Dear Ed,

It seems to me that this question is much more important for professors, and not for students. If you mean seriously, then the question of the limits of its applicability, for example, in molecular physics or in the physics of a condensed state, is really an important question in quantum mechanics. I am convinced that quantum mechanics is no longer able to correctly describe the dynamics of molecular quantum transitions, since the transient state there is a chaotic motion of electrons and nuclei with a continuous spectrum of energies, and consequently, it is classical.

Best regards,

Vladimir

Hello Dibakar, Christian and Vladimir,

Thank you for the responses. I will reply later to the specific points by Christian and Vladimir, while I reply here to what I see as common points to all.

First, I consider the question imposed for both professors and students, at the highest level of learning: to open the mind. In that regard, presenting as three choices is better than two. This is what Feynman did [1]. So, there is good precedent.

On the other hand, we no longer live in the land of "cogito, ergo sum". To exist, we need to communicate to others. That's one of the reasons we all, after all, are in this thread, to use RG. We need to hear what others have to say, and communicate.

Thus, a conflict presents itself, to tell less and a simpler version, versus to open the mind.

This conflict, which is evidenced by the Sci. American citations, exists. The denouement is observer-depending, certainly, but not future-depending. We should tell it as is, as science sees it, and that is always where YES is "NOT YET FALSE" and NO is "NOT YES" (i.e., maybe true) [2]. Truth is not provable by science, although we do seem to get closer to truth in time  [2]. The future may modify it, but we do not know the future, hence we boldly say today what we can evidence, and the future shall decide what is right. 

Hence, I tend to favor Feynman and do present the three cases, calling attention to the two classical extremes, particle or wave. That (altough there never be a  "particle and wave" case, try as high schools and Sci. Am. may) a new understanding is needed to explain the experiment, and is a third case called quantum (although quantified, discrete levels of energy are NOT always needed or used in quantum physics).

Cheers, Ed Gerck

[1] http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312540068_Science_and_the_Search_for_TruthThe_Scientific_Method

Presentation Science and the Search for Truth: Scientific Method

Hello Christian, 

The common part of my reply is given above. In particular, you asked, '...what exactly would it mean to replace the dichotomy with a new word "quantum" and how would this improve the understanding of the issue?'

To the first question I reply with the well know example upon seeing the color violet. The Russians have more words for colors in the violet range, hence they see more colors in that range. In [1] "Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination", Winawer et al. researched how native English and Russian speakers distinguish shades of blue, with their conclusion that the language system interfered with a task that could be decided otherwise to be purely visual: distinguishing between different colors.

Primitive tribes cannot count more than four of any quantity, hence they are happy to receive back from you just five even if you received from them nine, anthropology tells us.

So, it is useful to recognize that there is a third state, the quantum, verbally as well as in nature, not just classical particle and/or classical wave. We are enlarging our vocabulary,  we can express and see more. That's my reply to your last question. How would this improve the understanding of the issue? By allowing us to name it, we can see it, and understand it better.

Cheers, Ed Gerck 

[1] http://m.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.abstract

Hello Christian,

Thank you. But the name was quantum, and forms the base of Quantum Theory. Soliton was a classic wave type, observed first in a water channel, and quantum is not a wave--particle mixture.

The stumbling of good people can be avoided by not overloading the language. Feynman (cited in my posting above) was the first reference I found to use quantum and three cases, maybe there is an even earlier reference.

Cheers, Ed Gerck 

 Sorry, the whole of the hegemonic teaching is severely wrong, frozen and fossilized from the years 1925-1927, and should have been already corrected in the 1930-1935 years.

"Corpuscular aspects" do not exist at all in the real world. It is only a hegemonic mythology.

But the absorbers do exist. And most of emitters and absorbers are tightly held by quantic conditions to have stationnary initial state and stationnary final state. As initially showed by de Broglie and Schrödinger. Exceptions : the Brehmstrahlung and the synchrotron emission.

The hegemonic teaching abuses you, in forcing you to confuse :

Discovered in 1921, the Ramsauer-Townsend transparency is the definitive proof that the electron is its de Broglie wave. It is never transmuted into a corpuscle.

No "duality". No "pilot", so on. No more "waves of probability". No more "collapse".

ONE emitter and ONE absorber.

The hegemonic mythology pretends that the corpuscles exist, that the "corpuscular aspects" exist, that the macro-time of the laboratory may be extrapolated at the quantic scale without any experimental validation, etc.

Nobody in the hegemonic mythology pretends that the emitters do not exist, however all deny the role of the absorbers.

However, the absorption spectroscopy is amost as old as the emission spectroscopy : Wollaston 1802, Fraunhofer 1811, Kirchhoff 1861.

Exceptions to the quantic constraints : the synchrotron radiation does not fix the frequency of the emitted-and-absorbed-by-something photons, but most absorbing devices do.

Idem for the Brehmstrahlung emission.

Fermat-Fresnel Postulate.

All the real journeys come in phase, eventually at an integer number of periods.

Hence the geometry of the Fermat’s spindle between emitter and absorber.

The Fermat spindles do all what is to be done.

More in the paper and in the book (obsolete versions on RG) :

Actual versions at http://jacques.lavau.deonto-ethique.eu/Physique/15postulates.pdf and 

http://jacques.lavau.deonto-ethique.eu/Physique/Microphysique_contee_aout2017.pdf

Book La microphysique que l'on vous conte est-elle bien la bonne ...

Article Fifteen surreptitious, copenhaguist and corpuscularist postu...

Concerning the interference experiments, now I have to explain what is evident for us transactional physicists, and that is not evident for those bred in the anti-transactionist tradition.

The rays, or Fermat spindles between emitter and absorber, look like the rays of he geometrical optics, but their width is calculable from the wavelength and the distance from the source or from the absorber, and from the diameters of the emission reaction and the absorption reaction.

One can never predict which one of the potential emitters, nor which one of the potential absorber will succeed in establishing a handshake, and a successful transaction, nor when. No one can monitor the permanent Dirac-de-Broglie noise, the lapping of all the de Broglie waves, interacting forth and back in all the micro-times. The theorem of the requisite variety by William R. Ashby is here to ruin any panoptic dreams.

But for each of these potential couples emitter-absorber of say, photons, if we know the frequency and the width of this frequency, we can calculate the tuning of the phases coming by one and other hole or slit. So some transactions are probable, and some other are highly improbable. So we can draw the theoretical interference fringes.

You cannot master nor the real initial conditions, nor the final conditions, whichever a transaction occurs. But on the great numbers the randomness of the successful transactions go to a mean, and the impacts on the absorbers mimic the theoretical fringes.

Each photon, or each electron that in great numbers draw an interference pattern, has gone through the both holes or slits. Each is a wave, an individual wave that transits from one emitter to one absorber.

Oh ! I have not recalled that for an electron, or any massive particle, like in a Aharonov-Bohm experiment, the frequency is the de Broglie one : mc2/h. If only Richard Feynman knew that, he would not have heaped heaps and heaps of unnecessary divergent integrals.

Dear Vladimir and all,

You wrote, above, that "I am convinced that quantum mechanics is no longer able to correctly describe the dynamics of molecular quantum transitions, since the transient state there is a chaotic motion of electrons and nuclei with a continuous spectrum of energies, and consequently, it is classical."

Discrete levels of energy are not always needed or used in quantum physics. For example, of many, there are kinetic energy of atoms, and plasma temperature, that are continuous. See the reference below where a multiphoton (continuous levels of energy being accessible from a single photon that is NOT absorbable per se) band generate  laser action to a lower level.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2968915_Blue-green_atomic_photodissociation_lasers_in_group_IIb_Zn_Cd_and_Hg

where a sequential three-photon pumping process is proposed for the three cases. There are other examples in my own published research, where I have measured broad ground state energy bands (in infrared excimers of XeI), calculated broad bands in H atoms near ionization (Rydberg states), and calculated a shift of quantum-well levels when dressed by a lower frequency photon, all of which show a continuous spectrum of energies, and, yet, are not classical.

Cheers,  Ed Gerck 

Article Blue-green atomic photodissociation lasers in group IIb: Zn,...

Hello all,

Quantum mechanics is not difficult to understand today, we evolved our thinking, especially from isolated particles to consider coherent, collective effects. We are also better at rejecting what is not validated by experience, even beauty of forms.

This is a summary of a tentative model of QM that we are proposing. It revisits how to view and understand this experiment -- without using former models.

Real particles can be described only, entirely by real particles. Virtual particles, literally, do not exist.

There is not only ONE way something can happen, you can consider ANY path. The theory calculates, by conservation laws, which end-result is obtained, and experimentation confirms.

Take the two-slit experiment, with electrons, here considered. Any path can be followed by the electron, the end-result is calculated, and experiment confirms. You can do it as many times as you like, the end-result is always the same.

But you cannot choose or constrain the electron path; the problem is different, the end-result is different.

Detection of the electron chooses or constrains the path, even if no energy nor momentum is ultimately changed, upon the very act of detection, hence changes the problem, the end-result is different.

Comments are welcome

Hello all: I want expand on our idea.

1. We found out that there is, in nature, no place for a non-relativistic quantum theory of the electron. I would welcome to know of any other finding, either pro or con, but our result seems to be the first to prove it from the bottom-up. The draft paper is at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325934158_There_Must_Be_Light

2. Today, in what is a minority view, we hold that the Bohr equivalence principle is topologically impossible. Due to toplogical and also collective effects, where identification is not just defined by equality or equivalence under a gauge principle, an electron can be one kilometer long, or more, or less. It depends on coherence.

3. An electron is a quantum wave, not a classical wave, and not a particle. It does not make much sense to talk about electron size, unless this is taken into account.

4. An electric field is an imagined situation, what is real is an electric force, such as measured by the Lorentz force, including the magnetic component.

5. The magnetic component is due to charge motion -- such as the electron motion, where absence also counts collectively -- with no other cause.

Hello all: The result is that the "war" between particles and waves was lost, and both were "defeated", while quantum mechanis won, standing alone, so far, as the third vision. It still has to face general relativity, but is at peace with special relativity.

Newtonian conventionalisms, however, constrain physics, the electron is still considered a particle in the SM. But, when v < < c, are there really differences between Newtonian physics and modern physics? See and share at https://www.researchgate.net/post/When_v_c_are_there_differences_between_Newtonian_physics_and_modern_physics2

All: That a photon is neither particle nor wave, is shown by the very two-slit experiment we are discussing, where, e.g., one photon at a time reproduces the same pattern. RG is not really suitable for this discussion, but some aspects apply here, as has been shown in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzbKb59my3U

@Ed Gerck.  The same professional faults plague the three historical narratives you cherish:

 No analysis of the appropriate mesh of analysis.

 Moreover, you prefer the Copenhaguist mythology:

 Believing in the Newtonian universal macro-time.

 Believing in the "corpuscular aspects".

 Denying the most of optical physics, as the facts are incompatible with the myth of the "corpuscular aspects".

 The optical properties in polarized light of any transparent crystal, either isotropic, or uniaxial, or biaxial, are MUCH MORE SIMPLIFIED than the crystallographic properties we metallurgists or crystallographers deal with.  It proves that each individual photon is MUCH BIGGER than the crystallographic cell, when the absorber is some decimeters farther — excepted when its absorber is in the crystal.

 The optical properties in polarized light of any optically active solution prove that each individual photon is MUCH BIGGER than the distance between sugar molecules in the solution.

 Each individual photon is an individual electromagnetic wave, with one emitter and one absorber.  No-fuss. No more mythology.

All: Take five, as the famous jazz song says, and see the paragraphs below. First, you may hear "Take five" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEMzWuvUX44

Einstein SR has been effectively refuted, and Einstein GR will be also -- it is not a matter of if but of when (see QM).

This may be news here, and adds to this question, and complements my earlier entries here. How, and what that implies to science?

A mistake can be persistent and yet honest, for example, a non-Minkowski approach to relativistic particle dynamics has mistakenly been used even by physicists in particle tracking calculations, for about 70 (seventy) years (as found still in 2017).

It is a common misconception to likewise confuse the Einstein formulation of SR with the Minkowski formulation of SR, perhaps just "because" they are SR -- but they are of different types of SR, night and day.

For example, Minkowski's SR applies to ARBITRARY motion, including accelerated motion, and Einsteins' SR only to inertial motion, with constant speed.

Minkowski SR has been confirmed experimentally, not Einstein SR. It is also a common misconception that mass increases with speed, so-called "relativistic mass" -- but only in the beginning of Einstein SR -- it never did in Minkowski SR, nor Einstein GR.

RG has helpful people on that, who commonly blog, who could help, even with relevant already posted material.

For example, Christian Baumgarten, and people can study also "Spacetime and Geometry : An Introduction to General Relativity" by Sean Carroll at Caltech, at RG in:

Article Spacetime and Geometry : An Introduction to General Relativi...

besides my own work also at RG, all of which fully support that Minkowski SR includes less contradictions than Einstein SR, including Einstein

>

himself who had to alter his SR to be compatible with Minkowski SR (albeit without attribution) in order to propose GR (yet, GR does NOT obey QM and must stand refuted).

We are all cooperating, where cooperation is then best defined as different people, doing different things, at different times, for the same objective. Understanding that, even contrarians are cooperating. And misinformation destroys itself, sooner or later. This can be understood using Shannon's 10th Theorem, where the "noise" itself is used to clean the "signal".

For example, there are certainly errors when your hard-disk reads the bytes off the disk, and yet you see a perfect file with error-correction automatically -- using Shannon.