transcribed by oswald berthold
thank you, mhm, graham and i talked a little bit also wether one could say but maybe its dangerous to give the pointe away at the beginning, that this is a shamanistic meeting today, where science and art are being brought together again, because originally there were one and the same thing, they was also religion as the third, and i get medicine as the fourth, and law as the fifth. so we have all the faculties together here.
Thats also why its called a crash because people don't think this is possible anymore today, but i think, ok, i have been working in chaos and chaos theory is a very english theory because it was invented by isaac newton and newtow has fallen out of credit a little bit in the last century because his rationalism was thought to be naive with the advent of quantum mechanics and also relativity theory which are somehow counter-intuitive and claim to require a new set, aeh, a new mode of one's mind, a new mindset and this mindset is no longer causal.
and it contains absurdities like the fact, its experimental fact, that the speed of light is the same no matter how fast you go, which is completely, how should i say, it contradicts rationalism and an even worse thing happened with quantum mechanics, when suddenly, yes, the best example is non-locality, john bell's non-locality, i had the good fortune of meeting him, in, 16 years ago. and john bell tried, .., ja, its interesting, even though both realtivity and quantum mechanics were theories which are irrational from the point of view of old classical newtonian rationalism. these 2 theories started to fight each other, and up to this day, they have not come to a reconciliation. and einstein was very much interested in finding the weakest point of quantum mechanics, i would say to kill it.
and in science it is, you cannot do a better service to another scientist than to show him where he has been wrong, because it might save him a lifetime of doing the wrong things, aeh, spare him a lifetime. and so, being aggressive in science is the opposite of being aggressive in society. which is not very well know. so, much more young people would love science if they knew, they can be their full selves there. rather, …
and einstein, really, yes, he wrote a little paper with Podolsky and Rosen in 1935, which is the EPR-paper, its quite well know. and in that paper it says essentially “can quantum mechanics be completed”. the title is a little bit different but thats the essence of the meaning of the title. he found a way to complete quantum mechanics as he thought, but completing qm means “destroying it completely”. because qm consists in saying that you cannot have both things, you cannot measure both the momentum and the position of a particle. and einstein said he can do it, he gave an example. and in order not to frighten his colleagues too much, he called that “completion”. which sounds nice, it sounds like an act of benevolence. but actually it means the end of qm.
and when niels bohr heard about this paper of einstein's in the physical review of 1935, he dropped everything he was doing in qm with his co-workers, he always had a group of young co-workers from all over the world, working with him, from russia, from all countries, and they all had to concentrate on this new question of einstein's and then he wrote a paper after conversing with his co-workers, in the same journal, in the same year, with exactly the same title as einstein, so there are 2 papers with the same title, one by einstein, one by bohr, in the same journal, and they both ask the question wether qm can be completed. and you knwo the answer einstein gave was “yes”, the answer Bohr gave was “no”, but since its the same paper, the same title, the whole thing was diffused, if you wish. so the community did not realize that this had been an explosion. because there was something like a time reversal. so bohr “undid” what einstein had done.
and john bell then wanted to prove einstein right when he was young and he was unsuccessful in the sense that fears of einstein that qm would be fighting back turned out to be right. they were well-founded. it turned out that even, yeah, maybe i explain just for a moment this basic idea of einsteins: thank you. when i was in physics in high school there was an experiment where the teacher had 2 little toy-wagons, train-waggons, that were, with a spring inbetween that was trying to pull them apart, and there was also a thread of wool, a wool-thread, which was connecting them so that there, even though there was this strong force between them, they could move apart because they were fixed by the wooly thread. and then there was a flame, and then he put the flame underneath the thread, and then the thread would disappear, woudl go up in smoke, and then the 2 train-…, the 2 little waggons would be pushed symmetrically by the spring inbetween them and then both would have exactly the same speed, they would have the same position from the middle where they were standing at the beginning, they would be moving away, with exactly the same speed. and so, if you wish to measure the position of the one, you would automatically know the position of the other. because they were symmetric. if you wanted to measure the speed of the one, you would also know exactly the speed of the other because they are identical, they have all the same properties.
this is exactly the idea of EPR, and he said one should do that. then you could measure the momentum on the one specimen, the position on the other, then you would have completed qm, it would have been evaporated because now you could know both even though this is the main dogma of qm that you cannot do that.
and then john bell wanted to prove einstein right. and it turned out, that to his amazement at least, or to his terror, it turned out that as soon as he measured, and thats what the mathematics showed, that when he would measure the one particle immediatly the other train would know, what has been measured on the one and would take “precautions” that now you could not no longer measure its speed, its momentum undisturbed. so the 2 actually worked together in a conspiratorial manner. and erwin schroedinger who later came to edinbourgh was very much fascinated by that and he coined a new word for that: he is the originator of the notion of the Psi-Function. he was so afraid of his own invention of qm, of the wave-mechanics that he used the word “psi”, the letter \psi to show that it is somehow psychic thing, its no longer rationalism in the newtonian sense. but he believed in rationalism. but also he knew the structure of qm and so he could coin a word for this finding that bell later made with his work. and he called inter…, entanglement is the usual word. that is used in english. but he said, he used a german word, he said “Verschränkung” and that means interlocking and thats much better word than entanglement which is not much contact.
interlocking means, if you do one thing with this part, automatically, the other moves in a completely corresponding fashion. and so this interlocking of qm is really very frightening because it deepens the new irrationalism that was brought in in the 20th century.
then i had a discussion in 1988 with john bell after a talk he gave tübingen, where i was, and still am located and he, i was sitting, i had the good fortune of sitting beside his wife and across the table he was sitting at the after-dinner party, the after-speech party and his wife had a good position at CERN in switzerland and he always only had a lowly position. he was not allowed to give courses and, but it didn't matter because his wife earned a good living. and so he could do real science without being afraid of the administration as sometimes happens. and i gave him a proposal, and i later learned the proposal was not new, it had also been made by shimoni, and by susan feingold that you could take einsteins idea of fighting qm 1 step further. einstein was very kind to qm if you wish, because he thought just taking these 2 little waggons and taking them apart, enough apart, putting certian distance between them would be sufficient to uncouple them. and he was quite sure that that would be sufficient.
but in case it would not be sufficent there would be another way of uncoupling them, and that would be, to uncouple them by means of relativity theory, meaning, that you make sure the simultaneties between the 2 are not the same and so he didn't really use his whole brain if you wish for didactic / deductive reasons to fight qm. he thought it might be sufficient just to separate the 2 particles. but instead of course, you also put the one measurement into one spaceship that is moving this way, the other measuring station into the other spaceship that moves that way, and then, these 2 spaceships would not be just, how should i say, spatially separated, but they would be causally separated. because the thing that happens in the one would not be simultaneous with what happens in the other. but you could make sure that each measurement is the first, so you make the first measurement on the one train, on the one spaceship and then the other measurement is made in the other spaceship later than the first measurement. but the same thing is true the other way. so in each spaceship, the spaceship's captain knows for sure that he has been the one that made the first measurement. the other spaceship captain, this captain of the other spaceship only kind of had to pick up the, how do you say, the scrambles because there has already been a measurement and so by this interlocking there must have been an effect exerted at the other spaceship.
and so now you really have the deadly fighting between the 2 theories, relativity and qm, and when i drew this picture i called that the vx-diagram, the v is the light-cone, the light goes up like that, and x is the 2 simultaneities of the 2 spaceships bell was very kind, he told me, this idea is completely new to me. this was very encouraging and very kind, so i wrote it all up, then i sent him the paper and asked him to submit it for me. and he wrote back, and said, i do not share your enthusiasm in these ideas and i do not want to share the responsibility. but at the same time, he had corrected the paper. so i don't know what he meant. because now i could submit it, it was accepted, because he had helped me. be he didn't know the idea was not as new as i thought, as i said.
but, now it turns out that einstein has won, because every physicist in the world knows that the bell-correlations will continue in this kind of experiment, therefore scientific community makes sure that no-one does the experiment. because it would be too embarrassing for qm, if, i asked, whats his first name, zeilinger, anton zeilinger 4 years ago wether he knew the experiment and first he said of course, its an old experiment, and wether, and then he told me he doesn't like the experiment and then he went on but of course he has made a proposal to ESA to do the experiment. but that was 4 years ago, and ESA has not yet done the experiment even it has reluctantly been proposed to it.
and so the whole scientific communitiy is kind in a frozen state whre it doesn't want to know the outcome of a certain experiment who's outcome is inevitable anyhow, because then, one would have to rethink qm, because einstein would have won.
and so, zeilinger wrote a nice book, called “einstein veil” where he talk's quite nicely, without any formulas, just with a few handwritten pictures on this mystery of qm, but he doesn't go as far as i just told you. he also keeps the whole thing in suspension if you wish, and its very interesting that you can find in science such a situation where a battle that was really begun in 1935 by einstein is still too close to mind of the people involved, it is still, it is kind of, its like a torch, its too close to their heads, to be fully admissible. and i find this very interesting.
i was not trained in physics, i was a medical doctor when i was young, and then i came through biology, i met conrad lorenz, into theoretical biology, and then i learned a bit, little bit mathematics, i met bob rosen in buffalo in new york, i called “the hegel of mathematical biology” and he didn't object, so it must be true and i know it is true. and then slowly i found interest in these basic questions in physics. and think thats a very good way, unfortunately it takes time, but if you are young you can take a shortcut, so the only way to do physics today is not to study physics, because the community is too much how should i say, imbued in the way everybody is thinking.
so its not like a science, its like an institute, and in the institute of course everyone has to have the opinions of the cheerleaders, so to speak. i met benoit mandelbrot for example, he is very well known because he has the most beautiful pictures in chaos theory, the fractals, he coined the name, ok, but thats a different story.
moderator: should we see if people have any questions? does anyone wnat to come back and ask questions?
otto: is anyone wanting to defend qm?
dick bierman: i wonder wether you don't give a too simple picture maybe, maybe because not everybody is involved that deeply in quantum physics. i think that you cannot say that einstein has won, that the battle is decided, in any way, i think even that, if you consider this to be a battle that he has lost the first blow, in the sense that bell has shown that all local realistic theories which basically was what einstein was after, in the beginning, when he said i want to complete quantum physics, he said, it should be local and realistic. and that shouldnt allow spooky action at a distance. and i think that bell showed that all these theories are false. so that battle was lost. of course, your relativistic argument still holds but that i think could be solved, or at least should be seen in the light of non-locality as a concept. most physicists known about non-locality but don't pay attention as you say, its not a part of their institution but if they pay attention they generally pay attention in terms of spatial non-locality. but since we know that space and time are not, you cannot disconnect them, spacetime is a single concept. so non-loc. in space also implies non-loc in time and then you get all kinds of weird things happening. which make the whole experiment that you suggest meaningless some sense because there is nothing like first and second measurement there, so i think, yes, ok. please comment on that.
otto: dick that was very kind. yes, sorry ..
dick: that was aggressive.
otto: no. yes. i know. yes because it was aggressive it was very kind. yes. and you deepened the mystery. yes. because even though what i told you before is probably right that relativity allows you to get 2 first measurement even though it is forbidden is is also right as you correctly said that john bell proved that non-locality exists, that this interlocking also works, so we are in the strange situation even though qm was unacceptable to einstein and he found a way to show that something is wrong with it it also survived. that was the first round, that was bell. who showed that this non-locality, this non-local interlocking exists, but then einstein could also show that the claim that you cannot make 2 virgin measurements is also not correct, so if you wish the whole situation is in a completely new open state because all the the most unlikely and unexplicable things happened, all of them. both qm much, is still alive, but on the same, at the same time there is 1 way it is no longer alive in this relativistic context and so, nevertheless this is progress i would say because now one can try to make sense of this heap of a broken cup. and, this is where you would need endophysics. its a way of looking at the world, which is inspired by newton and actually by a pupil of newtons who did not meet newton because he was born too late. he could have met him as a young man but he didn't. boskovic. who was living in rome, he came from, a town called, i used to know it, in yugoslavia, the town changes its name from time to time, so forgive me, he was a dalmatian and he lived in rome, he was a jesuit priest there, it was, and actually he came there because his older brother who was a painter has had become a jesuit and he accompanied him and then when he had studied mathematics with the, at the collegium georgianum i guess, he turned out to be too weak to get a real profession, and so they kept him on as a teacher of mathematics in rome, and he became a very good mathematics teacher of course, and then he wrote a book, the book is called, theory, no he wrote it in latin theoria something, on newtons theory, i forgot the exact title, its almost the same title as newtons principia mathematica, and this book 1755 had, was a bestseller even though it was in latin, in the 18th century, it was 1 of the first bestsellers in physics, and in that book in the appendix he was reproducing 2 papers that he wrote in 1755, one is called “on space and time” and the other “on space and time, as we, as it is recognized by us” so its the same topic. but very strangely he has 2 sciences, the one science is how it is really and the other is how it appears to us. and thats the first time that someone has really distinguished between realtiy, objectively, outside and reality as perceived from the inside.
and i had also already come up with the same idea in 17.., in 1987, no it was earlier in 82, and written a letter to david finkelstein whom i had just met, and told him, we need 2 physics, one is the conventional physics, the other is the physics is the physics as it looks from the inside, and finkelstein wrote back and said why dont you call them exophysics and endophysics, exo would be the objective outside, and endo would be the inside, that is all we have. and he allowed me to use the word endophysics without quoting him, thats why i'm quoting him here.
moderator: we got aehm 5 minutes i think, what id like to do is kind of ask if theres any question that people wanna put ..
anthony moore: no, otto i think that you probably were gonna be getting there anyway fairly shortly so perhaps the question is a bit irrelevant, but it is simply about how the problems of the interface which you are very known for correspond to some of these tales you#ve just told us, and the problem of wether the endo- and the exo and how, if there's an interface between, just the interfaceology of it really, i think,
otto: thank you very much. you know anthony is a close friend and he found the best way to help me at this point. interface is exactly this idea. if you are part of the world, what you are seeing is only the interface between yourself and the rest, we have a good friend together in cologne, siegfried zielinski, and he has, he found someone in old greece wo had the same idea of, when we see something with our eyes, he thought that there are rays coming out from our eyes but there are also rays coming from the things and we see something in between. thats one of the first interface theorie. but this boskovic theory of the interface had a slightly different example. he claimed that if we were living on the earth, and the earth along with us and with all forces on the earth would be shrinking opr expanding in a number of days we wouldnt realize, we wouldnt notice anyting because we would be shrinking along and so the difference between us and the rest of the universe would be the same and therefore we wouldnt realize that this is completely different than we think. and this is the basic idea of this interface in physics.
so if you wish, the medium, which is the message, the reality, the only thing that we have is the interface. and what is the interface in physics. the if in physics is the difference. its a very simple idea. its like taking 3 and subtracting 2 and the difference is 1. and its just as easy. so, media-theory which today reinvents the interface all over the planet is an application of a physical theory which you need to understand qm, which you need to understand relativity, which really shows you a new way of interpreting the objective world in the interface as something which is not objective world even though it is the objective world. so it is very, it gives you a new handle on the world.
question: can you say that, the last bit, can you rephrase it again, ..
if you suddenly learn that what you thought was the total reality is not the total reality, theres a bigger reality within which this reality that you have is only a slice. then, you are given a means to do things that you could never do if you thought this was really the only reality. so if you wish, theres a new technology lurking in the background which allows to go out of the level on which you are and take advantage of jumping outside and coming back. and noone what will be the ultimate outcome, wether we could build a time-machine. so it is really dangerous actually. and in that sense the whole planet is in a very dangerous situation today, because there are so many young people on the planet as never before but they have noone who is taking their side so to speak and the EC countries loosing in terms of the population numbers. and they have only a chance to become friends to a majority on the planet which is the most hopeful majority of the history of the planet by giving them the best things that they have found in science for example for surviving and i m a little bit worried that the most basic questions in science today are kind of kept a secret and people are discouraged, i learned that in england many good schools and institutions are being shrunk down or, .. and its the same all over the world, it looks as if the developed countries were trying to stop science dead so that it doesnt progress again. because the future science belongs to the future of mankind and the future of mankind is not the future of europe. therefore, you, ok, i made another statement, sorry.
moderator: i think thats a very good point to finish up on.