Another week, another deluge of BS from the White House and from the Controlled Opposition.

The Audit is over, now the spin doctoring begins. Other efforts are afoot in other states. Good. The more the merrier.

The collapse of the Covidschina continues.

No doubt much will be said about those today. (And I have missed a lot this past week.)

To my mind the audits are the last hope for a within-the-system fix to what happened last November. “Within the system” meaning the audits find fraud, the various states decertify the results, and some dang judge rules that Biden must step down and Trump must be installed.

That last step is crucial. The way our system works, “fraud” isn’t a fact until some “competent authority” (i.e., meaning “one that has jurisdiction,” not “one that won’t end up with an ice cream cone on its forehead”) rules it is so. That must happen before the system will accept that the election is vitiated by fraud. No finding of fraud means, as far as they are concerned no fraud, no fraud means nothing vitiated. We sit and fume, because the system has failed.

I’ll leave it to you to decide how likely you think it is that a judge will rule against the Left given the riots that would likely endanger his/her family.

As for the military stepping forward and doing the job instead? Well, that’s technically “outside of the system” and besides…this military, that’s being made woke as we speak?

What do we do in the likely event that fraud is found, but no judge will find it to be “fact” as far as the Federal Government is concerned? I keep hoping someone will come up with a suggestion, and so far “general strike” (H/T Scott) is the only one I’ve seen.

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $1751.20
Silver $22.49
Platinum $986.00
Palladium $2047.00
Rhodium $15,750.00

This week, 3 PM MT on Friday, markets closed for the weekend

Gold $1762.00
Silver $22.65
Platinum $981.00
Palladium $2000.00
Rhodium $14,050.00

Minor shifts in almost everything. Gold and silver up a bit, the PGMs down a bit. I, as always, intend to hold.

Part XX – The Little Neutral One

Let us start off by recapping our list of “as of 1894” mysteries and conservation laws, and bring things up to date including the neutron.

• Conservation of mass
• Conservation of momentum
• Conservation of energy
• Conservation of electric charge
• Conservation of angular momentum
• (ADD:) Conservation of mass-energy

The following mysteries were unanswered at the end of 1894. I’ve crossed out the ones that have been answered up to this installment.

• Why was the long axis of Mercury’s orbit precessing more than expected, by 43 arcseconds every century? Was it, indeed, a planet even closer to the sun? If so, it’d have been nice to actually see it.
• Why was Michelson unable to measure any difference in speed of light despite the fact we, being on planet Earth that is orbiting the sun, had to be moving through the medium in which it propagates?
• What makes the sun (and other stars) shine (beyond the obvious “they shine because they’re hot” answer). What keeps the sun hot, what energy is it harnessing?
• How did the solar system form? Any answer to this must account for how the planets, only a tiny fraction of the mass of the solar system, ended up with the vast majority of the angular momentum in the system.
• What is the electrical “fluid” that moves around when there is an electric current, and that somehow seems imbalanced when we perceive that an object has a charge? Were there both negative and positive fluids, or just one fluid that had a natural neutral level; below it was negative (deficit), above it was positive (excess)?
• Why are there so many different kinds of atoms? How did electrical charges relate to chemistry? How is it that 94 thousand coulombs of charge are needed to bust apart certain molecules (though it often had to be delivered at different voltages depending on the molecule)?
• Why were the atomic weights almost always a multiple of hydrogen’s? Why was it never quite a perfect multiple? Why was it sometimes nowhere near to being a multiple?
• Why does the photoelectric effect work the way it does, where it depends on the frequency of the light hitting the object, not the intensity?
• Why does black body radiation have a “hump” in its frequency graph?

As of 1930, we had a notion of the rough answer to #3, thanks to Arthur Eddington. I hinted at it last time. But details still needed to be worked out.

Number 4 was still a mystery back then, as far as I know.

Recaps and Refreshers

There are some preliminaries to get out of the way here, some of them are refreshers on what came before. Back in part 17, when I told the story of the discovery of the neutron, I brought in the concept of “spin” in regards to electrons and protons. But it’s not spinning like a top, it’s something else, still measured as angular momentum. But apparently one “rotation” doesn’t bring the particle back to where it was before, it’s somehow upside down, and another rotation is needed to get it back to where it was. (Yes, that does not make sense to us here in our macroscopic world.) It takes 720 degrees of rotation, not 360, to put the particle back the way it was. (And yes, that doesn’t make sense.)

As I said, it does get measured in units of angular momentum, and Planck’s constant, h, has the same dimensions as angular momentum. Angular momentum can be thought of in terms of whole revolutions of whatever is spinning, or in rotations through an angle of one radian (which is preferred), so Planck’s constant is often divided by 2π to give a “reduced Planck’s constant” called ℏ (pronounced “h-bar”).

It turns out that electrons and protons have a spin of 1/2ℏ. Physicists will often drop the ℏ and just say that electrons and protons have “spin 1/2”. Two electrons, side by side, might be oriented the same way, or in opposite ways, in which case one of the electrons is assigned +1/2 spin and the other one is “upside down” and has spin -1/2. Similarly for protons. And neutrons. All have +/- 1/2 spins.

Like angular momentum, spin is expected to be conserved, because it is a funky form of angular momentum.

If you have many protons (and neutrons) in a nucleus, the nucleus itself has a total spin, which is just the sum of all those half spins. The combined number of protons and neutrons is the atomic mass number, so for an atom of nitrogen-14, there are seven protons (because it’s nitrogen, and nitrogen by definition has seven protons) and seven neutrons, total 14. So the spins of seven protons and seven neutrons have to be added up. When actually measured, the total spin is 1.

It turns out there’s a rule here: If the mass number is even, the total spin is an integer. If it’s odd, the total spin has a 1/2 (or -1/2) in it. This makes sense, if you think about it. You can go through the protons and neutrons in a nucleus and group them, arbitrarily into pairs. Each pair will consist of two +1/2 spins (total 1), a +1/2 and a -1/2 spin (total 0), or two -1/2 spins (total -1). And it doesn’t matter which protons and neutrons you arbitrarily choose to pair together. The result is that all of the pairs put together will make up a whole number spin since you’re adding 1s, 0s, and -1s. So if the nucleus has an even mass number, its spin is the sum of a bunch of pairs of nucleons and will be an integer. If it has an odd mass number, there will be one proton (or neutron) left over after you make up your pairs, again no matter which pairings you use, you have one left over. It will have spin -1/2 or +1/2, so you’ll end up adding or subtracting 1/2 from the integer spin you get from the pairs. In general, a spin with a 1/2 in it is called a half-integer spin, because when you double it, you get an integer.

Before the discovery of the neutron in 1932, there was an idea that a nucleus consisted of protons–as many as the mass number–and some electrons to cancel the charges on some protons. So the nitrogen-14 nucleus would have 14 protons and 7 electrons, leaving a total charge of 7, and that total charge made it a nitrogen nucleus. On one level (considering electrical charge) this makes sense, but it turns out to make no sense at all when considering spin. That (hypothetical) nucleus would have 21 particles in it, all with half spins (remember that electrons too have a half spin), so it should have a total spin with a 1/2 in it, a half integer spin. Yet the nitrogen-14 nucleus, as I mentioned earlier, had a measured spin of 1. That was a powerful argument used as support for the existence of a hypothetical “neutron” and indeed the discovery of the neutron made the math work out; now there were an even number of particles in the nucleus so it could have an integer total spin. However, as we shall see below, this solved one problem but left another problem in place.

When the anti-electron or positron was discovered, it turned out to have the opposite spin of an electron. Even when oriented the same way as an electron, its spin was -1/2 compared to the electron’s 1/2. And this is true of anti-protons and anti-neutrons as well; in fact the difference in spin is the only obvious difference between a neutron and an anti-neutron (but it’s enough!).

In 1925, Wolfgang Pauli enunciated the “Pauli exclusion principle.” At first he applied it only to electrons, but in 1940 it was generalized to all particles with half-integer spins. In short, it states that no two such particles can occupy the same quantum state. An example of this is the lowest energy level of an atom, the “1s” orbital. An electron in that orbital is in a certain quantum state. But spin is part of the quantum state, so you can put a second electron in that orbital, so long as it’s oriented the other way and has spin -1/2. But after that, no more. You have to put a third and fourth electron in the “2s” orbital, then six subsequent electrons into the three “2p” oribtals (two each), and so on. (This is why the periodic table “rows” (or periods) all have even numbers of elements in them; if you subdivide them into blocks corresponding to the s, p, and d orbitals, those blocks also each have even numbers of elements in them.)

This is fundamentally the reason why two material objects can’t be in the same place at the same time. They’re made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons with half spins.

This principle does not apply to particles with integer spins, like photons (spin 0). Photons can pile onto the same quantum state by the billions, and it’s no problem. That’s very “non-matter” behavior, and indeed photons aren’t considered to be “matter” as we know it. They can occupy the same place at the same time, and often do. Beams of light can cross through each other without a problem.

Eventually, the name “fermion” (for Enrico Fermi) was given to all half-integer spin particles as a class, and “boson” (For Satyendra Nath Bose) to particles with integer spin.

OK, that’s enough about spin (for now).

I’ve also already told the story of how physicists had discovered the “Strong Nuclear Force,” often just called the Strong force. It’s responsible for keeping nuclei together, and when it’s just not strong enough to do the job, you get alpha decay, where the nucleus ejects an alpha particle (after 1932, known to consist of two protons and two neutrons), total four mass units. When this happens to a uranium-238 atom, it becomes a thorium-234 atom; four mass units less. And the charge has decreased by two, from 92 (uranium) to 90 (thorium).

It was beginning to look, by the way, as if the total number of nucleons (be they protons or neutrons) was something that was conserved, a new conservation law. Eventually this would be called “conservation of baryon number” (other similar particles would be discovered after 1950, they ware all called baryons). Protons and neutrons each had a baryon number of 1. The only way to wipe them completely out was to hit them with antimatter, but the antimatter was regarded as having negative baryon numbers, an anti-proton or anti-neutron had baryon number of -1. So proton-anti-proton annihilation took a +1 and -1 and turned them into zero. Nice and tidy.

Beta Decay Spells Doom?

But there was another kind of radioactive decay, beta decay.

And it was causing headaches for physicists.

As a reminder, this is when a nucleus spits out an electron. The charge of the nucleus goes up by one, but its mass number stays the same. For example, that thorium-234 atom undergoes beta decay to become protactinium-234. Same mass number, but the charge has changed from 90 (thorium) to 91 (protactinium). That process repeats to get you to uranium-234.

The old notion of the nucleus as consisting of one proton per mass number, counterbalanced partially by electrons, seemed plausible because of this. One of those electrons could be kicked out, “uncovering” a proton and increasing the charge. But as I described above, this notion of electrons in the nucleus left an issue with spin. This was solved with the discovery that the nucleus in fact contained protons and neutrons, and no electrons, but there was still a problem with beta decay.

That thorium-234 nucleus has to have an integer spin (just like the nitrogen-14 nucleus) because 234 is an even number, and the discovery of the neutron explained why. (According to wikipedia the spin happens to be 0.) The resulting protactinium-234 nucleus similarly has to have an integer spin (also happening to be zero). But in moving from thorium-234 to protactinium-234, an electron was ejected; it has a spin of 1/2. Shouldn’t the resulting nucleus have a half spin as well?

It doesn’t. So it appears that beta decay violates conservation of angular momentum.

Another issue popped up when energy was measured. With alpha decay, the masses (considered as their energy equivalents) and kinetic energy of the particles before and after the event balanced, once you added everything up, including the recoil of the nucleus like a rifle firing a bullet.

With beta decay, some of the energy disappeared. The energy of the nucleus (including its recoil) plus the kinetic energy of the electron, did not add up to what was there before. There was always some missing energy, but the amount could vary from very tiny to most of it.

This of course looked very much like a violation of mass/energy conservation.

[I’ll pause here to note that physicists typically simply speak of “energy conservation”, not “mass/energy conservation” because they consider matter to just be another form of energy; so a change in mass of a nucleus due to binding energy and so forth, is just another change of energy to them. I’m going to follow that convention from here on out.]

Yet another issue was noted when the recoil of beta decay was considered. With alpha decay, the alpha particle and nucleus recoiled in exactly opposite directions, much like a cannon firing a cannonball is shoved back in the opposite direction. The two new momenta (a relatively light alpha particle traveling quickly, versus a relatively heavy nucleus traveling in the opposite direction slowly) cancel out, leaving the total momentum unchanged.

But with beta decay, the recoil was not in the opposite direction from the velocity of the beta particle that was ejected. If the two directions aren’t opposite one another they cannot cancel completely–there’ll be some slight motion to the side left over–so there’s some “new” momentum where there had been none before.

And this looks a lot like a violation of the conservation of momentum.

So beta decay broke not just one, but THREE conservation principles!

Oh, dear.

This was hard to stomach. Sure, these conservation principles are generalizations. We see them work all the time without fail, but there’s always a smidgen of a chance that we’ll discover that they don’t really hold true. After all, we had once had conservation of mass, and conservation of energy, but then realized they weren’t true after all. But in that case, they were still true afterwards when combined into the conservation of mass/energy (or conservation of energy could be kept if mass was simply regarded as another form of energy, but that still involved “scratching” conservation of mass).

But three such violations at once was hard to believe.

At least, baryon number was safe.

And the problem persisted in 1934, when a second form of beta decay was discovered as part of the discovery of antimatter. A phosphorus-30 nucleus (one which does not exist in nature) would decay by spitting out a positron not an electron. It would end up moving to the left on the periodic table (because a proton had turned into a neutron) and become a nucleus of silicon-30, which is stable. This new mode of decay is now known as beta-plus or beta-positive decay, and it suffered from the same issues with conservation of angular momentum, energy, and momentum.

There was another violation on top of all of these but one much less troublesome. It had been suggested that the total number of electrons was fixed. Before the neutron was discovered, back when the nucleus was thought to contain protons and electrons, beta decay was just considered ejecting a pre-existing electron from a nucleus, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think that there might be some law conserving electrons. So we never saw electrons being created from nothing. But with the new understanding, beta decay consisted of a neutron turning into a proton and ejecting a brand-spanking, made-from-nothing electron. And beta positive decay transformed a neutron to a proton, creating a positron from nothing. So conservation of electrons, never very well established to begin with, seemed to have been scotched.

Wolfgang Pauli (of the Pauli exclusion principle) pondered this problem and realized there might be a way to rescue all of these conservation numbers. He wrote a very famous letter in 1930 (two years before the discovery of the neutron), in which he suggested there might be a totally new particle, one that was very light (lighter than the electron) and had no charge. As such it would be very difficult to detect.

This could solve all of these problems and save all of the conservation laws.

The spin issue could be solved by positing that the particle had the opposite spin as the electron (or positron), so that the two ejected particles together added up to zero spin, so the nucleus didn’t have to have a spin change at all in order to comply with conservation of angular momentum.

If the new particle carried away some of the energy, it would cover the “missing energy” that seemed to suggest a violation of conservation of energy.

And if beta decay resulted in three entities, not just two, then any two of them could move in directions not opposite each other, with the third particle serving to cancel the sideways momentum.

Pauli named his proposed particle the neutron. (Remember this was two years before Chadwick detected “the” neutron, and the name wasn’t taken yet.) Enrico Fermi, the next year, renamed the hypothetical particle the neutrino, This is Italian for “little neutral one,” as opposed to the big neutral one, the expected but still undiscovered neutron we know today.

And in 1933 Fermi proposed a new force, the weak nuclear force (to contrast it from the strong nuclear force). This force would cause a neutron to turn into a proton, neutrino, and electron, or alternatively a proton to turn into a neutron, neutrino and positron. In other words, it would be the force that governs beta decay–both kinds of beta decay.

In fact if we assume that there are also anti-neutrinos, we can even create a new conservation law from the ashes of the conservation of electrons. If we classify electrons and neutrinos as “leptons,” then a hypothetical “conservation of lepton number” might work better.

“Regular” beta decay, then, would turn a neutron into a proton, electron, and an anti-neutrino. Baryon number is preserved (neutron +1, proton +1, electron and anti-neutrino both 0), and the new lepton number is too; no leptons before the decay balances with the situation after the decay where there is one electron (+1 lepton) and one anti-neutrino (-1 lepton). Beta plus decay spits out a positron; to balance this anti-lepton we need a neutrino lepton.

This is very tidy. Not only are the three old conservation laws saved, a new one is created. It must have been very tempting to just assume it’s true. But it’s not enough.

We need to find the particle.

The neutron, after all had been a suggestion that would solve a lot of problems, but few were willing to take its existence on faith. Fortunately it was found, fairly quickly.

But this particle was going to be a cast-iron bitch to find. Because it didn’t have an electric charge, so it wouldn’t interact with the electromagnetic force. And it, like the electron, wouldn’t be affected by the strong force. It could only “feel” the weak nuclear force. (Just forget about gravity, it’s so weak.)

The weak force has a very, very short range. In fact, now we know its range is less than a tenth the diameter of a proton. So the only way a neutrino could interact at all is when it is directly in contact with a nucleus.

Remember that a nucleus is about 1/10,000 the width of an atom, so even with solid matter like lead, only 1/10,000 x 1/10,000 x 1/10,000 or one trillionth of the space is actually nuclei. So a neutrino, travelling through a block of solid lead at pretty basically the speed of light, is only in contact with a nucleus one trillionth of the time. So, only a trillionth of the time could it interact with a proton or neutron. So for some reaction that has a half life of (say) 1/10,000th of a second, the neutrino would have to spend 100,000,000 seconds travelling through the lead before it had a fifty percent chance of interacting one of the lead nuclei. That works out to be about three years. In those three years about half of the neutrines will have traveled three light years, or basically 18 trillion miles, and come out the other side, intact.

It’s a common trope that neutrinos will pass through light years of solid lead (if you could arrange for that to be set up) without interacting, and this is basically why. They need to spend a fairly long time (1/10,000 of a second is an eternity inside a nucleus) near very small things and they’re buzzing along at the speed of light. More realistically, the vast majority of neutrinos would simply drill right through the earth without affecting it. In fact, sixty five billion neutrinos pass through every square centimeter of the arth every second, and no one notices. More to the point, that many neutrinos also pass through every square centimeter of you every second, and you don’t notice, because they pass through, and don’t get stopped by your body.

The first detection was actually of antineutrinos generated in a nuclear reactor by the huge number of beta decays occuring in the reactor core.

When a an antineutrino does condescend to react with a proton, the proton becomes a neutron and a positron is spat out; it’s basically anti-neutrino induced beta decay, except that this decay absorbs an antineutrino instead of creating a neutrino (the books balance either way). And this was how neutrinos were eventually detected…in 1956.

Clyde Cowan, Frederick Reines, Francis B. Harrison, Herald W. Kruse and Austin D. McGuire did this by parking their apparatus–which largely consisted of large tanks of water–near a nuclear reactor, which generates a lot of antineutrinos, then waited for the tiny fraction of them that would interact with their detector. The reaction, as noted turned a proton into a neutron and spits out a positron; the positron finds an electron and mutually annihilates it, generating two gamma rays. If the nucleus hit is one of the hydrogen atoms in a water molecule, it turns from a single proton to a single neutron, which will wander off until it hits a nucleus and is absorbed–in this case cadmium was used since it absorbs neutrons readily. When this happens the neutron also generates a gamma ray. By watching for both of these events, two gamma rays from the electron-positron annihilation followed shortly after by a different-strength gamma ray from the neutron absorption, the experimenters could see that the signal matched the profile of the reaction and conclude a neutrino had hit a proton.

Even though ten trillion neutrinos passed through every square centimeter of the detector every second, only about three neutrino events per hour were detected. And just to prove that it was neutrinos from the reactor, they shut the reactor off and continued monitoring the detectors, and noticed a drop in the number of events.

But the actual detection of neutrinos (well, actually, antineutrinos) is getting ahead of our story.

Next time we’ll tackle Mystery Number 3.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

The Audit

On that note, reading comments on the Friday thread, there seems to be mixed opinions on whether the audit was good news, bad news, and if good news, exactly what could be done with it.

I suspect a lot of discussion will be going on today, as we digest what we’ve seen and read.

But at least it finally is out.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $1754.80
Silver $22.46
Platinum $944
Palladium $2100
Rhodium $13,900

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $1751.20
Silver $22.49
Platinum $986.00
Palladium $2047.00
Rhodium $15,750.00

All prices are down from a few weeks ago, however this week some are up a bit and some are down a bit. Perhaps we’re bottoming out? Or just reversing for a bit before continuing the trend? Who knows? I was in a local coin shop and people were buying silver, taking advantage of the relatively low prices.

Physics?

I fought a futile battle to write something coherent.

About halfway through, I realized it needed rework, and probably should be split into two posts. So perhaps next week…

I didn’t even have time to write an anti-ChiComChimpanzee rant.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

Okay you knuckledragging ChiComs trying to take us down…here’s a history lesson for you.

For millennia, you had to suffer from this:

Yep. Steppe Nomads. They laid waste to your country, burned, raped and pillaged (but not in that order–they’re smarter than you are) for century after century.

You know who figured out how to take them on and win? The Russians.

Not you, the Russians. And it took them less than two centuries. And Oh By The Way they were among the most backward cultures in Europe at the time.

You couldn’t invent an alphabet, you couldn’t take care of barbarians on horseback, and you think you can take this board down?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! We’re laughing at you, you knuckledragging dehumanized communists…worshipers of a mass-murderer who killed sixty million people!

I mean, you still think Communism is a good idea even after having lived through it!

By my reckoning that makes you orders of magnitude more stupid than AOC, and that takes serious effort.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

All realistic hope lies in the audits, and perhaps the Lindell lawsuit (that will depend on how honestly the system responds to the suit).

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

(Paper) Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $1787.80
Silver $23.78
Platinum $962.00
Palladium $2220.00
Rhodium $16000.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1754.80
Silver $22.46
Platinum $944
Palladium $2100
Rhodium $13,900

Remember when rhodium was pushing $30K an ounce? And palladium was on the verge of $3000? Maybe I should have sold my palladium back then! I’ve now “lost” over 900 dollars per ounce. On the other hand I paid much less than $1000 an ounce for it, decades ago. I’m still way ahead. [Full disclosure, my luck with platinum hasn’t been as good.]

But my purpose with precious metals is to buy and hold them. I’m not going to freak out if gold drops 30 cents. There are large commodity traders who make their living buying and selling on the short term–those are mostly the paper gold people–and they have to worry about that sort of thing. A wrong move at the wrong time could cost them everything. But I don’t worry. If you believe precious metals are worth having, this is an increasingly good time to buy…not sell and punch out.

Which is why I am not forecasting DOOM for precious metals right now. And if you’re still building your stock up, you’re presented with an opportunity that might make up for whatever you “lost” buying a few weeks ago. (It’s not a true loss until you sell and “realize” it. And that doesn’t mean “realize” like “I realized voting for Biden was a mistake” but the much older original meaning: real-ize…to make real.)

XIX Antimatter

In 1928 British physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984 [Wow, he was still alive when I was in college!]) noted that Schroedinger’s equation did not account for relativistic effects. If the charged particle was traveling at close to the speed of light, Schroedinger’s Equation wouldn’t work.

Hoping that a properly written equation would explain a few puzzling things about energy levels, and hence spectral lines, Dirac eventually derived:

Which is now known as Dirac’s Equation.

One thing to note is that β and α are actually fourth order tensors (I think), not just simple scalar numbers. And furthermore there are three α’s, α₁ α₂ and α₃, each multiplied by a corresponding p_n. (That’s what that large capital sigma is telling you to do.)

I once saw another form of this equation, a very different looking form:

∫∫∫ [∣Ψ₁∣²+∣Ψ₂∣²+∣Ψ₃∣²+∣Ψ₄∣²] dx dy dz = 1

(The three symbols at the left should be larger, but apparently you can’t change the font size of only part of a paragraph.) You’re squaring the wave function Ψ along four different directions, then doing “triple integration” to the result…and getting 1.

The four squares have to add up to something, and that something, triple integrated, will be one.

But for every solution to this, there is an equal-but-opposite solution. If ∣Ψ₁∣² equals a certain value, then so does ∣−Ψ₁∣², in exactly the same way that 3 and −3 both square to equal 9. And so the whole mess will have the same total, 1, as it did before.

The implication is that something the exact opposite of an already-known particle, one that behaves as described by this equation, could also exist.

In 1930, Paul Dirac predicted antimatter on the basis of this fact.

According to this concept, for every type of particle, there is an opposite particle. For an electron, there would be an anti-electron. It would the opposite charge (positive instead of negative) but that’s not the only thing that would be opposite; it’s just the most obvious thing. One thing that is the same is the mass.

There would also be an anti-proton, of negative charge, and an anti-neutron…well, of no charge, but still an anti-neutron, somehow on a quantum level the opposite of a neutron despite there being no electric charge to serve as a “marker.”

This doesn’t seem to apply to particles that carry a force; a photon is its own anti-particle, as are other force carrying particles totally unknown in the 1920s.

One could imagine an anti-hydrogen atom consisting of an antiproton being orbited by an antielectron. You’d not be able to tell it was anti-hydrogen from the outside, though; the mass would be the same as hydrogen’s, and the anti-electron would jump to different energy levels by absorbing or emitting regular photons.

But, as it turns out, if an electron meets an anti-electron, both are instantly and completely converted to energy in the form of gamma rays, following E=mc². A single electron’s mass is equivalent to 511 thousand electron volts (511 keV), so a bit more than one million electron volts is released when both of the electron/anti-electron pair annihilate. If a proton (or neutron) meets an anti-proton (or antineutron), then there is a big burst of energy but at least some of the debris is other sorts of particles (particles not yet known in 1930), which will themselves decay to other things, releasing a lot of energy. The total energy of two protons is about two billion electron volts.

On the face of it this was a pretty outrageous prediction, one which was largely ignored.

But then, like a thunderbolt hurled by Zeus, the evidence came out of the sky.

Cosmic Rays

Back in 1909 Theodor Wulf had developed a device called an electrometer. It consisted of a hermetically sealed container, with a vertical conducting rod piercing the barrier. On the inside of the container, there was a swinging needle, attached to the rod. If the rod picked up an electric charge then so would the needle, and the needle and the rod would repel each other. The needle’s angle was an indication of the strength of the charge; it could even be put against a curved scale and read like the needle in any old analog voltmeter.

Wulf claimed that an electrometer at the top of the Eiffel Tower picked up more of a charge than one at its base. There were issues with his data, so it wasn’t taken quite as seriously as it should have been, nonetheless others were inspired to investigate.

In 1911 Domenico Pacini took electrometers over lakes and seas, and also three meters below the surface. He concluded, based on the lower readings underwater, that the radiation that was causing the charges wasn’t coming from the Earth.

In 1912 Victor Hess carried four improved electrometers to 5300 meters in a balloon, and they picked up four times as much charge as ones left at ground level. Could this be coming from the Sun? Probably not, because he repeated the experiment during a near-total eclipse, and that made no difference even though the moon would have been blocking most radiation from the sun at that time. This was confirmed by other researchers, and Victor Hess won the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physics as a result (yes, twenty four years later).

The rays were coming from space–deep space. Robert Millikan (who earlier had measured the charge of an electron) dubbed them “cosmic rays.”

These turned out to be very energetic protons, for the most part, smashing into something in the upper atmosphere and creating a cascade of secondary and tertiary particles. It’s nature’s particle accelerator.

Physicists continued to investigate cosmic rays, often by taking a “cloud chamber” aloft. This was a device with gas supersaturated, so that any charged particle passing through leaves a contrail. If the chamber is placed within a magnetic field, then any charged particles would be bent. And experiments in the late 1920s and 1930 started revealing curved traces.

On August 2, 1932, Carl Anderson caught an anti-electron in the act, a curve like a beta particle (electron) but in the opposite direction.

The outrageous prediction had proved true, only two years later.

The new particle was named the positron. And it is indeed antimatter.

If you’ve ever had a PET scan, PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. And that means you got subjected to positron radiation. You survived your encounter with antimatter.

Antimatter/Matter annihilation is the only known means of completely converting mass into energy. A half a kilogram (a bit over a pound) of antimatter, dropped on the floor, would annihilate itself and half a kilogram of matter and produce a 21 megaton blast. (That is about a thousand times as much as hit either Nagasaki or Hiroshima). (One megaton is 4.184 petajoules or 4,184,000,000,000,000 joules.)

It’s Real

Antimatter is essentially a mirror image of matter. As far as we can tell, the universe could just as easily have been made of antimatter instead of matter…but of course the anti-scientists in such an anti-universe wouldn’t call that stuff antimatter, they’d call our matter “antimatter.”

One of the ongoing mysteries of physics is why our universe isn’t half-and-half matter and antimatter. That’s not an 1894 mystery, that’s a 2021 mystery.

Another loose end, is that based on theory, antimatter ought to behave exactly like matter in a gravitational field. In other words, it should fall, and at the same rate. (Which is fine until it impacts, then KABOOM!!!!! doesn’t begin to cover it.) But this really should be confirmed; the problem is it’s hard to make antimatter, then slow it down (since it generally comes out of particle accelerators), then keep it from touching anything [or kaboom!] long enough to see if it will fall when the magnetic containment is released. This would have to be done in a vacuum, of course, lest the antimatter simply collide with an air molecule and annihilate.

I mentioned anti-scientists above; this should not be confused with the likes of Fauci, the Climate Research Unit, etc.

Also, apparently the most that can happen combining antipasta and pasta is indigestion or weight gain (it creates mass!).

And of course, Joe Biden didn’t win.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

SPECIAL SECTION: Message For Our “Friends” In The Middle Kingdom

You knuckle-dragging barbarians are still trying to muck with this site, so I’ll just repeat what I said last time.

Up your shit-kicking barbarian asses. Yes, barbarian! It took a bunch of sailors in Western Asia to invent a real alphabet instead of badly drawn cartoons to write with. So much for your “civilization.”

Yeah, the WORLD noticed you had to borrow the Latin alphabet to make Pinyin. Like with every other idea you had to steal from us “Foreign Devils” since you rammed your heads up your asses five centuries ago, you sure managed to bastardize it badly in the process.

Have you stopped eating bats yet? Are you shit-kickers still sleeping with farm animals?

Or maybe even just had the slightest inkling of treating lives as something you don’t just casually dispose of?

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

And here’s my response to barbarian “asshoes” like you:

OK, with that rant out of my system…

20 Years Since 9/11

I’ve got only three minutes left, so I am going to have to jump to my conclusion.

Over three thousand people died 20 years ago today, they must not be forgotten. There are memorials at three sites; I’ve been to the one in Pennsylvania. Plenty of people were there, including a large group of very patriotic, Q-following bikers.

The deed was done by very evil men, almost certainly Islamic jihadis, but…aided and abetted by whom? Do we really know that yet? Were they acting only with other jihadis’ support, or was someone behind the scenes, pulling the strings? If the latter (and I have no real opinion of this, though I do have one on the physical cause of the buildings’ collapse–let’s leave that aside), then they STILL need to be punished.

After all, justice must be done.

Justice Must Be Done

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

The Audit

The Audit is definitely heating up. Let’s see if the Opposition manages to squelch it and its consequences. I’ll be honest; I expect it to be ignored by anyone capable of ordering Biden/Harris to step down.

Nevertheless, anything that can be done to make Biden look less legitimate is a worthy thing!

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $1828.60
Silver $24.77
Platinum $1032.00
Palladium $2506.00
Rhodium $17,750.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1787.80
Silver $23.78
Platinum $962.00
Palladium $2220.00
Rhodium $16000.00

Wow, they’ve ALL taken a thumping! Is this a buying opportunity or are we watching a bubble burst? Well I’m not one of those kinds of prognosticator.

To be honest, I don’t buy this stuff for the short term. I buy it for the long term, and pretty much everything I hold in precious metals (except for the small amount of platinum I have) is higher than I paid for it.

That will probably be true for anyone buying today, twenty years from now. Assuming western civilization is still running twenty years from now.

Part XVIII – Quantum Weirdness Explained by Richard Feynman

A couple of weeks ago I embedded a video of a lecture by Richard Feynman on just how weird quantum mechanics is.

Here’s a (slightly different) version of the same video. (This one has a short introductory shot of the campus of Cornell U, and a title graphic.)

the Messenger Lectures, PROBABILITY & UNCERTAINTY–the quantum mechanical view of nature

This week’s physics article is going to be me paralleling what is said in this video. I may sometimes duplicate Dr. Feynman’s wording, but mostly I will not. Why am I doing this? Because this is the best explanation I’ve ever seen for just how whacky quantum mechanics is. And I know many don’t have the patience to watch a video…I’m one of those people, 99% of the time.

My summary/regurgitation/mangling of what’s in the video starts in the next paragraph. Things that are purely my own comments rather than me paraphrasing or summarizing Feynman are [in brackets].

When we first began using scientific observation, it largely started with intuition, but that is actually based on our experiences with every day objects. These largely suggest “reasonable” explanations for things. As we continued pursuing scientific knowledge, we observed more phenomena and created generalizations we call ‘laws.’ But we also are seeing a situation where the laws become more and more ‘unreasonable,’ more and more intuitively far from obvious.

With twenty-twenty hindsight, there was no reason this shouldn’t be the case. Our everyday lives involve large numbers of particles (even a dust mote has billions of billions of atoms in it), objects moving slowly (compared to how fast they could be moving), or other very special conditions. Our direct view of the world is actually very limited; all we can see is a narrow set of cases. But with refined and careful measurements using instruments that extend our sensory “reach” we get a more complete picture and we start seeing unexpected things. We see things that are far from what we would guess. We see things that are far from what we could have imagined. Our imagination is stretched, not to create or follow fiction, but just to understand what is actually there.

[Feynman gave the example of special relativity and its conclusion that simultaneity–which we intuitively think is an absolute in that if I see two events as simultaneous, so will you–depends on the observer’s situation.]

It’’s this kind of unexpected thing that is our topic.

Let’’s start with light. At first it was seen to behave as a rain of particles, corpuscles, like rain, like bullets from a gun. Then with further research that turned out to be wrong. Instead light behaved like a wave, water waves for instance. This seemed absolutely solid, thanks to various experiments that could only work for waves, and Maxwell’s equations. Then at the beginning of the 20th century after more research, it looked once again like light was made up of particles, for example with the photoelectric effect, and the particles are now called ‘photons.’ Electrons were first believed to be particles, but further experimentation with electron diffraction shows that they behave like waves. There was a lot of confusion until 1925-26 when the correct quantum mechanical equations were written. [Much of this was covered in prior installments.]

Unfortunately there just isn’t a word for what photons and electrons really are. Particle doesn’t fit, wave doesn’t fit. You can’t use either of these because you give the wrong impression. They behave a third way, a way like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

[My flip joke about this is when someone asks if light (or electrons) is a particle or a wave, I reply, “yes.”]

Well there is one thing that makes the situation simpler than it otherwise could be. Electrons and photons behave the same, that is they’re both screwy, but in exactly the same way. (After all they could have turned out to have been screwy in different ways.)

The newspapers say there was a time when only twelve people understood relativity. [Feynman] doesn’t believe there was ever such a time. There was a time when ONE person understood it, but once he published, a number of people were able to understand it, at least sort of.

But, [Feynman says] no one understands quantum mechanics. [Good then I have plenty of company.]

So we are going to describe the behavior of electrons and photons by a mixture of contrast and analogy. Pure analogy would break down, of course, since they’re not like anything in our normal experience.

Bullets

So we’re going to compare and contrast particles, for which we will use bullets [no PC woke stuff then!], and waves, for which we’ll use water waves. We’re going to describe an experiment run on bullets, then water waves, then electrons or photons. This one experiment will encapsulate everything weird about quantum mechanics. Any other weird thing about quantum mechanics, you can say “you remember the experiment with the two holes? It’s the same thing.”

For bullets, our experimental apparatus is as shown below. This is a view from above. On your left there’s a source (machine gun) firing through a hole in armor plate. The gun is a bit wobbly, so the bullets don’t all follow the same trajectory. To your right from this, is another piece of armor plate, with two holes in it, a bit to the left or right as seen from the source, but from your point a bit above and below the center line, symmetrically situated–number these 1 and 2 since they’ll be talked about a lot. This plate is a ways to your right from the first plate, but just to fit it on the blackboard I’ll draw them close together [and so will I, below]. Also, this is really three dimensions. The plates extend into and out of your monitor, and to repeat you’re looking down on the thing from above, with the plates edge on. Finally at your far right is a line of bullet detectors (a backstop with sand), so we can see where the bullets went.

[Note: I did not have time to draw the diagrams. So unfortunately, I’m going to use a generic diagram I found on line, and modified, quickly! It’s going to have its shortcomings.]

There are a couple of key differences between this scenario and actual reality. First, these bullets can ricochet off the edges of the holes, so that will tend to spread their impact points out a bit. But if they hit a barrier head on and don’t go through the holes, they stop, rather than ricocheting. They’re also indestructible (not liable to break in half on impact).

So we run the experiment and the first thing we notice is something obvious but we need to take note of it. Bullets are lumps, all the same size (one bullet each). The bullets have distinct locations where they hit the sand at the backstop. Also, we never get two bullets impacting at the same time. If the machine gun is firing slowly you hear “plink, plink plink” rather than “plink, plink, plinkety plink.” These are all aspects of a characteristic that Feynman labels “comes in lumps.”

So say you let the machine gun fire for an hour, then you go from top to bottom on the diagram, (or left to right as seen from the machine gun) along the backstop and plot how many bullets you find in the sand.

You end up with a double-humped distribution (imagine a Bactrian camel). And you can say that this double hump is proportional to the probability that the next bullet will hit at that location. At the tops of the humps it is most likely. Let’s call that distribution N₁₂ because it results from both holes being open. You can run this experiment for even longer and come up with good average figures, even if it’s 2 1/2 bullets hitting a particular spot per hour. (Just like you hear about the average family having 2.4 kids. But no family has .4 kids in it; children come in lumps. Some families have more, some have less.) [Feynman actually brought that up, not me.] You can also run the experiment again but this time covering one or the other hole, in which case you get two different single-hump distributions, N₁ and N₂. And then you’ll notice a key fact; if you add N₁ and N₂, you get N₁₂. It works this way because there is, as Feynman says, “no interference” between the two holes.

Water Waves

Okay, we’re done with bullets. Now place this exact layout in a pool or lake. Instead of armor plate, we’re talking breakwaters or jetties or lines of barges. And instead of a machine gun, there’s some big massive object being moved up and down in a regular fashion to make waves, which then pass through the slit in the left hand barrier, then through the two slits in the middle barrier, to reach measuring devices at the third barrier (instead of a sand trap, though if the barrier is the beach, there might still be sand involved). The measuring devices measure the amplitude (height) of the wave that arrives at that point, which is proportional to the energy carried by the waves.

When you do this, whatever arrives at the detectors can have any size at all. It doesn’t come in lumps. [The waves can be a meter high, a centimeter, a micron…] What’s measured is the intensity, not a count of lumps.

The result is a curve like this. [Note, Feynman actually drew the wrong curve in the lecture at about 21 minutes. He later noticed that he had drawn the wrong curve (at about 21:30). “Which is the exact opposite of this curve..” and he did a quick fix.]

The reason for this rather complicated curve is that when the source wave hits the two openings in the middle barrier, it reaches them at the same time, and those two openings themselves act like sources, and waves ripple outwards from them. The two sets of waves will add together. Along the center line the peak of the wave from opening 1 arrives at the same time as the peak from opening 2, so the waves add together to make something twice as tall, or twice the energy. A bit off the center line, the trough from wave 1 will hit the spot at the same time as the peak from wave 2, or vice versa, resulting in canceling out. A measurement here will see no wave height at all and an energy of zero. Even further off the center line, a peak from one opening will arrive at the same time as the following peak from the other opening, and they will add to each other rather than canceling out. (However one of those waves will have traveled farther and will be weaker, so this peak will not be as high as the one on the center line.)

The waves interfere with each other. This is used in science in a funny way because sometimes the interference from a wave strengthens the other wave (“constructive interference”) and sometimes it cancels (“destructive interference”); in ordinary language interference always works against someone, never with them.

The interference creates the complex pattern shown, I₁₂ (I for intensity). If you close one hole or the other, you get a smooth curve, just like you did with the bullets. In fact the patterns are basically identical, N₁ looks like I₁, and N₂ looks like I₂. But these two patterns, I₁ and I₂ do not add up to make I₁₂.

This distribution is known as an interference pattern.

So we see several key differences between particles and waves: lumpiness/non-lumpiness, discrete/continuous values, non-simultaneous/simultaneous arrival times, and the lack/presence of interference.

Electrons

OK now for electrons (metal plates). Or photons (for which the barriers are made out of black paper). But I’m only going to discuss electrons. [But remember, they’re both screwy in the same way.]

What we receive at the detector are lumps. Click, click, click, all the same size, like small bullets. If the source of electrons is made weaker, you hear the clicks further apart, but each individual click remains the same size, just like slowing down the machine gun for the bullets. And no two electrons arrive at the same time, because they aren’t emitted at the same time, again like the machine gun firing one bullet at a time. The key here is that the electrons come to one place, one at a time.

So we can now play the same game we did with the bullets, let the emitter rip for a while and then look at the distribution and equate it to a probability curve, with high areas corresponding to a greater probability of receiving the next electron fired.

We should expect to see the double humped N₁₂ curve, right? That’s how our lumpy bullets behave.

But (@27:20)…we get a probability curve looking like the multiple humped I₁₂ intensity curve, the interference pattern.

THAT is weird. These things are lumpy, and behave just like lumps…except for how they are distributed, where the distribution shows wave interference. But what would a wave have to do with particles? Or vice versa?

[Yes, it makes no sense. But it does work this way, we’ve never seen it not work this way. And this is why light was confusing around the turn of the 20th century. When experimenting with its distribution it appeared like a wave. But when we did things with the photoelectric effect that would actually depend on the lumps, we got lumpy behavior.]

[Ok, it’s mad. Stark raving mad, But this is the way things work.]

Some Additional Subtleties

There are some subtleties.

One might state as “obvious” that an electron–which is a “lump”–has to have gone through hole #1 or hole #2. Call that “Proposition A”

That of course would imply that the total number of electrons that reach the detector is the sum of those which go through hole #1, and those which go through hole #2. But you can’t sum the two one-hole distributions to get the interference pattern, so Proposition A would appear to be false; the electrons must be splitting up, somehow.

This is science, we test it even though it seems like ironclad logic.

So we set up lights over each hole to watch the electrons.

Lo and behold, you will see a flash in one hole, or the other hole, and these match the times of hits on the detector, so Proposition A appears to be true after all!

And it is true. But you can’t add the distributions together to get the interference pattern!

Well, I haven’t told you the whole story. Because when you set people to watching the holes and reporting, for each hit on the detector, which hole the electron went through…the distribution on the detector switches from being the interference pattern to the double hump pattern! So now that you know what I₁ and I₂ are…I₁₂ is equal to their sum!

So, obviously, the light is doing something to the electrons. This is not surprising, after all, light has enough energy to shove electrons around (hence emission and absorption lines in spectra), so we decide to turn the intensity of the light down enough to have less of an effect.

But light, too, is “lumpy.” Turning down the light reduces the number of lumps or photons. If you reduce the light enough, electrons might get through the hole without running into a photon at all, in which case the guy monitoring the holes will say he didn’t see the electron at all.

Guess what? If you plot the electrons that didn’t get seen, and ignore the rest, you get the multiple hump distribution. If you look only at the ones that were seen, you get the double hump distribution. If you look at them all, you get some sort of weighted sum of the two, depending on what fraction of electrons were or were not seen.

Other methods can be arranged to determine which hole an electron goes through, and they all lead to the same result. If you make the sensor too gentle to muck with the electron…you end up not seeing the electron. There is no way to detect an electron without disturbing it and wrecking the interference pattern.

[Feynman summarizes the way scientists describe the situation:] If you set up an apparatus to monitor the holes, then you can say that it goes through one hole or the other (and Proposition A is true). If you don’t have such an apparatus, then you cannot say that it goes through one hole or the other, because when you’re not looking, electrons don’t behave as if they do go through one hole or the other.

No one can give you a deeper explanation of this than [Feynman] has given you. They might come up with more examples, but this is the basic conundrum of quantum mechanics.

Another subtlety. We use probability in daily life for things like, say, the throw of a dice. We shouldn’t have to do this. We should be able to calculate how the die will land, given its orientation, speed, the nature of the surface it will land on, and so forth. Straight mechanics, even if very, very complicated. But since we don’t know the initial conditions well enough, the die toss appears to be a random event, we can’t predict what it’s going to do. But again that’s because we don’t know the initial conditions and haven’t the skill to do the computation fast enough.

With these electrons, one might think if they behave as though they have a probability of doing something, we could somehow write laws that would tell us where the electron will be. But this turns out not to be the case. True randomness–the randomness we don’t actually see in our macroscopic world–is built into it. We can’t know the state of the electron and be able to compute what it will do; if we could, we’d lose the interference pattern. “Nature herself doesn’t know which way the electron is going to go.”

Feynman’s Concluding Rant

[nearly verbatim]

[Feynman puts on a pompous voice and quotes a philosopher as saying “It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same result.”] Well, they don’t. And yet the science goes on. [So much for that philosopher.]

What is necessary for the very existence of science and so forth and what the characteristics of nature are not to be determined by pompous preconditions, they are determined always by the material with which we work, by Nature herself. We look and we see what we find and we cannot say ahead of time what it’s going to look like. The most “reasonable” possibilities turn out often not to be the situation.

What [actually] is necessary for the very existence of science is just the ability to experiment, the honesty in reporting results (the results must be reported without somebody [instead] saying what they’d like the results to have been), and finally an important thing is the intelligence to interpret the results. [Take THAT, Climate Research Unit!]

But an important thing about this intelligence is that it should not be sure ahead of time about what must be. Now it can be prejudiced and say “that’s very unlikely, I don’t like that.” Prejudice is different than absolute certainty, I don’t mean absolute prejudice, just bias, not complete prejudice. Even if you’re strongly biased, the experiments will pile up until you cannot ignore them any longer.

In fact the only thing needed is that minds exist that do not demand that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions, like those of our philosopher.

[Oh, and we need to fix elections, too. And we need bacon.]

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!