Math & Science
Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 07:40 Written by beverlyhills Monday, 17 August 2009 12:04
The Rift between Quantum Mechanics and Relativity
An Interview with James W. Banks
May 10th, 2009
Cris: We’re here with James Banks, to learn what he thinks about the possibility of quantum physics and classical science finally converging. James, do you think this will ever happen in our lifetimes?
James W. Banks: No. Not in our lifetimes.
Cris: How far have we gotten to the two theories merging?
James W. Banks: From Einstein’s general relativity to quantum mechanics, which were invented at almost the same time in 1939, we’ve gotten no closer to marrying the two, although some may argue otherwise. In ways, the two are further apart now than they’ve ever been. What you’ve got to understand is that quantum mechanics is a sort of by-product of relativity. That’s what really freaked Einstein out, too.
Cris: Einstein, as I understand it, was a firm believer in just general science, and said, “God does not play dice.”
James W. Banks: Right. He was a determinist; it was almost like his religion. And quantum mechanics goes against the grain of determinism.
Cris: I see.
James W. Banks: So was Isaac Newton. He couldn’t get rid of the idea of absolute, motionless space, just purely for religious reasons. As a rule, he wasn’t really a religious man, but he religiously needed that clockwork mechanical universe. That’s why he invented that bullshit like, ether and all that kind of fuckin crap.
Cris: “Bullshit ether”. Interesting.
James W. Banks: There’s no ether. Space is a vacuum. But it threw his calculations off, space being a vacuum. Now, if there were a medium for light to travel through, like the way like sound travels through air, then all his numbers jibe with absolute, motionless space. But we all know that that’s not true now because of quantum mechanics. But like Einstein, he was a determinist – he needed that absolution, that permanency, which is very weird for a scientist, if you think about it.
Cris: And what other things have scientists come up with to even try to marry the two you know, theories together? Have there been like leaps forward in math or science or astronomy?
James W. Banks: No, but there have been attempts, like string theory, super symmetry, brought forth by Richard Feynman at Caltech . . . But that’s about it. Oh, and Hawking explored it briefly, indirectly with his “cone of reality” and “micro-black hole” theories, but only as a side thing, not as a main thesis report or research. But mostly it is string theory and super symmetry that attempts to marry the two, and I just think that not even those theories are strong enough to come close. What might help is if they find the particle that carries gravity: the graviton. It would explain a lot, but it still wouldn’t marry quantum mechanics and relativity, but it would narrow down the direction we need to go if we ever needed to answer that and marry the two. If we can find the graviton, it would prove two things: It would prove that other dimensions exist – parallel universes exist – and for sure that the big bang happened. It wouldn’t marry quantum mechanics and relativity, but it would make it a step closer on what to eliminate, and what to continue researching toward that end.
Cris: As I understand it, there’s even some dissention among those in the science community in as far as the big bang theory and graviton existence.
James W. Banks: Oh yeah, it’s hotly debated, both of them are. And there are great arguments on both sides. But for me, I personally believe in the big bang. The graviton is so complicated I sometimes think the graviton is out there, sometimes not. Gravity is so unlike any other force. It’s probably the one that doesn’t have a particle associated with it. Sometimes I’ll look at other math and other research and I’ll think that maybe, just maybe there’s a graviton. But as for the big bang, I would almost bet money that it happened. There’s a lot of mathematical evidence for the big bang being real. But the graviton? I’m 50-50 on that. To simplify things, every particle is a wave. Even if we found a graviton, it would of course have wave-like properties, because that seems to be just the nature of things and the nature of particles. There seems to be a duality with every particle. At first we just thought the photon – the light particle – had this duality. And even hadrons (larger particles such as protons and neutrons) have wave-like particles under high enough energies. So that seems to be a thing about reality itself and it’s a very bizarre thing to think about. That’s mind-boggling, knowing that every particle is wave-like, too. Not just light.
Cris: What about the Large Hadron Collider?
James W. Banks: It’s not working now. They’ve still got to get some kinks out of it. They turned it on early. Too early, and it doesn’t work. They’re fixing it now and it will be back online in two months.
Cris: Isn’t there something that was built before the Hadron Collider that was actually smashing atoms before that . . .
James W. Banks: There have been 16 different cyclotrons since the 1950s. The largest cyclotron – the Tevatron – is owned by Fermilab. CERN, their kind of “competitor”, operates the Large Hadron Collider which is going online soon.
Cris: I wonder why it’s not working.
James W. Banks: Oh, they just had some power issues and a major leak of coolant fluids. They know how to fix them.
Cris: I bet it takes a lot of power . . .
James W. Banks: It takes about as much power to smash two subatomic particles – microscopic particles – as it does to run, I would say, the city of Reno.
Cris: For how long?
James W. Banks: For a ten-hour cycle. So that’s a mind-boggling amount of power. That’s how much power it takes to get even something microscopically small near the speed of light.
Cris: Well, I wonder if, when we come up with alternative sources of energy, it would be more feasible to get things like the Hadron Collider online.
James W. Banks: Yeah, I mean, any alternative form of energy would be great. But I mean, you could go two ways. You could like, efficiently run the colliders we have now, or invent something completely new using new forces of energy to completely replace the collider altogether. You could do both; there would be benefits of doing both. My idea would be to primarily try to get the most out of collider technology with this new energy source, if we found one, and put a limit on it. You know, a time limit. We could say, “Well, this is as far as we’re gonna go; let’s build something else.” But at least try it a little bit to try to optimize it. Because there’s not much more you can . . . There’s not much bigger you can get with an accelerator, there’s not that much more power you can get out of it, there’s not much more closer you can get to the speed of light.
Travelling twice the speed of sound ,it’s easy to get burned….
