PostQuantum

noreply@blogger.com (Ravi Gomatam) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:53:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog page!

Feel totally free to send me your thoughts and comments on these posts.

In fact, you are encouraged to do so!

All comments will be carefully read, and since this is a moderated post, selected ones (hopefully every one of them) will also be published in this blog

Have Fun!!

I am an active researcher in the foundations of quantum mechanics, working to develop a new approach to Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics.

A brief bio of mine can be seen on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_Gomatam

For some of my published papers and for some scholarly appreciations and citations of my work, go to http://www.bvinst.edu/rgomatam

Ravi Gomatam

Blog 002: Quantum Reality - A Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Ravi Gomatam) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:33:00 +0000

The Institute of Semantic Information Sciences & Technology, (InSIST) organized an exciting seminar on the topic, “Quantum Reality – New Perspectives on March 26, 2011. The venue was the prestigious Nehru Science Center in mid-town Mumbai, India.

updated: 25 August 2011

Quantum Reality – A Seminar

The Institute for Semantic Information Sciences & Technology, (InSIST) organized an exciting seminar on the topic, “Quantum Reality – New Perspectives on March 26, 2011. The venue was the prestigious Nehru Science Center in mid-town Mumbai, India. You can view the full seminar poster at: http://insist.ac.in/images/pdfs/QuantumReality-Poster.pdf

Why is such a seminar needed? Thanks to many popular books and articles, the mysteries of quantum theory are now quite widely familiar even amongst the non-scientific public. Phrases such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations and Schrodinger cat paradox are widely known, at least by name, beyond just the physicists’ circle.

However, much of what is passed on in popular literature are colourful but ultimately inadequate ways of stating what physicists do NOT understand about quantum theory!

“No one understands quantum mechanics”, said the famous Nobel Laureate in quantum physics, R. Feynman. Similarly, another Nobel-prize winning physicist, Murray Gell-Mann, the inventor of the quark particles, said “Quantum theory, that strange thing we all know how to use, but understand very little.”

Prof. Ravi Gomatam, director of InSIST, says “there is a vital need to find proper categories of thought to re-understand quantum mechanics properly.”

The highly successful seminar was attended by over 200 people, including more than 30 Ph.D.s from prestigious local institutions such as Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bhabha Atomic Research Center and the Indian Institute of Technology. There were also more than 170 students from not only physics but also chemistry, biology, engineering and even law.

The seminar opened with a talk by Prof. Gary Bowman, a quantum physicist from Northern Arizona University. Prof. Bowman is the author of a well-regarded textbook on quantum mechanics (Essential Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press). His talk introduced the important non-classical features of quantum theory in a simple manner, and discussed what kind of description quantum theory can and cannot give.

The second speaker, Dr. Unnikrishnan is another distinguished quantum physicist from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He spoke about quantum “non-locality”, another classically expressed quantum feature. Up until quantum theory, in physics, for one particle to influence another particle, some physical signal has to travel from that particle with a finite speed and thus in finite time to influence the other particle. However, nonlocality is the idea that one quantum particle can instantly influence another quantum particle, even if it is millions of galaxies away! Although increasingly coming into the domain of practical exploitation, the mechanism underlying quantum nonlocality remains shrouded in mystery. Unnikrishnan’s talk presented some of his latest research findings that question the very idea of nonlocality.

The third speaker was Dr. Ravi Gomatam (yours truly). My talk was based on the fact that all we get from the world is information of two kinds. Every object in front of us has a particular position, which is physical information; and a meaning it holds for us -- such as say, it is a “table” -- which can be called semantic information. Physicists have so far used only the physical information (i.e. just position) as the basis for all physics. Prof. Gomatam will show how the semantic aspect of information, can also be objectivized. The most basic elements of semantic information are the five phenomenological aspects of an object – sound, touch, color, taste and smell – which we acquire through our senses. I proposed that semantic information, long neglected by physicists, if used to conceive every day or macroscopic objects, can lead to a new form of quantum theory with new applications, which will also be free of all paradoxes currently surrounding that theory.

Prof. C. R. Muthukrishnan, formerly deputy director of I.I.T. Madras, and a distinguished computer scientist, chaired the whole session ably, and delivered his concluding remarks. Prof. Muthukrishnan is also a member of the International Advisory board of InSIST.

The talks presupposed no familiarity with quantum mechanics and were presented in a manner that was easily accessible to the non-scientist public too. The post-conference publications will soon be available, in both in video and book format, for which order can be placed now. For further information, please contact: contact@insist.ac.in

Blog 001: A Theory in search of an Understanding!

noreply@blogger.com (Ravi Gomatam) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:01:00 +0000

Quantum theory has been around for nearly a century now. Yet, universally physicists aver (see quotes below) that the theory itself is "not understood" — in a specific sense that we will explore further in this blog. Just as people are able to use a TV without an understanding of its underlying structure that makes it work, similarly quantum physicists have learned how to use quantum theory without really understanding it. From cell phones, computers, and medical electronic equipment, even in the chemistry behind your improved dish washing liquid - quantum theory is at work.

updated: 25 August 2011

A Theory in Search of an Understanding!

Historically speaking, the German physicist Max Planck introduced within physics in the 1890s, a constant that got called eventually "Planck's constant" (written symbolically as ћ, pronounced h-bar) and that eventually led to the full-blown quantum theory. Subsequently, a number of great scientists - Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born, and Wolfgang Pauli are the major ones - contributed to developing the theory in major stages by 1926. Each of the scientists named above won a Nobel Prize for their work in quantum theory. It is worth noting that even Einstein won his Nobel Prize for his work in quantum theory, not for relativity theory.

In this continuing blog, I will write about what is quantum theory (more accurately called the non-relativistic quantum mechanics), what kind of problems it is presumed to pose for our understanding, why these problems — much written about in popular literature — are all only symptoms of a real deep problem that has so far not been uncovered. I shall also write about my own approach to identifying that deep problem underlying quantum theory, the solution I am working toward, which I tentatively call MQM (Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics), and its potential rewards both for improving our understanding of the reality around us, and for greater technological revolutions.

Let me conclude this opening blog by citing quotes from Nobel Laureates in quantum theory from throughout its history over one hundred years, emphasizing that quantum theory is yet to be "understood".

100 Years at a Glance !

Nobel Laureates in Quantum Physics About Quantum Theory

“There is no doubt that the stage that quantum physics has reached is beyond the grasp of even its creators.”
[Max Planck, 1935]

“At present, the theory is more intelligent than us. It knows why it works, we don’t.”
[Max Born, 1940]

“What does not satisfy me in that theory, from the standpoint of principle, is its attitude towards that which appears to me to be the programmatic aim of all physics: the complete description of any (individual) real situation as it is supposedly exists independent of any act of observation or substantiation.”
[Albert Einstein, 1949]

“It is probably justified in requiring a transformation of the image of the real world as it has been constructed in the last 300 years...[for] now it seems to work no longer. One must therefore go back 300 years and reflect on how one could have proceeded differently at that time, and how the whole subsequent development would then be modified. No wonder that puts us into boundless confusion!”
[Erwin Schrödinger, creator of the modern (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics, to Albert Einstein, 1950]

“I think it is safe to say no one understands quantum mechanics...Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
[Richard P. Feynman, 1965]

“The interpretation of the [quantum] formalism, is today, almost half a century after the advent of the theory, still an issue o unprecedented dissension. In fact, it is by far the most controversial problem of current research in the foundations of physics...”
[Max Jammer, 1974]

“Quantum theory, that strange thing we all know how to use, but understand very little.”
[Murray Gell-Mann, 1979]

“The mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics was far quicker and easier to establish than a full understanding of the physical essence of the quantum phenomena. Indeed, a full physical understanding is not yet in hand, even now.”
[Braginsky et al, 1992]

“Why the quantum? After 100 years, we still do not know.”
[John A. Wheeler, 2000]

“Physicists today are in a similar conundrum with quantum theory as those who were at the 1911 [Solvay] meeting.”
[Prof. R. Kollosh, Stanford University, 2005]

“Physicists are [still] in a period of utter confusion.”
[David Gross, Nobel Laureate, 2005]