://hiup.org/publications/
rpz 6y ago
Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around. Plancks energy equation should be E=htf h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second. This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f. Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency. When you realize plancks constant should be in Joules you will shortly realize that the fine structure constant actually has units of seconds. Another neat thing is that light has mass: h/c^2 (ridiculously small). If it has mass then it should have net charge as well. This could explain why light curves without needing general relativity. Coulombs law using permeability of free space instead of permittivity reveals that coulombs law is a long form of expressing E=mc^2 F * d = muc^2 q1q2/d E = (h2alpha/e^2c)(q1*q2/d)c^2 Edit: formatting
- K0balt 6y ago
  Do you have any references for this conjecture? It's an interesting idea, but I'd like to see any more work done exploring this line of thought.
  - rpz 6y ago
    I recommend reading the papers here https://forgottenphysics.com/ https://forgottenphysics.com/ They're all short reads. There's one of them that goes into the history of E=hf and how Planck actually originally had E=htf but Boltzmann criticized him for it
- krageon 6y ago
  I lack the requisite amount of sleep to evaluate the truth of this post, but I did really enjoy the fact that this appears to be an unusual explanation of basic concepts that doesn't immediately devolve into mysticism.
  - rpz 6y ago
    Thank you for your consideration, I usually get down voted for saying this on here.

45 points by gyosifov 6y ago

QM is obviously very true in the sense that it makes useful predictions (in that sense, truth is somewhat a quantity). But it is arguably very inelegant in its seemingly ad-hoc introduction of probability. Naturally, one would hope to one day get a more principled explanation of this randomness. What would be needed to make physicists search for such an explanation? Some kind of pattern in the "randomness"? Say, photons behave more like particles on Monday mornings?

AgentME 6y ago
If you go with the Many-Worlds Interpretation, then trying to remove the randomness is nonsensical: the world just branches (in proportions as described by the Schrodinger equation), people on every branch have experience, and "randomness" is just what branch you find yourself on. The randomness of what branch you find yourself in is just like the randomness of what person you find yourself born as. All classical theories and interpretations of QM already have indexical uncertainty (the randomness of what person you find yourself born as). MWI avoids adding any new kinds of entities not implied by the Schrodinger equation and effectively explains away quantum randomness by implying that it's the same thing as indexical uncertainty, instead of being a separate kind of randomness.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  On the contrary, it is still an open problem to rigorously derive the Born rule probabilities in MWI just from this perspective. Either way, the response will be equivalent to the Born rule: instead of positing that a measurement'outcome is proportional to the amplitude of the state, we posit that the number of branches in which an outcome happens is proportional to the amplitude of that outcome. Not sure why these are fundamentally different. Also, the MWI idea of branching is no more satisfying or intuitive than the wave function collapse, which at least doesn't require an infinity of universes out of which some are much more probable than others. Note also that there is only 1 of you in MWI, you just exist with different amplitudes in different states, but when interacting with another object, you become entangled with a single outcome and thus can no longer perceive the other states that other versions of you perceive. This is important, as otherwise physical quantities would not be properly conserved.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    The Born rule is statistical distribution, and statistics is certainly computable in MWI. It's a matter of converting the wave function into distribution basis, where it will have the Born rule distribution with amplitude close to 1, which means that observations have the Born rule distribution in most cases.
- kanzenryu2 6y ago
  This is one thing I love about MWI... it has at least some kind of explanation for randomness. For every other interpretation they do some stuff and then choose a random outcome, and I want to ask "and how does that random step happen?"
- l33tman 6y ago
  But it isn't that simple. There isn't a "proportional split" that can depend on the Schrödinger Equation. This is exactly why QM behaves non-intuitively in the first place - you can't add up probabilities from individual events, you have to add complex numbers and only at the "end" you square them and get probabilities. So it's would be a nice analogue in MWI that the world just splits up and that's why probabilities arise, but it doesn't fit.. :/
diegoperini 6y ago
> What would be needed to make physicists search for such an explanation? I'd say confirmation of a failed prediction by QM is what's needed.
vecter 6y ago
What you want is a theory of local hidden variables. [0] They are at odds with what quantum mechanics predicts (and what we have observed). On a semi-related note, I might be reading too much into your comment, but I very much dislike when people imply that scientists haven’t thought outside or the box or tried other non-mainstream theories. They try all the time, but fail because those theories often aren’t true. What we’re left with are the best extant theories, even if they’re obvious incomplete. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory?w...
- zackees 6y ago
  No. Correct theories are suppressed all the time by oligarchs. See the electric car. This assumption that the best is chosen is part of the problem of the scientific institution - the assumption that corruption doesn’t play a major role in what is allowed through the gate keepers.
- choeger 6y ago
  It is true that at my level of understanding I would intuitively prefer hidden variables. But that's not my point. My point is that the notion of "measurement" or "wave function collapse" simply don't seem to explain anything. Instead they are just different words for what we observe. So yes, that is certainly useful but it also seems to be limiting. A simple question would be: What is "measurement", i.e. what is the fundamental thing that forces a probability distribution to yield a concrete value? And why does it exist separately from said probability distribution? Edit: to make things even clearer: I am not lamenting that there is no one working on mathematically consistent interpretations of QM. I know people are doing that and I know that this is difficult. Instead I am asking what would be a clearly visible limit of QM. Where would we, as a society, encounter a situation where we say: "We really need to explain the reasons behind QM or we won't get that problem here solved."
chii 6y ago
> explanation of this randomness what if randomness is an inherent property of nature?
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The problem is that QM doesn't allow randomness at the fundamental level. The Schrodinger equation is a linear differential equation, systems that evolve according to it evolve just like classical mechanics. However, when you measure the state of such a system after however many steps of perfectly deterministic interactions you want, you find the system takes only one of the many possible states predicted by the Schrodinger equation, with a probability that depends on the amplitude of that state. It is this discrepancy between the deterministic nature of the quantum world and the classical world, but the probabilistic nature of the crossing between them, that people find disconcerting. MWI even does away with this to solve extent, explaining it as a kind of observation bias: as a particle interacts with a very independent system, it loses its ability to interact with itself (decoherence), and so we get many versions of the system each interacting with a single version of the particle, which stimulates classical physics for each version. From the perspective of any particular version of this system it is random with which particular version of the particle it interacts, even though at the universal level there is no randomness.
pessimizer 6y ago
The probabilities spawned QM, not the reverse. The modern interpretation of QM is a reification of those probabilities - an insistence that they aren't the results of a process, but are just probabilities, irreduceably.
- AgentME 6y ago
  And it's not just like people found these probabilities and then decided to stop trying to explain things and said "what if these are just how physics worked". Instead, people found that any attempts at removing the probabilities (through local hidden variable theories) ended in contradictions, and then accepted that they must be fundamental.
nojs 6y ago
Local hidden variables as an explanation has been experimentally refuted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
pishpash 6y ago
This is a misunderstanding of QM. Probability isn't what's unusual, it's the Born rule and the fact that the world doesn't use probability laws over real numbers but over complex numbers. That's what gives waves some sense of reality.
- frongpik 6y ago
  The probability waves may be regular real waves, it's just convenient to describe amplitude and phase at every point with a complex number. We could describe water surface the same way, but it wouldn't mean water is complex.
  - pishpash 6y ago
    The point is that waves are inherent in the description, whether it's complex numbers or amplitude + phase.

frongpik 6y ago

QM is the new Ptolematic system: it makes good predictions, but because it puts Earth in the center, the orbits become needlessly complex and artificial.

vecter 6y ago
Explain how QM metaphorically “puts Earth in the center”.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  That's the thing we don't know yet. It's probably a good bet that we are going to discover that to rectify the complexities of QM, there is some assertion most people have fundamentally accepted and is quite uncomfortable to let go but is necessary to simplify the equations. I can't really guess what it's going to be though.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    Plato and a few others told about the world of ideas and the world of matter: both exist and are connected somehow. I wonder if QM is this bridge between the two worlds and the wrong assumption we make is that QM describes the world of matter. In other words, the probability waves may actually exist, but they exist in the world of math, and the real question is how exactly the two worlds are connected.
  - vecter 6y ago
    That's not good enough. I want a specific claim about how one or more of the postulates of QM are likely to be incorrect (or even stranger, how they have to do with "putting Earth at the center", whatever that means, or some anthropomorphism baked into the postulate). Saying "we don't know what we don't know" is both a tautology and completely useless. It's like my saying: "I believe that you committed a crime last week." You ask for more details about why I think that and what the crime was, and I reply "we just don't know." I hope you see how ludicrous that is.
    - 6y ago

withinboredom 6y ago

Has anyone ever considered that perhaps the particle/wave actually goes back in time?

DennisP 6y ago
Yes, that's the "transactional interpretation" of quantum mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation
sam_goody 6y ago
There was an Israeli team that "proved" quantum particles can go back in time by linking groups of entangled particles that didn't exist in parallel. Would have to look for the link, and don't know if that was ever rejected, but.. maybe? By extension, spooky action may be ignoring time entirely.
mjfl 6y ago
Quantum mechanics definitively contains nonlocal effects (entanglement), which does seem to imply some kind of time traveling information, at least when combined with special relativity.
- phkahler 6y ago
  I thought nonlocality was the obvious answer to "no hidden variables" but instead so many prefer to hidden multiverses instead. ;-)
- nabla9 6y ago
  Kind of. Quantum states don't have on place or time. Only objects that share those states have locations. The concepts like locality and physical object have become more specific over time. Before QM, principle of locality in physics matched the common sense of locality in every sense. Object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. Objects have locations. Field must mediate the action over distance. After QM was developed, principle of locality in physics became more refined. Quantum states don't have location in space and time. They are not 'physical objects' themselves. Quantum states is everywhere in time and space where objects sharing that state are, and everything correlates perfectly over time and space. Before QM, something like quantum-state would have been called a non-local thing. In current more refined meaning it's not breaking locality. Non-local instant quantum state 'hovering over wast distances of space and time' is OK as long as causality is local and moves at the speed of light.

fungiblecog 6y ago

The problem is the insistence on the existence of particles at the quantum level. We know that quanta propagate like waves, but interact with classical level systems in discrete units. So we need to stop believing in discrete particles with distinct properties at the quantum level and come up with an explanation of why quantum waves appear particle-like at the classical level. Probably the answer will involve the way in which de-coherence occurs when a large number of quanta are involved.

deertick1 6y ago
Lori Gardi, widely believed to be a crackpot, in my opinion has made a breakthrough in our interpretation od quantum mechanics. If I understand her correctly, she proposes that the reason waves behave like particles is because they transfer energy essentially every zero-crossing : for example a photon is just one half of a wavelength of light. She has a much more interesting explanation of what i am very poorly tryingto spit out here on youtube. Bear with, because honestly she is a whackadoo but she is a smart whackadoo. Lemme know if you want a link to the video
- jamiek88 6y ago
  Why is it always YouTube videos with these (let’s generously say)esoteric ideas and never a link to a paper or essay?
  - millstone 6y ago
    Not GP but since you asked, here it is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325462944_Planck%27s_Constant_and_the_Nature_of_Light https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325462944_Planck%27... The argument is: Planck's relation says that a photon's energy is in proportion to its frequency. But a higher-frequency photon oscillates more times per second. If you look at the energy of a single oscillation, you get a constant, regardless of frequency. This is remarkable and so we should reframe Planck's constant as the fundamental "energy per cycle." The problem is that "energy of a single cycle" cannot be related to other measures of energy, e.g. the binding energy of an electron in the photoelectric effect. Basically it seems like unit sophistry.

karmakaze 6y ago

Here are the easy-viewing Wikipedia pages on Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment[0], and my favorite the Delayed-choice quantum eraser[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed-choice_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed-choice_exp... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

miika 6y ago

https://hiup.org/publications/ https://hiup.org/publications/

rpz 6y ago

Quantum mechanics is not the simplest explanation around. Plancks energy equation should be E=htf h should be in the units of Joule as opposed to Joule second. This formula reveals the true nature of the photon: its not a fundamental particle. What we regard as a photon today is the energy of 1 seconds worth of light at some frequency f. Every wavelength of light contains the same energy, h, regardless of frequency. When you realize plancks constant should be in Joules you will shortly realize that the fine structure constant actually has units of seconds. Another neat thing is that light has mass: h/c^2 (ridiculously small). If it has mass then it should have net charge as well. This could explain why light curves without needing general relativity. Coulombs law using permeability of free space instead of permittivity reveals that coulombs law is a long form of expressing E=mc^2 F * d = muc^2 q1q2/d E = (h2alpha/e^2c)(q1*q2/d)c^2 Edit: formatting

K0balt 6y ago
Do you have any references for this conjecture? It's an interesting idea, but I'd like to see any more work done exploring this line of thought.
- rpz 6y ago
  I recommend reading the papers here https://forgottenphysics.com/ https://forgottenphysics.com/ They're all short reads. There's one of them that goes into the history of E=hf and how Planck actually originally had E=htf but Boltzmann criticized him for it
krageon 6y ago
I lack the requisite amount of sleep to evaluate the truth of this post, but I did really enjoy the fact that this appears to be an unusual explanation of basic concepts that doesn't immediately devolve into mysticism.
- rpz 6y ago
  Thank you for your consideration, I usually get down voted for saying this on here.