On Monday, May 5, 2025 at 6:37:07 AM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
On Sun, May 4, 2025 at 4:37 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: *> JC; I await and would appreciate your response to whether Time is an operator, and can be used in the Time-Energy form of the Uncertainty Principle.* *Time is not an operator because it is not an observable in the way that position, momentum and energy are, instead it's a parameter, the stage against which things happen. We can say that a particle has a position, a momentum and an energy but a particle doesn't have a time. Mathematically that means that in quantum mechanics position, momentum and energy are all Hermitian operators but time is not. However it remains true that Δt × ΔE ≥ ℏ/2, and of course Δx × Δp ≥ ℏ/2* Your first equation is nonsense since *Δt *represents the statistical uncertainty of an operator, but *t* isn't an operator. Unless you can find a way around this problem, your proof, using Quantum EM is fatally flawed. Moreover, it has recently been shown that the Casimir Effect can be calculated independently of vacuum energy and virtual particles. >From Wiki: Relativistic van der Waals force[edit <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casimir_effect&action=edit§ion=5> ] *Alternatively, a 2005 paper by Robert Jaffe <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jaffe_(physicist)> of MIT states that "Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies. They are relativistic, quantum forces between charges and currents. The Casimir force (per unit area) between parallel plates vanishes as alpha, the fine structure constant, goes to zero, and the standard result, which appears to be independent of alpha, corresponds to the alpha approaching infinity limit", and that *"*The Casimir force is simply the (relativistic, retarded <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retarded_potential>) van der Waals force between the metal plates."[19] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#cite_note-:0-19> Casimir and Polder's original paper used this method to derive the Casimir–Polder force. In 1978, Schwinger, DeRadd, and Milton published a similar derivation for the Casimir effect between two parallel plates.[24] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#cite_note-24> More recently, Nikolic proved from first principles of quantum electrodynamics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics> that the Casimir force does not originate from the vacuum energy of the electromagnetic field,[25] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#cite_note-25> and explained in simple terms why the fundamental microscopic origin of Casimir force lies in van der Waals forces.[26] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#cite_note-26>* *AG* > *Your answer to this question critically influences your claim that the Casimir Effect can be explained by applying Quantum EM theory. * *It's not my claim, it's the claim of Hendrik Casimir, he used Quantum Electrodynamics to predict it in 1948, although it wasn't until 1997 that it was experimentally proven that Casimir's prediction was correct. * As I read Wiki, Casimir didn't use QED to make his prediction. AG > *Also, why do you apparently accept the physical existence of virtual particles * *I believe virtual particles exist for a number of reasons, the most important being experiments insist that they do. If you assume that virtual particles are real you are then able to make the most precise theoretical prediction not just in physics but in all of science, one part in 10 trillion. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics, which is about virtual particles, predicted that the electron's magnetic moment should be approximately 0.001,159,652,181,643, the most accurate experimental measurement says it's approximately 0.001,159,652,180.* > *even though they contradict Conservation of Energy. * *In quantum mechanics you can borrow mass/energy from nowhere but you have to pay it back, and the more mass/energy you borrow the shorter amount of time you have before you have to pay it back; that's why you will never be able to directly observe a virtual particle, however you can observe effects caused by those virtual particles. * I don't think this borrowing concept comes from the postulates of Quantum EM, but is an ad hoc add-on. AG * > Are you aware of this fact?* *Of course I'm aware of it! In Quantum Mechanics the law of conservation of energy had to be modified. And it's not just Quantum Mechanics, in General Relativity the law of conservation of energy is true locally but not at a cosmic scale. * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* kfa -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c12826e7-bd6b-4594-b39e-7b5046da96b7n%40googlegroups.com.
