Does QM or Relativity Contradict Evidence (or Each Other)?

Bull. General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics!

Wrong

Hehe, that is pretty entertaining. @Patrick, did you know that Quantum Mechanics contradicts both General Relativity and cosmological observations?

No it doesn’t. Tell me one empirical observation that is contrary to either GR or QM?

From today’s science news:

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Acceleration of the universe. Had to posit dark energy

And Planck results confirm the equation of state for dark energy w= -1.042 ± 0.042

A post was merged into an existing topic: Evolution of the Placenta

And measurements of Hubble constant by Planck and Reiss confirmed to 0.1% accuracy.

You know I’m not saying GR is wrong right?

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I don’t know what you are saying. Dickhead. :grinning:

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Okay. We are even now.

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Easy. Have you ever heard of the worst prediction in physics? It is made by QM.

“The simplest calculation involves summing the quantum mechanical zero-point energies of all the fields known in Nature. This gives an answer about 120 orders of magnitude higher than the upper limits… set by cosmological observations. This is probably the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics! Nobody knows how to make sense of this result. Some physics mechanism must exist that makes the cosmological constant very small.”

And so, quantum physicists are in a bit of a pickle. Making slight tweaks to theoretical estimates narrows the ginormous gap considerably, but our best theories from quantum mechanics still overestimate the influence of dark energy by sixty orders of magnitude.

The best model we currently have: [1205.3365] Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Cosmological Constant Problem (But Were Afraid To Ask). And the wikipedia page for the problem:

Now, where do I collect my prize @Patrick?

Also, lest we doubt its relevance to Relativity, we have this quote from that article too:

“Yes, we’re clueless,” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson admitted in his recent book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. “But it’s not abject cluelessness. Dark energy is not adrift, with nary a theory to anchor it. Dark energy inhabits one of the safest harbors we can imagine: Einstein’s equations of general relativity.”

This not only counts as contradicting evidence, but contradicting each other.

We need to find a physicist for the forum. Pretty much have all other branches covered.

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@dga471 can you help us out?

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Nope, no prize will be awarded. The statement was

I said GR and QM has passed every empirical observation.

The problem you mention is a calculation error of 120 orders of magnitude. Calculation error of this magnitude says the summation model is wrong. We do not know if the observed values of vacuum energy density in the universe IS the summation of all the observed zero-point energy of quantum field theory. The two empirical observations may be unrelated.

The fact remains that GR and QM has passed every empirical test where we know the model of GR and QM are correct.

No Nobel Prize in Physics for either of you. But it was a good try.

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How about Larry Krause? He hasn’t been busy lately. Maybe Peaceful Science would be a good sanctuary for him.

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Invite him to an office hours? We would be glad to host him. We would treat him with respect.

I am sure you would. But given LK’s reputation and closeness with Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, he would be “hard to manage” here. However, if the recent accusations have gotten to him, he might be toned down considerably.

In his prime, his answer to a question from someone who was injecting their faith into the question, was “to fuck off”, where Dawkins chimed in to give the proper way of saying “Fuck off” and then Hitchen chimed in with a two minute triade that ended in “fuck off” . And this was a question from a young muslim student wearing a hijab. I thought that was over the top. Not funny but the crowd loved it.

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Do you know him? Could you see what is going on along a back channel?