Mongol #1: Erwin Schroedinger
In my view, the Academic Physics Community remain light years from comprehending their task to Fix Quantum Theory. This is why we embarked on the idea of Privateer Science and the Mongol Physics project.
The issue is not any lack of intelligence on the part of Academics. On the contrary, it is probably an acute excess of misspent brain power and a marked deficiency in practical commonsense. In particular, the Academic community seem to be unprepared for the idea that they will need to rebuild the entire quantum theory. Yes, you heard me right… all of it. Not incremental improvement, but radical improvement.
This may seem a little drastic, but I for one am quite convinced that this is necessary. Not only do I think it is necessary, I also think it is feasible within five years from now.
In actuality, I think it could happen a lot faster than that. However, Academics are slow learners and seem poor at taking direction. They are unlikely to comprehend the need or the necessary focus for effort. They are all trying to be brilliant in small ways rather than wise in expansive fashion. This has made them: discovery ineffective.
Hence my target of five years is really a target that calls on the skills of dedicated amateurs. Ordinary Mongols like you, out foraging on the Steppes of the Internet.
I will write more on this in the next weeks and months, but I also have businesses to run and revenue to raise. People in the Real World do not have the luxury of Pontificating from an Ivory Minaret. We Mongols actually have to work for a living!
However, to kick things off please consult this resurrected conference post-print:
Quantization as a Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problem
In it you will find a statistical interpretation for nonlinear field theories.
In Academic land, you would spend a few centuries debating whether this was a good interpretation. In the world of Mongol Physics, this one is perfectly adequate for all practical purposes. If it is simple and works, just use it!
The important thing about it, the statistical interpretation that is, is that it functions fine as a means to compute the observable quantities of the theory. These are not spelled out in great detail in the above paper, but are generally things like one-body charge densities and currents. The very things Maxwell knew how to observe.
One does not actually need to dwell on this very much, because the real work comes when you re-build quantum field theory. To do that one has to accomplish several additional tasks. These are mainly to do with re-tracing the history of the original development of QFT and taking a different road at each major turn.
That you can do this represents the fun part of Mongol Physics.
The Academic Community don’t know there may be an alternative quantum field theory because they never actually looked for it. They always assumed there could not ever be one, which is why we don’t ask them for help. They are certain there is none.
In short, they won’t help with this project because they can’t help. Their mental blinkers prevent them from even looking and you won’t find it if you don’t look!
However, you, my Good Mongol, can help.
All you need to do is start thinking like Erwin Schroedinger
The above paper deals with the first steps along that road: realizing that the problem of quantized values can be understood as a nonlinear eigenvalue problem.
That means: no operator fields required.
Once you get past that first hurdle, things get a lot easier.
Think of this whole Mongol Physics caper as being like the plot of that very cheesy war movie: The Final Countdown. The one where the Nimitz Aircraft Carrier goes back in time to fight the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
The Mongol Horde go back in time and come back with a Superior Quantum Field Theory! Superior in every way… non-perturbative, and finite, with added gravity.
The rest, as they say… is History.
Having just finished Michael Nielsen’s “Reinventing Discovery”, of all the collective science undertakings discussed there, your project is most similar to the original Polymath Project.
According to Nielsen one key factor that made it a success was the clear scope of the problem that was tackled, and the quality of contributors it attracted. The latter I think will be the biggest challenge i.e. finding the right kind of mongols who are not suffering from the delusion of being Genghis Khan (while at the same time not even knowing what’s head and what’s tail on a horse).
I think mathematics has it easier in this regard, for some reason physics attracts an insufferable amount of crackpots, who have zero qualifications but think they can “fix” QM with their superior common sense (the LinkedIn QM and Theoretical Physics groups are chuck full of them).
Thanks for those remarks Henning! The other existing projects are good models, but I think people are naive to suppose that new theories are welcome. Mongol Physics has the right name for what it is, a change to the existing order.
I do not think it will be too hard to attract people once they understand what is being said. The Mongol thing is tongue in cheek but sets the right tone for true innovation.
The majority of Academic Physicists working today seem not to know a great deal about the history of QM. They tend to perceive the choices made in 1950, with the advent of QFT, as truly “inviolate”, as in permanently set in stone.
I think when the populace at large start to comprehend the list of people who did not believe QFT was final (Dirac, Einstein, Schroedinger, Feynman, Schwinger, de Broglie, Bell, Barut, Jaynes, Hoyle, Narlikar, Mead etc etc) then perhaps the enterprise will receive some wider attention.
The exciting thing for me is that significant chunks of the New Quantum Theory are already in the literature. They have been for fully twenty five years now. It is really a miracle that nobody seems to realize that a new quantum theory is even possible, much less imminent. It is a tribute to the Grant Funding System that we spend large quantities of public money on things that do not work.
Meanwhile we spend no money on that which seems likely to work 🙂
In the long run, it is a no brainer. The advances in quantum engineering mean that if physicists do not soon get off their arses they will cede their entire subject to a bright new generation of quantum engineers.
The New Theory is Inevitable. It is already here.
I’ve been advocating the Schroedinger time-evolution picture of quantum mechanics for a long time, and started blogging on it about three years ago. Here are some posts I think people should read:
“Quantum Siphoning” where I show how a “single molecule” of silver bromide can collect enough energy from the weak light of a distant star to reduce the silver atom.
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2010/03/quantum-siphoning.html
“The Day I Almost Won the Nobel Prize” where I independently stumbled on Schroedinger’s semi-classical explanation of the Compton Effect
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2011/10/day-i-almost-won-nobel-prize.html
“The Crystal Radio” where I debunk the misconception that the correct absorption cross-section for the photo-electric effect is related to the physical size of the atom
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2011/10/crystal-radio.html
“The Quantization of Spin Revisited” where I take on the idea that an electron can be in only one of two possible spin states:
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2011/12/quantization-of-spin-revisited.html
“The Clicking Detectors” where I debunk the idea that you can prove light is made of particles by lookiing for coincidence clicks in the detectors of a beam which is split in two by a half-silvered mirror
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2010/02/clicking-detectors.html
In a series of articles beginning with “About The Black Body Spectrum” I show how you don’t need to introduce any ad-hoc assumptions about the quantization of light because the distribution of electromagnetic energy must follow the distribution of frequencies of the mechanical oscillators of a system, which are themselves frequency-limited by the DeBroglie matter wave characteristics
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2011/02/about-black-body-spectrum.html
In “Who Says Energy Comes in Lumps” I explicitly show by calculation how the Schoredinger picutre of atoms as tiny antennas radiating and absorbing continuously gives you the same equilibrium for the electromagnetic field as Copenhagens quantum leaps between eigenstates:
http://marty-green.blogspot.ca/2012/02/whats-so-special-about-pure-states.html
If you email me, I’ve a brief paper ‘Alternative approach to quantum mechanics’ which may interest you. As described in ‘Protons, life and evolution’ on my web site, protonics lacks the uncertainty of electronics.