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Quantum Chaos Discovered
Chaotic Behavior Observered in QM

Quantum Chaos Discovered

wuliheron
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Posted 10/07/09 - 04:24 PM: Subject: Quantum Chaos Discovered	#1
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/40620 Just days after the announcement of an experiment demonstrating that quantum entanglement is contextual comes this new announcement from a group in Canada and the US that they have observed Chaos theory in the behavior or entangled particles. This has been quite a month for quantum researchers in general, with two additional papers being published detailing the observation of quantum entanglement being used by microorganisms to promote photosynthesis. It may be too early to say with confidence that these discoveries presage a new era in understanding entanglement, but it certainly looks that way.

Cadrache
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Posted 10/07/09 - 04:36 PM:	#2
Things comes in threes. I'll read it at home. I wonder what the third one will be? Probably some thing that was written years ago and just 're-discovered'. We should give money to that guy.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

Arkady
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Posted 10/07/09 - 04:52 PM:	#3
wuliheron wrote: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/40620 Just days after the announcement of an experiment demonstrating that quantum entanglement is contextual comes this new announcement from a group in Canada and the US that they have observed Chaos theory in the behavior or entangled particles. This has been quite a month for quantum researchers in general, with two additional papers being published detailing the observation of quantum entanglement being used by microorganisms to promote photosynthesis. It may be too early to say with confidence that these discoveries presage a new era in understanding entanglement, but it certainly looks that way. That bit about photosynthesis sounds interesting. Do you know any of the details?
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley

wuliheron
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Posted 10/07/09 - 07:26 PM:	#4
One microorganism was discovered to have two parallel bifurcating tree-like structures that apparently used entanglement between them to make photosynthesis more efficient. The hope is that such research might possibly lead to solar cells that are almost 100% efficient and might even be grown using gene modified single cell organisms. It could also help to create room temperature quantum computers, perhaps in conjunction with spintronics efforts. Imagine a supercomputer that uses just a few watts! I did the google thang: http://www.google.com/search?sourc...+mechanical+photosynthesis There has been speculation that entanglement might also play a role in helping mitochondria to be more efficient. Considering that we share perhaps 60% of our dna with plants, it is certainly not a far fetched idea.

swstephe
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Posted 10/07/09 - 08:38 PM:	#5
I'm not sure I follow the article. Chaos theory applies to systems and multiple "attractors" creating a virtually unpredictable result. The "butterfly" analogy is already based on a fallacy, (the energy output of butterfly wings is miniscule compared to evaporating oceans). It seems like a bunch of fudging to appeal to chaos-fans, (where are you Jeff Goldblum), as well as people who like quantum non-determinism. It seems they are measuring spin, then claiming that since we don't know the initial conditions, we can't predict the spin and that it should therefore be considered chaos theory. I only see just a different layer of uncertainty. The bridge between quantum and classical physics is already understood to be a kind of law of averages.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

wuliheron
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Posted 10/07/09 - 11:46 PM:	#6
Chaos theory is about the limits of relatively random behavior in classically deterministic systems. We may not be able to tell exactly what caused the relatively random behavior, but using chaos theory we can infer that it was classically causal because it is possible to demonstrate that the system is not utterly random. Quantum Indeterminacy is, as far as anyone can tell, utterly random. It follows no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Part of the problem in determining if quanta are behaving in a classically causal manner (eg Chaos Theory) or utterly random (or some mixture of the two) is the difficulty in measuring both the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously. Although I don't understand the details, the researchers have apparently overcome this difficulty and observed classically deterministic "random" behavior in a quantum mechanical system. Evidently they have also witnessed this well within the limits of what would normally be considered utterly random. My favorite example of Chaos theory is a young college student who used his desk top computer and a little investigative work to predict when slot machines in a number of midwestern casinos would pay out. He happened to know that the outdated machines would reset to their original state whenever the power went out, and used this to calculate when they pay out. Over a single summer vacation he won $70,000.00 and paid for his college. He could do this because Chaos theory assumes that there is no such thing as a perfectly random system, and shows how to calculate exactly how any particular system is not random. This is what physicists call a "phase transition" and is of enormous practical interest. Quanta are fundamentally different. As far as anyone has been able to determine they are utterly random and today you can even buy machines to hook up to your computer that are true random number generators based on quantum interactions that cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. If confirmed, this research provides at the very least yet another means of determining when a quantum indeterminate system makes the transition to a classically deterministic one. Among other things, it could shed light on quantum decoherence, that is, how the collapse of the wave-function occurs. Edited by wuliheron on 10/07/09 - 11:52 PM

swstephe
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Posted 10/08/09 - 12:51 AM:	#7
Actually, I played around a bit with Chaos theory, back when it was hot stuff. Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics and is completely deterministic. The Wikipedia definition starts, "Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics which studies the behavior of certain dynamical systems that may be highly sensitive to initial conditions.". Nothing random at all, just that there is a bit of memory involved in addition to expected initial conditions. For a time, Chaos theory was the wild card that allowed you to speculate why predictions would always be wrong. Quantum indeterminism comes from the idea that you can't measure all the states of a particle simultaneously. It is a fundamental physics problem, so the supposed claim that they have overcome this "difficulty" should raise the first red flag. If they have really been able to achieve measurement of position and momentum, then it is the end of Quantum physics as we know it. I suspect the college student example is an urban legend. Most computer random number generators are the same, so if the programmer didn't take any precautions to randomize the seed and the program were so simple that the number of CPU cycles were always the same, then it would be predictable, but such a lucky set of circumstances is very unlikely or a deliberate set-up. If this were an application of chaos theory, in fact, then the student would have no way of determining the output based on initial or intermediate conditions. So, at the quantum level, you have probabilistic state values, and they are making the claim that they know these initial values, but that the value they are measuring is unpredictable because of the number of "attractors", (just 3 deterministic influences can lead to a chaotic system). It sounds more like they aren't getting the results they expect from quantum probabilities -- and are just throwing labels to say that it is impossible to solve. What does "random" really mean? Getting the same results is just as random as getting an even distribution. The test for randomness is not being able to detect the deterministic cause.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

Cadrache
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Posted 10/08/09 - 10:00 AM:	#8
How do you expect pre-determined states when at the macro level we supposedly never technically grasp things? If nothing ever 'touches' at the level - why then assume that things must touch at a smaller level? Interesting information about chaos theory though.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

wuliheron
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Posted 10/08/09 - 10:44 AM:	#9
swstephe wrote: Actually, I played around a bit with Chaos theory, back when it was hot stuff. Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics and is completely deterministic. The Wikipedia definition starts, "Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics which studies the behavior of certain dynamical systems that may be highly sensitive to initial conditions.". Nothing random at all, just that there is a bit of memory involved in addition to expected initial conditions. For a time, Chaos theory was the wild card that allowed you to speculate why predictions would always be wrong. I agree, the theory is completely deterministic and that is why I wrote {i]"realitively random"[/i] meaning these systems can appear random to the casual observer. swstephe wrote: Quantum indeterminism comes from the idea that you can't measure all the states of a particle simultaneously. It is a fundamental physics problem, so the supposed claim that they have overcome this "difficulty" should raise the first red flag. If they have really been able to achieve measurement of position and momentum, then it is the end of Quantum physics as we know it.[/i] They did not claim to be able to measure the position and momentum with precision simultaneously, only to have overcome the problem this difficulty presents for measuring chaotic systems. If they had actually made such a claim it would have been the biggest news of the century. [quote=swstephe]I suspect the college student example is an urban legend. Most computer random number generators are the same, so if the programmer didn't take any precautions to randomize the seed and the program were so simple that the number of CPU cycles were always the same, then it would be predictable, but such a lucky set of circumstances is very unlikely or a deliberate set-up. If this were an application of chaos theory, in fact, then the student would have no way of determining the output based on initial or intermediate conditions. I don't know anything about casino slot machines, but the young man's case made headlines when the casinos refused to pay him and the case when to court. The courts decided in his favor stating that it was up to the casinos to insure they had they most modern equipment. swstephe wrote: So, at the quantum level, you have probabilistic state values, and they are making the claim that they know these initial values, but that the value they are measuring is unpredictable because of the number of "attractors", (just 3 deterministic influences can lead to a chaotic system). It sounds more like they aren't getting the results they expect from quantum probabilities -- and are just throwing labels to say that it is impossible to solve. What does "random" really mean? Getting the same results is just as random as getting an even distribution. The test for randomness is not being able to detect the deterministic cause. Exactly so, random literally means the lack of any perceptable order. Hence, like up and down the random and ordered are relative terms that define each other and when using a broad metaphysical context such as life, the universe, and everything both terms become demonstrably meaningless. Again, the researchers did not claim to have conquored quantum indeterminacy. They claimed to have been able to measure Chaotic fluctuations in a quantum system. In other words, they merely observed more order in this quantum system than other approaches were capable of observing.

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