We uphold a general viewpoint that the ideas have their own ‘objective’ dynamics, that is a dynamics independent of personalities. Every now and then, the ideas are accessible to individuals. When it comes to social expression, though, it is only a genius, among individuals, who can reach such an accessible idea as ultimate truth, even to the point where he/she succeeds to casting it into proper words, available to society at large. Beyond those words no one can ‘rationalize’, not even the genius himself. We illustrate this observation with Erwin Schrodinger’s interpretation of the wave function introduced by him to common knowledge, which has been cast into proper words by another genius, Richard Feynman, who, nevertheless, honestly acknowledged mistrusting that interpretation. In fact, Feynman always openly admitted, and effectively exercised the probabilistic interpretation of Max Born. To wit, it is guided by this kind of interpretation, that he has built the well-known version of wave mechanics, which is based entirely on the concept of probability. We argue that Feynman was actually right on both accounts – Schrodinger’s and Born’s interpretations – and show here why and how, thus revealing a few missing points in the contemporary natural philosophy. The whole argument, and the accompanying illustration, stands completely by the words of still another genius of modern physics: Louis de Broglie, whose physics is documented and developed in the present work. The construction of this physics gives us the opportunity of a historical review of significant moments of the physical knowledge
We uphold a general viewpoint that the ideas have their own ‘objective’ dynamics, that is a dynamics independent of personalities. Every now and then, the ideas are accessible to individuals. When it comes to social expression, though, it is only a genius, among individuals, who can reach such an accessible idea as ultimate truth, even to the point where he/she succeeds to casting it into proper words, available to society at large. Beyond those words no one can ‘rationalize’, not even the genius himself. We illustrate this observation with Erwin Schrodinger’s interpretation of the wave function introduced by him to common knowledge, which has been cast into proper words by another genius, Richard Feynman, who, nevertheless, honestly acknowledged mistrusting that interpretation. In fact, Feynman always openly admitted, and effectively exercised the probabilistic interpretation of Max Born. To wit, it is guided by this kind of interpretation, that he has built the well-known version of wave mechanics, which is based entirely on the concept of probability. We argue that Feynman was actually right on both accounts – Schrodinger’s and Born’s interpretations – and show here why and how, thus revealing a few missing points in the contemporary natural philosophy. The whole argument, and the accompanying illustration, stands completely by the words of still another genius of modern physics: Louis de Broglie, whose physics is documented and developed in the present work. The construction of this physics gives us the opportunity of a historical review of significant moments of the physical knowledge
The famous 1927 Solvay Conference was considered a turning point in the world of Physics. The scientific realists like Albert Einstein had lost and the instrumentalists like Niels Bohr had won the fundamental conflict. Since then Physics has followed the path of the instrumentalists in which Quantum Physics has been determined by the concept of Elementary Particles and Probability Waves. Until May 2013, when for the first time a photo had been made of the Probability Waves Inside the Hydrogen Atom . It should be impossible to make a photo of a non-existing complex probability wave with mass zero But the fact could not be denied anymore that scientists had succeeded to make the “complex” and the “non-existing” quantum mechanical “Probability Wave” visible. Since the Copenhagen Interpretation there is still no clarity about the physical interpretation of the Quantum Mechanical “Probability Wave Function”This Manuscript describes a third unknown interpretation of the Quantum Mechanical “Probability Wave Function”. A fundamental physical interpretation that will change the generally accepted Copenhagen Interpretation. This Manuscript will answer the fundamental question: Does an alternative theory exist in which the existence of this particular photo, of the Quantum Mechanical Probability Wave within the Hydrogen Atom, could be explained. And that the famous photo of the Hydrogen Atom can be explained in a logical and a simple way. To find the answer, we have to go back in time. Back 300 years in time to the moment when Isaac Newton discovered the beauty and one of the many secrets of the light. The moment when science walked away from light. And we return to the fundamental question: “Is it possible to build Matter out of Light (confined electromagnetic waves)?” To answer this question if it is possible to build Matter out of Light, we first have to answer the question how we have come to this world of Probability Waves and Elementary Particles and Quantum Physics.Louis de Broglie described in 1924 in his PhD thesis the wave properties of matter. Erwin Schrödinger published in 1926 the well-known Schrödinger wave equation with the characteristic spherical and elliptical wave solutions. To describe these material waves, the immediately and first explanation was: “There is only one possibility. These are “Electromagnetic Waves”. De Broglie Waves are ” Light Waves”. Because these were the only waves, known in the world of Physics, that could travel through vacuum. But there was a fundamental problem. These material waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie and mathematically described by Erwin Schrödinger could never be solutions of the well-known 4 linear equations of James Clerk Maxwell. The material waves were spherical and elliptical solutions of confinement and that was impossible for the solutions of the linear Maxwell Equations. According to the linear Maxwell Equations, superposition is possible but Electromagnetic Interaction and Electromagnetic Confinement can only be described by a set of non-linear differential equations. To solve this fundamental problem a new set of 3 non-linear Electromagnetic Equations (Equation 5 in this manuscript) has been developed which replaces the well-known 4 linear Maxwell Equations and the possible solutions of Equation (5) are also Spherical and Elliptical solutions of confinement. Table 1 in this manuscript presents a number of Electromagnetic Spherical Confinements as solutions of Equation 5a .A second problem was that the model of the atom of Bohr could not hold. How could an electron be everywhere at the same time in a kind of a spherical shell surrounding the nucleus. And be a particle at the same time. And Bohr found a compromise to declare the “De Broglie” waves to be the probability waves. Two problems were solved. Bohr’s planetary model could hold. And there was a name for the unknown material waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie and mathematically described by Erwin Schrödinger. The theory of “Probability Waves, Elementary Particles and Quantum Physics” had been created. To find a possibility, to create matter out of light we have to go back to the Equations of James Clerk Maxwell. The only possibility to declare the probability waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie, to be electromagnetic waves, to be light, and to be the building element of our universe, is to find evidence that he Maxwell Equations are not complete and that it is possible to confine light (electromagnetic waves) in spherical and elliptical shapes. A new equation has to be found. In this article it has been claimed that this missing equation is Equation (5). Because the Theory of General Relativity has been built on the Einstein-Maxwell Equation, a new equation has to be found that describes in a generalized way the interaction between light and matter. This missing equation is Equation (5-a).
Where did we get that [equation] from? Nowhere. It is not possible to derive it from anything you know. It came out of the mind of Schrödinger. Richard Feynman De Broglie's matter waves The early struggles of physicists towards a quantum theory were mostly concerned with attempts to understand the nature of light. The traditional picture of light as a wave motion had been challenged by Planck and Einstein. They had shown that certain experimental results that were impossible to understand in terms of a wave picture could be easily explained if light was thought of as a stream of particles, now called photons. William Bragg, who, with his son, won the 1915 Nobel Prize for studies of crystal structure using X-rays, summarized this dilemma for physics by exclaiming in despair that he was teaching the corpuscular theory of light on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the undulatory theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays! Physicists were still wrestling with these apparently contradictory properties of light when, in 1924, Prince Louis de Broglie (pronounced ‘de Broy’) suggested that all matter, even objects that we usually think of as particles – such as electrons – should also display wavelike behaviour! This revolutionary idea was completely unexpected and, what is more, was included by de Broglie in his Ph. D. thesis. Like most people, physicists are generally reluctant to accept any wild new idea, especially if there is not a shred of evidence to support it.
Abstract In addition to recounting some contemporary scientific history, Chapter 6 describes the hypothesis that matter, like light, can display wavelike properties, and the creation of the various formulations of quantum mechanics. That matter could have a wavelength was proposed in 1924 by Louis de Broglie, who presented a specific formula for calculating it, one that was verified experimentally in 1927. However, de Broglie’s hypothesis was overshadowed by the creation of three versions of quantum mechanics in 1925/26. The first, denoted matrix mechanics, was proposed by Werner Heisenberg. It was quickly and successfully applied by Wolfgang Pauli to the hydrogen atom. Paul Dirac introduced the next version, which was followed by that of Erwin Schrödinger via a wave equation whose solutions, denoted wave functions, were soon interpreted byMax Born to be related to the probability that certain outcomes or events will occur: classical-physics determinism was thereby removed from quantum mechanics.
The founding fathers of quantum mechanics had already perceived the essence of the difficulties of quantum mechanics; today, after almost a century, the discussions are still lively and, if some very interesting new aspects have emerged, at a deeper level the questions have not changed so much. What is more recent, nevertheless, is a general change of attitude among physicists: until about 1970 or 1980, most physicists thought that the essential questions had been settled, and that “Bohr was right and proved his opponents to be wrong”. This was probably a consequence of the famous discussions between Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, de Broglie, and others (in particular at the Solvay meetings [1–3], where Bohr's point of view had successfully resisted Einstein's extremely clever attacks). The majority of physicists did not know the details of the arguments. They nevertheless thought that the standard “Copenhagen interpretation” had clearly emerged from the infancy of quantum mechanics as the only sensible attitude for good scientists. This interpretation includes the idea that modern physics must contain indeterminacy as an essential ingredient: it is fundamentally impossible to predict the outcome of single microscopical events; it is impossible to go beyond the formalism of the wave function (or its generalization, the state vector ∣ψ) and complete it.
A physically real wave associated with any moving particle and travelling in a surrounding material medium was introduced by Louis de Broglie in a series of short notes in 1923 and in a more complete form in his thesis defended in Paris on the 25th November 1924. This result, recognised by the Nobel Prize in 1929, gave rise to a major direction of "new physics" known today as "quantum mechanics". However, although such notions as "de Broglie wavelength" and "wave-particle duality" form the basis of the standard quantum theory, it actually only takes for granted (postulates) the formula for the particle wavelength and totally ignores the underlying causal, realistic and physically transparent picture of wave-particle dynamics outlined by Louis de Broglie in his thesis and further considerably developed in his later works, in the form of "double solution" and "hidden thermodynamics" theory. A price to pay for such rough deviation from the original de Broglian realism and consistency involves fundamental physics domination by purely abstract and mechanistically simplified schemes of formal symbols and rules that have led to a deep knowledge impasse justly described as "the end of science". However, a new, independent approach of "quantum field mechanics" (quant-ph/9902015, quant-ph/9902016, physics/0401164) created within the "universal science of complexity" (physics/9806002) provides many-sided confirmation and natural completion of de Broglie's "nonlinear wave mechanics", eliminating all its "difficult points" and reconstituting the causally complete, totally consistent and intrinsically unified picture of the real, complex micro-world dynamics directly extendible to all higher levels of unreduced world complexity.
The dominance of the Copenhagen interpretation is the result of a historical accident (Cushing, 1994). At the Solvay conference in 1927, Louis de Broglie put forward the deterministic pilot wave theory, described later. Never slow to criticize, Pauli jumped up and demolished de Broglie’s proposal, and de Broglie was so discouraged by this that he did not develop his interpretation any further. The Copenhagen interpretation was then developed by Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and many others, as described in the previous chapter. It was strongly supported by von Neumann’s proof of the impossibility of hidden variables. Years later, in 1952, Bohm published a deterministic hidden variable theory, showing that there must be something wrong with von Neumann’s proof. The error was found by John Bell in 1966, as described in the last chapter, and he also showed how Pauli’s objections to de Broglie’s original idea can be answered. If this had been done at the conference in 1927, quantum mechanics could have been interpreted deterministically from the beginning. The essential mistake in the Copenhagen interpretation is to treat it as a complete account of the behaviour of each individual system. It is frequently claimed that it enables us to calculate, at least in principle, everything that can be measured. Thus Hooft (1997, p. 11) said that ‘The laws of quantum mechanics have been formulated very accurately. We know exactly how to compute anything we would like to know.’ Also Peierls (1997, p. 25) has said that quantum mechanics ‘had become a complete and consistent scheme capable of giving a unique answer to any questions relating to actual or possible observations’. Even if this were true, it would not imply that it is the final complete theory, for it is always possible that some new phenomenon might be found that cannot be calculated quantum-mechanically. However, it is not true: there are many phenomena such as the time of decay of a radioactive nucleus, or the direction a particle is scattered by a nucleus, that cannot be calculated, even in principle. Quantum mechanics is therefore an incomplete theory. We can only calculate the statistical properties of these systems, such as the half-life of a radioactive decay or the differential scattering cross-section that gives the probabilities that a particle is scattered through various angles. All measurements of quantum systems are of this statistical character. It might be thought that the possibility of making measurements on a single electron provides an exception to this. However, even in such cases the electron is continually bathed in a fluctuating background radiation from nearby atoms. Since this is variable, that electron is a member of an ensemble of electrons subject to different fluctuations. All these examples clearly demonstrate the statistical character of quantum mechanics. ‘I am rather firmly convinced’, Einstein (in Schilpp, 1949, pp. 666, 671) remarked, ‘that the essentially statistical character of contemporary quantum theory is solely to be ascribed to fact that this theory operates with an incomplete description of physical systems’. As a result, ‘the c-function is to be understood as the description not of a single system but of an ensemble of systems’. So, ‘if the statistical quantum theory does not pretend to describe the individual system completely, it appears unavoidable to look elsewhere for a complete description of the individual systems’. Thus ‘the difficulties of theoretical interpretation disappear, if one views the quantum-mechanical description as a description of an ensemble of systems’. If this is achieved, ‘the statistical theory would, within the framework of future physics, take an approximately analogous position to statistical mechanics within the framework of classical mechanics’. ‘Thus, essentially, nothing has changed since Galileo or Newton or Faraday concerning the status of the ‘‘observer’’ or our ‘‘consciousness’’ or of our ‘‘information’’ in physics’ (Popper, 1982, p. 46). Once this is accepted, the quantum paradoxes that plagued the Copenhagen interpretation are easily resolved, as described below. In any textbook of quantum mechanics problems such as the calculation of the energy levels of the hydrogen atom are solved as if that hydrogen atom is alone in the universe. As Feynman (1972) remarked, ‘when we solve a quantum-mechanical problem, what we really do is to divide the universe into two parts – the system in which we are interested and the rest of the universe. We then usually act as if the system in which we are interested comprised the whole universe.’ In fact, however, every hydrogen atom on which measurements are made is surrounded by other atoms and exposed to their radiations. Quantum mechanics somehow takes this into account and gives the average behaviour of an ensemble of hydrogen atoms. A more detailed theory takes these influences into account. One attempt to do this is stochastic electrodynamics, described in a later section.