Then you're lost — magritte

Magritte would disagree. Once lost you can only be refound by the truth. Experimental habitats exist only a few hundred years. If objective existence needs conscious observers to exist the n how could conscious beings develop in the first place. Quantum reality doesn't care about us nor our experiments. The latter can be discussed though.

The first step is to visualize a vector field: — jgill

The way I am starting to understand this from an information theoretic is: The particle is a body of information being acted upon by an informational field that is forming and determining the particle, in shape and direction.

Consciousness is a similar such body of information that is formed from and determined entirely by information acting upon it.

The first step is to visualize a vector field: — jgill

What's the purple line in your picture above? What's the green dot? A particle? Is it a trajectory (purple) of a particle (green) in a vector field? What do the vectors represent? What creates them? — Thunderballs

This is a relatively simple vector field in the complex plane based upon the function f(z)=-cos(z). The contour is a streamline describing the path of a point moving under the impetus of f(z). I suspect quantum fields are far more complicated and elaborate than this one. Kenosha Kid might chime in if he is around for an expert opinion.

Physical field theory seems quite different, involving tensors,etc.

If objective existence needs conscious observers to exist then how could conscious beings develop in the first place? — Thunderballs

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.

I know this article!
— Thunderballs

So you must be on Ulrich’s mailing list. It was only published yesterday — Wayfarer

:lol: Speaking for myself, I don't want to be on any mailing list - yes, I might miss out on some good offers but I definitely won't be scammed! :grin:

Ulrich Mornhoff is definitely not going to scam anyone. You can click the link I provided with confidence.

The reason I said that is because when I posted the link to that article, Thunderballs said he knew the article. So I pointed out it had only been published a day previously.

Ulrich Mornhoff is definitely not going to scam anyone. You can click the link I provided with confidence.

The reason I said that is because when I posted the link to that article, Thunderballs said he knew the article. So I pointed out it had only been published a day previously. — Wayfarer

:ok: I just found it funny and also very inspiring that there are people on this forum who take knowledge seriously - keeping up to speed is not my cup of tea, as it is I have difficulty with what's already known.

You might find the following to be an interesting conversation (transcribed from an interview) between Hannah Fry (mathematician) and Prof. Ivette Fuentes (quantum physicist).

Hannah Fry: It seems that there's quite a lot of uncertainty in quantum physics. Does that bother you?

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: No, when I heard that things were, you know, uncertain and also against our common sense in quantum physics then I thought, oh wow!, that sounds interesting, I want to know more about that.

Hannah Fry: Ok, alright, I'll tell you what then, quantum physics lesson 101, where do we start?

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: Ok, I would say we have to start with superposition. So, let's talk about electrons. So, they're very small particles and they can be in two states, spin, and the spin can be pointing up or down. So, if we were in the classical world, the spin could only be either up or down but in the quantum world, the spin is in a superposition which it means it can be up and down at the same time.

Hannah Fry: In the quantum world you can have your cake and eat it too. Alright, tell me about entanglement then.

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: Ok, so take two electrons. If the electrons are entangled, and if I do something to one of the electrons, for example change the direction of the spin, that will instantaneously affect the state of the other electron even if they're separated (by) long distances.

Hannah Fry: How far are they from each other?

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: Well they can be a few centimeters but now the latest experiments, using satellites, show entanglement across 1,200 km.

Hannah Fry: What? You've got something over here and something 1,200 km away. You do something to one and the other one instantly knows what's happened?

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: Yes, you affect the state of the other one instantly.

Hannah Fry: Apparently, there is no causal link. The only thing we can say is that the two particles are synchronized. How does one know what the other one is doing?

Prof. Ivette Fuentes: Well, that we're still trying to understand because that's what mathematics tells us and then we can show it in the experiment but we're still struggling to understand what that means. And one of the reason why we don't understand it in, you know, like you're asking is because we don't see it in our everyday lives. So, let's say it's not part of our experience and common sense but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

How to envision quantum fields in physics?

A field has a value at every point. Picture each point being on a spring going up and down; this is the harmonic oscillator! These points moving affect other points moving, dragging on them. The sums of the harmonic oscillators are the wavering waving fields. There are fields for boson and fermions. They can affect one another.

At rest, the fields still fluctuate (since there can be no stillness), about the zero-point energy, which isn't zero but to a physicist. The Higgs field at rest is of an even higher energy! All the fields overlap and merge into the one quantum field of the universe. They exhaust reality; there isn't anything else. They provide the entirety of physics. They are here now and were there before the Big Bang and are ever and always.

As fundamental, a field must ever remain as itself, thus but rearranging itself to form the elementaries of the Standard Model, which occur at stable rungs of energy and sometimes charge, as quantum excitations of the field being at certain stable unit levels.

As it famously says in Acts 17:28 "For in the quantum field we live, and move, and have our being"

"For in the quantum field we live, and move, and have our being" — bert1

"The Quantum Field that made the Universe is the Ground of Determination and does not live in Colliders built by human hands. It made everything from the field excitations that are the stable elementaries."

Quantumfields also live in colliders.

There are two objective realities for a black hole too. What is meant by two objective realities is that two observers see different parts of the same objective reality.

The particle is a body of information being acted upon by an informational field that is forming and determining the particle, in shape and direction. — Pop

The particle is just an almost point-like structure which moves on ALL trajectories through spacetime (also backwards in time!) simultaneously. As such it contains no information. The only information is contained in their respective probability amplitudes. The wavefunction is inferred from these paths (path integral formalism(. The only usefull information to people lies in the collective forms of interacting particles (through gauge fields). We see these. They can be usefull to us. A quantum field can be pictured:

For one particle as all paths in spacetime of an almost pointlike classical particle interacing with fluctuations of the vacuum fields of ALL elementary particles (quarks, leptons, or even more fundamenta ones. and vacuum gauge fields, like the photon, gluons and gravitons).

For more particles the situation is the same but the particles interact on top with one another and excitations (creation and destruction operators) of fields can cause more or less particle to fly around.

A field can be seen as an operator valued distribution. The operators are creation and destruction operators. With, say, that one particle such a distribution is associated. Corresponding to all these trajectories and probability amplitudes.

Thanks for that. What is meant by an operator valued distribution?

A distribution (a function-like structure) of operators. Around and at (not only AT) each point in spacetime an operator is assigned. Creation or destruction operator.

Do you mean the operator in this case would be the forces of the vector field - Operating on the particle?

I mean creation or destruction operators creating or destroying elementary partcles. They act on vacuum fields of elementary particles (matter and gauge).

Thanks - I have quite a bit of catching up to do! :smile:

You're welcome! :smile:

A field has a value at every point. Picture each point being on a spring going up and down; this is the harmonic oscillator! These points moving affect other points moving, dragging on them. The sums of the harmonic oscillators are the wavering waving fields. There are fields for boson and fermions. They can affect one another. — PoeticUniverse

This is the wrong nature of fields. Imaginative and helpfull though. Reminds me of "Quantum field theory in a nutshell", where a comparison with a spring matrass is made.

nutshell — ArisTootelEs

Acts 29 “Therefore since we are the field's box spring's offspring, we should not think that the field's being is like gold or silver or stone—but like a mattress."

In some of the pop-physics books I've read, people like Sean Carroll, Carlo Rovelli, Art Hobson and the like, they tend to say that a field is kind of like a space, not unlike when we think of a field ordinarily, but we abstract away all the phenomenal qualities we tend to associate with them (greenness, grass, sand, whatever).

What that image presents is a kind of curved loop area. Or am I misinterpreting the image?

Kind of. There's a pretty good discussion of this by David Tong @ the Royal Institution on YouTube. It's calledQuantum Fields The Real Building Blocks of The Universe

In some of the pop-physics books I've read, people like Sean Carroll, Carlo Rovelli, Art Hobson and the like, they tend to say that a field is kind of like a space — Manuel

More or less. Take just one particle (spin 1/2) in empty space. This particle, if prepared firstly by an interaction, also called a measurement, is essential for spinor fields (quarks and leptons and maybe even more deep) to localise. This particle moves on ALL possible trajectories at once. If it had not interacted all probability amplitudes for these paths (and these are litterally ALL paths) are equal. All these particle paths and interactions later constitute space. Space is that what allows all these particle trajectories. But these paths don't constitute space.

Ah cool. I will take a look. Thanks. :up:

All these particle paths and interactions later constitute space. Space is that what allows all these particle trajectories. But these paths don't constitute space. — Ozymandy

Very interesting.

For my benefit, permit me to re-formulate this: So the particles move in all trajectories in these paths, these paths later constitute space, at the end of a process.

Space is what allows or permits these processes happening. So would the fields be space itself or would they be what is involved in the paths particles take?

In other words, are fields the process by which particles move in all directions, or are fields more fundamental than that?

Space is what allows or permits these processes happening. So would the fields would be space itself or would they be what is involved in the paths particles take? — Manuel

Good thought! I answered it in my last sentence. These paths dont constitute space though its tempting to think. Would we finally know what spac actually is. MAYBE... they constitute spacetime... Must think about that! Thanks! :grin:

:chin:

Looking forward to your eventual reply, once your done cogitating for a while. :)

Looking forward to your eventual reply, once your done cogitating for a while. :) — Manuel

:smile:

Vector space does not mean vectors in space.

Entanglement frequently arises in these discussions, and it's tempting to wander into quantum mysticism. Here is a fairly clear-eyed perspective of it, from Quora by Mark John Fernee:

It's the quantum version of a correlation. That means that two or more parts of a quantum system have correlated properties. What's strange about it is that the correlation is indeterminate until a measurement is made, after which the correlation is revealed.

A reasonable example is that of a pattern. A pattern represents collective information that isn't apparent unless the entire pattern is observed. That's a classical pattern! Such a pattern can be said to always exist, regardless of whether it's measured. For the quantum version, there may be two or more possible patterns, which all exist in an abstract space. However, just a single local measurement will select the entire pattern that will be observed. That means a local measurement seems to have a nonlocal effect. However, that nonlocal effect is not apparent at the local level. You need to see the entire pattern, which entails making lots of local measurements and comparing them.