Quantum Theory, String Theory: unproven, unscientific claims and their distortion of reality.
Why Quantum Theory has led to distortive investigations and claims.
What is Science?
‘Natural Science’, or the scientific analysis of our natural world, is constructed on 3 concepts: objectivity, reasonability or rationality and experimental verification (Ratz, 2000). It is fair to say that much of modern physics and cosmology is by this definition, unscientific. When we discuss Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, or String Theory, each admittedly covering a broad area, we will discover that the 3 core ideals for science listed above, are violated and often raped.  Within these three domains we find subjective, unreasonable and unverified conclusions. The implications for society and ‘science’ are both nefarious and portentous.
Violins with 10500 strings
We know that the abstraction of Relativity fails to explain the ‘macro world’, littered as it is with unproven time-space integration, a cadre of incorrect and inaccurate equations and forecasts from light to energy and mass, and suffering from experimental disproofs. Relativity is a philosophy not a proven objective, reasonable, experimentally verified ‘science’.Â
The same is true of its bastard offspring String Theory, which the last post introduced. This inanity is an attempt to provide a unified theory aligning the macro-philosophies of Relativity, with the micro-world of particles and molecules, explained by Quantum Mechanics. It is a spectacular and expensive failure.Â
String theory proposes that all particles are vibrating strings and can produce a non-reality of some 10500 ‘possible dimensions’, or ‘other worlds’, which is infinity. There are 1080 molecules in the universe or 1 followed by 80 zeroes. After 35 years and billions in spend, no ‘strings’ or other dimensions have been found. String theory is therefore irrational, unreasonable, untestable and subjective. It is not ‘science’.Â
What then of the middle layer of ‘The Science’ sandwich in physics, namely Quantum Mechanics? Unlike Relativity and String Theory, Quantum Mechanics has bequeathed some hard, factual scientific outcomes and observations to help discover and explain the micro-world of particle physics. However beyond this, quantum mechanics like Relativity and String Theory, becomes rapidly unscientific, philosophical, rather insane and corrodes our reality.  The reasons to support this view are summarised below.Â
Quantum Mechanics – brief history
Modern Quantum Mechanics was largely in place by the end of the 1920s. In a 20-year period, the micro-world of particles was uncovered in part and somewhat explained. It is fair to say that in the past 100 years similar progress has not been made. It is also fair to say that much of what has been created is wrong.Â
1.     In 1900, Max Planck built an experimental model to explain the full spectrum of thermal radiation. Planck used an oscillator, or a DC circuit coverting electrical energy into electromagnetic energy to investigate. He found that the oscillator loses energy at higher frequencies at a standard rate. This energy emission was dubbed ‘quantized’ which describes how a photon's energy is equal to its frequency multiplied by Planck’s constant (‘h’) which is still the measurement used to calculate energy emission. The constant ‘h’ has a value of approximately 6.626 x 10^-34 joule seconds.
o  However, Planck’s constant is inaccurate and difficult to prove. It is used as a close approximation and is a foundation of QM.
2.     In 1913 Niels Bohr proposed a new model of the atom, which included quantized electron orbits. Electrons emit energy as they circle the nucleus (akin to Copernicanism). Bohr’s model proposed that electrons may jump from one orbit to another giving off energy in the form of an emitted photon or light.Â
o  Bohr’s electron model is still unproven today.  Keep in mind that Lord Kelvin’s ‘electron model’ (no fixed orbits) was ‘the science’ until Bohr came along.
3.     In 1925 Max Born, in assessing Bohr’s model, developed a matrix-mathematical model to try to explain the transitions of electrons and different energy levels.
o  Born’s idea is really just a smart guess, and needs other assumptions to make it work.
4.     In 1927 Werner Heisenberg formulated an early version of the ‘uncertainty principle’ as a thought experiment. He theorized about measuring an electron’s position and momentum at the same time, postulating that ‘anything can happen’.Â
o  Heisenberg’s assumption that measurements falsify classical mechanics is incorrect.
5.     A more precise mathematical definition of what ‘uncertainty’ meant was pursued by Wolfgang Pauli, Hermann Weyl and others.
o  However the ‘uncertainty principle’ is quite uncertain, probably false and likely meaningless.
6.     In 1926 Schrödinger developed ‘wave mechanics’ to explain electron motion, and apparently proved that Heisenberg's matrix mechanics supported the behaviour of the electron, though they disagreed on the interpretation of what this meant.
o  The wave theory only works with hydrogen atoms, not helium atoms and suffers from other defects.
7.     ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ paradox theorises that electrons or photons can be in 2 states and in 2 places at once (or a cat in a box might be both alive and dead at the same time).Â
o  A cat in a box being both dead and alive is truly insane and insults our intelligence. Same can be said for claiming a particle can be in 2 states in 2 different places.
8.     1927, Paul Dirac tried to unify Quantum Mechanics with Special Relativity by proposing an equation which in mathematical terms only, achieves the relativistic description of the wavefunction of an electron that Schrödinger failed to obtain.
o  However, Dirac’s theory is unused, unproven mechanically, and was later replaced by Quantum Field Theory. Dirac in his writings was quite ironically, a steady critic of QM.
9.  Beginning in 1927, Quantum Mechanics was applied to entire fields of particles, not just single particles. This is called Quantum Electro-dynamics or QED. Dirac, Jordan and R. Feynman in 1940s were prominent. It attempts, but fails to explain a quantum theory of electrons and positrons, with the electromagnetic field.
o  QED is unproven and inaccurate, contrary to the science propaganda. Even if it is relevant as many claim, it leads to untestable theories and dimensions.
10.  In the 1970s Higgs, Weinberg, Glashow and others showed how the ‘weak nuclear force’ and QED could be merged.Â
o  The weak force (one of the 4 main physical forces) is a concept that cannot explain ‘strong forces’ and due to this QED was superseded by String Theory starting in the 1970s.
—> (for above see Brief history of QM, Nature, Lisi, Hawking)
What does it mean?
Strip away the smart people, their clever language and we have 2 mathematical ‘principles’ in QM or QED.
1. At the micro-level there is a mathematical entity called a ‘state-vector’ (a position, and velocity of an object on a grid map), which describes the state of the universe at a given time.Â
2. Another maths entity called the ‘Hamiltonian’ (total energy of the system) is the ‘operator’ on these ‘state-vectors’, transforming them into a new state. Â
There is nothing particular astounding in the above. It has some echoes of Newton’s 2nd law of motion. Energy acting on a an object in a state, will induce a change. I see this every day with programming code, object states and functions. However, the theorists take this obvious occurrence to unscientific levels.
The above mathematical ‘principles’ are explained using a vector specified not by three spatial coordinates (or the real world of Euclidean 3 dimensions), but by an infinite number of coordinates (Woit 2011).  Hence QM and QED ineluctably lead to String Theory or something similar with infinity dimensions. There is no way to test this.
To make things even more impossible to understand, these limitless coordinates are complex numbers, not real numbers.  A complex number is a combination of real numbers and an imaginary number…..so much science!
Bottom Line:Â A lot of rubbish
Clever men with clever equations. Most of them Ivy League educated, going to the best schools with PhDs in physics or maths, or often, both. Yes, very intelligent, so ingenious in fact that they can create their own imaginary worlds and pass them off as ‘science’. Quantum Mechanics does not explain reality. To wit:
1.     Quantum Mechanics is incompatible with gravity and does not align with Relativity. If Relativity is right, QM is wrong, if QM is right Relativity is wrong….hence the frantic search for a unifying theory.
2.     Planck’s constant cannot be expressed as a fraction or a ratio of two integers. It is an ‘irrational number’ (an imprecise number with endless decimal points) . The excuse given is rather tautological, namely that the constant expresses a law of nature which cannot be proven more accurately.
3.     Bohr’s electron model may work with hydrogen with its one atom (which the early Quantum enthusiasts focused on), but it does not work with atoms that have more than 1 electron.
4.     The future state of a system can be described by QED, but none of the mathematics or models can describe future states in a deterministic way as they claim. It is all probabilistic theory and often wrong. It predicts nothing (see Penrose 2010).
5.     An object can never be in 2 states at once. You can’t be dead and alive. You can’t be here or there (unless you are bilocating which is a super-natural phenomenon outside of science). Schrödinger knew this and was making the simple point that unless there is another variable involved (magic or supernaturality), being in 2 states is impossible. Yet QM has taken this and run with it all the way to QED and String Theory.
6.     QED leads to an infinite number of realities which can never be tested. If you can’t test these dimensions it is not ‘science’.
7.     Dirac, who established the entire framework for Quantum Mechanics, was a sceptic, saying QM is only a provisional theory, that cannot be measured.
In summary:
The view of our world provided by Quantum Mechanics is completely foreign to common sense or reality. Our 3-dimensional experience, which was explained by classical mechanics or mechanical physics, in which there is a world of distance and energy scales, is now rendered by QED and its ‘standard model’ to be a fantasy world of made up numbers and dimensions.Â
QED has produced some concrete benefits. Particle accelerators and the breakdown of constituent matter for example. Atomic clocks and incredible accuracy. Understanding the emission of electron energy and being able to harvest that technologically. Television on the other hand, that ‘entertainment’ and propaganda tool, is an unfortunate byproduct of such knowledge and must be arranged as argument against QM and QED. Television is the worst invention in modern history.
As with most of ‘The Science’ QM and QED and its related project forks have been taken over by mathematical philosophers who are marketing their theories as facts. In short, none of modern physics is ‘The Science’, and none of it should be immune to criticism. Too much of it is expensive rubbish and philosophical gibberish. It is distortive, disingenous and in so many ways, culturally and socially dangerous.
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Sources
Links above.
Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 2010 (discusses the ridiculous notions of the M-theory of everything, another example of where ‘scientists’ need to get a real job, no one is quite sure what the M stands for)
Graham Farmela, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, Basic Books, 2009
Del Ratz, Science: its limits, 2000.
Roger Schlafly, How Einstein Ruined Physics: Motion, Symmetry, and Revolution in Science, 2011
A. Garrett Lisi, An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything, 2007.
Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, 2011
Roger Penrose, Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, 2010.
A curious thing I've noted over the years about science: they either assume, in the absence of any evidence, things are much simpler than they are. But then, when building theories, they LOVE to add and add and add, until their theoretical edifice is vastly more complicated than things are.