Guest essay by Nancy Green
At the close of the 19th century physics was settled science. The major questions had been answered and what remained was considered window dressing. Our place in the universe was known:
We came from the past and were heading to the future. On the basis of Physical Laws, by knowing the Past one could accurately predict the Future.
This was the Clockwork Universe of the Victorian Era. We knew where we came from and where we were going. However, as often happens in science, this turned out to be an illusion.
A century before, the double-slit experiment had overturned the corpuscular theory of light. Light was instead shown to be a wave, which explained the observed interference patterns. However, Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect turned the wave theory of light on its head.
We now accept that Light is composed of particles (photons) that exhibit wave-like behavior. Each photon is a discrete packet of energy (quanta), determined by the frequency of the wave. What Einstein did not envision was the implications of this discovery, which led to the famous quote, “God does not play dice”.
But as it turns out, with our present level of understanding, God does play dice. Consider the dual slit light experiment. What does it tell us about the nature of our universe when we view light as particles?
In the dual slit experiment, light from point A is shone towards point B. What we find is that the individual photons will go through slit 1 or slit 2 to reach point B, but there is no way to determine at Point A which slit (path) the photons will choose. And equally perplexing, there is no way to determine at Point B which path the individual photons will arrive from. Relabeling the slits as paths we have:
This property is not confined to light; it can also be recreated with other particles. The implications are profound. Point A has more than one possible future, and Point B has more than one possible past. Rearranging our double slit experiment so that A and B coincide with the Present, we end up with:
Which we can simplify:
Our Victorian Era picture of one future and one past is no longer correct. Our deterministic view of the world now becomes probabilistic. Some futures and some pasts are more likely than others, but all are possible. Our common sense notion (theory) of one past and one future does not match reality, and when theory does not match reality, it is reality that is correct.
Now you may say, well that may be true for very small particles, but surely it doesn’t apply to the real world. Consider however, that in place of a particle, we used you the reader.
Let point A be your office and point B your home. Some days you will travel from the office to home via path 1. On other days however, maybe you need to go shopping first, or meet friends, or your car may break down, or any number of activities may require you to take path 2 to reach home. So you take path 2.
For all intents and purposes your behavior mimics the behavior of a particle. An outside observer will not be able to tell which path you are likely to take. To an outside observer your “free will” is no different than the behavior of the particle. To the observer the reason for both behaviors is “unknown” or “chance”. It cannot be determined, except as a probability.
Chaos is routinely discussed when considering models. What does our double slit experiment tell us about Chaos?
Consider that instead of starting at point A, we start at A1. A1 is a microscopic distance along the path from A to P1. Or, instead we start at point A2, which is a microscopic distance along the path from A to P2.
From geometry, A1 and A2 will be an even smaller distance from each other than they are from A. They are less than a microscopic distance from each other, yet they lead to different futures. At A1 you can only travel to P1. At A2 you can only travel to P2. Thus with a less than microscopic difference in “initial values” we get two different futures, neither of which is wrong.
But wait you say, ignoring that P1 and P2 are in A’s future, they both lead to the same future. They lead to B. But in point of fact, B is only one possible future. We purposely kept the diagram simple. Reality is more complex. From points P1 or P2 the particle may travel to a whole range of futures. (thus the interference pattern of the double slit experiment).
And this is what we see when trying to forecast the weather or the stock market. Very small differences in the values of A1 or A2 quickly lead to different futures. All the futures are possible; some are simply more likely than others. But none are wrong.
Climate Science and the IPCC argue that climate is different. Because climate is the average of weather, we should be able to average the results of weather models and arrive at a skillful prediction for future climate. However, does this match reality?
![clip_image018[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/clip_image0181.png?quality=75 "clip_image018[1]")
Climate science argues that future climate = (C+D+B)/3, where 3 = number of models.
However, climate is not the average over models. Climate is the average over time. Thus:
If we arrive at B via path 1, then climate = (A+P1+B)/3, where 3 = elapsed time
If we arrive at B via path 2, then climate = (A+P2+B)/3, where 3 = elapsed time
Since P1 <> P2, even though we have arrived at the identical future B, we have two different climates, none of which resemble the IPCC ensemble model mean. And this only considers future B.
Futures C and D are also possible, with different probability. We will arrive at one, but there is no way to determine in advance which one. Thus for a single starting point A, there is an infinite number of future climates that are all possible. Some are simply more likely than others.
Thus the failure of climate models to predict the future. The IPCC model mean predicts B, simply because it happens to be in the middle. However, this is simply accidental. As the “Pause” demonstrates, nature is free to choose C, B, or D, and in the real world nature has chosen D. As a result the models are diverging from reality.
In reality the models are attempting an impossible task. There are not simply 3 futures and are not simply 2 paths; there are for all intents and purposes an infinite number of futures, and an infinite number of paths. All are possible.
Some futures are more likely, but that is simply God is playing dice. We are not guaranteed to arrive at any specific future, thus there is nothing for the climate models to solve. They are being asked to deliver an impossible result and like Hal in 2001 they have gone crazy. They are killing people by cutting life support via energy poverty.
HAL: “The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error”.
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Perhaps, once we listen we will learn.
1. Climate is not the average of weather, the climate function is an integral of the weather function.
2. Models in physics are good, but are supplanted by models that are better. Newton’s formulations are still valid and useable, but the newer ones based on quantum mechanics are better. Models of the climate have yet to reach the point of being anywhere near good or valid..
gymnosperm, its been tried. If you use an electron, which also has wavelike properties, instead of a photon, you can use a magnetic field to detect which slit the electron travels through.
Here’s where it gets really weird though. If you cover the detector with a hood, so nobody can tell which slit the electron goes through, you get the zebra pattern caused by quantum interference – the electron behaves like a wave.
If you remove the hood, and watch the detector output, you get a machine gun pattern – the electron behaves like a particle.
Some people have suggested you could turn this into a temporal communicator. If instead of covering the detector with a hood, you sent the image from the detector to Jupiter, then bounced it back to the laboratory, in theory you could make the decision whether or not to view the detector several hours after the experiment – so by watching the output of the experiment, you could receive a message from the future.
Some serious attempts have been made to build such a time communicator – but so far, none successful to my knowledge.
Love back and forth this is great, but in my opinion, no-one knows the futur..
More on Quantum time machines – Wheeler’s causality experiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler's_delayed_choice_experiment
Interesting.
My favorite literary analogy for the current situation with climate models is The Machine that Won the War, a short story by Asimov.
Also, this guy’s take on the slits experiment is quite novel (well it was to me at least).
Excellent post Nancy Green.Well presented. Applause!
Climate will always be an arbitrary set because it is dependent on arbitrary selection of a start and end date. Any particular future day (or any other period of interest) has a 1 divided by the-number-of-days-included in-the-set-of-the-climate-period probability to fall outside the range of values incorporated within the climate period.
As long as we all understand the limits of certainty provided by such analysis & methodology, everything is hunky-dory. But humans often don’t work like that and too many scientists, especially ‘climate-scientist’ refuse to understand their limitations, heralding their probabilities as certainties.
Of course it helps if scientists actually have accurate data to base their estimation of climate during any arbitrarily selected period. Unfortunately this is STILL not the case, since the required replicated, random samples are STILL not being taken and inappropriate statistics employed. Garbage in, Garbage OUT.
There is always the possibility that Dr. Ellen Weber had it right when she concluded that Global Warming caused smaller brains….
http://www.brainbasedbusiness.com/2007/03/expect_smaller_brains.html
Models are just models. The empirical real world is the correct model with all variables in the mix. To say that a model is in any way superior to observation is hubris. Excellent thought provoking post.
Col Mosby says (March 11, 2014 at 8:28pm): “I disagree with probabilistic reality. [And so on and so forth]….”
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Well, yes, I guess that none of us like the concept of a universe that is fundamentally, irrevocably and absolutely random but that seems to be how the quantum world really operates. Einstein didn’t like it, most physicists don’t like it, I don’t like and even God may not like it – but, unfortunately, Reality seems to favour it.
Of course, in the 110 or so years since the birth of Quantum Mechanics there have been many attempts to construct Hidden Variable Theories in which say that even if Man doesn’t know what the rules of the game are, at least God knows. Sadly, each attempt is overthrown with papers (notably Bell’s theorem) which say that, no, even that weak form of determinism does not prevail: even God doesn’t know the rules of the game and, what’s more, can never know. This claim is somewhat unsettling.
Now, Bell’s Theorem isn’t the last word on the matter and, every now and then someone makes a brave attempt to re-introduce determinism into mechanics – in either a weak or strong form. On each occasion, a theoretical paper is published that counters those attempts. The current state of affairs is a little murky, and the jury is still out, but the room for manoeuvre for those proposing determinism in Quantum Mechanics is now – after a century of effort – very, very limited.
The consequence of this is that, operationally at least, we are forced to accept a description of a universe that is not only intrinsically random, but also one that permits a ‘spooky action at a distance’.
Eric Worrall says:
March 11, 2014 at 10:20 pm
Interesting comment.
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I’m enjoying reading the comments here but the discussion is way over my head. I don’t know exactly how an “image” of a photon or electron is captured to be described as a wave or particle.
If I were to guess that an image were to be taken or interpreted to be from the side of the direction of travel and it sometimes seemed like zebra stripes (wave) and at others like a machine gun (particle) my wandering mind questions if the trajectory could be something like a corkscrew.
Like I said this is way over my head but if I don’t try to follow along the only certainty is that I will never understand.
Climate models wouldn’t be so bad if any one of them actually got it right.
But it’s difficult to get the model right if the scientist is not willing to rethink his forcings and feedbacks.
Instead what we get is ensembles and excuses.
The Met Office was already into spin control with poor weather predictions right before Climategate. Matthew Collins had written, but was published much later, on a paper called,
“Climate model errors, feedbacks and forcings: a comparison of perturbed physics and multi-model ensembles”. It was submitted on Sept, of ’09.
The very first line explains what I mean:
“Ensembles of climate model simulations are required for input into probabilistic assessments of the risk of future climate change in which uncertainties are quantified.”
Which in my opinion is a crok of dung.
Now lets fast forward to today. Two weeks ago, Gavin Schmidt wrote a piece that got published in Nature Geoscience called, now get this, “Reconciling warming trends.”
I love this word. Reconciling. So Gavin wants to find a way to make two very apparent truths, seem similar, and his only recourse was to suggest it was, “Conspiring factors of errors in volcanic and solar inputs, representations of aerosols, and El Niño evolution…”
His camp of alarmists friends must be cringing at these words. How often has it been stated that these factors he has mentioned play an insignificant role in climate models. Yet, here we are.
So I posted a comment on RC, which I stated,”Gavin, is there anyone in your department considering adjusting models to contain feedbacks,(pos or neg) that were previously ommitted? If the models fail to follow observed trends, its not the science that has failed, just the models. Could be time to re think the feedbacks.”
To which he responded,”Feedbacks are emergent properties from the models and so are diagnostic, not input. We are rethinking processes all the time in order to better represent the real world, but as yet, they have not much changed the main feedbacks. In any case, it would not be possible to ‘fix’ feedbacks to change responses just for one decade without changing responses in all other metrics”
In other words, he refuses to change the negative feedbacks because the last decade of flat-lined temperatures is an outlier. Yet, he is willing to go on record and say that the recent pause may very well be the feedbacks he refuses to adjust in his model. How typical.
I am a little bit confused though and was wondering if anyone would attempt to help we with something he wrote. Gavins wrote feedbacks are diagnostic, not inputs, Can someone tell me just exactly what kind of nonsense is he trying to shovel me?
Quite a lot of commentary bulldust being kicked into the air which clouds the issues quite significantly which lots of bulldust hanging around is inclined to do.
We haven’t, we can’t and we are never likely to be able to accurately predict the future whether from chicken entrails or mega million dollar computers manned by hordes of munificently salaried, many lettered climate model fiddlers.
Climate model fiddlers who claim they can or will be able to predict the future of the climate with their models, except achieving that feat by a chance encounter with future reality, are either hopelessly besotted with their own self percieved omnipotence and are incapable of doing any serious self examination of their real motives or are liars,[ a small number of whom have demonstrated a strong tendency to being pathological liars. ref; Climate Audit’s most recent posts ] with a good probability of entertaining some grievous intentions against the public purse and the citizens who fund their activities
Now I’ve got this picture in my mind of a photon (light) traveling in a corkscrew manner. A shorter wavelength being like a finer thread than a longer wave length (course thread). If the amplitude (height of the wave or dia of corkscrew) were the same and it impacted water (say ocean or lake) it would seem that the longer wave length would travel deeper as the photon would encounter fewer water molecules per depth traveled.
Another thought considers the possible properties of that proton when bouncing off or reflected away something. Would the frequency or wave length change?
One more thought. If this photon traveled in a corkscrew manner would it be more/less susceptible to influences of forces such as gravity by reason of a varying distance (due to corkscrew trajectory) from that attracting force even though quite small? That would probably need to assume that a photon has some form of property similar to mass.
I’ll probably loose sleep worrying about these things I don’t understand.
I commend the article as an explanatory analogy of QM to climate models, but I cannot recommend it as any kind of argument that should alter our belief about said models. I say this even though I agree with the article’s conclusions about the models. The reason basically is that the QM explanation is far too simplistic and in some parts flat out wrong about QM. Unfortunately the proof is too long to fit in the margin of this weblog. 😉
But briefly, you simply cannot talk about merely not knowing where a particle is or was. Within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, it is much closer to the truth that the particle simply doesn’t have a precise location. And even that overlooks a book’s worth of subtleties. QM is far more remarkable. If I decide now to do a test of an object’s position some time ago, I will find a position and the object will have behaved – in the past! – as a particle. But if I, now, decide to check up how it behaved as a wave previously, lo! I will discover wave behaviour and the object will not have had particle-like qualities in the past. This violation of apparent causation is too much for many people, and some physicists avoid brain strain by saying that QM is merely a calculating method for finding out how things behave. Lots more to say, but it would digress too much from the article topic.
eyesonu says:
March 12, 2014 at 12:33 am
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Hmmm, photons are funny quantum mechanical things. Now, I have no idea what a photon looks like – in fact, no one does – but it is probably a mistake to think that a photon has a trajectory and that it may somehow corkscrew. These are classical concepts that do not carry over well to the quantum world.
In fact, things are so storage that in an orthodox quantum description of a photon, it would be quite reasonable for me to say that a photon is here; it is also over there; and that it is, in fact everywhere all at the same time (and, in fact, at all times). It is also true to say that a photon is not a particle; nor is it a wave; and yet it is both. This acute ambiguity about the ‘when’ and ‘where’ and nature of a photon lies at the heart of the quantum mechanical paradoxes of the double slit experiment.
The nature of the dynamical ambiguity of a photon is really only addressed within the arcane mathematical languages of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory. And, for the most part, physicists only really understand the concept of a photon within the context of manipulating mathematical symbols in those languages.
In short, the reality of quantum is so bizarre that we simply have no good way of visualising a photon.
Its even more amazing when the photon experiment is conducted using electrons. These particles are constituents of solid matter yet they behave like waves in the double slit experiment.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/14/feynmans-double-slit-experiment-gets-a-makeover
Chaos theory and QM are different phenomena. I think you’re comparing apples and Oranges. You provide one interpretation of QM. It’s not the only one. I personally find Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen’s analysis to be cogent, and more consistent with the first law of thermodynamics. I was intellectually excited the first time I saw the ‘many pasts’ version of QM proposed, but I am not satisfied it is a valid description of reality. I freely admit I don’t have the education and skills to debate QM, but I am not persuaded that your argument does either.
The history of Anglo-Saxon societies (especially the UK and the US) is the continual creation of alarms, scares, irrational exuberance and over-the-top depression. It’s how market volatility is created, which is the Father in the Financial Services Holy Trinity of Volatility, Information Asymmetry and Societal Ostracism of those who expose Illusion.
The creation of new arenas of volatility is called ‘innovation’. It’s very innovative to steal all the hard-earned savings of humble folks on main street through trashing the thrifts in the 1980s. It’s very innovative to create cartels of sports franchises which give the illusion of competition but are a focus for online global gambling. it’s very innovative to egg up the ICT industry around the millennium and then let it crash down again. Ditto with clean tech, biotech and graphene tech.
It’s very innovative to say that the Russians are megalomaniacal global domination freaks whilst retaining the absolute dominant position in military hardware spending.
It’s very innovative to make paying more for less the desired model for society, with communally owned lower-cost solutions being ostracised as the root of all evil.
It’s very innovative to call a duopolistic Broadway show called American politics where a small number of families are funded by a small number of big money families to play at democracy and then tell the whole world that they have nothing to learn from truly democratic systems about democracy.
Climate science is just one manifestation of this mafia Holy Trinity. Create a scare, control the media, ostracise the honest witnesses, create speculative investment bubbles, call the top of the market, change the shades of grey in the narrative, start another bubble in the energy sphere etc etc.
That’s all this thing is.
Core American Dream politics.
Main Street might not call it the American Dream. It’s not a dream I would go to America to pursue.
But that’s what the true American Dream is all about. It used to be a niche, now it’s the market leader.
Get with the program, folks.
You didn’t vote for Ralph Nader or Ron Paul.
So this is what you get.
Space-time trumps quantum mechanics. If quantum mechanics multiplies the number of possible pasts and futures, space-time falsifies the idea of time’s arrow. It falsifies what we commonly understand the past and future to mean. Time’s arrow makes no more sense than height’s arrow, width’s arrow or depth’s arrow – all are bound.
The question becomes why do we experience the world, through our consciousness, as though time’s arrow is real; and not the way it is as a 4d space-time continuum?
My take on models is first they are approximations of reality not reality itself. Some models in science are better describing observations than others and as a result allow to predict future behavior with varying degrees of confidence. Now to construct a good model there first must be good quality data to use. From what I have read, the climate quality is erratic at best and of very limited scope. This should be a flag that the climate models are likely to be inaccurate and new data is likely to diverge from the model at some point. I trust quality data before any model in all areas of science, not just climatology. The problem to me is money is available for the theoretical models but not for developing quality data. The cart is before the horse.
Its well known any retail trader who tries to model the financial markets using past predict future and place bets on them will go bust. For the retail trader the market is a ‘black box’. The best they can come up with is probabilities which may or may not give you an edge that creates money. Those who make money in the markets are not using probabilities. They are using inside information or manipulation. They are ahead of the curve not behind it. They are making facts not creating averages out of them.
So if one does not know what the facts or processes are [black box] one can only use probabilities to dice outcomes. So when i hear the use of probabilities then for me its because the real facts are not known. Its admitting its a black box. If climate processes are not known then its ok to use probabilities [what else] but that highlights a gap in knowledge of the processes?
The co2ers are dice players betting on co2 is the dominant factor and insisting everyone else bet on it as well. For the climate prediction dice players they are admitting, for them, climate is a black box. No certainties with black boxes.
A point source is a mathematical concept. You can’t achieve it on earth with our current technology. Any source of photons is vast, even if microscopic to our eyes. I defy anyone to produce a single photon from a single position repeatably. Molecules are not spherical and frankly I don’t know which part of the molecule emits and in what direction. A slit is enormous compared to a photon’s ‘size’. The reason outcomes are random is because we haven’t measured things adequately.
Alex says:
March 12, 2014 at 2:25 am
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I must be bored today: I can’t resist.
Yes, a point source is a mathematical concept. But, then, it’s not really correct to say that a photon is a point particle.
I’m not sure that there is any real meaning to assigning a ‘shape’ to an atom or molecule.
In the double slit experiment, a photon is typically prepared in a state with well-defined momentum and therefore, by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a very poorly defined position. Because of this, the slit is not enormous in comparison with the ‘size’ of the photon. In fact, if anything, it is the other way around: the slit is probably ‘small’ in comparison with position probability envelope for a photon that has been prepared in a well-defined momentum state.
And, no, outcomes of the double slit experiment are not random because things haven’t been measured adequately. They are random because, at the quantum level at least, Nature seems to be fundamentally random.
Momentum is not position. Without looking it up somewhere a photon is nowhere near the size of a slit. I am designing a spectrometer at the moment and 0.1 micron is not close to a photon’s size. Molecules are all shapes and sizes and their spatial orientation is random. The position of a single photon , even with a cyclotron, would fall into a probability curve ie not exact. You can’t get a photon coming from exactly the same point. Sub nano reproducibility is BS.
Fall back on the attitude that it is random because nature said so. So convenient. You don’t have to look closer then. You don’t have to build the Hadron collider.