Scientific woo-hoo is the propagation of nonsense. It is the belief in magic, draped in the robes of science. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics has done more harm to science than even the global warming cash and power grab.
Woo-hoo is the belief that particles don't have properties until a scientist measures them. They really believe this, because they have been carefully trained, for generations, to not think. (Don't believe me? Look up the history of rogue waves in the ocean. Despite sailors knowing about them for millennia, they "didn't exist" until scientists finally documented one hitting an oil platform in 1995.)
Woo-hoo is the belief that math is more real than reality, that models are more important than observation, that the map really is the territory, that doctrine is more important than thought.
Woo-hoo is the belief that a particle in a superposition is actually in multiple states and multiple places at the same time.
Woo-hoo is the belief that in a double split experiment, a single photon splits itself into multiple existences, some traveling slower than the speed of light while others travel faster, so it can interfere with itself along the way to the detector.
Woo-hoo is the belief that entangled particles don't have properties until a scientist measures one of them, then the other instantaneously becomes something as well. This is the belief that if you flip a coin and see heads on top, the bottom suddenly and magically becomes tails. The belief that if you take a pair of shoes, randomly place them in separate boxes, and mail one box to China, that box will suddenly and magically contain a left shoe the instant you open the other box and find it contains the right shoe.
Woo-hoo is the ongoing experiments to see if a particle quantum tunneling through a barrier teleports or moves faster than light. The reality is so much more simple. The particle tunneling its way out of a barrier does so because at that random instant, the barrier isn't there. A tunnel momentarily opens up through sheer Brownian chance. The particles and fields comprising the barrier have randomly moved and changed in such a way that the barrier is no longer a barrier at that particular time and place. If you shake a box of ping pong balls long enough, while looking through a pair of holes on opposite sides of the box, there will eventually come a moment when you can see clearly through the box because all the balls are randomly not in the way.
Woo-hoo is believing that black holes really are singularities of infinite density, with alternate universes inside them.
Woo-hoo is actually believing the 'many worlds' hypothesis is in any way scientific.
Woo-hoo is the uncritical belief that Bell's theorem disproves local realism, despite Bell's inequality being obviously based on a strawman argument. (Bell "proves" that triangle waves are not identical to sine waves, that straight lines are not curves. The fact that nobody ever suggested they were somehow seldom gets mentioned, and those who do quickly lose their jobs and voices in the industry. Pour encourager les autres.)
Woo-hoo is the unquestioning belief that the expansion rate of the universe randomly changes over time, never asking how or why. So many questions left unasked - how would the rate change everywhere, evenly, at the same time? If this is a real effect, and I am by no means assured it is (there are a lot of adjustments made to observational data), then it is the most definite proof of the existence of God I have ever seen.
Woo-hoo is strangling science through magical thinking.
Thoughts on dual slit?
ReplyDeleteThe dual slit experiment definitively shows that reality is aligned to the Pilot Wave theory. This is, in fact, the only way to generate the interfering waves that the energy packet semi-randomly rides along. It is so simple and so explanatory that it's amazing anyone ever argues against it. Photons generate waves, and are guided by them. The waves do not instantaneously appear, nor do they disappear instantly. They take time to form, and then linger a bit.
DeleteThe standard theory demands that, in order to generate the interference patter, the photon splits itself into infinitely many versions, some of which travel faster than light while others travel slower, then suddenly collapses back into a single energy packet when it (whatever 'it' may be) finally interacts with the detector, "collapsing the wave function." The silliest thing I've seen are the claims that photon wavelengths extend infinitely from the moment of creation as perfect, unending sine waves. Scientists have been so carefully trained not to think that their critical faculties have atrophied. They can do the math, but they have no idea what it means. They forget the math is a useful model, and the map is not the territory. (The universe can't do math at all, but is absolutely fantastic at geometry.)
There has never actually been an experiment that emitted a single photon at a time into the detector. We simply don't have any means to do such a thing yet. The experiments that claim to do so are using statistical effects of a filter - which is completely different from not emitting all the other photons at all.
The "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment is proof that you can fool most of the scientists most of the time. It is also proof that scientists don't understand how filters and beam splitters actually work.
DeleteSee also the recent "negative time" moronic interpretation of a fairly pedestrian experiment. To get paid, they have to get published. Academic rankings depend on both publication and citations; headlines grab attention.
The basic mistake at the heart of things (besides hubris and deliberate misdirection) is confusing unpredictability for randomness. The outcomes may be random (in a statistically very well defined way), but that doesn't mean the processes are.
DeleteBrownian motion is unpredictable, that doesn't mean it is without cause. The causes are of such a nature that we *cannot* precisely measure them. That doesn't mean they don't exist, nor that we can't gain a general understanding of them if we try.