Category: Physics, Psychology, and Creativity
WAVE/PARTICLE :: UNCERTAINTY=POSITION/MOMENTUM
In Einstein’s 1917 paper The Quantum Theory of Radiation, photons stimulate the emission of photons by striking and being absorbed by molecules and by raising energy to the point at which new photons are emitted, thus lowering the energy (coincidentally, the theory behind the MASER, LASER, and quantum entanglement) by utilizing the equivalence of mass and energy (e=mc2). This posits the existence of the light quantum, radical since photons were not recognized as yet by the physics community, hence the title. Einstein felt his theory had a weakness—he really wanted there to be a “union with wave theory” and found this to be the greatest weakness of the quantum theory of radiation. He is searching for something but cannot reach it. He knows there must be something about this that explains particle-wave duality but cannot come up with it utilizing the level of experimental knowledge of the time, and cannot therefore arrive at ways to experimentally verify what he intuitively “knows” is true.
Now (2014), a hundred years later, the gap is closed. New work (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/24/quantum-physics-easier-to-understand_n_6370570.html) suggests wave and particle duality are the equivalent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in which there is a relative duality between position and momentum. That is, like particles vs. waves, position and momentum can only be measured separately—if one measures a particle’s position one can no longer measure it’s momentum–but are really identical. Vice versa if one measures its position and knows where it is, how fast it is going can no longer be measured. This article states that they are relative—two sides of the same coin. To put it bluntly, momentum and position are relative, just as space and time are relative and particle and wave are relative.
The equivalence principle founds much of Einstein’s later work and led to the generalization of the Special Theory of Relativity. It took from 1905 until 1916 to attain this goal in the Theory of General Relativity, which forced physics to relativize space and time. Now the principle of equivalence leads to a further relativisation—particle and wave are now relative not only to each other but to position and momentum. It took a century but Einstein was proven right again. What interests me is the implication that there might be a bridge here between quantum theory and relativity theory.
The implications of equivalence can immediately be applied to cryptology. What simple mathematical formula describes this four-part harmony between matter, energy, where that matter is, and how fast it is moving? With so many variables, we should be able to avoid anyone hacking into and stealing records of our credit cards because they are encrypted on so many levels. For me—leaving cryptologists to the Turing test—I ask the question: what simple mathematical formula describes this four-part harmony? I sense we are approaching unity—the nexus of Einstein’s model of a macro universe and the Copenhagen school quantum theory of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Schrödinger. This nexus fascinates me because I do not believe Einstein would have predicted it and neither would Heisenberg. This may throw light on whether or not Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead.
Einstein’s quest for a unified theory extends: Kaluza-Klein theory adds a 5th dimension, string theory adds six more to that, and still there is no experimental proof that there is a 5th or an 11th dimension. The first—Kaluza-Klein— disappointed Einstein secondary to lack of data, and the second—string theory/M theory—disappoints a couple of generations of string theorists. What if the results of the classical double-slit experiment—the essential paradigm of particle-wave interaction—represent Einstein’s idea that both wave-particle and uncertainty theory are relative to one another? Well, they are, but only if measuring momentum or position are flip sides of the coin of the principle of uncertainty and there is an equivalence between this and wave-particle theory.
I visualize a multidimensional propagating wave whose particle manifestation can be measured either as velocity or position. It’s like one of the Star Trek movies came to life and you can beam up Captain Kirk. Add to this the relativity of space and time and I see the Tardis ripping through the fabric of the elegant universe.
Too bad the article I read skims the finding because, even though I AM NO MATHEMATICIAN, I’D LIKE TO SEE SOME FORMULAE. THE NEXT STEP IS THE FORMALIZATION OF THESE EQUIVALENCIES SO AS TO MAKE PREDICTIONS. THAT’S when the pedal hits the metal!
What if nonlinear mathematical equations known as chaos theory may be applied to neuronal development, behavior, and the mind? I am not talking about religious chaos, Jungian chaos, good and evil chaos. I do not like the descriptor “chaos” because nonlinear equations produce what appear to be chaotic flutter, arrhythmia, turbulence, lightening, and other phenomena which are less organized than so-called order would predict stability to be. Yet there is stability in nonlinearity. If I call personality determinants such as ego “attractors,” then other nonlinear psychological organizations are also attractors. Chaos theory defines strange attractors as stable and deterministic patterns that cost a system less energy and do not repeat themselves. Can psychological strange attractors be described by the nonlinear mathematical formulae which chaos theory utilizes to create strange attractors and Mandelbrot fractals?
I want to study this problem and if anyone can make a scientific contribution to this issue I will pay extreme attention to their comments.
There I was, stopped for speeding on the West Side Highway for doing what I have always done—keeping up with traffic. Two days later, stopped for speeding on Rte 28 for passing by going faster than the speed limit. As I explained to the cop, it’s only logical to get in and out of the passing lane decisively to avoid hitting him. One more stop in the next 18 months and I’m busted–license pulled for 6 months.
After the anger, or rather as a result of it, my behavior was re-assessed, and my mind made up. No tickets for a year (and a half). But how?
I soon realized there was a connection between the two events. In both casesI was doing what I had developed over the million miles and accepted as common practice and suddenly all that I had developed was called into question. So, under the gun, my mind was made up. Drive exactly at the speed limit. Ignore other drivers who buzzed by me, flashed their lights at me for driving to slowly, and never modify my behavior except to avoid an accident. Stay street legal.
The result of this change was profound. By ignoring all my well-learned instincts I avoided multiple traffic stops (the cops were out there like flies laying eggs on rotten meat, drivers infested with flashing lights, embarrassment, angry wives or husbands, and big fines). One person in a Mercedes thought that my being in the passing lane driving the speed limit was just TOO MUCH and kept flashing his headlights until I pulled over after ten minutes of matching the speed of a tractor-trailer who also was driving the speed limit but one lane over on the two lane interstate. And by driving in the far-right lane, not one but two cars pulled out in front of me, I being in this unused-to lane since I was now the slowest car on the road. BUT, I twice slammed on my brakes and arrived home safely—totally fried.
After sleeping ten hours I am still stewing. My life has changed. Now I am following the rules, different rules from those I developed over a million miles analyzing traffic-generated pressure waves, intuiting what will be the faster lane, and taking the occasional risk to save a minute — systems that seem to me adaptive and efficient but get me into trouble with the law. Exceeding the speed limit to make a safe pass? No brainer. Staying with the flow of cars? They’d have to stop everyone so there is no danger of being stopped. I have a litany of reasons which in the harsh light are nothing but excuses for doing exactly what I want to–get there as fast as possible.
NO MORE TICKETS. Or as Burton Greene once told me wisely, the the mind of the pilot goes faster than the rocket ship. The time”wasted” spent driving legally frees me to intuit unimaginable things faster than the speed of thought–a dutiful rebellion. Improvising faster than the speed of thought. Spiritual life without the spirit. When the Captain says “engage” my superluminous mind, not my spaceship, will approach warp 11.
Twenty-first century science, and physics in particular, might have walls around itself. Only when the old farts die off will science be able to accept what is apparent to the younger farts, that determinism is relative. It is seductive to think that theory can control everything, and that there may be a theory of everything and all that. I believe we are seduced by what I consider to be a bubble of determinism. I can look into the immediate past and see what caused this or that to occur, and I speculate as a futurist into what stretches out in front of us based upon the principle that the past predicts the future. Can I say the past is illimitable insofar as I can link causally everything that made this moment in time be what it is for me in my relativistic frame? I think not. And the same argument appears to hold for the futurists among us. Therefore, if causality and determinism have a place in logic we cannot assume direct links connect everything into the past and into the future; we live in a bubble of causality.
What lies outside the bubble? Or, for that matter, what permeates our bubble universe of causality? Is random “behavior” the rule and no potential for certainty exists? Well—yes and no. If the scale is large enough the probabilities mount up and random transmutes into certainty. It looks like we are going to have to get ready for surprises in the middle area. Things from our lives may “happen for a reason” but the extent of the reasonableness escapes us. I cannot conform to the teleological force of the “reason” because there is not enough data to prove or to disprove that behavior—the rule of the hypothetical-deductive foundation of science suggested by Karl Popper.
Just know we are related and on some sixth level connected. It is neither the totality of the hologram nor the linearity of Euclid but some “third” (or fourth, or fifth) thing which I can “see” if I do not focus my eyes too closely on the nearest object.
Nspacetime = 0
Nspacetime = 1
0 = 1
0 = spirit
1 = spirit
N0 spacetime = N1 spacetime
N0 spacetime = light matter
N1 spacetime = dark matter
Each N–N0 and N1–have unique laws of physics and interact according to them. Notes, words, expressions of vibratory nature and relative levels of acceleration constitute N, 0 and 1.
Every part is of the whole and is entangled.
Parts are words, letters, narrative, poetry.
Notes are vibratory and interact on all levels, just as do words.
Matter and energy inform words, notes.
Dark and light inhabit dark universes and light universes and are organized into dark and light centers of energy/matter/spirit and interact and can be formed into structures, maps, essences of greater transparency or lesser transparency. Quality is defined by transparency and dischord (discord) shapes transparency. Dischord and transparency coexist to bring about chiarascuro, depth, flatness, and limit.
We participate in this in real and in projected form.
If physics is the king of the sciences, then psychology is the monad of the sciences encompassing all sciences, spirit, chaos, order, elemental and civilization without end: DISCUSS.
I’m changing. Up till now I’ve insisted I did not have the self-promotion gene. This gene is not expressed, i.e., functional. Time to express it. In the interest of playing more music in front of others. Widening my field of music means playing music I haven’t played in years. Been working with phenomenal vocalist Lex Grey and incredible drummer Sonny Rock up in the Catskills which extended into sitting in with more rockers up there like Tas Cru and Murali Coryell. Re-entered the new music downtown NY scene–playing with Rashid Bakr/Charles Downs’Centipede with Ras Moshe, Larry Roland, Billy Stein, Matt Lavelle. Sessioning with Steve Cohn. Getting down with Mel Nusbaum, Billy Stein and ZONE. Put out INTERVALS, a cd with Billy Stein that breaks down all the barriers. Ready to do it again. And working with and putting out a cd,New York and Me, produced by NY/Santa Fe storyteller Regina Ress. And the third cd, Natural, that came out this year on old buddy Mike Mahaffay’s label in a group called the Willamette River Pirates caught me playing with the West Coast new music scene. Also curated the first night of the 7th Annual Westbeth Music Festival and played in four different groups including ZONE, Michael Moss / Billy Stein Duo, Dave Mann Mannmadesound, and The Raytones. And, released two YouTube videos of Billy Stein and myself.
Next up a west coast tour in the spring. Billy Stein and I are performing March 20, 2013 with my old buddy pianist Jack Bowers in the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. Reaching out to other venues on the left coast.
Coming to my point…. My self-promotion gene is starting to express itself, as am I. I’m composing new music and want to share it with others. You can purchase INTERVALS on this webpage. I’m playing with as many people as possible. Help me climb that mountain. I’m itching to expand.
Your message has been sent
Ok, this idea sounds meshugah to one of the physicists I spoke with at the end of a salon entitled “Refining Einstein.” It was part of the World Science Festival, 2013. I volunteer every year and get to hear smart people talk about Einstein and quantum physics. This year the salon participants decided to avoid the quantum physics part and devoted their attention to defining and refining the geometry of time. Which is ok if you didn’t know that they were supposed to relate time to both the macro and micro, to Einsteinian spacetime and to quantum mechanics.
One of the questions from the audience wondered whether or not the absolute zero of time wouldn’t be the big bang at its inception when time did not yet exist. In other words, time originated with space. That makes sense since time and space are so intimately related that the geometer of space absolutely defines time and time cannot be separated from space. Gravity is the great force here as mass and energy warp spacetime, slowing and accelerating time itself. In fact, gravity became the 800 pound gorilla in the room of the salon and time and space were inseparably linked with the effect mass and energy have on spacetime.
But what happens to gravity in the quantum world where mass/energy does not have much effect on subatomic particles? Gravity is comparatively weak in spacetime; in quantum levels there is no valid theory of gravity. Quantum loop gravity theory is one effort to define gravity on the quantum level but is as yet less than authoritative. The distances are so short and the energy so high that compared to the weak force, the strong force, and random events gravity is still enigmatic.
Time and gravity are structural elements but neither have clear roles when the issues of singularity or entanglement come up. The numbers in the mathematical equations reach for infinity at the center of a black hole—a singularity—relative to time, space, and are thus undefined. If your equation results in infinity, the result is invalid. This is not the way to go about working this out.
My insight: entanglement, defined as two particles so involved with each other that action or measurement of one changes the other instantaneously no matter how far apart they are states that no time is spent communicating through spacetime. This “spooky action at a distance” (Einstein) has a real claim on reality. Just don’t ask me what reality is. Entanglement reflects a state of no-time. The absolute zero of time which I choose to ascribe to the state at the period of origin, named by Fred Hoyle as the big bang, is also timeless. My question: at both the singularity, and in entanglement, time n’existe pas. Therefore is there not some relationship?
The physicist I spoke with adamantly denied a relationship between singularity no-time and entanglement no-time. He did not want to go into it. Nonetheless, I can’t stop thinking about it.
My thinking spread out, like an electron wave. What if photons and other massless particles that travel at light-speed and therefore do not “experience” time are aspects of this phenomenon of entanglement and singularity? Really, the way I understand it, gravity slows down time, and at the singularity time stops. There might be a connection. Some would say that all particles are entangled because all energy and mass emerged from the singularity of the big bang. I am not about to say we are all one, though that would explain a lot, such as the existence of the mind and our ability to communicate with others instantaneously, experiences anecdotally verified but not yet experimentally validated. We could branch out into the concept of synchronicity, a bildung co-created by analyst Carl G. Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli. No, I want to correlate the science of quantum mechanics with the science of spacetime. I do not believe my question is without meaning, order, or even relativity.
Time for me is special. I love time. As a musician I consider time to be the skeleton upon which the flesh of music is hung. I know that the brain sets up sympathetic vibrations of action potential among a group of listeners to music that captures and unites a crowd. Time for me is the essence of music, and even when musicians say they are ignoring time when they play freely, without time, I think time is implied. You can hear time in the energy. Time slows down at lower energy levels of expression and speeds up at higher levels of energy. Playing sometimes feels like I’m riding a wave that moves faster than the speed of thought. I surf the wave of time as notes pop out of the quantum foam of superposition of notes. I am very familiar with time as both a construct of creativity and as a value in physics. I am fascinated with time. And no time.
The physicist asked me why I asked the absurd question: is there a correlation between the absolute zero of time and quantum entanglement? I could not believe I had to explain: there must be an overarching construct relating the non-existence of time with both the singularity and with entanglement. Isn’t it obvious?
Now that I think about it, might there not be some form of equivalence between the speed of light and no-time? Time n’existe pas at the speed of light. Photons do not age. And photons, once emitted from quantum interactions, do not accelerate. They are always going at the maximum speed allowed. I have always been fascinated by that fact. A photon is emitted, and no time exists, and it travels at 386K miles per hour. It is as miraculous and ridiculous as quantum entanglement. The double slit experiment with its interference waves of particles is just as mysterious. How can there not be some kind of equivalence?
Now, you might think that I am just blowing smoke because I do not refer to mathematical constructs. You are correct. Smoke is ineffable, exhibits a chaotic lack of form, and appears at the higher end of entropy. That is, smoke has no form because it is the end product of other interactions. It has high entropy. It has low meaning content. And I am out there blowing smoke, making meaningless statements born of pure intuition. I do not wish to resort to the obvious—tell me why it can’t be true?—argument. Who cares? It’s just that I trust my intuition. This question comes from a deep understanding of time and what you can do in space with time. All I need is Einstein’s brain to construct a true gedankenexperiment. Yes, I know I am Einstein’s distant cousin, but I don’t have his mind. I do, however, have a small bit if his attitude and focus, though at an exponentially dimmer wattage. “What if?” the absolute zero of time and entanglement mean something bigger? I’d like to know.
LIVING A QUANTUM LIFE
My wife, Judy, and I were having dinner with our friends Billy Stein and his wife Daniella tonight and over a wonderful steamed whole fish Billy asked me to explain to Daniella what I was trying to say when I used the rainbow metaphor which I published in the last two posts. Rainbows, expanding on my understanding, do not and do exist at the same time. They are not three dimensional, you cannot touch one, and are not concrete, plus no rainbow is the same for you as it is for me, I said. Water droplets prismatically reflect back to the viewer photons of varying wavelengths so we see ROYGBIV in one order, and VIBGYOR in the second order of rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet). The sun must be directly behind us and the rainbow appears directly in front of us; therefore my head being in a different place from yours, we cannot see the same rainbow, even though we can share it, making believe we are seeing the same one.
I went on to say the metaphor hit me when I was reading The Sun’s Heartbeat (Bob Berman, Little, Brown, 2011) and Berman described rainbows. The rainbow exists in spacetime, yet photons exist in quantum reality. We are connected on the quantum level in more than one way, something I find pleasing and satisfying (see earlier posts in M2-Theory.com). But, while I may be in the same light cone you are in and we converse within that context, or continuum, we cannot be experiencing things in the same way. I think we carry around our own frame, look at things from a slightly different place, in a different spacetime from each other—everything being relative. That I can talk to you depends more than upon sound waves and syntactical structures within our forebrains, Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area. My heretical and unproven hypothesis suggests quantum entanglement accounts for some of our ability to understand one another—again something I develop more fully elsewhere (MIND AND MATTER, MIND AND LOGIC, MIND AND ACAUSAL MEANINGFUL “COINCIDENCE”: IS MIND A QUANTUM PERCEPTION OF A BRAIN SITUATED IN SPACETIME?).
I was starting to reach a wall so I thought it might help if I brought in another wackadoodle idea of mine, that quantum superposition helps artists make artistic decisions faster than thought. Given that we share a light cone—an area of spacetime that is defined as the distance between two objects that light can travel within, and are entangled—an indefinable distance in which subatomic particles that are entangled interact instantly, whether within or without the light cone, and given the concept of quantum superposition in which multiple possible events may occur but have not, e.g., Schrödinger’s cat, I can show how I as a musician can play the next note using a decision process that moves faster than thought. This counts as a big idea.
Any artist faces choices. Poets must choose the next word, artists the next brush stroke, sculptors the next chisel point, musicians the next note, composers the next notes, dancers the next move, and so forth. Not done in a vacuum, preceding notes—for the musician, to stay within a medium with which I am most comfortable but which translates into other mediums and art forms—do not causally predict notes that follow. Yes, there are parameters; there is a structure of a tune, a history of how notes have been used within tonal structures, a history of what other musicians played on those tunes, and even histories of what the musicians you are playing with now have done with you. At any point while improvising, I get to play a range of notes. Think of all of them in potentia, potential notes that are in a state of quantum superposition. The notes up till now allow more than one note of differential duration and power to be played, or as I prefer to think, for the wave to collapse. Collapsing waves are mathematical metaphors which are useful and descriptive. If the music is a wave, then the wave collapses on further notes by all the musicians in the context of where the wave comes from, its propulsivity, direction, depth and energy.
I choose a note. The wave collapses. An entire universe comes into being. An infinity of universes opens up of notes in superposition. It is as if the notes just happen. I cannot think that fast. If I stop to think I become paralyzed—it just has to happen. You’ve got to learn to let it go. Faster than thought, it is.
A brief example may be found in my Youtube video on an earlier post in this blog (Stein/Moss “Riverside After Dark”).
Daniella got it. Billy caught it. Judy was it. That is what it is like when we are in the zone. The highest levels of creativity occur in that zone of faster than thought, superluminal, entangled connectivity. We are individuals connected in, entangled in an elliptically called creative process.
For myself I feel like I am surfing a wave. The wave is complex and alive—can I shape my way through it by becoming the wave and simultaneously finding my individual arc through it, around it, till I come back to shore (the shores of consciousness)? That would be living the quantum life.
