

An Arguably Unreal Particle Powers All of Your Electronics (2013) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/an-arguably-unreal-particle-powers-all-of-your-electronics

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westoncb
Interesting, though I can't see how these properties have any bearing on the
particle's status as 'real' versus 'imaginary.' The rules describing this
entity's behavior are pretty incongruous with the behavior of other known
entities—but we shouldn't forget that, just as when laying out a framework for
a software system, we have chosen which our basic entities are going to be. If
we were to select a different framework for describing physical phenomena,
something less object-centric (something derived from Whitehead's process
philosophy, for instance), what are the chances any notion resembling
pseudoparticles would exist?

When I consider that a framework based on a taxonomy of spatial object types
may only have seemed natural to us because we started with macroscopic
phenomena (which our minds 'objectize') and brought our existing tools and
heuristics with us, I can't help but feel like all of this 'incomprehensible'
quantum weirdness is just our modern version of trying to model elliptical
orbits with circles.

~~~
Retra
It is best to think of particles as clumps of properties that are roughly
localized in space-time. They can smear out, and then they look less like
particles.

The properties themselves are ephemeral and confusing. Is mass real? Is charge
fundamental? We don't know, and we don't know how to know. We can measure it,
and that's as real as anything ever gets. In fact, that's pretty much what
'real' means, since we can't usefully define 'real' in terms of anything else.

I think you are hitting the nail on the head here. Of course these things are
real. Everything is real. The relevant question is: why do you care if they
are or not? What are you gonna do if some particle is shown to be imaginary?
How you can manifest such a distinction into the construction of a better
world?

I've always felt that quantum mechanics was mostly intuitive. But people want
to quote Feynman at me and say "if you think you understand it, then you
don't." Well, guess what? I was born in the 1980's. There was never a day of
my life where I went around knowing anything about physics without being told
quantum physics was better. I learned Newtonian physics under the assumption
that it was incorrect. Quantum physics isn't weird. Objects are weird.
Perfectly smooth curves are weird. Hard categorical distinctions are weird.
They are all obviously approximations that may simply be a result of the fact
that all our words happen to have spaces between them, when this isn't
necessary.

~~~
westoncb
Interesting. I like this, "Hard categorical distinctions are weird. They are
all obviously approximations that may simply be a result of the fact that all
our words happen to have spaces between them, when this isn't necessary."
Reminds me of something I've been thinking a lot about recently, which is how
often even extraordinarily smart people fail to make the distinction between
systems of reference and their referents (even when aware that it's a
potential pitfall). It's a pervasive mistake in physics-derived philosophies,
too: thinking properties of our system of description are properties of the
system being described.

There's this question in philosophy of mathematics, whether math is discovery
or invention. It's good that the issue is recognized there, but it seems very
rarely acknowledged in science. Sure, it starts and ends empirically—but we
can't say anything without inventing a way of stating it: we always choose our
terms, a framework to express our discoveries in. When we find 'weird'
properties cropping up in physics, why is it immediately assumed to be a
property of reality itself rather than in our form of expression?

As an example, Arthur Eddington describes quantum uncertainty as a consequence
of the fact that the language of physics switched from referring directly to
physical phenomena, to describing our knowledge of these things; so when we
only have partial knowledge, we frame our descriptions in terms of
probabilities.

Anyway, I guess we may be products of our era since I'm from the 80's as well.

~~~
Retra
>As an example, Arthur Eddington describes quantum uncertainty as a
consequence of the fact that the language of physics switched from referring
directly to physical phenomena, to describing our knowledge of these things;
so when we only have partial knowledge, we frame our descriptions in terms of
probabilities.

I have never heard this before, but it is _exactly_ what I have said about the
subject. This usually causes me to have to explain how I'm not saying we
_could_ know that stuff: the information may not even exist. But we can't even
say whether or not that is true.

>There's this question in philosophy of mathematics, whether math is discovery
or invention.

I have also had many discussions about this. A lot of it stems from the fact
that mathematicians tend to say "we are free to choose our axioms," when all
my experiences say otherwise. We cannot choose contradictory axioms because
useless math isn't math. (I.e., there is more to good math than truth: it must
have possible utility.) And furthermore, if I were to drop two pennies on the
table and consistently get you to agree there are three cents there, then you
would be damned sure some mathematician would want to have a model for what is
going on!

So mathematics is fundamentally tied to observation. That's why they spent so
much effort trying to define things like 'continuity' and 'smooth curve': we
need a model for reality, not just for our 'freely chosen' axioms.

So mathematics is discovery in the sense that we must observe its correctness,
but invention in the sense that we must invent its usefulness.

In the end, all of our efforts are about developing language that allows us to
describe our reality in a reliable and teachable manner -- Physicists and
mathematicians are primarily trying to develop better language.

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semi-extrinsic
Actually a quite good, if quite brief, explanation of quasiparticles in
various forms. Alas, the author did not give his audience sufficient benefit
of the doubt as to embark upon an equally brief explanation of the pn junction
as an example, which would have made this so much more interesting. Full
disclosure: I am a physicist.

~~~
kurthr
Agreed, I wish there was an example to keep people interested and educated
rather than "amazed and entertained"... I actually don't like articles like
this that make the simplifications and models we use (in this case for
semiconductors) seem opaque, "unreal", and more difficult than they really
are. It's true that there are abstractions (like bubbles aren't real?) that
are convenient for calculation that otherwise seem strange, but showing how
those are useful would be more interesting than saying... Look how amazing my
magic is, you just couldn't understand it, because it makes no sense to anyone
but us wizards.

