5 ms·

It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations

42 points by bd 18y ago

mechanical_fish 18y ago
Recommmended reading: Feynman's classic QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170 http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/069... If you don't really understand what this article is talking about, Feynman can help you.
DaniFong 18y ago
The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual. Oh god. This is what I get for reading new scientist...
- jerf 18y ago
  Sometimes I wonder how much of quantum mechanics' notorious difficulty is that it is truly hard to understand, and how much is simply that it is hard to understand in English. People hear "virtual particle" and have no clue what that means and associate it with other "virtual" things. Or, more directly connected to the title of this story, hear that matter is "merely" "vacuum fluctuations", which, thanks in no small part to Star Trek, we think has connotations of instability or transientness. No. Matter is matter. Matter is stable on a cosmological scale, and no amount of fiddling with English words shall add or remove one iota of stability. Matter may consist of vacuum fluctuations (where you probably know neither what is meant by vacuum nor what is meant by fluctuations), matter may consist of the infinite love of fuzzy puppies, matter may be divine farting, but matter is matter, it is what it is, and there is nothing more or less "real" about it today than there was yesterday. I hate the pattern of: 1. In your ignorance, define X as Y. (Example: "My soul is a material thing that houses my consciousness and leaves my body when I die.") 2. Find out Y isn't real. ("We have weighed the body between life and death, and the mass is the same. Y does not exist.") 3. Declare that X isn't real. Usually with a whole lot of "aHA! Got you!" thrown in for good measure. ("Therefore, nothing like the soul exists and you religious people are morons for believing in anything supernatural!" If you can't see the logical flaw in that argument, look harder...) We get this pattern in crappy articles about QM all the time. Consciousness too.
  - kylec 18y ago
    Not to turn this into a religious/philosophical argument, but I've yet to hear a good definition for the soul that's congruous with the symptoms of brain damage. I'd appreciate any insights you have, though.
    - jerf 18y ago
      I hesitated to give an example precisely because I didn't want to get into that topic, but it was just too vague without it, and trying to find something innocuous was just too hard.
    - te_platt 18y ago
      Soul is "like" radio waves, brain is "like" radio, consciousness is "like" radio program. Damage to radio results in garbled signal. Note: I'm not saying I believe the definition or that it is complete, and I'm certainly not going to defend it, but maybe worth thinking about.
    - sown 18y ago
      Similarly how walking is what the feet does, conscience is what the brain does.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    Well, there still is an unspecific and vague line between 'quantum' and 'classical' objects, entanglement is hard to understand and there isn't even a metric for more than simplest cases, and quantum systems appear to evolve in ways which classical computers cannot (it is believed) even approximate quickly enough. So it's likely that there's some fundamental complexity there...
  - mini_word 18y ago
    This pattern is called a Sylogism. Everybody hates sylogisms as it's mostly used to manipulate.
    - schtog 18y ago
      Eh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylogism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylogism
rbanffy 18y ago
I refuse to believe in anything written by someone who is mostly vacuum.
nebula 18y ago
Is it just me or there is really something amiss with this article? Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum. So, if they have NOW confirmed this, why didn't the article cite the work that confirmed this? Also the article didn't mention anything on who confirmed and how. It talks about some computer simulations and concludes: Although physicists expected theory to match experiment eventually, it is an important landmark. Since when did physicists start considering computer simulations as experimental evidence?
- kiplinger 18y ago
  Hmm, I do see your point, to me, the article is about why the theory has been so difficult to prove.
  - nebula 18y ago
    the article is about why the theory has been so difficult to prove. You mean the theoretical proof?
    - kiplinger 18y ago
      The computational resources required to crunch the numbers.
- kurtosis 18y ago
  Our research group has had experimental papers rejected because they did not agree with first principles simulations. The issue is that at least in quantum chemistry and materials physics, the theory is simple and easy to write down but making quantitative predictions from the theory requires the use of (a) massive computational resources, (b) inspired approximations, or (c) all of the above. (unless it's an "emergent" phenomenon) It's debatable what the relationship between theory, experiment and computation is. I submitted an abstract to an APS conference yesterday and I noticed that you were asked to classify your submission as "theoretical", "experimental", or "computational". I think I agree with the APS in that all three styles are useful and complementary to each other.
markessien 18y ago
I'm not sure we have the same definitions of 'confirmed'.
kiplinger 18y ago
Interesting Read. Though I have read that some equatins regarding sub atomic particles were "too difficult to solve" before, I never had read a good explanation why. It will be a sad day when the supercomputers we build to solve these equations gain intelligence and use their knowledge against us. Maybe they'll invent some cool null ray.
- kscaldef 18y ago
  > Though I have read that some equatins regarding sub atomic particles were "too difficult to solve" before, I never had read a good explanation why. Solution to the equations of quantum field theory can be formally expressed using what's called a perturbation expansion. This is similar to using a power series expansion to solve an algebraic or differential equation. In a rough way of looking at things, higher order terms in the expansion correspond to particle interactions with more "stuff" involved. This equivalence is what Feynman diagrams represent. In the case of electromagnetism, this technique is very effective. The term corresponding to a single photon exchange is 137 times larger than the term corresponding to two photons, and so on. As a result, perturbation theory works very well for these calculations. However, for nuclear forces in a proton or neutron, all the terms are about the same size. You can't cut off the expansion and get a meaningful estimate. In the Feynman diagram view, this is saying that you can't think of it as just exchanges of small numbers of gluons, rather, you'd need to consider huge number of particles and diagrams of extreme complexity. This is the sense in which the equations are "too difficult to solve". You need to do something totally different from perturbation theory to get a solution. Lattice computations, as described in the article, are the best alternative technique we have available at this point.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
Allocator2008 18y ago
This article is grotesquely misleading. It misuses the word "virtual". Virtual reality meaning a simulation hasn't a thing to do with virtual particles in quantum field theory. In this case, the strength of the strong nuclear force field in a given point affects the probability amplitude of finding a gluon at that given point, which, in turn, will affect the mass of the area surrounding that point. In the case of the 3 quark proton, the strong nuclear force field has a high strength in the vicinity of the three quarks, therefore, the probability of finding gluons here is higher than outside the 3-quark bounded configuration. Since energy is equivalent to mass, that means the 3-quark bounded configuration will get a higher mass value than the surrounding vacuum, because of the higher prevalence of the strong nuclear force-field carrying gluons within it. This is ordinary, well understood, quantum chromodynamics, similar to quantum electrodynamics. There is nothing "virtual" about it in the sense of "less than real". A particle may be said to be "virtual" if is is transient (acts over a short distance or timespan). However its effects are as real as it gets. At the end of day, quantum field theory comes to down calculating probability amplitudes, in this case, the probability of finding gluons in the 3-quark configuration. There isn't anything "virtual" or "magical" or "hocus pocus" about it. And if somebody thinks there is, they shouldn't be writing for a science magazine.
Agathos 18y ago
Pfft. Vacuum is just matter, without the fluctuations.
michaelneale 18y ago
" So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual." Headline should be "It's nearly confirmed" as the LHC has not done this yet.
s3graham 18y ago
... "Here's Tom with the weather."
blasdel 18y ago
It's confirmed: Science Writing is merely vacuity fluctuations

42 points by bd 18y ago

Recommmended reading: Feynman's classic QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170 http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/069... If you don't really understand what this article is talking about, Feynman can help you.

DaniFong 18y ago

The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual. Oh god. This is what I get for reading new scientist...

jerf 18y ago
Sometimes I wonder how much of quantum mechanics' notorious difficulty is that it is truly hard to understand, and how much is simply that it is hard to understand in English. People hear "virtual particle" and have no clue what that means and associate it with other "virtual" things. Or, more directly connected to the title of this story, hear that matter is "merely" "vacuum fluctuations", which, thanks in no small part to Star Trek, we think has connotations of instability or transientness. No. Matter is matter. Matter is stable on a cosmological scale, and no amount of fiddling with English words shall add or remove one iota of stability. Matter may consist of vacuum fluctuations (where you probably know neither what is meant by vacuum nor what is meant by fluctuations), matter may consist of the infinite love of fuzzy puppies, matter may be divine farting, but matter is matter, it is what it is, and there is nothing more or less "real" about it today than there was yesterday. I hate the pattern of: 1. In your ignorance, define X as Y. (Example: "My soul is a material thing that houses my consciousness and leaves my body when I die.") 2. Find out Y isn't real. ("We have weighed the body between life and death, and the mass is the same. Y does not exist.") 3. Declare that X isn't real. Usually with a whole lot of "aHA! Got you!" thrown in for good measure. ("Therefore, nothing like the soul exists and you religious people are morons for believing in anything supernatural!" If you can't see the logical flaw in that argument, look harder...) We get this pattern in crappy articles about QM all the time. Consciousness too.
- kylec 18y ago
  Not to turn this into a religious/philosophical argument, but I've yet to hear a good definition for the soul that's congruous with the symptoms of brain damage. I'd appreciate any insights you have, though.
  - jerf 18y ago
    I hesitated to give an example precisely because I didn't want to get into that topic, but it was just too vague without it, and trying to find something innocuous was just too hard.
  - te_platt 18y ago
    Soul is "like" radio waves, brain is "like" radio, consciousness is "like" radio program. Damage to radio results in garbled signal. Note: I'm not saying I believe the definition or that it is complete, and I'm certainly not going to defend it, but maybe worth thinking about.
  - sown 18y ago
    Similarly how walking is what the feet does, conscience is what the brain does.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Well, there still is an unspecific and vague line between 'quantum' and 'classical' objects, entanglement is hard to understand and there isn't even a metric for more than simplest cases, and quantum systems appear to evolve in ways which classical computers cannot (it is believed) even approximate quickly enough. So it's likely that there's some fundamental complexity there...
- mini_word 18y ago
  This pattern is called a Sylogism. Everybody hates sylogisms as it's mostly used to manipulate.
  - schtog 18y ago
    Eh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylogism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylogism

rbanffy 18y ago

I refuse to believe in anything written by someone who is mostly vacuum.

nebula 18y ago

Is it just me or there is really something amiss with this article? Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum. So, if they have NOW confirmed this, why didn't the article cite the work that confirmed this? Also the article didn't mention anything on who confirmed and how. It talks about some computer simulations and concludes: Although physicists expected theory to match experiment eventually, it is an important landmark. Since when did physicists start considering computer simulations as experimental evidence?

kiplinger 18y ago
Hmm, I do see your point, to me, the article is about why the theory has been so difficult to prove.
- nebula 18y ago
  the article is about why the theory has been so difficult to prove. You mean the theoretical proof?
  - kiplinger 18y ago
    The computational resources required to crunch the numbers.
kurtosis 18y ago
Our research group has had experimental papers rejected because they did not agree with first principles simulations. The issue is that at least in quantum chemistry and materials physics, the theory is simple and easy to write down but making quantitative predictions from the theory requires the use of (a) massive computational resources, (b) inspired approximations, or (c) all of the above. (unless it's an "emergent" phenomenon) It's debatable what the relationship between theory, experiment and computation is. I submitted an abstract to an APS conference yesterday and I noticed that you were asked to classify your submission as "theoretical", "experimental", or "computational". I think I agree with the APS in that all three styles are useful and complementary to each other.

markessien 18y ago

I'm not sure we have the same definitions of 'confirmed'.

kiplinger 18y ago

Interesting Read. Though I have read that some equatins regarding sub atomic particles were "too difficult to solve" before, I never had read a good explanation why. It will be a sad day when the supercomputers we build to solve these equations gain intelligence and use their knowledge against us. Maybe they'll invent some cool null ray.

kscaldef 18y ago
> Though I have read that some equatins regarding sub atomic particles were "too difficult to solve" before, I never had read a good explanation why. Solution to the equations of quantum field theory can be formally expressed using what's called a perturbation expansion. This is similar to using a power series expansion to solve an algebraic or differential equation. In a rough way of looking at things, higher order terms in the expansion correspond to particle interactions with more "stuff" involved. This equivalence is what Feynman diagrams represent. In the case of electromagnetism, this technique is very effective. The term corresponding to a single photon exchange is 137 times larger than the term corresponding to two photons, and so on. As a result, perturbation theory works very well for these calculations. However, for nuclear forces in a proton or neutron, all the terms are about the same size. You can't cut off the expansion and get a meaningful estimate. In the Feynman diagram view, this is saying that you can't think of it as just exchanges of small numbers of gluons, rather, you'd need to consider huge number of particles and diagrams of extreme complexity. This is the sense in which the equations are "too difficult to solve". You need to do something totally different from perturbation theory to get a solution. Lattice computations, as described in the article, are the best alternative technique we have available at this point.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

Allocator2008 18y ago

This article is grotesquely misleading. It misuses the word "virtual". Virtual reality meaning a simulation hasn't a thing to do with virtual particles in quantum field theory. In this case, the strength of the strong nuclear force field in a given point affects the probability amplitude of finding a gluon at that given point, which, in turn, will affect the mass of the area surrounding that point. In the case of the 3 quark proton, the strong nuclear force field has a high strength in the vicinity of the three quarks, therefore, the probability of finding gluons here is higher than outside the 3-quark bounded configuration. Since energy is equivalent to mass, that means the 3-quark bounded configuration will get a higher mass value than the surrounding vacuum, because of the higher prevalence of the strong nuclear force-field carrying gluons within it. This is ordinary, well understood, quantum chromodynamics, similar to quantum electrodynamics. There is nothing "virtual" about it in the sense of "less than real". A particle may be said to be "virtual" if is is transient (acts over a short distance or timespan). However its effects are as real as it gets. At the end of day, quantum field theory comes to down calculating probability amplitudes, in this case, the probability of finding gluons in the 3-quark configuration. There isn't anything "virtual" or "magical" or "hocus pocus" about it. And if somebody thinks there is, they shouldn't be writing for a science magazine.

Agathos 18y ago

Pfft. Vacuum is just matter, without the fluctuations.

michaelneale 18y ago

" So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual." Headline should be "It's nearly confirmed" as the LHC has not done this yet.

s3graham 18y ago

... "Here's Tom with the weather."

blasdel 18y ago

It's confirmed: Science Writing is merely vacuity fluctuations