Decoherence, determinism and chaos
The author claims by now to have made his case that modern work on fractals and chaos theory has already removed the presumption that classical physics is `deterministic`. Further, he claims that in so far as classical relativistic field theory (i.e. electromagnetism and gravitation) are scale invariant, they are self-consistent only if the idea of `test-particle` is introduced from outside the theory. Einstein spent the last years of his life trying to use singularities in the metric as `particles` or to get them out of the non-linearities in a grand unified theory -- in vain. So classical physics in this sense cannot be the fundamental theory. However, the author claims to have shown that if he introduces a `scale invariance bounded from below` by measurement accuracy, then Tanimura`s generalization of the Feynman proof as reconstructed by Dyson allows him to make a consistent classical theory for decoherent sources sinks. Restoring coherence to classical physics via relativistic action-at-a distance is left as a task for the future. Relativistic quantum mechanics, properly reconstructed from a finite and discrete basis, emerges in much better shape. The concept of `particles has to be replaced by NO-YES particulate events, and particle-antiparticle pair creation and annihilation properly formulated.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 10136569
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-6397; CONF-9309358-1; ON: DE94009018; TRN: 94:007465
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 15. annual international meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association,Cambridge (United Kingdom),9-12 Sep 1993; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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