Prime Ideas

I am not going to claim that I know everything there is to know about Quantum Physics or Quantum Computing but then, who can? It would be like making the statement that there is a single person on earth that understands the current IRS tax code here in the United States. There are lots of assumptions and a lot of things stated as proven fact, but in the end, there is very little truly understood.

Take for a moment superposition: This is a word used to try to explain the fact that a particle exists in more than one position at the same moment in time, and that only the measurement of that particle causes it to choose one position over another. For example: In an earlier post I tried to explain the 2 slit experiment in which physicists say that a single electron fired towards 2 slits, travels through both slits at the same time. And that only our measurement (or attempted measurement) causes it to choose a single hole or the other. See my earlier post as to why I think this might be wrong, but for now I want to assume they are correct.

In today’s world of computers, we typically use 8 bits of memory or storage, that is made up of either a 0 or a 1, to represent a single character. This combination of 0’s and 1’s allows us to represent massive amounts of information and processes. Computer programs use this information in order to determine what a user just typed at the computer keyboard, or what is currently displayed on the screen. Now watch this!

Quantum Computing is attempting to use the actual elements to represent this 0 or 1 state by measuring the particles spin or state and using that value to represent information. But as we just stated above, in the world of Quantum Physics, a particle exists in 2 states at once. Physicists use this behavior to state that its now possible to represent an entire character set with only 8 bits. In the old method, you would have 2 states multiplied times 8 positions which yields 255 different combinations. In the Quantum Computing methodology, they claim you’d only need the 8 positions, since all 8 particles are representing all possible combinations at once.

They go on to tell us that it will be possible to have computers that can out think time itself, due to the fact that Einstein’s theory of relativity states that nothing moves faster than light, yet these Quantum Physicists claim that on the single particle level everything does.

Back to the time Computer: So, lets consider for a moment a computer made from particles that are interpreted via the rules of Quantum Physics. What would it tell you? I want to store the word “mouse” in its memory. How would one accomplish this? According to these guys, the computer would require a lot less memory to store the entire word, due to the fact that any 8 bits would be able to handle this job easily where before it would take a lot more using a computer built today. But thinking through the logical use of this computer gets a little crazy. I mean, lets think of today’s computer that could possibly exist in both 1 and 0 at the same time, and only the measurement of one of those particles causes it to Choose… Keyword: Choose… In other words, Quantum Physics states that we can NEVER know the state of a particle until we measure it, and that the measurement itself will change other aspects of its existence. Therefore, we’d have “mouse” that we wanted, but until we measured each bit, what would we get? How would we force the particles to provide the data we wanted when they would obviously, according to their own rules, have to have every possible combination at once. It would appear to me that we might just as easily get the word horse, or dog or cat than to get what we wanted, out of the system.

I’m sure that there are many aspects of these Quantum Computers that I just don’t understand and may never be able to understand. However, I feel that at the moment, we waste a tremendous amount of time and money, in search of magic. Either Quantum Physics is wrong, which is what I lean towards, or Quantum Computing just makes no sense.

Who’s to know? At this point, no computer has been built using this technology and the tests that have been done to show it works have been flimsy at best. Yet years have already been invested and most likely billions of dollars moved towards making the illogical logical… After all, a computer is 100% logic and nothing more…

– glenn hancock

I’ve been busy trying to think through more test results, setting up new tests and trying to come up with any explanation at all that explains the results.  The old claim that light moves as a wave and a particle just doesn’t sit well with me and I hope that I can either make sense of the claim, or show that its not true.  Perhaps we’ll do nothing more than confirm the old results, but along the way, I hope to gain more understanding into the movements of our only true friend.

The real problem outside of me not understanding the claims, are that I can’t confirm them.  I’ve done a pretty good job of setting up my tests in ways that should have duplicated the old test results seen by others, yet I am unable to see them.  While I do see lines on the wall, they can’t be explained using wave theory as has been used by so many before.  The reason, it would seem, is that waves interact with each other, requiring more than a single wave.  Something has to happen to cause the wave to change, such as it running into another wave and creating a third wave formation.  To explain a single wave, simply brushing by the edge of an object and causing an interference pattern at some point just makes no logical sense.

As an example, I took 2 books and set them up in a dark room and used an LED flashlight to shine between them.  The result was a pattern on the back wall, yet, thinking through this using wave theory, you’d have to be looking for a second wave.  What I should have gotten is a single wave coming out from the slit and spreading uniform across the back wall, not a pattern of light and dark lines.  I then removed one of the books and allowed the light to flow past the book.  Again, if you look, you will see more patterns of light and dark lines.  While a water wave for example would bend around the edge of the object, it doesn’t cause a pattern of high and low spots on the back wall that it eventually contacts.

Moving to my shop and getting back to testing with the laser, I confirmed the results I saw inside with the LED’s.  I removed the slits and used a single piece of material, both thin and thick to see what differences they made.  The results consistently were patterns on the wall. 

Then I tested using a single peice of thin aluminum to split the light with no other objects around to interfere with its path.  The result this time was no pattern, which again somewhat conflicts with stories I’ve read on the tests performed.

So, I may regret ever sharing this information but I want this blog to be a real time log of my thoughts and experiments so to keep things honest, here is what I think today:

I believe the statement that light moves as a wave and a particle is just wrong.  I think its only a particle and that it moves at a constant speed as it passes by objects on its way to the eternal abyss.  I think that the fact that light moves at a constant speed is a very important aspect of why we see what we see when it hits objects.  I think this consistancy in speed is what makes the uniformed patterns we see and then try to explain using formulas that just don’t fit.

If one thinks of the movement as a particle, then what logically would happen as it hit an object?  Some of the particles would be injected into the main stream of particles and would bounce off.  Not only would they bounce off, but they would also set off a chain reaction of other particles bouncing back and forth into a pattern that we might see on a wall as it strikes the wall.  In fact, the initial particles would be bounced off the main stream and at some angle outside of the main stream, causing the appearance that they were bending around the object.

This chain reaction could also explain the patterns we see on the wall, as well as why I didn’t see them with a single thin object in my earlier tests.  The reason would seem to be, that as the stream bounces off both sides of the object, they are bounced back into the main stream on the other side and no pattern is seen. Adding a slit where the two sides are actually injected into the larger stream, you would have a much larger flow of injected particles into the stream and therefore might expect that things eventually make it out the other sides as they bounce back and forth.

Again, this is only a theory at this point as I have nothing substantial to back up my claims.  I will continue to experiment and see if there is something I can do to prove my theories, right or wrong…

–

glenn hancock

I wanted to take a few minutes to explain for those interested exactly what a valence shell is and how its used to figure out how things will blend together when you mix up combinations of different atoms.  I’m going to try to keep this post as basic as possible to help you understand, and I’m not going to show fancy images of the way each shell moves.  The fact is, these are all just opinions anyway, as its physically impossible for us to actually see an electron to know how it spins around the nucleus.  What Scientist have done is to prove these paths as closely as they can using mathematical models that seem to work most of the time.

All atoms contain a nucleus that has Neutrons and Protons and then an outer shell that contains electrons. To help keep these things separate we say that a proton has a positive charge of 1 unit and an electron has a negative charge of 1 unit.  Compared to the relative size of the atom, the shells are a pretty long ways away from the nucleus and the electrons spin very fast.  The average atom that you might find in nature is usually going to be balanced electrically, which means that it will have the same number of protons and electrons.  However, each atom can at any time have different variants of electrons and neutrons.  The protons always stay the same as far as the number found in a certain type of atom.

The Valence shell is nothing more than the outer most shell of an atom.  The reason shells are discussed is that after many years of research and experimenting, they seem to be an observable fact.  The simplest atom is that of Hydrogen, which is something we have been trying hard on this site to capture from water.  If you look on the Periodic table you will see that it has a “1″ above it and shows up in the first column on the chart.  This tells you that it has a single electron in its valent shell and helps us determine if it will mix with other elements or if it will want to stay by itself.  Noble gases, the far right column on the chart are atoms that are full of electrons and therefore very stable.

Elements that have valence shells that are not full, are the ones used to mix up other compounds.  Before we get too far I want to describe as simply as possible what shells exist and how they fill.  We’re going to start at the closest shell to the atom and work our way outward. 

Each layer has a number that tells you which shell we’re discussing, however, each number can have multiple letters that go along with it.  Each letter can only have 2 electrons within that shell layer and it has to have an opposite spin to the other.  So if we were to say that the He (Helium) atom has the 1S layer full, then we can assume that one of the electrons has an up spin, and the other has a down spin.  We are not going to get into what all this means here, but just remember they spin opposite directions.

So here is an easy way to remember how many shells exist, and remember, each can contain multiple letters layers and that each layer can contain 2 atoms maximum.  Ready?  Because this is really hard…  Here is how many Shells layers you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2.  Remember that your Periodic table contains 7 rows from top to bottom (forget the two always exploded out as they are for something else that we’ll explain shortly).  So starting at the top row on your chart, you know that there is only 1 Shell for all elements on that row.  Moving to the second row, there are 2 Shell Layers.  The 3rd row there are 3 and so on.  By the time you get to the 6th row you start reversing and by the 7th and final row you are back to 2.

Next we’re going to get into the actual sub shells that make up each Shell layer.  These layers have names associated with them such as Px, Py, Pz and so on but we won’t worry with that here as its not important for this discussion.  For now we only want you to remember the number of sub layers in each shell.

To remember how many electron sets go with each layer, we’ll only count by odd numbers.  Here I’m going to give you your letters to remember.  S = 1, P = 3, D = 5, F = 7. 

Here is a list of how things fill up from the inner most layer to the outer most layer.

1S,  2S,  2P,  3S,  3P,  3D,  4S, 4P,  4D,  4F, 5S, 5P, 5D, 5F,  6S, 6P, 6D, 7S, 7P

Using these figures and looking above for how many physical shells exist in each layer, we can determine the first shell always has a maximum of 2 electrons in the shell.  Since all S shells only have 1 layer, that means ALL S layers have only 2 electrons maximum.  Looking above at our P shell we see that it has 3 sub-layers so we can multiply 3 * 2 and get 6, which means that all P shells can have a maximum of 6 electrons.  So looking here, our second shell (2) has a 2S and a 2P layers, which means it can hold a total of? You guessed it, 8 electrons (S)1*2 + (P)3 * 2 = 2 + 6 = 8. 

So for example:  I tell you that we have an Oxygen atom and I want to know how many electrons are in the valence shell.  To determine this, we first look at the Periodic table and determine that the Atomic number for Oxygen is 8.  Our next job is to take the information we learned above and figure out how many we have in the outside shell and how many more we’d need to fill the layer completely. 

Looking above, you’ll see that our first layer is a 1S layer.  Writing 2 down on our paper we now have accounted for 2 of the electrons and we have 6 more to go.  So next we write down 2S because it is the next shell layer we need to add up.  Again, All S layers can only have 2 electrons max so we’ll write down 2 more for a total of 4.

The next shell we have is the P shell, and looking above we see that P has 3 layers, each having 2 electrons in them.  This means that since we have 4 more to fill, that we’ll end up in the P shell and we’ll have 1 of the P layers left over with nothing in it. 

So remembering how many layers are in each shell, you can figure out how many electrons fit in each.  For example, we know there are 3 layers (2 electrons each) for the P shell, so multiplying 3 x 2 = 6, which means we can have a total of 6 electrons in that layer.  A 4D layer has 5 layers in the D shell and therefore has 5 x 2 = 10 electrons in that shell layer.

I’ll mention here that things have a certain way of filling up, but we won’t go into great detail as to how this works in all cases.  But to give you an example: when your P shell fills, it fills 1 electron in each shell layer, then goes back and adds a second to each layer.  When you go from a P layer and are about to start filling the D layer, the electrons will jump up and fill the next higher S shell, before finishing the D shell of the previous shell.  However, for most conversations this is not going to hurt you to not know, but if you want to learn exactly how scientists think things fill up, then you can research it a little more and learn it.

One more example:

How many electrons exist in the valence shell of the Al (Aluminum) atom?

Al Atomic Number = 13…  (1S =) 2 + (2S =) 2 + (2P =3layers * 2 electrons each =) 6 + ( 3S =) 2 + (3P = ) 1 for a total of 13 electrons.  So as you can see, we will end up with a single electron in the 3P shell.  So if I were to ask you how many more electrons that atom could have in its valent shell to fill it, your answer should be a total of 8 in that shell minus 1 = 7 electrons.  However, remember that it could also more easily loose 1 electron to eliminate the 3P shell and backup to the 3S shell as its full valence shell.

Valent shells are a very important aspect of atoms because all atoms want to have their outer most shells full which is why things mix in the first place.

I hope I haven’t lost anyone with all the math, but learning how electrons flow around an atom is actually quite simple, at least in theory…  Look for more entries to come on other aspects of Chemistry and how things mix… 

–glenn hancock

Quantum Physics is a rather strange bird indeed.  Most people that study and use its numerous wave functions to make predictions of the locations of very small particles, do so without the vaguest idea of what exactly it means.  We use Newton’s laws everyday and they make sense to us.  Quantum Physics on the other hand, makes very accurate predictions of all sorts of strange things, yet the why remains a mystery sealed from our eyes.

There have been numerous experiments done all around the world that purport to prove these very small things communicate at speeds greater than the speed of light.  That they do so instantly, even, beyond the realm of time itself.  In fact, it is hypothesized that these levels of communication actually reverse time in order to play out.  That they some how run ahead of time to determine what is going to happen, and then backup to perform their duty.  Particles in these states are often referred to as entangled.  I’m not really sure about the exact manor in which one entangles particles, but its said that they can entangle them, transport them to the opposite sides of the earth, and then anything done to one will immediately be seen in the other.

I’ve searched the Internet for signs of any details of how they performed these tests.  Such as what the process is that entangles, how did they transport to opposite sides of the earth, how did they determine they were communicating instantly when we can’t?  There are hundreds of questions one would have in a conversation such as this and I assume only that they take the stance of religious teachers in that its beyond our understanding so why try to explain.  I’ve purchased many books on the subject and they all talk about it, but provide no details.

I’ve also watched very nice documentaries on the subject such as “What the Bleep do we know?” and “What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole”,  yet none talk at length on this subject.  In the “What the Bleep” film, I heard one person talking about the visual viewing of a single particle taking up 2 and up to 3000 different places in space at the same point in time.  Yet, again, no real information.

One thing I can tell you for fact, is this:  A lot of speculation has been added to the subject of Quantum Physics that makes one question the very foundation of his/her beliefs.  Some may be beneficial, some may not, and making a distinction between the two might prove impossible at best.  The real problem as I see it however, is that the very people doing the experiments are talking about the results as if they are factual and understood, when in fact, they are the furthest from the truth.

The good old two-slit experiment, of which I’ve done quite a bit of research and actually have built a device to start testing, has been the foundation of a lot of speculation within Quantum Physics.  Quantum Physics predicts quite a bit of fairly accurate results over and over, and therefore, tests along with their appeared results are given this magical property before anyone really has time to digest them.  In my opinion, the 2 slit experiment is but one example.

Its safe to say that a lot of the magical properties given to Quantum Physics originated from the results of this single experiment carried on many years ago.  You won’t purchase a single book or article attempting to explain the wonders of Quantum Physics that doesn’t mention this experiment in detail.  I’ve been able to find no detailed documentation about the experiment to date, but have figured out the majority of its pieces.  Its final results have caused physicists world round, to think of many-world universes, Quantum Logic, NeoRealism and many more intriguing topics.  It stems from the thought that single electrons fired through the 2 slits, still interfere with themselves, which made everyone assume that they must exist in all places at once.

Perhaps all of this is true, however, the fact remains, that Science has a bad habit of stating a hypothesis as fact to the world, even though within its ranks, it’s still unproven.  Science, to those of us looking in from the outside is very much a religious organization, unwilling to open itself up to the world.  If you don’t have the degree and the years of paid study, then you are not worthy of participating.  Its a shame they feel this way, because there may be people all across the world with points of view that might aid in a final answer, but don’t have a way to voice the information.

So as an example, we’ll end with another point of view on the subject of communication between particles.  Of course, if in fact these particles were sent to the other sides of the world my hypothesis might be incorrect.  But one has to ask how they are even seeing these particles that are millions of times smaller than a particle of light.  You could liken it to trying to look at a water drop by throwing other water drops at it.  But speaking of water, what would happen if you had two sticks floating just under the surface of water and you did something to disturb the water?  Would both sticks appear to move instantly as one?  Perhaps there are hundreds of other possible explanations, but until one figures out how exactly they are looking at these things, so small that you can’t even see them in an electron microscope, its hard to know if such thoughts are worth while.

 –glenn hancock

If you spend any time at all studying Quantum Physics, then I’m sure you’ve already read numerous examples and claims about the two-slit experiment.  In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you probably already figured out, that this is one of the most important experiments presented.  You won’t pickup a book or watch a documentary on Quantum Physics, that the person doesn’t at least offer a glimpse of what this experiment means. 

The problem however, arises when only these explanations are entertained. Can there not be others that make just as much sense?  Could we be interpreting the data wrong?  Does Quantum Physics have to have that mystical quality about it that puts it in line with the unknown, unexplainable, unattainable?

While I don’t purport to be an expert, nor do I claim vast knowledge on the subject, I have read numerous volumes on the subject and have my own opinion.  That is the reason for this blog entry today.  Not to tell the answer, but to offer up another possible piece of the puzzle in Quantum Physics.

First I’d like to explain the experiment:  The two-slit experiment was originally done using sunlight and a few small cards that split the light.  The goal was to determine if light was particle or wave.  The thought was, that if indeed it were a particle, splitting it up would amount to having a simple shadow on the wall where the light was broken apart.  In this case, you can think of shooting small bullets at a wall, with another surface positioned between you and the wall.  The bullets could hit everywhere on the wall, except for the small area where you are being blocked.

Now if we expand on this theory and add a second wall, again, we should see bullets hitting the wall everywhere except where our two dividers or blocks are positioned.  Seeing this would prove that light acted like a particle (or really small bullets) of light.  However, the results baffled everyone that looked.  What happened when they added the second slit, caused the shadows on the back wall to cancel each other out and instead of having two slits of light, we had many small strips of shadow and light moving across the wall.  The only way to explain what was seen, was that the light was moving as a wave (much like an ocean wave) and that as it passed through the two slits and redefined itself on the backside of our slits, the two separate waves started to cancel each other out and didn’t reach the back wall as a solid line of light and dark, but of back and forth patterns based on the width and distance apart of our slits.

However, our great experimenter didn’t stop there.  He next decided that he needed to know what would happen if he were to fire a single electron at the slits.  Would he get two slits on the back wall like you’d expect when firing a single bullet through the hole?  His thought of course, was yes, he would.  After all, how would you get an interference pattern when only firing a single electron?  What would it be interfering with?

Things are not so simple in this wonderful universe however, and what we see when firing a single electron through the slits, is that after a period of time we begin to see the same patterns that we saw when sending billions through.  Of course it takes a few hours of doing this to get a definable pattern, but they are there nonetheless.  But how could this be?  What are they interfering with as they move through the slits?  This is where all known logic stops and imaginations take over.  After all, how could one think logically in relation to such a strange occurrence?

More experiments were designed that tested to see exactly which slit a single electron went through when they fired it.  But what happened was that whichever slit they looked through, the electron would enter the other.  Like the electron saw them looking and went somewhere else.  So next they attempted to look into both slits together to see what would happen and things got even stranger!  Now, when looking at both holes, the pattern stopped completely and the expected result of two slits on the back wall showed up.  Like, because we looked, the wave pattern stopped.

After many years of thinking about these strange results, scientists decided that what has to be happening, is that the electron is going through both holes at the same time.  That it exists at all possible locations at once, and that by us looking to see what its doing, we force it to choose one specific location, therefore canceling out all others and canceling out the wave properties of its movement.  That until we look at something, it doesn’t exist in a single location, but in all locations.  All things happen at the same time and only by our observance do we force one single result to show up.  These thoughts led to such things as multi-world universes where upon each decision that must be made, causes an infinite number of parallel universes to spring up in order to allow all cases to be true, yet only one result to show in each separate universe.

Yes I know, this is getting rather deep indeed and I’ll stop there.  You can purchase a few books if you’d like to read up on this further.  However, I wanted to end this entry with another plausible solution to the results seen during these tests.  One that not many people will except because they’ve long ruled out the existence of a specific property that I think must exist for anything to work.  Something they say is not required and can’t be seen.  This something, is called the Aether.  Its something that scientist of old always thought existed.  It’s like the water that carries our waves across the ocean.  After all, water is not a wave; it’s just the medium in which the wave travels.  So it made logical sense to them that this must be true.

However, no one could ever detect the existence of the Aether and Einstein came along with his Theory of Relativity and all but put a nail in its coffin.  He declared that you didn’t need the Aether for things to exist, but he always left room for something existing.  He just didn’t know what. 

One more small point before I give my explanation.  Quantum Physics is not an exact science.  It in fact is a system of mathematical equations that form predictions of where particles will appear based on a complex stream of input.  But over the years, it has again and again proved correct in its assumptions so everyone lends more and more magical qualities to its facets.  The most interesting quality of Quantum Physics functions however is just what they are…  They are what are referred to as “Wave Functions”!!!

In all definitions of a wave, it’s an energy force that travels through some medium, yet scientists were now telling us a medium isn’t necessary.  That light and electrons travel through nothingness!  Think of a wave in water.  If there is nothing going on with the water, such as it sitting in a glass, it just sits there, nothing happens.  But if you splash your finger into the glass, you see a wave.  The wave is a result of the energy traveling through the water that you added with your finger.

So, if we were to add the properties of the Aether back into existence and then push a light particle along its surface, we would be making a wave much like the wave of the ocean, or our glass of water.  It’s only a single finger in our glass and it’s only a single particle in our experiment.  But the wave exists nonetheless.  So as the light particle moves towards the slits, it travels within the wave it is creating as it moves.  The wave hits the slits and then separates, carrying the particle to the back screen, canceling out in areas and enforcing in others just like a water wave would behave.  Yet, we have only a single particle, not billions of the same particles existing in all realms at once.

So now we have offered another example of the problem without going mystic.  So what about the looking part of the problem.  After all, when we looked at the particles they changed their behavior.  I think this is plausible as well. To explain, lets think about our water again.  If I were to create a wave that moved through two slits, and in those slits I setup screens to filter the water though, would I not essentially be canceling out the wave itself?  I would smooth out my original waves so that on the backside of the slits they would not longer be waves.

To help think about this, you have to think about what it is to look at something.  In order for us to see anything, including detecting light particles, we have to look.  But what can we look with?  Well, with light of course.  But wait! if we look with light particles, that means that we are shooting our light particle with other light particles, would this not effect our original particle in some major way?  As another example, imagine having a large boat floating across the ocean making waves and we are much larger in size.  We can’t see the waves, nor the boat, but we know they are there from experiments.  But we want to see what is going on, so because we are so massive compared to our boats, we fire other boats of equal size at our single boat in order to determine where it is at any particular moment in time.  So looking at something is not quite as simple as just looking!  But then this opens up a whole different topic indeed, so lets just stick to the subject at hand.

As you can see, applying Occum’s Razor to the topic might yield a little better explanation of what we see (or don’t see), and allow us to provide a better explanation of the expected results without going mystic.  Is this the answer?  I don’t know, but I suspect its a lot closer than having billions of universes popping into existence every second of our lives!

–glenn hancock