🚀 go-pugleaf

bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
: The reason why I don't believe in Lorentz invariant quantum
: "collapse" is that no one's come up with a theory of it, OK?
: You can throw words around: mechanistic, nonlinear, chaotic,
: but it makes no progress.  Just go off and invent the theory,
: please.

Oh, I admit it's an outrageous suggestion and an immensely daunting task.
But what is the present "theory"?  "It happens by magic and there's no other
explanation and there's nothing else there."  Not so hot.

:  mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel) writes:
: >It's almost as if people don't want to bother to really look.  (Why?
: >Might small science actually get a Nobel Prize by accident?)
: 
: Why?  Because the chances of getting anything done are
: minimal and you will have a tough time convincing anyone to
: give you a job.

Why?  Because everybody is sure that there's nothing else there.

Acutally, it's my opinion that the experimental evidence _for_ superluminal
collapse is weak, and experiments testing any sort of collapse phenomena not
too numerous.  Most physical experiments don't depend on how collapse
&cetera work, only on things like energy spectra and cross sections.

Sure money's tight, but compared to space missions, and any particle
physics, some small experiment with fast electronics & photomultipliers
is chickenshit.

:  Here let us remember some advice attributed
: to David Mermin: "No one should work on Bell's theorem until
: after they have tenure."

True.  Forgetting about GR, I don't think that any sensible theory could
reasonably be expected without new experimental results, though.

: Ben Weiner

Matt Kennel
mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu