A Proposed Proof That The Origin of The Universe Cannot Be Scientifically Explained

What encounters and scatters of the barrier is the probability function for locating the electron. Some of this probability goes through the barrier and some reflects off the barrier.When electron detection equipment is brought into the area of the barrier, the chances of it detecting the electron in a given area is given by the strength of this function. In the gif in post 161, the function is quite weak (has a small value) to the right of the barrier. So there is some chance, but not a great amount, to detect it there. This is as Catholic Scientist said.The potential can be any potential, electric, magnetic, nuclear force, gravitational, the will all show roughly similar behaviour.So for example with an alpha particle, some of its probability function will eventually leak outside the nucleus. This means there is now a non-zero chance of detecting it outside the nucleus.What is important to see here is that what propagates and moves is the probability function of detecting an electron, not the electron itself, which does not have a position until detection.

Here is a link to the paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328Good discussion here:
Can the quantum state be interpreted statistically? | Matt LeiferMatt Leifer

Hi Dogmafood,At the end of my last post I detailed four possible pictures of the world which are consistent with the mathematics of quantum mechanics and experimental results. Depending on which view you take to be the real one, the reason the quantum world becomes the classical world is different. Most physicists tend think one of the options (1), (2) or (4) are true. ((3) would be a minority position) (4) is still quite rare though, so mainly (1) or (2).Dr. Adequate has already explained why quantum effects die off from the point of view of (2), I'll explain from the point of view of (1), the many-worlds.If you take this view, the reason for quantum mechanical oddness is the interaction of the separate branches of reality with each other.
For example if you roll a fair dice, then the chance of any result is 1/6. The probabilities cannot interfere with each other, a dice roll of 3 cannot effect a dice roll of 2, since only one actually occurs.
However in the many worlds picture, since all the different options actually do play out, they can affect each other. So you get probabilities that appear impossible since they are due to different outcomes interfering with other outcomes. So for an "electron dice" the universe with an outcome of 3 for the roll, could affect the universe with a roll of 2 and decrease its probability.Now, let's take a measurement to measure the electrons spin, by a piece of apparatus made of ten atoms. If the electron is spin up, the apparatus measures this by having all atoms in it aligned magnetically with each other, if it is spin down, then the atoms are anti-aligned.So when the measurement is performed the outcome is two worlds:
Spin-up, Apparatus Aligned.
Spin-down, Apparatus Anti-Aligned.Now the apparatus in each world would not be able to tell the other branch of reality (the other universe)is interfering with it. That would require some other piece of equipment outside both objects.Now imagine you doing a measurement on the strength of a nut bolt. Billions of universes will result from this (different value of the strengths of the bolt). However you and the bolt are both interacting with and being measured by the atoms of the sun (when light shines on you), the air, e.t.c. That means that the whole system consists of trillions of tons of matter (you, the sun, e.t.c.) To see the interference effects from different universes, something would have to be outside this system to perceive it. Secondly, since the values of the bolt strength are almost identical in each universe (only slight atomic differences) it would be very hard to detect the effect of these interactions. Hence only a massive, extremely sensitive piece of equipment could see it.For this reason we can't see these effects and so they effectively do not exist for us.Even in the probabilities interpretation ((2) in the previous post) something like this going on. Since we interact with our environment, the probability you should look at is not:
Probability that I am at point A
but
Probability that I am at point A and my environment is in a state consistent with me being at A.
(For example if you could stand in two spots two meters apart, the choice you make affects the states of quadrillions of photons from the Sun and atomic particles in the ground and the air.)When you are an even moderately large object (a protein), you interact with enough of the universe that there simply isn't that high a probability of you and the entire environment to which you are connected to jump to another state. In fact the odds are so small, ignoring them is the most accurate approximation in science.So, the reason you don't see quantum mechanics is because you are constantly interacting with your environment.Out of interest, this is the problem with quantum computers. Quantum Computers perform a part of the computation in each universe. If you prefer the probabilities interpretation, they perform the computations using the probabilities of each state, rather than the state itself like a classical computer. That is, they don't use 0 or 1, but the chance of observing 0 or 1, this is a lot more information, so a quicker computation.This is fine if the computer is small, but to be useful, the computer must be reasonably large, a few million atoms at least. However once it is this large, the interactions with the environment begin and quantum effects are destroyed. So the open question in quantum computing is how to shield them from the environment.Edited by Son Goku, : Typos

Ah good! It's a pretty confusing, but cool world we live in. Again, any questions just ask.

In quantum mechanics we want to know how the probabilities evolve, those rules for their evolution are the (quantum) laws of physics.The probabilities associated with the electroweak force develop according to a different mathematical structure (or set of rules or laws of physics, which ever you prefer) than the strong nuclear force.Lying behind these rules is a mathematical structure known as a Lie Group. The group controlling the electroweak force is called SU(2)XU(1) and the one behind the strong force is SU(3). For a variety of reasons people suspect that these groups should really just be part of a larger Lie Group. If this is the case then the probabilities for the Strong Force and the ElectroWeak Force are really controlled by the same rules and are ultimately just different manifestations of the rules of one force, the ElectoNuclear force.I haven't mentioned Gravity. The problem with gravity is that it's not a force like the others, it's just a side-effect of spacetime being curved. This curvature of spacetime is still treated completely classically in modern theoretical physics, no probabilities associated with it at all. We don't know how to apply the ideas of quantum probability to gravity as of 2012.These are two separate problems. The problem of the unified forces and the problem of quantum gravity.However some physicists believe that they can't be solved separately, or more accurately that the unified forces problem would need to solved first.

I should say something more about the Lie groups.Lie groups are basically mathematical objects that describe symmetries. I won't go to far into the details, but one thing I wanted to say is that the groups we use in physics are known as SU groups. There are an infinite number of these, SU(2), SU(3), SU(4),.... (SU(1) is completely uninteresting for physics). We also use the group U(1).I should explain what these are. If you imagine an arrow on a sheet of paper, you can rotate the arrow by any angle and its length doesn't change. The set of all these rotations is a Lie Group called O(2).Now if you take an arrow/vector in three dimensions, all the ways you can rotate it is O(3). In four dimensions O(4) and so on.If we add in complex numbers (allow the vector to point in the imaginary direction) all the ways you can rotate it are called U(2) or U(3), e.t.c. the number depends on the dimension.Usually there is one special operation that completely flips where the vector. This we usually don't include (as it turns out not to matter), so we pull it out. We then have what we call SU(N).For the three forces of nature, the following groups are used:
U(1) - The hypercharge force.
SU(2) - The weak isospin force.
SU(3) - The strong nuclear force.
these groups are related to the symmetries of the forces, which seems like an incidental things, but if you know the symmetries then you can basically figure out everything else about the force. The full group is then known as:
U(1) X SU(2) X SU(3)Early on in our universe the Higgs field interfered with the symmetries U(1) and SU(2) causing them to mix together, the result being that we no longer see the two forces above, but rather the forces we call the Electromagnetic force and the Weak Force.An example of how these symmetries work is quarks. Quarks have a quantity called color, nothing to do with visual colour, which comes in three types: red, green, blue. If you made a list of how much red, green or blue charge a given quark had you would have a list with three elements. You could consider this list as being a three-dimensional arrow/vector, with each of the numbers telling you how far it points in a given direction.Now, since the laws of physics don't care if you swap a quarks colors around, you can basically rotate this arrow/vector as much as you want without effecting anything, all these rotations are SU(3), which is why it is the group for the strong nuclear force.Another thing is that if a force has a symmetry group SU(N), then N^2 - 1 particles control that force. So for example for SU(3), we have 3^2 - 1 = 8 particles. These are the eight gluons. SU(2) has 2^2 - 1 = 3 (related to the two W bosons and the one Z). U(1) has only one particle, related to the photon. In total that's 12 force particles.
(The reason SU(1) isn't interesting is that it would have 1^2 - 1 = 0 particles, so no force. In fact it's not really a symmetry at all.)Now, in the 1970s people found that the full group of all the forces:
U(1) X SU(2) X SU(3)
fit inside other groups. The smallest being SU(5). So the idea was that there is only one SU(5) force. However SU(5) has 5^2 - 1 = 24 particles. That would mean 12 new force particles. It turns out that these extra force particles would cause the proton to be unstable. The lifetime the SU(5) theory gives for protons is enormous, but experiments at the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan indicate that it's still too short.For that reason people have looked at other groups that U(1) X SU(2) X SU(3) might fit into. All these theories are known as GUTs (Grand unified theories). The particular guess of SU(5) is known as the Georgi-Glashow model:
Georgi—Glashow model - Wikipedia