Why do you suppose IBM recently announced that they created the largest quantum computer so far with more than 400 qubits?

Yes, and "IBM said it is targeting for this system to be online by end of next year". Moreover, their current offerings, such as IBM System Q 1 IBM System Q 1 are powered by "quantum simulation". For that reason, we should be skeptical of such claims. Let them connect up a large chain of them and PROVE to the world that they can compute as promised. Because simulated qubits cannot perform those tasks nearly as quickly as a true quantum computer.

 

Ok then how would you explain the photon that travels as a wave yet when it hits a wall it only creates a small point-like impression.


If everything is waves then what we call solid must be just waves interacting with waves, which i can see happening. We never actually 'touch' a solid object the electron fields in our finger interacts with those in the solid so it's really field against field.

To have some point-like reaction that would mean that the wave has to act in just one place alone even though it traveled as a wave.

Can we see this phenomenon using water waves? I dont think so, but we can generate a wave from a point in one place alone.

In any case, the energy from a particle wave has to be able to act at one point alone, or is it that the point we refer to isnt really a point but an area, although that area would still be very very small compared to what we think of as the width of the wave (not the wavelength).

If we allow for a reversal of time then we can see the water wave turn into a single point (more or less).

The easiest way to see the wave-like nature of everything is the double-slit experiment, which can be performed on all manner of matter (protons, entire molecular structures, etc).

In my opinion, these point-like entities called "particles" are composed of standing waves "wrapped" inside of a continuum. Only high-speed collisions can disrupt their "bubbles" (thereby converting all of the mass into energy). Otherwise, they behave as what we would call "solids". So in the double-slit experiment, it is not their internal wave-packets that are seen to appear on the screen, by the vibrational waves of apparently spherical objects interacting with its surroundings.

As far as water waves, the cavitation bubble before collapse might be a good analogy for what they might look like in that respect. Which is to say, highly-local action, extending not far beyond the confines of its "sphere of influence". So the answer is, you wouldn't see much going on on the macroscopic level. (Unless we are talking ONE HUGE cavitation bubble!)

And reversal of time, while not impossible, is such a rare microstate that it would be more likely to win the lottery 71 times straight...and at that, struck by lightning on every single occasion!

 

Hello again,

So you think IBM is lying? I guess that is possible.

I have no trouble reasoning out the wave like nature of everything i even gave an example of field to field interaction rather than particle to particle interaction. Not only that, isnt quantum physics mostly about waves too?

But as to a wave converting to show a particle like behavior it is still a little hard to imagine how something spread out over a large area can suddenly look like it is a tiny point of influence. That's what they refer to as the collapse of the wave function isnt it?

As to reversal of time, that was just an example of how we might see a water wave behaving as a wave turning into a point of influence. If we throw a rock into the water we see ripples spread out more and more and more. If we reverse time, we see the ripples converge more and more and more into a much smaller area which we might deem a 'point'.
I did not mean that it was possible to do that with water (although maybe it is), it's just an example of how we might view how a wave shows point like behavior. Instead of a point influence spreading out in ripples of influence, the ripples would converge into a single point influence.
Wouldnt it be funny if it turned out that when a photon strikes a wall it had advanced notice that it had to move out from a tiny point and spread out as a wave. If the photon sees time as reversed, that might be a possibility. There is probably a better way to think of this though.

In the two slit experiment a single photon at some point in time can interfere with another single photon at another point in time. It has been theorized and i think proved that there is no spatial 'memory' of any kind. That would mean that the first photon must have had some advanced influence from the second photon even though the second photon, from our point of view in time, did not arrive yet. That might be possible to explain if we allow for a reversal of time. Maybe that's not enough though.

 

So you think IBM is lying? I guess that is possible.

Well, investors ARE throwing billions of dollars at QC research right now, and they want to see results. So IBM builds these impressive-looking Rube Goldberg machines, power them with their QC simulation technology under the hood, then publish lots of over-hyped marketing.

The fact is, there has been little effort to validate their own claims. Can people/researchers submit large numbers to be factored by one of these computers in order to prove to everyone, once and for all, that true quantum computers truly do exist now? IBM's current offerings don't even feature enough qubits to perform such a feat. How convenient! They say they can string these processors together. Well why don't they then?

I have no trouble reasoning out the wave like nature of everything i even gave an example of field to field interaction rather than particle to particle interaction. Not only that, isnt quantum physics mostly about waves too?


But as to a wave converting to show a particle like behavior it is still a little hard to imagine how something spread out over a large area can suddenly look like it is a tiny point of influence. That's what they refer to as the collapse of the wave function isnt it?


As to reversal of time, that was just an example of how we might see a water wave behaving as a wave turning into a point of influence. If we throw a rock into the water we see ripples spread out more and more and more. If we reverse time, we see the ripples converge more and more and more into a much smaller area which we might deem a 'point'.

I did not mean that it was possible to do that with water (although maybe it is), it's just an example of how we might view how a wave shows point like behavior. Instead of a point influence spreading out in ripples of influence, the ripples would converge into a single point influence.

Wouldnt it be funny if it turned out that when a photon strikes a wall it had advanced notice that it had to move out from a tiny point and spread out as a wave. If the photon sees time as reversed, that might be a possibility. There is probably a better way to think of this though.


In the two slit experiment a single photon at some point in time can interfere with another single photon at another point in time. It has been theorized and i think proved that there is no spatial 'memory' of any kind. That would mean that the first photon must have had some advanced influence from the second photon even though the second photon, from our point of view in time, did not arrive yet. That might be possible to explain if we allow for a reversal of time. Maybe that's not enough though.

Sounds kind of speculative, IMO. Can you provide any references to support some of these ideas?

 

Sounds kind of speculative, IMO. Can you provide any references to support some of these ideas?

What part did you think needed more explanation? A concept or something?

 

What part did you think needed more explanation? A concept or something?

Well I just meant some sort of evidence of research findings in those areas. Claiming that a photon might have "advanced knowledge" for example seems a bit of stretch, if you ask me...

 

Where? Please site the paper where he actually raises that point.

Again, even so, his "observer effect", which necessitates the supposed wave function collapse phenomena in the first place. The idea of an observer as an entity in order for quantum mechanics to work arguably rather absurd.

Now of course the ACT OF MEASUREMENT can indeed effect the THING BEING MEASURED. Naturally, measurement devices are necessarily made up of atoms in various energy states which can obviously interact with its surroundings.

That isn't however what we are talking about when we debate Copenhagen versus "Einstenian" interpretations. Einstein made the very rational argument that the probability density functions were merely equations representing all of the possible microstates of the system, and that the act of measurement was simply a reflection of those equations being applied to ESSENTIALLY DETERMINISTIC processes, in the presence of "hidden variables" (an undetected cosmic EMP striking the electron being measured, for example).

But the Copenhagenists insisted that no, causality was an illusion, and measurements are governed only by statistical models for which the result "comes into being" by way of some mysterious mechanism. AKA wave function collapse. Incidentally many scientists over the years have walked back these aspects of quantum mechanics. (As confirmed by the current Wikipedia articles).

Only problem is, this ties in directly to whether or not quantum computers are actually possible. Because with no "observer effect", there is no wave function collapse, and thus no decoherence. And without that, there is little hope of ever extracting any information from a qubit, or getting ANY quantum computer to work as promised for that matter.

Here is the reference cited by the reference sited by Wikipedia

Heisenberg, W. Gesammelte Werke-Collected Papers; Blum, W., Dürr, H.-P., Rechenberg, H., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 1985; p. 485.

Note that what you are arguing against is not my opinion, but the consensus interpretation of QM known as the Copenhagen interpretation.

In a nutshell, it says that the wave function is not a physical thing but rather a mathematical framework that allows us to make accurate predictions of behavior. Further, the so-called collapse if the wave function is no any physical change, but a change in information.

Let me give you an an analogy. Accounts use a set of methods and records to track financial activity. Before the books are consolidated and and a calculation is done, the profit is unknown. Balancing of the books produces knowledge of the profit. You might call that the collapse of the accounts, but that process has nothing to do with the profit itself.

The wave equation is also just a bookkeeping operation that has nothing to do with physical reality but rather encodes our knowledge of the physical system.

 

Here is the reference cited by the reference sited by Wikipedia

Heisenberg, W. Gesammelte Werke-Collected Papers; Blum, W., Dürr, H.-P., Rechenberg, H., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 1985; p. 485.

Note that what you are arguing against is not my opinion, but the consensus interpretation of QM known as the Copenhagen interpretation.

In a nutshell, it says that the wave function is not a physical thing but rather a mathematical framework that allows us to make accurate predictions of behavior. Further, the so-called collapse if the wave function is no any physical change, but a change in information.

Let me give you an an analogy. Accounts use a set of methods and records to track financial activity. Before the books are consolidated and and a calculation is done, the profit is unknown. Balancing of the books produces knowledge of the profit. You might call that the collapse of the accounts, but that process has nothing to do with the profit itself.

The wave equation is also just a bookkeeping operation that has nothing to do with physical reality but rather encodes our knowledge of the physical system.

Exactly, it isn't real!

The prevailing theory, called the Copenhagen interpretation, says that a quantum system remains in superposition until it interacts with, or is observed by the external world. When this happens, the superposition collapses into one or another of the possible definite states. The EPR experiment shows that a system with multiple particles separated by large distances can be in such a superposition. Schrödinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.[4]

To further illustrate, Schrödinger described how one could, in principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system by making it dependent on a quantum particle that was in a superposition. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-live cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.[1] The idea that quantum superpositions of macroscopic states could be possible led to the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory.

Since Schrödinger's time, various interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real, others do not.[5][6] Intended as a critique of the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment remains a touchstone for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics and can be used to illustrate and compare their strengths and weaknesses.[7]

Again, this is the fundamental problem with the Copenhagen interpretation. The basis is SIMPLY FLAWED. Schrödinger's cat is not both dead and alive up until the moment of measurement. Superposition is nothing more than the convolution of probability density functions. It isn't "real" either. Nor are quantum computers. They are a mere fiction. A clever one, yes, developed by some of the most brilliant minds, von Neumann, Feynman, and so many others. But just because "the maths works" does not mean that the theory itself is sound. Einstein's determinism-plus-random-variables approach is compatible with pretty much all of the equations of QM. Just minus the gobbledegook metaphysics. The Copenhagenists on the other hand have ruined science with their "multiverse fantasy land"-caliber contributions...

 

Well I just meant some sort of evidence of research findings in those areas. Claiming that a photon might have "advanced knowledge" for example seems a bit of stretch, if you ask me...

I wasnt actually 'claiming' i was suggesting that as a possibility. All things considered, i think our whole concept of time is flawed we just use it because it was always convenient. If things are happening that we dont understand, something assumed along the way is flawed.
In fact, everything we do is convenient whether it is true physical fact or not.
The example with the water wave though was just to think about how a wave could possibly act as a point all of a sudden when it is considered to be spread out before that.

Im not sure i like the "not physical" arguments coming up here. That's because nothing we have on paper is the real physical situation, it's just our way of using information and logic to explain a way to handle problems that come up involving things like waves and points and all sorts of things. If something we call physical happens, we seek to explain it on paper. Someone at the time being head of engineering once told me that scientists dont have to know everything about the universe, they just have to know how to calculate everything.

There was an old tale told about how scientists sometimes reduce problems to some sort of logic. It went something like this...
A scientist working with frogs would ring a bell to get the frog to jump. He had it trained so that it would jump every time it heard the bell. As an experiment, he cut the legs off the frog, then repeated the test by ringing the bell. Needless to say, the frog did not jump.
He concluded that when the legs are cut off the frog, the frog goes deaf. (ha ha).
I always thought that was funny.
I think we do this with almost everything except we see what we think are better correlations and most of the time it works so we continue, and there probably isnt any other way, at least for now.

 

I wasnt actually 'claiming' i was suggesting that as a possibility. All things considered, i think our whole concept of time is flawed we just use it because it was always convenient. If things are happening that we dont understand, something assumed along the way is flawed.

In fact, everything we do is convenient whether it is true physical fact or not.

The example with the water wave though was just to think about how a wave could possibly act as a point all of a sudden when it is considered to be spread out before that.

If you are asking if a time-reversed ripple is a good analogy for the highly-localized nature of particles, I would say...sort of? I mean it's okay. Probably not any worse than my cavitation-bubble-based analogy anyway.

Im not sure i like the "not physical" arguments coming up here. That's because nothing we have on paper is the real physical situation, it's just our way of using information and logic to explain a way to handle problems that come up involving things like waves and points and all sorts of things. If something we call physical happens, we seek to explain it on paper. Someone at the time being head of engineering once told me that scientists dont have to know everything about the universe, they just have to know how to calculate everything.

All I meant was, all claims in science should be verifiable. If someone says "when the wavefunctions collapse, all of the infinite possibilities collapse down to what is observed", that implies some sort of physical mechanism. If it's just a artifact of the mathematical "model", well then it isn't real, and probably doesn't deserve much mention. I can tell you what are all of the probabilities in flipping a fair coin four times, but I am definitely not going to start talking about how the coin is ACTUALLY a superposition of 16 possible outcomes. That would be nonsense. Would it not?

A scientist working with frogs would ring a bell to get the frog to jump. He had it trained so that it would jump every time it heard the bell. As an experiment, he cut the legs off the frog, then repeated the test by ringing the bell. Needless to say, the frog did not jump.

He concluded that when the legs are cut off the frog, the frog goes deaf. (ha ha).

Well I told that joke to a frog...he didn't even laugh. So clearly they have no sense of humor either.

I think we do this with almost everything except we see what we think are better correlations and most of the time it works so we continue, and there probably isnt any other way, at least for now.

Sure, the models with which we describe physics will ALWAYS be incomplete. We cannot see "reality" with our human eyes, and nor will we ever understand it completely with our limited minds. We have to build these mental frameworks around the familiar senses that we have available to us. But as long as our models accurately predict outcomes, they are useful. Whenever a better theory comes along, that doesn't necessarily DISPROVE previous models, it only REFINES them. One day, another will supersede that one too...

 

There is no physical process on the wave function because the wave function is not a physical entity. Is that really so hard to understand? The particle undergoes a physical process, not the wave function.

 

There is no physical process on the wave function because the wave function is not a physical entity. Is that really so hard to understand? The particle undergoes a physical process, not the wave function.

Well of course. The wave function is a model for a physical process. The "collapse" is not a physical mechanism either, but rather a metaphysical argument made by the Copenhagenists to explain away determinism. The Solvay conference was supposed to iron out these little details, but unfortunately only led to more divisive viewpoints. And here we are, almost a century later, with no resolution in sight. Oy vey...

 

Well of course. The wave function is a model for a physical process. The "collapse" is not a physical mechanism either, but rather a metaphysical argument made by the Copenhagenists to explain away determinism. The Solvay conference was supposed to iron out these little details, but unfortunately only led to more divisive viewpoints. And here we are, almost a century later, with no resolution in sight. Oy vey...

Well there is your misconception. The wave function does not model the behavior of the particle. It is not like the equation for a wave on a string which gives us the time varying displacement at every point on the string. The QM wave equation tells us nothing about what the particle is doing between measurements.

 

There is no physical process on the wave function because the wave function is not a physical entity. Is that really so hard to understand? The particle undergoes a physical process, not the wave function.

Oh i see what you are getting at. The wave function is a special kind of function unlike many other functions which actually try to emulate a physical process believed to have occurred.

 

All I meant was, all claims in science should be verifiable. If someone says "when the wavefunctions collapse, all of the infinite possibilities collapse down to what is observed", that implies some sort of physical mechanism. If it's just a artifact of the mathematical "model", well then it isn't real, and probably doesn't deserve much mention. I can tell you what are all of the probabilities in flipping a fair coin four times, but I am definitely not going to start talking about how the coin is ACTUALLY a superposition of 16 possible outcomes. That would be nonsense. Would it not?

Sure, the models with which we describe physics will ALWAYS be incomplete. We cannot see "reality" with our human eyes, and nor will we ever understand it completely with our limited minds. We have to build these mental frameworks around the familiar senses that we have available to us. But as long as our models accurately predict outcomes, they are useful. Whenever a better theory comes along, that doesn't necessarily DISPROVE previous models, it only REFINES them. One day, another will supersede that one too...

Well i am not sure the dice analogy is the same thing. If the dice where the same then we would be able to extract the constant pi from a roll of just one die. All we will ever get is 1 through 6 (with a standard die) and nothing ever like 1.2804 or 3.1459 or similar.

"Whenever a better theory comes along, that doesn't necessarily DISPROVE previous models, it only REFINES them."
Yes but sometimes it does disprove them or makes them obsolete. Einstein vs Newton for gravity. Einstein's interpretation is based on an entirely different mechanism showing that Newton's was just empirical.

I dont think anyone has yet shown how the wave acts like an influence on just one small area we call a point sometimes.
As i said several times, my best guess is the object it encounters acts like an antenna that converts the particle wave into another type of wave which could easily be a different frequency. The only explanation i can think of is that it creates a small electric current which then acts with the material to cause heat, but then heat is also a wave. I would probably have to be taken as a special kind of antenna though one that could capture the energy of the entire wave.
Dont forget this is a guesstimate.

 

Well there is your misconception. The wave function does not model the behavior of the particle. It is not like the equation for a wave on a string which gives us the time varying displacement at every point on the string. The QM wave equation tells us nothing about what the particle is doing between measurements.

With all due respect, Bob, you really have no idea what you are talking about. Wave functions are most definitely sets of equations used to model the behavior of various systems, and indeed, if that were not the case, we would have no need for quantum mechanics in the first place!

Well i am not sure the dice analogy is the same thing. If the dice where the same then we would be able to extract the constant pi from a roll of just one die. All we will ever get is 1 through 6 (with a standard die) and nothing ever like 1.2804 or 3.1459 or similar.

Sure, insofar as a roll of the die is a discrete probability, whereas a wavefunction is continuous. Incidentally, you can extract pi from a roll of just one ("fair") die. Unfortunately, it yields a horrible approximation! However, if you roll MANY times, the approximation gets better and better. That's the basis of the "Monte Carlo pi randomness test", except instead of dice we usually us coin tosses (as they can be much more easily converted to binary numbers.

"Whenever a better theory comes along, that doesn't necessarily DISPROVE previous models, it only REFINES them."

Yes but sometimes it does disprove them or makes them obsolete. Einstein vs Newton for gravity. Einstein's interpretation is based on an entirely different mechanism showing that Newton's was just empirical.

Again, ALL physical models are incomplete. We choose the one that give the best results for the problem domain. Newton's laws break down in extremely large gravitational fields. Well guess what? Einstein's supposedly breaks down at the event horizon of a black hole. So there you go.

I dont think anyone has yet shown how the wave acts like an influence on just one small area we call a point sometimes.

As i said several times, my best guess is the object it encounters acts like an antenna that converts the particle wave into another type of wave which could easily be a different frequency. The only explanation i can think of is that it creates a small electric current which then acts with the material to cause heat, but then heat is also a wave. I would probably have to be taken as a special kind of antenna though one that could capture the energy of the entire wave.

Dont forget this is a guesstimate.

Sounds like you just pulled that one out of your, um, hat.

 

So, you are not capable of seeing the difference between equations that result in a measurable physical quantity, such as position or velocity and ones that results in a mathematical probability? The difference between QM and classical m mechanics is that QM only makes statistical predictions.

And stop your personal attacks, I do indeed know what I am talking about.

I am done with thread, I don’t debate with people who use ad hominem attacks.

 

So, you are not capable of seeing the difference between equations that result in a measurable physical quantity, such as position or velocity and ones that results in a mathematical probability? The difference between QM and classical m mechanics is that QM only makes statistical predictions.

What does that even have to do with the question of whether or not wavefunctions are a mathematical model used to make predictions?

And stop your personal attacks, I do indeed know what I am talking about.

I am done with thread, I don’t debate with people who use ad hominem attacks.

It was an honest assessment. You don't seem to have a very firm grasp of the issues, and frankly that just makes for a very aggravating conversation. So I am bowing out too. I have better things to do than bicker with people over "first principles"...

 

You’re entitled to your opinion, even if it is at odds with the vast majority if people who actually do understand QM.

 

Also Bob:

For the record, not only do my "opinions" agree with those of Einstein, Schrödinger, and other great minds, but many others within the scientific community as well. If you had any inkling about the subject in question you would have known that.