The History of Creation in Three Words
The history of Creation can be expressed in three words (not even words but mere conjunctions): “and,” “or,” and “and/or,” whereas the history of physics may be expressed in two of them: “or,” and “and/or.”
The Tree of Life and Wave Mechanics
As we discussed in the earlier post, The Tree of Knowledge as a Metaphor for Superposition of States and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a direct consequence of wave-particle duality. If so, shouldn’t we expect to see some hints at the wave nature of reality in the narrative of the Garden of Eden? And the Tree of Life (Etz HaChaim): what was it doing in Eden? It appears in the narrative only twice—in the very beginning and at the very end of the story of the primordial sin—almost as if to put a frame around the picture. At the start of this narrative, the verse states: And the Lord G‑d planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground [...]
Futurist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
(A popular summary of the paper “Towards Futuristic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” by Alexander Poltorak being currently prepared for publication) Quantum mechanics (QM) is one of the most successful theories of physics that withstood the test of time. Indeed, it is one of the best-tested theories known to science. Yet, we hardly advanced in our understanding of the meaning of QM since its inception almost a century ago. The indeterministic nature of the theory puts it at odds with both classical physics and our intuition, and continues to perplex physicists and philosophers of science today as it perplexed Einstein, who famously said, “G‑d does not play dice with the universe!” Superposition and entanglement seem to defy common sense and, yet, they have been confirmed experimentally time and again. The phenomenon known as the [...]
Abraham Meets Abraham From a Parallel Universe
And he [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him… (Genesis 18:2) On this blog, we often discuss the collapse of the wavefunction as the result of a measurement. This phenomenon is called the “measurement problem.” There are several reasons, for which the collapse of the wavefunction—part and parcel of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics—is considered a problem. Firstly, it does not follow from the Schrödinger equation, the main equation of quantum mechanics that describes the evolution of the wavefunction in time, and is added ad hoc. Second, nobody knows how the collapse happens or how long the wave function takes to collapse. This is not even to consider that any notion that the collapse of the wavefunction is caused by human consciousness, as proposed [...]
The Pilot Wave
And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, even the tent of the testimony; and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it, and the appearance of fire by night. And whenever the cloud was taken up from over the Tent, then after that the children of Israel journeyed; and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel encamped. At the commandment of the Lord the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the Lord they encamped: as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they remained encamped. And when the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle many days, then the children of Israel [...]
Schrödinger Menorah: Burning and not Burning
The miracle of Chanukah revolves around a single-day-supply of olive oil burning for eight days during the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (Bet HaMikdash), after Maccabees liberated Israel from the occupation by the Greco-Syrian Seleucid empire. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson There are countless explanations of the miracle of the oil lasting eight days. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, offers a unique explanation. The Rebbe dismisses any explanation of the miracle that relies on the miraculous nature of the oil itself. The Rebbe maintains that to be kosher for the Menorah, the oil had to be natural olive oil, not some miraculous oil. According to the Rebbe, the miracle was that natural oil was burning and not burning at the same time. The Rebbe draws an analogy with [...]
Schrödinger May Have Been Born Today
A man once came to a rabbi with said news – his cat just died. Rabbi politely expressed his sympathy to the owner of the deceased cat. He thanked the rabbi and asked if he could say kaddish (memorial prayer) for his cat. Rabbi was taken aback – a kaddish for a cat?! This is sacrilege! The man offered to donate to the synagogue a thousand dollars, if the rabbi would allow him to say kaddish for his cat, but to no avail. He offered two thousand, five thousand, but rabbi was unmoved. When the man finally offered ten thousand dollars, the rabbi exclaimed, “Why didn’t you tell me your cat was Jewish?!” Ervin Schrödinger I am not sure if the cat in this old Jewish joke was Jewish, but the [...]
Suspected Adulteress as a Schrödinger Cat
In quantum mechanics, the state of a physical system is described by the so-called wave function (or the "wavefunction"). All attempts by Schrödinger, who first introduced the wave function, and others to interpret it as a scalar potential of some physical field, or as the de Broglie wave (as in particle-wave dualism) were not successful. In 1926, Max Born noticed that the squared amplitude of the wavefunction of a particle in a given region gives the probability of finding the particle in this region. He suggested that the wavefunction represented not a physical reality but rather our knowledge of the quantum state of an object. The wave function represents our knowledge of all possible quantum-mechanical states of an object and their probabilities. In other words, the quantum-mechanical state of a physical system is [...]
Witnesses – See and be Seen
By the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall the one liable to death be put to death; he shall not be put to death by the mouth of one witness. (Devarim-Deuteronomy 17:6) I wrote about witnesses in my earlier post imaginatively called Witnesses. Deuteronomy restates many mitzvoth (commandments) introduced earlier, which is why it is also called Mishneh Torah – the repetition of Torah – the portion Shoftim-Judges restates the law of witnesses first introduced in in the book of Numbers, portion Massei. So we shall revisit this fascinating subject. The Judgment of the Sanhedrin: "He is Guilty!" (1892 painting by Nikolai Ge) I. An accused criminal and a Schrödinger cat Most criminals are convicted in the US based on circumstantial evidence. Rare is the case when a jury gets to hear an [...]
A curious Case of Retrocausality—Dead Inherit the Living
Pinchas You shall apportion the Land among these as an inheritance, in accordance with the number of names. To the large [tribe] you shall give a larger inheritance and to a smaller tribe you shall give a smaller inheritance, each person shall be given an inheritance according to his number. Only through a lot shall the Land be apportioned; they shall inherit it according to the names of their fathers' tribes. Bamidbar-Numbers 26:53-55 Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel in Princeton Einstein once said that he only went to his office at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton to have an opportunity to chat on the way home with his friend, Viennese mathematician, Kurt Gödel. Once, the story goes, Gödel came to Einstein's birthday party with a present – a new cosmological solution [...]