[Physics] Physics Digest, Vol 4, Issue 11

[cj at mb-soft.com]

To Hans, regarding gravitation:

Yes, in those hundreds of conversations in the 1960s at UC, many opinions were presented about Quantum and Gravitation.  Nearly all of those converssations ended with a logical issue.  We all agreed that gravitation was a "continuous function" while all Quantum concepts included a "time dependence" in order to produce the many Wave functions.  Nearly all of the conversations, including those which included Nobel Laureates ended with that issue which we felt was insoluble.

On a possibly related matter, we all regularly did lab experiments.  In contemplating the early decades of Quantum thinking, and many other issues, we often discussed that our equipment generally took millionths of a second to produce a photographic image.  We often laughed that most of our experiments took so long to occur that at the speed that electrons orbited their nuclei, they certainly always did billions of orbits before we could ever get any image.  A common concern was that if electrons mutually (electrically) interacted, we would never see any results except for "final results".  after billions of orbits of mutual perturbations.  So all of our experiments always showed "fixed parameters" uch a Pauli and the rest always found.  THEY concluded that Quantum arguments necesarily applied.  Later in my life, I wonder if  we just had "slow eyes" and mutual perturbation was occurring every orbit.  In our solar system, the asteroids have orbited billions of times during the lifetime of the solar system, and we see Kirkwood Gaps.  The Galilean moons have orbited billions of times and we see interesting effects which seem to be due to mutual perturbations.  The question might be, if we could only observe the solar system every billion years or so, would we not be aware of mutual perturbations and we might believe in Bode's Law regarding the planets (current) locations?  My question is that maybe Quantum arguments might not actually be valid for this sort of reasoning.

We students all dreamed of creating experimental apparatus which was a billion times fasster than we have.  None so far.

Carl Johnson
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