Born again

Another excerpt from Born’s reply to Schrödinger:

It is only a few years ago since Schrödinger published a paper under the title ’2,500 Years of Quantum Mechanics’, in which he stressed the point that Planck’s discovery of the quantum was the culmination of a continuous development starting with the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, the founders of the atomistic school. At that time he obviously thought the idea that matter is composed of atoms, ultimate indivisible particles, a great achievement. Now he rejects the same idea, because the execution of the programme leads to some grinding noise in our logical machinery. It is this anti-atomistic attitude which appears to me the weakest, in fact quite indefensible, point in Schrödinger’s arguments against the current interpretation of quantum mechanics.

A few comments:

1. Schrödinger does indeed argue against the idea of energy quanta in his papers (e.g., “One ought at least to try, and look upon atomic frequencies just as frequencies and drop the idea of energy parcels”); this is an unnecessary overreach, and one can dismiss the idea of elementary particles without dismissing energy quanta.

2. I can understand the temptation to eliminate atomistic ideas altogether, but the atomistic structure of matter is more well-established today than it was in Schrödinger’s time – given our current definition of the atom as a composite object consisting of a nucleus and electrons.

3. What we call an atom is not what the Greeks called an atom; our notion of an elementary particle (such as an electron) is what the Greeks would have called an atom: an ultimate indivisible particle. It is this notion that should be rejected if one wants to make sense out of quantum phenomena.

4. The easy association of energy quanta with spatially-discrete particles is due to the Newtonian intuition embedded deep within our psyche. You don’t just throw that kind of thing off overnight. It seems obvious now, but it’s taken me years to get used to the notion that electrons (as particles) don’t exist.

Superluminal neutrino retraction

It turns out that the recently reported propagation of superluminal neutrinos is likely due to a measurement error. An independent group has measured subluminal neutrinos using the same method as the original group, and the original group is claiming previously unreported sources of measurement error. It’s fun to see the hand-wringing over the public perception of science in the articles describing this fiasco. This scientist’s hands are clapping.

(HT: Ryan Rippee)

Life inside black holes

A paper came out yesterday that dramatically illustrates the power of Equations. It’s entitled Life Inside Black Holes, and in it the author analyzes the orbits of particles inside a black hole using the equations of General Relativity. They’re called orbits of the third kind, and the amazing thing is that the analysis predicts – get this – extraterrestrial life! From the abstract:

Interiors of supermassive black holes may be inhabited by advanced civilizations living on planets with the third-kind orbits.

I haven’t reproduced the calculation in detail, but I think the prediction follows from Equation 19. I think.

A real cause for alarm

Craig Carter has a nice summary of and links to recent global warming skepticism here. One of the things that struck me was the following quote by Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation:

If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.

2015 also happens to be the year the upgrades to the gravitational wave observatories are supposed to be completed. What if climate science and the physics of compact objects were both discredited in the same year? Now that would be a real cause for alarm. If scientists can’t give us certainty, to whom will we turn?

Life begins at conception

I’ll risk displaying my theological ignorance by offering what might be an insight into the vexed discussion of the ordo salutis. For the Calvinist, regeneration precedes faith logically but not temporally, a formulation I’ve always found to be a bit awkward. If birth is the metaphor for regeneration, however, could we not use conception as the metaphor for the gift of faith? The giving of spiritual life in seed form would then precede spiritual birth, so that faith precedes regeneration temporally while remaining entirely a work of God. As we are reminded on this Sanctity of Life Sunday, life begins at conception, not birth.

Born’s reply to Schrodinger

Here is a useful website for those who are interested in the historical background of quantum mechanics. Of particular interest is this paper by Max Born written in reply to Schrodinger’s papers outlining his interpretation of quantum mechanics (or, as he called it, wave mechanics). The money quote:

I suppose you have all read Schrödinger’s paper. What he maintains can be condensed in a few sentences: The only reality in the physical world is waves. There are no particles and there are no energy quanta; they are an illusion due to a wrong interpretation of resonance phenomena of interfering waves. These waves are connected with integers in a way well known from the vibrations of strings and other musical instruments, and these integers have deluded the physicist into believing they represent numbers of particles. Any attempt to describe the physical phenomena in terms of particles without contradicting the well-established wave character of their propagation in space, leads to impossible, unacceptable conclusions, like the assumption of timeless quantum jumps of particles from one stationary state to another. Moreover, if you try to describe a gas composed of particles you are compelled to deprive them of their individuality… All these and many other difficulties disappear if you abandon the particle concept and use only the idea of waves.

Notice the conflation of particles and energy quanta, a confusion that crops up more than once in Born’s paper and that persists to this day. Particles and energy quanta are both enumerable – this does not make them equivalent. Schrödinger rejects the former but not the latter, and it is precisely his replacement of particles with waves that allows his theory to predict the discrete energy levels of atoms.

The faith (and reason) of Abraham

I’m the Sparks director at my church, and recently we’ve been looking at the testing of Abraham. I realized that this story is a beautiful example of the proper relationship between faith and reason, an issue that is lurking behind much of the current debate between creation scientists and Christian evolutionists. The LORD had promised Abraham descendants through his only son Isaac, and yet here He is telling Abraham to kill Isaac. What did Abraham’s faithful response look like? Abraham could have unthinkingly obeyed, checking his reason out at the door and figuring that somehow God would work it out. Such a response may have been a faithful one, but it would have demonstrated a faith that was weak. Unbelief would have taken the route that it always takes – did God really say that? Perhaps God was speaking metaphorically. I can’t think of a way to reconcile this act of obedience with God’s promise, so He must not be asking me to do something so unreasonable. Well, how hard are you trying? Abraham’s faith in God’s promise was strong enough that he figured out a way to make sense out of things. He believed God’s promise and therefore he reasoned that God would raise Isaac from the dead (as we’re told in Hebrews 11). Faith is not opposed to reason, but it is foundational to reason. And to someone who doesn’t share the same faith, the faithful response looks unreasonable. Building an ark makes perfect sense if God has told you He is going to destroy the earth with a flood. To someone who doesn’t believe a flood is coming, however, it’s completely ridiculous. The conclusion only makes sense if you grant the premises, and granting the premise that God has spoken is the one thing that unbelief refuses to do. Building a creation model is an eminently reasonable thing to do if God has revealed to us when He created the world. To an unbelieving scientific establishment that will not allow a divine foot in the door, however, creation science is an exercise in futility and it always will be. But then so is any other Christian enterprise (such as preaching the gospel) that takes as it’s starting point the fact that God has spoken.