Help w/ quantum reality of particles,? once again. Please be gentle (NXC)

[Leo_Bloom]

I was think about roast beef and the old momentum and time of particle cannot be measured and, as posters here have taught me, cannot be asserted to have any answer whatsoever with regard to the “ultimate” physical description of a particle.

But that thing is still existing. I’ve tried to substitute that process, but that doesn’t help. Thingness is still there.

I “understand” that ultimately (there’s that word again) that no event exists in every and all reference systems, which does call into question, similarly, the “itness” of any thing/process. Ditto, as the night follows the day, sort of, light/wave duality. Does this mean I sort of get the picture, sort of, here (hours and hours of internal and reading discussion not noted here)?

I can feel, intellectually, that my “understanding” of those two is no more or less than what should be the case of my wrapping my head around OP, and is integral to it. Accept two, get the third (the OP). (Einstein got, wrote, the two preceding, but OP is his dice thing?)

I wish I could be like the Queen in Alice, who sometimes believed six impossible things before breakfast. (Not interested here in physics-as-belief system.)
FTR, “NXC” is an abbreviation I created and now bequeath to the Internet, useful for many posts/texts: Not an Existential Crisis

One more thing: I’ve been meaning to ATMB this, and probably will, but posting here on this is, by now for me, like button-holing a few people who I know at a long-running cocktail party. I thank them for this, as well as all posters and readers.

[Senegoid]

Is this thread inspired by KarlGauss’s Heisenroast thread?

You may be mired in a physics-as-belief system whether you like it or not. The very “thingness” of any, uh… thing may be illusory, a figment of your imperfect perceptual capacities.

The quantum world is just a pile of abstract mathematical descriptions of … some[del]thing[/del] … that seems to somehow describe how [del]things[/del] work. Mysterious forces are in play: Strong, weak, electro, etc. They push and pull on [del]things[/del] without ever even touching the [del]things[/del] that they are pushing/pulling on. Strange.

The very “thingness” of any[del]thing[/del] may be nothing more than an artifact of the pushing and pulling of forces. What makes a solid object solid? When you push your finger against a solid object, you can’t push your finger right into and through the object. Why not? It’s no[del]thing[/del] more than a confabulation of forces pushing back on your finger (which itself is nothing more than a confabulation of forces) that prevents your finger from moving farther. There is really no “thing” there. Just a universe of forces all jostling on each other, which our imperfect perceptual capacities sense as “things”.

Now a question for the actual physicists here who may actually know a thing or two: Is any of the above even remotely accurate?

[j_sum1]

@Senegoid

Now a question for the actual physicists here who may actually know a thing or two: Is any of the above even remotely accurate?

I got no[del]thing[/del].

[Exapno_Mapcase]

How about this?

There is no good explanation for why or how or even exactly when quantumness disappears as we move from the very micro to the macro. It just happens. You don’t need to worry about not getting it because at this point we literally don’t have an answer. Let them worry about it. They’re the ones who need funding.

[Senegoid]

@Exapno_Mapcase

You don’t need to worry about not getting it because at this point we literally don’t have an answer. Let them worry about it. They’re the ones who need funding.

Of course they know. They just don’t want me and thee to know. Your doctor won’t tell you, and your insurance company won’t tell you, and the gummint won’t tell you. (ETA: Not even Exapno Mapcase will tell you!) But a housewife in the San Fernando Valley discovered it all, and has a web page with an advertisement for a book she wants to sell you.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Senegoid

Of course they know. They just don’t want me and thee to know. Your doctor won’t tell you, and your insurance company won’t tell you, and the gummint won’t tell you. (ETA: Not even Exapno Mapcase will tell you!) But a housewife in the San Fernando Valley discovered it all, and has a web page with an advertisement for a book she wants to sell you.

What? She’s competing with my book! What’s the name of the law firm in The Good Wife?

[John_Mace]

@Leo_Bloom

I was think about roast beef and the old momentum and time of particle cannot be measured

Energy and time. Momentum and position.

But I read your OP 3 times, and I can’t figure out what your question is.

[Chronos]

Quoth Exapno:

There is no good explanation for why or how or even exactly when quantumness disappears as we move from the very micro to the macro. It just happens.

What? Of course there is. When the typical action or angular momentum of a system is large compared to hbar, quantum effects are small. When the typical action or angular momentum is small, quantum effects show up. For any quantum phenomenon, if you do the calculation of the “classical limit”, you recover the familiar classical behavior: If you couldn’t do that, then quantum mechanics would be just plain wrong.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Chronos

What? Of course there is. When the typical action or angular momentum of a system is large compared to hbar, quantum effects are small. When the typical action or angular momentum is small, quantum effects show up. For any quantum phenomenon, if you do the calculation of the “classical limit”, you recover the familiar classical behavior: If you couldn’t do that, then quantum mechanics would be just plain wrong.

That’s not what I’m saying. Of course classical behavior appears in the macro level. (Actually, I did say that.) I asked a different set of questions. When? I keep seeing experiments that push the boundary upward to larger and larger masses of particles. Nobody is willing to draw a line, and there might not be a meaningful line. How? There’s no comprehensive explanation that I know of. You can call it an emergent property but that’s essentially the same as saying it just happens. Why? That’s really the question Leo is asking. You can say science doesn’t answer why questions, or you can extend how to mean why. A deeper, more comprehensive understanding is required.

When non-scientists ask for understanding, those are the questions in their head. I’m comfortable with the reality that science cannot yet explain the deepest behaviors of the universe. It’s amazing enough that they can mathematically handle virtually everything that the universe throws their way. So there are questions left: isn’t that exactly what they want to work on?