• Raymond
    815


    What are field points and how can they oscillate? Are it not the excited wavefunctions that show oscillating behavior?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    Virtual particles are a weird ingredient of empty space. One might even argue that it's the source of dark energy. For sure it has a different effect on empty space as normal, real matter does. The negative energy contributions give negative curvature. It is said that the vacuum fluctuations have a very high energy, while in fact it should be negative.Raymond

    Well, there's no empty space because all is field, and there's no inert space as Newton had it as a background who's only quantity was value. Einstein got rid of Newton's absolute space, achieving background independence, and there is still no space because quantum fields serve as what used to be called 'space' and are everywhere.

    Yes, the 'vacuum' energy could be the source of the push of dark energy, the fuel that ever keeps on giving. In the Casimer experiment the 'vacuum' pushes two plates apart.
  • theRiddler
    260
    I'm a Mysterian. There are no answers I'm particularly interested in. I just understand that reality is ineffable, to a delineating degree.
  • Raymond
    815


    I'm not sure I get you. There is no empty space?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    What are field points and how can they oscillate? Are it not the excited wavefunctions that show oscillating behavior?Raymond

    Field points are just the moving continuous points of a field that can be assigned a value. The excitations of a field oscillate, too, as the sums of the harmonic field point oscillations and can make for a stable lump of stuff called a particle.

    These wave functions go along deterministically until someone wants to measure something or until they interact with something else. Whoever wants to know both the location and the momentum of a particles is out of luck due to these not being arithmetically commutable due to the uncertainty principle. I and adding this stuff in just to show that we know more about what goes on.

    So, some measurements often only return a probability about a particle's doings, but they are statistically deterministic in that the probabilities add up to one, which is called unitarity. After all, we don't know all the quantum math, plus we can't even then take the whole universe into account, plus the elementaries aren't point particles but are spread out field waves that have a volume…
  • Raymond
    815
    Yes, the 'vacuum' energy could be the source of the push of dark energy, the fuel that ever keeps on giving. In the Casimer experiment the 'vacuum' pushes two plates apartPoeticUniverse

    That means on one side there is a different force then on the other. What's different in between?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    There is no empty space?Raymond

    All is field, plus 'Nothing' cannot be.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    That means on one side there is a different force then on the other. What's different in between?Raymond

    Sorry, it pushes the plates together:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    I'm a Mysterian. There are no answers I'm particularly interested in. I just understand that reality is ineffable, to a delineating degree.theRiddler

    Well, now it's effable, but what are you interested in?
  • Raymond
    815


    You seem to imply that field are space. I'm inclined to the view that fields describe the simultaneous histories of almost pointlike particles. Quantum Field Theory claim that the fields are more fundamental than particles and waves, but I disagree. A particle is a funny thing. Empty space is filled with quantum bubbles, but the virtual particles it describes are still situated on empty space. Simultaneously on different parts of space (or zipping below hidden variables, which would make the hidden variables the substance of space). Some of the virtuality is missing between the plates. The hidden variables are confined, excluding some of their modes of being, reducing pressure.
  • Raymond
    815
    Well, now it's effablePoeticUniverse

    The true "nature" of reality will be ineffible always. Only the outside nature can be seen.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    A particle is a funny thing.Raymond

    A neutrino walks through a bar.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    at least currently seems to be the case, that there is no such solid foundations that matter is built on,Reformed Nihilist

    Well, the foundation has been found; it's the quantum 'vacuum' and its fields that form matter, but that doesn't mean there is some expected deep meaning to it; no meaning is still a find.

    To continue, there is the Permanent along with the temporaries that it necessarily forms that are doomed to fade away until more are forthcoming.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    quantum bubblesRaymond

    The Literature of the Cosmos

    The quantum vacuum field waves are the strokes
    That write the elementaries’ letters
    As the Cosmic alphabet for wording
    Of the elements and the forces that

    Phrase the molecules’ interactions
    Unto the cells’ sentences that make for
    The lives’ paragraphs of the species that
    Experience the uni-versed story,

    In a book from Babel’s Great Library,
    The epic tales of the temporaries,
    Their glorious triumphs and sad failures,
    Amid complexity’s unwinding spring.
  • Raymond
    815


    We don't know the fundamental fields though. How can we read the Babylon Books properly? Cranking up energy? How can physicists be so blind that they don't see that there is more elemental stuff than quarks and leptons?
  • Raymond
    815
    A neutrino walks through a barPoeticUniverse

    Says the bartender:
    "Fancy a drink?"
    Light-heartedly neutrino says:
    "No thanks, I'm just passing trough!"
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    How can physicists be so blind that they don't see that there is more elemental stuff than quarks and leptons?Raymond

    The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
    Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.
  • theRiddler
    260
    What's the difference between these fields and convenient math?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    What's the difference between these fields and convenient math?theRiddler

    Not too much; the math is not complete.
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