Any Physicists Here?

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FractalAudio

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I have a theory about dark matter:

The double-slit experiment says that elementary particles can behave as both particles and waves. I've never been able to fully accept that. It means that a particle turns into a wave and then recombines to become a particle.

However... what if dark matter was a fluid that permeated the universe. All particles vibrate due to their energy. If you drop a rock into a pond it creates waves. In the same way if you shoot a particle into a fluid it will create waves.

So the particle is moving from the emitter towards the slits. There's a wave in front of it. The wavefront bounces off the solid area and also goes through the slits. This creates an interference pattern. The interference pattern is a complex wave with high and low pressure zones. The particle will follow the path of least resistance. Sometimes it will strike the plate. Sometimes it will go through the left slit and sometimes through the right.

So, yes, there's still wave-particle duality but it's because there's a wave around the particle. The particle is always a single particle and is never in two places at the same time. It's wavefront, however, is affected by the surrounding and dictates the path the particle will take. The path is randomized due to various factors so sometimes the path of least resistance is the left slit and sometimes it's the right slit. The wavefront behind the slits has all sort of peaks and nulls due to interference and the particle follows the troughs.

Therefore what I'm thinking is that wave-particle duality is actually due to a dark matter fluid that creates waves around particles.

It also explains the patterns with a single slit. The wavefront passes through the slit and there is diffraction off the edges of the slit. This causes lobing of the wavefront. Sometimes the particle will follow a sidelobe path due to random fluctuations.

IOW, there's a wave that propagates through the fluid and the particle follows the troughs in the wave.
 
Great question, and one I’m unqualified answering. The whole particle/wave thing, along with quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement never made sense as thing seem to behave very peculiar at that level. Quantum entanglement, as Einstein noted, means spooky things happening at distance.
 
I listened to a physicist on the CBC radio science show yesterday and dwelled on the weirdness that is quantum physics, the various interpretations, and the double-slit experiment in particular.

I've always found that the interpretation "it's both a wave and a particle" until you measure/observe the individual slits (collapsing the wave function) unsatisfying at best and uber-bizzare at worst. You get the sense that there is something else currently out of our scope of imagination and observations going on at a very deep, fundamental level.

Since dark matter/dark energy is unexplainable at this time and confounding physicists mightily, it seems to hint that there is a huge fundamental gap in the knowledge base which may tie many fundamental things together and truly explain 'things', or at least provide a huge leap in understanding and clarity.

While the really out-there interpretations of quantum mechanics (many universes theory, where every quantum event spins off a whole new universe, the 'particle can take every path possible until we collapse the probability/wave function', M-theory, etc.) yield tangible results, offer correct predictions of experimental observations/measurements, and make the math work (sometimes with 'hacks' like 're-normalization'), it appears there are fundamental 'elegant' and 'simple' laws that physicists still need to grasp, and/or outright fundamental changes in thinking/approach are required.

Interesting post Cliff, makes sense and got me thinking...kind of like how the Higgs-field permeates space entirely and interactions with that field are what gives particles mass. Another kind of field that acts as 'water' is food for thought....

All I know (or don't heh) is that quantum physics is the subject I've read about the most over decades and is the one I understand the least...there is that 'duality' once again o_O
 
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FractalAudio said:
I have a theory about dark matter:

The double-slit experiment says that elementary particles can behave as both particles and waves. I've never been able to fully accept that. It means that a particle turns into a wave and then recombines to become a particle.

However... what if dark matter was a fluid that permeated the universe. All particles vibrate due to their energy. If you drop a rock into a pond it creates waves. In the same way if you shoot a particle into a fluid it will create waves.

So the particle is moving from the emitter towards the slits. There's a wave in front of it. The wavefront bounces off the solid area and also goes through the slits. This creates an interference pattern. The interference pattern is a complex wave with high and low pressure zones. The particle will follow the path of least resistance. Sometimes it will strike the plate. Sometimes it will go through the left slit and sometimes through the right.

So, yes, there's still wave-particle duality but it's because there's a wave around the particle. The particle is always a single particle and is never in two places at the same time. It's wavefront, however, is affected by the surrounding and dictates the path the particle will take. The path is randomized due to various factors so sometimes the path of least resistance is the left slit and sometimes it's the right slit. The wavefront behind the slits has all sort of peaks and nulls due to interference and the particle follows the troughs.

Therefore what I'm thinking is that wave-particle duality is actually due to a dark matter fluid that creates waves around particles.

It also explains the patterns with a single slit. The wavefront passes through the slit and there is diffraction off the edges of the slit. This causes lobing of the wavefront. Sometimes the particle will follow a sidelobe path due to random fluctuations.

IOW, there's a wave that propagates through the fluid and the particle follows the troughs in the wave.
Click to expand...


I'm definitely not a physicist but got into studying and thinking (as a hobby) for many years about these things. There are some obvious things that I believe are overlooked because most scientist, in general, want to build on a foundation they have already established and have an incredible amount of bias toward seeing things in a new way. (tube vs digital kinda thing :))

First I believe there are extremely small particles that emit vibrational waves that create all we see, know and are able to measure as reality - this lines up with modern physics theories. The size of these particles cause differently sized and differently intense waves which act in extremely complex ways with each other - which also lines up with modern physics.

The difference I see is that particles are dead (no energy) and there may not be a very large amount of them in the universe by volume but an incredible amount by number. It is impossible to create energy from nothing so they are reacting to a field of energy created by a source, or possibly many sources orchestrated together that creates this amazing dance of motion/energy/interaction we see. The energy field I imagine is at such a high frequency and moves far faster than the speed of light. We will never detect it without a single particle measuring device (which is impossible). There are trends that occur in the field(s) that cause some of the stranger observations like quantum entanglement (also think about some of the waves of events we witness that are to bizarre to be coincidence!). Also when you think of space without particles or heat energy, it's the perfect super conductor to transport all of this ultra high energy that drives all of these particles.

It would take a long time to write out my view on all of these things but in a way it does line up with what Cliff is saying and somewhat with the pilot wave theory mentioned above.

Any way you decide to look at these things, the more you see, the more you realize that they are directed and powered by a very complex force. Whether you believe that to be God, mathematics, mother nature, aliens, dark matter or the all powerful atom? Some prefer not to believe in any of those things, but here we are :)
 
FractalAudio said:
I have a theory about dark matter:

The double-slit experiment says that elementary particles can behave as both particles and waves. I've never been able to fully accept that. It means that a particle turns into a wave and then recombines to become a particle.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's quite right; at least, that's never how I was taught it.

The way I was taught it was as follows:

We don't think quanta are particles. We don't think that quanta are waves. We certainly don't think they're particles half the time, and waves, the other half of the time.

We think they're quanta, all the time.

Quanta are just things beyond our experience, which happen to behave according to a certain set of equations under one set of circumstances, but according to a different set of equations under other circumstances.

The best way to describe them is with Jabberwocky: That is, with nonsense-terms intended to remind us that we don't know what these things are, at all, and to use terms like "particle" or "wave" is just taking the dual-applicability of the equations and allowing that "dual use" to lead us into false analogies drawn from our everyday macroscopic experience.

So we should think of an electron, not as a "particle," but as a "slithy tove." In Jabberwocky, the "slithy toves" like to "gyre and gimball" in the "wabe." There are eight slithy toves gyre-ing and gimball-ing in the "oxygen wabe," when it has a neutral charge; when it has a negative ionization there may be nine. But they aren't particles (they're not little balls of stuff with conventional momentum) nor are they waves (they're not pressure-changes in some existing medium); they're "slithy toves": Things outside your experience, whose behavior (in terms of measurable changes) happens to follow certain equations.

From a philosophy-of-science perspective, it's good to periodically give yourself a reality-check and approach the topic in this way, because it keeps our claims about what kinds of things we really know through physics sufficiently humble. (Where "sufficiently" means "matching the actual data provided by our methodology.")

NOTE: I'm not saying that we might not, somehow, manage to explain wave-like behavior in quanta more-consistently as actual pressure waves at some future date. Or, as actual particles of some stuff. It seems unlikely, but paradigm shifts have occurred and could occur again, provided they maintain or improve on the power of the existing model, and somehow provide new insight into the identity or substance of the observed thing, not merely the amount by which it changes. Such a paradigm shift would seem to require a different methodology of experiment or reasoning, given that our current methodology literally excludes investigation of "identity or substance" in order to focus on quantifying change. But, hey, it could happen. Not saying it couldn't.

I'm just saying: Remember that, with the scientific method, we've intentionally abstracted away from whole categories of questions about reality, and limited our view to certain kinds of experimental results that are measurable...and not all of those, but only the ones where equations can be written describing state-changes in observable phaenomena at the beginning and end of an experiment.

The question of what something really is can never, even in principle, be discovered by such a methodology, for the methodology itself excludes it. Asking "what is this thing?" isn't the same as asking "by how much has this thing changed?"

If then, you're bugged by the sense that you're being asked to believe that a quantum "changes what it is," and then later "changes back," the proper reply is: Don't let yourself be bugged by that, 'cause it's just a misunderstanding! To think that the double-slit experiment means that a particle really is a particle, and then really is some waves, and then later really is a particle again, is a misinterpretation of the kinds of information our methodology provides. What we know about quanta does not say (and could not ever, even in principle, say) anything about that. It only says what we can measure, and allows us to predict what measurements we'll probably get the next time we encounter similar events.

None of that is to badmouth the scientific method, of course! Of course it's extremely powerful and successful and nobody with an ounce of sense denies that it's perfectly-tailored for capturing knowledge of the particular aspects of the world towards which it is tailored (namely, observable things that change, whose changes can be quantified in some way)!

But, we have to keep its limitations in mind, and not mistake claims that "it changed by X amount" for a claim about "it is...."

(Or so I was taught. If someone feels I ought to distrust this, I'm open to being corrected.)
 
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FractalAudio said:
The double-slit experiment says that elementary particles can behave as both particles and waves. I've never been able to fully accept that. It means that a particle turns into a wave and then recombines to become a particle.
Click to expand...

The crazy thing with that experiment is observing it can change the outcome, which is a challenge creating usable quantum computers. The other crazy thing is the delayed observer version where time backs up and causes the outcome to change as if it was observed the whole time. Trends in the complex interactions energy fields? I think so.
 
There are hundreds if not thousand of theories which try to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, but among the ones I "know" the Orch-Or theory by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff is the most fascinating cuz it's one of the few which also tries to explain what is and what role has the "observer" in the collapse of the wave function.

Here's a great interview to one of the authors and if you're interested I suggest reading Penrose's book 'The emperor's new mind'

 
DLC86 said:
There are hundreds if not thousand of theories which try to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, but among the ones I "know" the Orch-Or theory by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff is the most fascinating cuz it's one of the few which also tries to explain what is and what role has the "observer" in the collapse of the wave function.

Here's a great interview to one of the authors and if you're interested I suggest reading Penrose's book 'The emperor's new mind'

Click to expand...


 
Well... I actually earned an advanced degree in applied physics many, many, many moons ago. Then I realized the pay was for shit and went into software engineering and architecture and I forgot a lot of what I learned.

@Dr. Dipwad is on the correct train of thought from what I can recall... a quantum perspective (which is very appropriate given Cliff’s thesis) and his explanation of quantum thought processes holds true to what I recall also.

Also @FractalAudio and @Dr. Dipwad viewing the waves as a result of the interaction between a particle that has disturbed a medium and thus created waves is reasonable, and in my opinion in line with the type of elegant systems and interactions we discover once we truly understand how things work.

@2112 actually summed up something that I have thought for some time. Pre-general relativity the concept of “ether” was a catch all for things that were beyond the ability to observe, test, measure, and ultimately quantify. It was also pretty well entrenched in the scientific community of the day.

Quantum physics has always had a similar feel to me. I think quantum theory has a lot of validity, but there are still a lot of “spherical chickens in vacuums” there.

Shit, we know gravity exists but we do not understand the mechanics behind it. Is there a graviton particle? A gravity boson? Is gravity the result of the warping of the fabric of space/time due to an object with mass occupying that point in space/time?

I suspect that much of the weirdness in the particle and quantum realm can simply be ascribed to humanity’s current deficiencies.
 
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In the scenario you described, the pressure wave ahead of the particle, assuming it is caused by the particle, would need to travel faster than the particle itself in order to affect the path in front of it (let alone have enough time to reach the plates, bounce back, and create interference patterns that affect the same particle which created the wave). We know nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, except in the event that the space-time itself is expanding (inflation theory). Even if that weren't the case, the photon could not accelerate heavier particles in the fluid faster than what it is traveling itself. Quantum is weird, but there are still some basic laws that cannot be avoided.

It's a plausible scenario if the particle is not a photon and is moving magnitudes lower than the speed of light. Also depends on the medium. Fluid dynamics is also very, very weird and complex. Sometimes I wish I would have chosen a career in this field... and become a world famous Formula 1 aerodynamicist :) But alas, I ended up just a lowly network engineer.

Anyway, back to the experiment, the "wave" aspect of a particle maps to the probability function. A particle doesn't necessarily travel through space as a wave does through a medium in newtonian physics, but rather the wave property is used to describe all possible outcomes before observation. The photon could, after all, pass straight through the lead plates without interacting with any of the lead atoms and arrive at the detector behind, without having to enter either of the slits. The probability function maps out all possible outcomes, and this is what can be interpreted as a wave function. But yes, there still exists interference and convergence within the quantum world wave functions as well.

Dark matter/energy is one of those things that I feel we need to think in much higher dimensions; the same with gravity. In fact, a portion of string theory involves the idea that gravity doesn't exist directly within our universe, but is shared or leaked from neighboring branes or hyperspace, which would explain why it is so much weaker than the three other fundamental forces. Very short description here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane...s_weak_and_the_cosmological_constant_is_small
 
I sooo want to dive into this but if I have an ounce of sense I will wait until I have less beer in me.

(Oh hey, I hear there's new firmware upgrade! What could possibly go wrong with that...?)
 
The problem is it's a impractical theoretical approach.

Gravity obviously will attract matter, and if every action has a equal and opposite reaction, then gravity will attract antimatter at the same rate that matter attracts matter.
 
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This got me to thinking about some ideas I had decades ago.

The idea that (at the time I was thinking about this stuff) we could not account for 96% of the matter in the universe troubled me.

Additionally our view of matter and anti-matter did not sit well with my mind. We beleive that matter and ant-matter behave the same. We believe that almost as much anti-matter was created by the big bang as matter. Almost as much. We believe that anti-matter and matter annihilate each other when they encounter one another.

We also view space as a clumpy void. Vast regions of “nothingness” with small regions of “somethingness” interspersed in the void.

I struggled with these views. There is almost equal dispersion of matter and anti-matter but they rarely collide? Well if matter/antimatter is so damn pervasive and equally dispersed, they should be encountering one another regularly. We have voids and “missing” (by our accounting) matter/anti-matter? I felt that we were missing something fundamental.

I argued that the missing matter/anti-matter is hiding in plain sight. That anti-matter and matter do not annihilate one another, they simply balance each other. Think along the lines of (+1) + (-1) = 0. That the void of space is not empty, but is filled with exactly the same amount of matter and anti-matter effectively nullifying one another and creating (to us) a perception of emptiness/nothingness. That the matter we could see and quantify is the excess matter.

I posited that space is merely a perfect balance of matter and anti-matter. That the matter we observe and quantify is the excess matter produced by the big bang that could not pair with anti-matter because there was more matter than anti-matter.

I also suggested that if this was correct, that we could definitively answer the question of whether or not the universe could expand infinitely. I believed that if space were a fabric spun of a perfect balance of matter and anti-matter the universe could only expand so far before “stretching” to a point that stalls then reverses to contraction... much like a spring. In my view the “big crunch” is an inevitability and the universe may be the ultimate perpetual motion machine, as once sufficiently following contraction another “big bang” would occur.

My professor and advisors scoffed at this notion. They told me that it was a waste of time. A dead end. That I should let them teach me how the universe really works rather than chasing after hunches. I found that I really liked writing software during my studies and decided to pursue technology.

The idea of particles moving through and disturbing matter really appeals to me because it is very much a part of how I wanted to see things so many years ago.
 
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