The recent 4 forces thread has inspired me to ask a question that’s been bugging me for a few years.
I studied physics at university a couple of decades ago and came up with the germ of a new theory while I was there. I didn’t have time to fully explore it while studying for my BSc and economic realities meant I couldn’t afford to continue and do a PhD. So I left academia and got a job in the real world with a wife, 3 kids and a mortgage.
But the idea has stuck with me and I’ve worked on it on and off over the years and I still think it has some potential. It’s yet another interpretation of QM, but this one makes some predictions that differ from the rest. But as far as I can tell, nobody has performed the specific experiments to show this yet. It’s basically an extension of Bell’s inequality and would require a modified version of the experiments Aspect and others did to validate Bell’s work.
My mortgage is coming to an end soon and 2 of the 3 kids will be leaving the nest. I’d really like to get back into physics and see if this is a valid idea, or just an undergraduate mistake that I have carried around for years.
How do I do this without being treated like a crank? I can see what I shouldn’t do at least. I shouldn’t post half my theory to random forums and get butthurt when people laugh at me. Nor should I set up my own website with bad HTML and 1990s flashing gifs. Random science words with no maths is also a bad idea.
My theory contains maths as well as diagrams and I do have a degree in the subject at least. So I’m hoping I wouldn’t get piled on as much as some of the cranks that appear here. And I admit to having piled on a few of them myself!
I’m 50/50 on whether this is nonsense or something valid that may be useful to science. And by useful I mean in a minor way, I’m not claiming this to be a TOE or the biggest thing since Einstein. So I don’t really want to quit my job and go back into academia full time just yet.
I’ve been thinking that a part time Masters degree might be the way forward. It would allow me to carry on working and finish paying off the mortgage, but would give me a toehold back into academia. It would freshen up my knowledge and get me used to writing academic papers rather than business proposals. And I’d make a few contacts that may be useful if I go on to do a doctorate. Even if I discover that my theory is bullshit while I’m doing that, I will at least have a few extra letters after my name at the end of it.
Is that a good plan? Or does anyone have a better idea? Has anyone here returned to academia after 20+ years? How did it go for you?
I found myself rooting for you by the time I had finished your post. As long as it doesn’t set you back financially I would go for it. Meanwhile maybe some of the more advanced physics guys here would be willing to take a look at your theory. You don’t sound like you would be hard to work with.
IANAP, but I am a chemist. And IME part-time masters aren’t really a thing here. Are they in physics?
Upon searching, looks like Drexel, Brown, and others do in fact have them. Maybe it is a thing in chemistry too and I just didn’t know. Have you looked at nearby schools?
Physical science MS students are usually self-funded (looks like Brown is $52k/year), whereas PhD students almost always* receive a full tuition and fee waiver, plus a stipend. New students usually have to teach for a year or two, after which your funding is covered by your advisor’s grants or your own fellowship. So to get the resources for your experiments you’ll either need to find a professor with funding that is broad enough to fit you in, or one you can help apply for new funding, or win a fellowship yourself from, say, NSF.
A part-time PhD would be unusual, but if you want to try the MS full-time, you can always get into a PhD program, with all the waivers and stipend, then “master out” after a year or two.
I recommend checking out the curriculum of any nearby MS programs. There may only be a course or two relevant to your interests. The school may have a continuing education program that lets you audit classes, but I have no experience here. You may also just be able to get ahold of a relevant syllabus or two and self-study. If you get stuck, ask strangers on the internet for help.
Your attitude about all this seems aligned with good science, which is encouraging. I’ll just note that it’s hard to do science in a vacuum. I learned more from others than I learned from my classes or my own bumbling in the lab.
*Not getting that is a good indication that another path may be more appropriate
I’m mainly based in the UK, with occasional time spent in the Czech Republic for work. Part time masters in physics are a thing in the UK, but not everyone offers them. I did start looking a few months ago, but entrance requirements for mature students were confusing and not standard across the board.
The Open University might be my best option as they were designed for distance learning and mature students. (You may be familiar with the OU from ‘educating rita’. Or the Beagle probe that crashed on Mars a few years ago.)
Their MSc is 2-7 years and flexible about how many credits you want to do per year. Total cost is about £7000, so it’s cheaper than taking up golf!
I agree about the vacuum not being helpful, I have tried to stay abreast of developments as much as I can. But reading journals online isn’t the same as discussing them in the senior common room.
There was a researcher in the UK who’s book seemed to be expousing a theory that was closely related to mine. I read it on holiday and got all excited that there was a kindred spirit out there and felt validated a little bit. As soon as I got home I phoned his university to try and set up a meeting. Only to discover that he had been killed in a car crash 6 months earlier. I have never cried so much over the death of a stranger.
Obviously he was assassinated by the physics-industrial complex because he knew too much. Better keep your head down if you value your life.
On a more serious note, I know nothing about you or your ideas, but in general, the number of times an “underqualified” outsider steps in and solves a problem that all of the world’s experts in that area combined have never been able to figure out is vastly smaller than the number of times the “underqualifed” outsider has been spectacularly wrong.
I’m well aware that I’m probably wrong. But I don’t want to be on my death bed and still thinking ‘what if?’ So I’m trying to find a way to answer that question that doesn’t impact the family finances too much or get me laughed off the internet! I’ll treat it like a hobby and see where it goes, hence my comparison to the cost of playing golf.
The OU course is probably my best bet, even though the courses offered aren’t that closely related. It will be a good way to get back into the academic mind set and is unbelievably cheap compared to the US costs mentioned up thread.
It’s a general science MSc rather than physics, here’s the course details: http://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f12
I’m 45 so this is probably some kind of mid life crisis triggered by helping my eldest son research his own university course. Too many prospectuses have been lying around the house for the last year or so! But as mid life crisis goes, it’s a fairly harmless one I guess. It’s either this or an affair with a woman half my age and buy a red sportscar.
It’s not too different over here, apart from the lower costs. I appreciate you having typed it all out.
I’m still kicking myself for turning down an MSc course after my batchelors. But the course fee plus living costs would have been way too much at the time. Maturity does bring a little more financial security, I just hope the brain cells are still there.
The course I’d been offered at the time was in London working with a Dr Strange which would have added kudos. I’d already been taught by a Dr Watson.
Just give a thumbnail sketch of it here–nobody is going to laugh you off the internet if you aren’t coming off acting like you are a kid with a peashooter expecting to take down the town gunslinger. (And at the very least mention the name of the physicist/author you referenced earlier.)
The physicist was Euan Squires from Durham University in the UK. I made a mistake, it wasn’t a car crash, he collapsed playing cricket, such an English way to die. Here’s his obituary:
The book is called ‘Conscious mind in the physical world.’ It was halfway between a popular science book and something more academic, trying to bring together various ideas about QM and consciousness. I think he was trying to tap the same market that Penrose did with ‘the emperors new mind’ but didn’t get as much publicity.
There were a couple of chapters where I could see him heading down the same roads I had. He hadn’t reached the same conclusions, but he was getting pretty close.
Consciousness does play a small part in my theory, but it’s not in a woo kind of way. The basic theory is a reworking of Everetts many worlds interpretation of QM with a few extra wrinkles. What makes it interesting is that there is a possible experiment where my theory would predict X and other QM interpretations would predict Y. At the moment it’s just a thought experiment and a bunch of maths, just like Bell’s theorem was until Aspect managed to turn the thought experiment into a real experiment.
Of course, if the experiment was performed and the result was x, it doesn’t prove that I am right, it just shows that I am less wrong than the other interpretations. It would be possible to modify the regular many worlds interpretation with some or all of my wrinkles and get the same result for instance. I’m sure the same could be done for other interpretations.
Traditionally, all QM interpretations have given the same results and it’s personal preference to which one you believe. That I think is my USP, I have a different interpretation that offers different predictions to an experiment that can hopefully be performed. That’s what has kept it alive in my head for so long and keeps making me ask ‘what if?’
If I am right, I’m not expecting it to change the world or rewrite all the physics books. It’s more akin to correcting a minor typo rather than rewriting the textbooks.
If your goal is to determine if your theory is valid, it seems like an advanced degree is a long path to what might be a quick answer. I’m picturing you slaving for 7 years on your degree, and then having someone point out the fundamental flaw in your theory in 10 minutes.
Instead, why not spend a little time cleaning up what you have, fill in any math that’s missing, and bounce it off a few friendly people? If no one can prove you wrong, maybe you end up pursuing the degree to help develop the theory more. Or they show you the error in your ways and you can rest easy and take up golf like you always wanted.
If your goal is more than just this theory and you are itching to get back into physics in general, then I’d say go for the degree.
Do you want the degree or the education? You can get advanced education, for free, from stuff like MIT, YouTube, etc. There are tons of good lectures on advanced fields all it takes is time and a computer.
While I encourage everybody to seek further education for its own sake, if it’s a serious investment of time and resources, it might be a good idea to have somebody look at your idea first.
One point of warning, working on the interpretation of QM isn’t terribly popular, although having an experiment that could potentially lead to a difference is always interesting; and furthermore, each mention of ‘consciousness’ is likely to slash the number of benevolent readers of your manuscript in half.
Having said that, as of right now, I’m an academic physicist with a PhD in quantum information theory and some experience in the foundation of quantum mechanics (I’m going to leave for hopefully greener pastures next month, though); I’ve also published a paper on the philosophy of consciousness (intentionality, to be more precise). So if you’re interested, I’d be more than happy to take a look at your work—although I can’t make any promises as to how quickly I’ll get to read it. PM me if that sounds OK to you.
Impressive! Where was the paper published? JCS by any chance? If so, I might have read it!
The consciousness bits aren’t the usual woo stuff that claims a measurement needs a conscious person to collapse the wave function. I’ve read so many of those over the years!
I did submit to JCS originally, but the editor said it was ‘too mathematical’ for their audience, and recommended I send it to their sister journal Mind & Matter—which is where it ended up being published.
I was really excited when that journal launched in 1994 just as I was finishing my degree. And the first few years were great with articles by Penrose and Dennet and the like. Then the biologists seemed to take over and there were more and more articles on neuroscience that I struggled to get through. I let my subscription slide a few years back but still check the extracts on line to see if there’s anything worth reading. Has it improved at all?
