Talk:Quantum foam

anyone know why the "other universes" link points to "star wars"? 147.154.235.51 20:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Merged

Why cannot this article be merged with "quantum fluctuations"? I hestitate to do it because I am no great physicist... however, I fail to see the difference and only view this as a sndikeihenjnjendejndnejndejndnjednj "pop-sci" article. 96.50.10.234 (talk) 07:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)]]

Because quantum fluctuation is a broader term for a behavior of many different things in quantum physics. In fact, what I know of quantum fluctuations has nothing to do with quantum foam or cosmology but in fact and quantum vortixes. Quantum fluctuations and quantum i am a person vortices are loosely related because both are situations in where you have to combine the theories of stochastics or even deterministic choas with general quantum theory.Physics16 (talk) 14:40, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Cleaned up

The article looks fine now; it is vastly improved over the May 2005 version (Star Wars have gone too :) ), so I'm removing the cleanup tag. GregorB 22:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

-- unlike theory of gravity with known parameters and experimental data this theory is only a proposed theory that has no basis in factual data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.112.134.109 (talk) 16:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Quantum chromodynamics predicts that space-time is not smooth; instead, space-time would have a foamy, jittery nature and would consist of many small, ever-changing, regions in which space and time are not definite, but fluctuate.[2]:minute 48:07/1:20:00

Wrong it's not quantum chromodynamics that predicts that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:646:100:BAF1:A014:C018:7E41:447C (talk) 07:28, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Extra Citations

If anyone is interested, here are a few extra citations:

• Spacetime foam by Stephen Hawking (from Nuclear Physics B, Volume 144, Issues 2-3, 13 November-20 November 1978, Pages 349-362)
• Algebraic Description of Spacetime Foam by Ioannis Raptis et al 2001 Class. Quantum Grav. 18 4187-4212
• Space-Time Foam from Non-Commutative Instantons by Harry W Braden and Nikita A. Nekrasov Communications in Mathematical Physics Volume 249, Number 3 / August, 2004 (pgs 431-448).
• Quantum Evolution in Spacetime Foam (preprint) by Luis J. Garay

Just thought I'd add some extra reading materials in the discussion section, since they are tangential to the article. If anyone thinks they deserve to be in the article go ahead and add them. pqnelson —Preceding comment was added at 22:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Mention Timeline connection?

The first time I ever heard of Quantum Foam, it was in the (very popular) book Timeline by Michael Crichton (a well-known Sci-Fi author who likes to put real science in his books). Should this connotation be noted on here? 67.176.199.134 (talk) 14:50, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Foam illustration

Ridiculous!! Remove it at once. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.72.23.67 (talk) 15:00, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Why didn't you remove it yourself, lazy? 77.23.144.37 (talk) 21:14, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

However?

Could someone knowledgeable edit the introductory paragraph please? The fact that the last two sentences both start with "However" renders their meaning a little too opaque to me. Presumably the penultimate sentence is slightly contradictory to that which precedes it and then the final sentence is contradictory of that one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tedmarynicz (talk • contribs) 08:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC) As requested, I clarified the paragraph with the first however, I could find by using general explanation of physics jargon. I also corrected the beginning without because their is a theory for gravity and quantum gravity; the problem is its still developing and not a complete theory. I would like to point out that I am horrible with grammar because english is my second language, so I would like to request someone grammar check to make sure I didn't forget verbs or commas while I was writing.Physics16 (talk) 14:56, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

The Kantian Angle

Recently, it has been proposed (http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2014.43032) that quantum foam should be identified with Immanuel Kant's famous thing-in-itself, he calls it an "X," from the symbol for a mathematical unknown, in his "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781, 1787). Ultimate reality beyond empirical observation. Kant's definition of cognition, contained in his notoriously difficult "Transcendental Deduction" (TD) of the categories, is that cognition comes about by and should be limited to empirical observations or facts combined with thought. Here, "thought" is based on what he calls "general experience," also similar expressions, eg. "one, or interconnected experience," esp. in his third "Critique of Judgment Power" (Urtheilskraft). Cf. Andrew Brook (2006) for more. What he meant is the internal world model, our noumenal cosmos, a cleaned-up, sanitized version, that we hold in our brains, of the chaotic, unsavory universe. It is the organized sum total of all that we have learned individually, but based on the tribal memory comprised in our DNA genome, acquired over the course of 4 billion years, kind-of tribal lore recorded in the genetic code. What Kant in the TD explains, now is called top-down processing, white matter fibers running backward from the prefrontal cortex--orbital, behind the eye brows--where our decision centers are in Brodmann areas 10, 11, all the way back to the occipital visual cortex, area V1,and the higher-level centers V2, V3, V4, V5 further forward. There are more fibers running backward for top-down anticipation, than forward for bottom-up processing. The human animal, and all animals depend on top-down, because bottom-up is very inefficient. All animals need that internal cosmos. I recall visiting the Roman Pantheon cupola on a highschool trip, and being overwhelmed by the immensity of this 2,000 year structure. Going back next day, the whole experience had been incorporated into my noumenal cosmos and the thrill was absent the 2nd time around. Of course, at age 17 I had no idea what was going on, and was bitterly disappointed. -- Soooh, back to quantum foam, it's perhaps just something in our noumenal cosmos (~cosmetics, indicating a pretty version of messy reality). If Kant is right, the ultimate reality must be unobservable (he goes into quite a bit of detail on that aspect, disproving both atomistics and non-atomistics). According to his TD, if quantum foam is unobservable then we can have no cognition of it. hgwb 07:20, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

For a reply or concrete counterexample to the idea that Kant's Ding an Sich might be unobservable, see Max Born (1965) Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, Appendix: 'Symbol and Reality' where Born explains a table-top optics-lab technique for confirming intersubjective verifiability. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 15:19, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

From another Wikipedia page (Talk page "Noumenon"), Max Born said this: One person cannot convey the concept of the color red, but two people can agree (on the color). There is no reference to Kant, or "Ding an sich," and I can only find Max Born Natural Philosophy ... from 1949, not 1965, with no appendix named 'Symbol and Reality.' Please supply more information.--Above refers to the problem of qualia, an unsolved issue in brain science & philosophy, but there is no relevance to the the Ding an sich. By my own reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his Ding an Sich is unobservable by definition, so perhaps you are misreading Max Born. You don't seem to object to quantum foam being unobservable, which is the real issue of my long paragraph, which you mostly ignore. hgwb 22:43, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

True, Born wrote an addendum. Perhaps you can find the Peter Smith Edition of Born (Peter Smith apparently had the 60s version rebound in red). Born thought about the subjective nature of knowledge for years, but came up with this answer at the end of his life, he said. My reading is that a conundrum may be subjectively unknowable, but that a community of like-minded researchers can collectively build up an interpretation, a system (thereby sharing the burden of understanding that which is too big for one brain, such as the edifice of physics). Born's appendix explicitly refers to Kant's Ding an Sich. Hope you find it, but the web might have a pdf of the 1965 version.

Regarding the article: It from bit comes from the same John Wheeler. 'It from bit' amounts to the same thing as the subject of this article. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 01:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Unlikely in my judgment, that quantum foam could ever become observable even if a community of any number of physics Nobel prize winners, in their collective consciousness, were to form an interpretive system. We may need to be content with quantum foam remaining as a noumenal, not a phenomenal entity at the most basal level of the material universe, leading to no conceivable experiment capable of verifying its existence. hgwb 20:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Bad article

"the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows energy to briefly decay into particles and antiparticles which then annihilate back to energy without violating physical conservation laws."

It does not. That's a wrong (although frequently encountered) popscience interpretation of Heisenberg time-energy uncertainty, with in itself is already very different from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for actual observables (time isn't one). This whole article reeks pseudoscience. It's a historical model and it should be completely rewritten to better represent this fact - instead of adding popscience salt and pepper to it to make it "more easily understandable" as is done by citing HUP wrongly here. 92.196.78.139 (talk) 10:46, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The first sentence makes me laugh!

"Fluctuations due to quantum mechanics"!?!?! QM is just a theory trying to describe reality. It does not cause any fluctuation! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koitus~nlwiki (talk • contribs) 14:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The Primordial Sea of Chaos

If the basis of our stable reality is a bunch of churning foam doesn't that prove the various mythological stories about the primordial sea of Chaos? 207.112.57.220 (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

just because a scientific discovery matches up somewhat to a myth doesn't mean that the myth is "proven" in any sense, especially considering that the sea of chaos that the myths talk about were probably orders of magnitude higher (in terms of size and energy level) than the current models for quantum foam

- Roboprince (talk) 12:48, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

actual definition of quantum foam

the article currently lists two different definitions for quantum foam, with one describing it as the creation and annihilation of virtual particles while the other describing it as spacetime itself fluctuating at small scales. I am not fully sure which one is correct but if someone does could you fix this please. thanks - Roboprince (talk) 11:14, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

postscript: if both of these are correct, could the article clarify this more? Roboprince (talk) 11:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Simple Visualization of the Quantum Foam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TvRWskImBk Doug youvan (talk) 22:26, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

What could be done with it

Would it ever be possible to make a computer using it's fluctuations, since it's the smallest thing that exists we know of? ANd, would that be the ultimate computer, nothing can possibly be faster because nothing exists that is smaller? 173.76.166.185 (talk) 03:35, 2 April 2024 (UTC)