by Yablon » Mon Apr 18, 2016 10:08 am
Ben6993 wrote:Hi Jay
I have folllowed a couple of Susskind's online courses this last few months: "Basic Concepts" (which turned out to be an introduction to QFT) and am now working through SUSY. About 20 hours per course.
In lecture 10 of QFT, he says that" integrating over time conserves energy" and "integrating over space conserves momentum" wrt Feynman diagram values. Is this relevant to your note about energy-time complementarity? You note that you have equations for the QED effect but not yet for gravitation or motion. I think QED is easier than QCD wrt re-normalisation because of the small coupling constant. In QFT there is, apparently, no single correct answer as the particles get closer together without limit. You pick a small cut-off delta minimum distance separation and try to engineer a non-infinite answer for the Feynman diagram value for that particular cut-off. Are you doing the same sort of thing in your equations, i.e. allowing for the answers to be different for different separations?
Apologies if this does not make much sense!
Hi Ben, Long time no talk.

Noether's theorem, which is highly profound both philosophically and operationally, says that each symmetry of nature is connected to a conservation law. Invariance under time displacement implies energy conservation. Invariance under position displacement implies momentum conservation. Lorentz symmetry implies angular momentum conservation. And gauge invariance implies conserved electric charge. The philosophical beauty is that every time we discover a new symmetry which is a theoretical visualization of something that does not change under some operation, we have discovered (or validated) a physical conservation law. The operational beauty say that if we want to discover (or newly-validate) conserved physical entities, we need to find new symmetries. So now, to your query.
I am not a fan of SUSY, but let's not go there. Energy is conserved on a statistical basis, because due to uncertainty and Planck's constant not being equal to zero, for a very teensy-weensy period of time (that is a technical term that one cannot comprehend without at least four years in graduate school

) we can actually have the energy not be conserved. But after more than this teensy amount of time, i.e., after we integrate over some time that is not so tiny, this violation of energy conservation becomes rectified and the energy is conserved. Same with space and momentum. So when Susskind says "integrating over time conserves energy" and "integrating over space conserves momentum," you will see that he is tying together the symmetry and the conserved quantity aspects of Noether's theorem. Specifically, in the quantum world, when we are looking at very, very small periods of time and regions of space, there are very violent quantum fluctuations. cf. the quantum vacuum where our good friend Fred Diether lives.

So moving forward by, say,

seconds, or moving over by, say,

meters which are not too much larger than the Planck time and length, nature is
not symmetric under time or space translation, because what I observe a tiny part of a second later or a tiny part of a meter over is not the same as what I observed initially. And, no symmetry means no conservation. But then when I go to a "wide angle" view and do not see the granularity at the Planck scale, the world looks the same at all times and at all places, so there is now a symmetry, so by Noether, energy and momentum are conserved. That is, a "wide angle" -- the "view from 30,000 feet" -- is just another way of saying that I am "integrating" over the larger regions of time and space, so I recover the conservation laws.
This is the same sort of thing I am presently dealing with as I dive into energy - time uncertainty. However, these cutoffs you refer to are a plague that come along with renormalization, and it would be very desirable to reach the same results but with a different process to get there.
Also, when you say "you note that you have equations for the QED effect but not yet for gravitation or motion," I want to be clear. I am not
looking to find this. If it is there, it will find me. If I can pass along to others one of the most important lessons I have learned over my years of trying to find out new things about the natural world, it is this: It is so very important to get rid of one's preconceptions about what one ought to find and how the world ought to be. You have to objectively follow the equations wherever they take you and interpret whatever they are saying to you. Dirac perhaps said it best, when he once said that his Dirac "equation is more intelligent than its author." Those of us who try to find new things about the natural universe do not talk to our equations. Our equations talk to us.
Jay
PS: The last statement is why I am not a fan of SUSY: its authors are talking to its equations rather than vice versa, because they have preconceived that particle types at any given spin ought to have counterparts at other spins.
[quote="Ben6993"]Hi Jay
I have folllowed a couple of Susskind's online courses this last few months: "Basic Concepts" (which turned out to be an introduction to QFT) and am now working through SUSY. About 20 hours per course.
In lecture 10 of QFT, he says that" integrating over time conserves energy" and "integrating over space conserves momentum" wrt Feynman diagram values. Is this relevant to your note about energy-time complementarity? You note that you have equations for the QED effect but not yet for gravitation or motion. I think QED is easier than QCD wrt re-normalisation because of the small coupling constant. In QFT there is, apparently, no single correct answer as the particles get closer together without limit. You pick a small cut-off delta minimum distance separation and try to engineer a non-infinite answer for the Feynman diagram value for that particular cut-off. Are you doing the same sort of thing in your equations, i.e. allowing for the answers to be different for different separations?
Apologies if this does not make much sense![/quote]
Hi Ben, Long time no talk. ;)
Noether's theorem, which is highly profound both philosophically and operationally, says that each symmetry of nature is connected to a conservation law. Invariance under time displacement implies energy conservation. Invariance under position displacement implies momentum conservation. Lorentz symmetry implies angular momentum conservation. And gauge invariance implies conserved electric charge. The philosophical beauty is that every time we discover a new symmetry which is a theoretical visualization of something that does not change under some operation, we have discovered (or validated) a physical conservation law. The operational beauty say that if we want to discover (or newly-validate) conserved physical entities, we need to find new symmetries. So now, to your query.
I am not a fan of SUSY, but let's not go there. Energy is conserved on a statistical basis, because due to uncertainty and Planck's constant not being equal to zero, for a very teensy-weensy period of time (that is a technical term that one cannot comprehend without at least four years in graduate school :)) we can actually have the energy not be conserved. But after more than this teensy amount of time, i.e., after we integrate over some time that is not so tiny, this violation of energy conservation becomes rectified and the energy is conserved. Same with space and momentum. So when Susskind says "integrating over time conserves energy" and "integrating over space conserves momentum," you will see that he is tying together the symmetry and the conserved quantity aspects of Noether's theorem. Specifically, in the quantum world, when we are looking at very, very small periods of time and regions of space, there are very violent quantum fluctuations. cf. the quantum vacuum where our good friend Fred Diether lives. ;) So moving forward by, say, [tex]10^{-41}[/tex] seconds, or moving over by, say, [tex]10^{-33}[/tex] meters which are not too much larger than the Planck time and length, nature is [i]not[/i] symmetric under time or space translation, because what I observe a tiny part of a second later or a tiny part of a meter over is not the same as what I observed initially. And, no symmetry means no conservation. But then when I go to a "wide angle" view and do not see the granularity at the Planck scale, the world looks the same at all times and at all places, so there is now a symmetry, so by Noether, energy and momentum are conserved. That is, a "wide angle" -- the "view from 30,000 feet" -- is just another way of saying that I am "integrating" over the larger regions of time and space, so I recover the conservation laws.
This is the same sort of thing I am presently dealing with as I dive into energy - time uncertainty. However, these cutoffs you refer to are a plague that come along with renormalization, and it would be very desirable to reach the same results but with a different process to get there.
Also, when you say "you note that you have equations for the QED effect but not yet for gravitation or motion," I want to be clear. I am not [i]looking[/i] to find this. If it is there, it will find me. If I can pass along to others one of the most important lessons I have learned over my years of trying to find out new things about the natural world, it is this: It is so very important to get rid of one's preconceptions about what one ought to find and how the world ought to be. You have to objectively follow the equations wherever they take you and interpret whatever they are saying to you. Dirac perhaps said it best, when he once said that his Dirac "equation is more intelligent than its author." Those of us who try to find new things about the natural universe do not talk to our equations. Our equations talk to us.
Jay
PS: The last statement is why I am not a fan of SUSY: its authors are talking to its equations rather than vice versa, because they have preconceived that particle types at any given spin ought to have counterparts at other spins.