If you are a scientist good enough in your area of expertise, at some point you start wondering whether you can explain everything around you, every single event, physical phenomenon, consciousness, human nature etc. etc. by using methods from your area of expertise.

For example, Robert Laughlin, condensed matter theorist and Nobel Prize winner, seems to be seriously thinking that the Theory of Everything is a theory of quantum Hall effect, while other condensed matter theorists are trying to find Universe in a helium droplet. On the other hand, some string theorists believe that Universe was created by a collision of two huge D-branes widely spread along extra dimensions, etc. etc. Sorry for being poetic, but that how Dr. Lanza presents his ideas, so I’ll naturally try to mimic his style.

Dr. Robert Lanza is a famous biologist. Not surprisingly, he wants to argue that the whole Universe can be described only using the language and methods of biology – as he explains in his recent book “Biocentrism: how life and consciousness are the keys to understand true nature of the Universe“.

To support this statement, Dr. Lanza tries to combine some ideas from biology, psychology and neuroscience as well as physics. Although his opinions about biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists are usually polite, he seems to be particularly angry on physicists for some reason – here is, for example, one passage from the very end of the book:

Finally, one must consider the endless ongoing attempts at creating GUTs – grand unifying theories. Currently, such efforts in physics have been maddeningly lengthy – stretching typically for decades – without much success except as a way of financially facilitating the careers of theoreticians and grad students.

I guess, the reason of his attitude towards physics and physicists is that he wasn’t able to establish a healthy dialogue with them while developing his ideas (on the other hand, as it seems, he was able to establish such dialogue with biologists and psychologists). Since I am a physicist myself, let me try to explain why it did not happen.

In my explanations, I will also try to be as polite as possible since, I must admit, I am always sympathetic with rebels, and Dr. Lanza seems to be quite a rebel. Here are my notes, anyway.

1. Regarding physics, the book contains multiple factual errors and features misuse of physics terminology. Let me list some of the errors and such misuses:

a)

Attempts to combine all forces in order to produce an underlying oneness – currently in vogue is string theory – require invoking at lest eight extra dimensions

I am afraid, it is “at least six”, not eight.

b)

…Z-point energy…

There is no such physical quantity as Z-point energy (and I am not sure how exactly this term was born by the Dr. Lanza’s conciousness), but from the context it is clear that he is talking about zero energy vacuum fluctuations (vacuum energy).

c)

…vacuum field…

There is no such thing as “vacuum field”. Generally, a field can be in the vacuum state or in an excited state. In other words, “vacuum” means a particular state of a quantum field (the state without particles).

etc. etc.

Finally, the word “ether” should actually be spelled “aether” (sorry for that, but facing with the same wrong spelling for the 6th time in the book is a bit annoying.)

2. Dr. Lanza really misses several important pieces of the overall puzzle such as

a) general relativity. Dr. Lanza mentions it a couple of times but never actually demonstrates his understanding of what he is talking about – actually, his physics discussions only include special relativity.
Einstein did not really stop after discovering special relativity in 1905, he has also discovered general relativity in 1915. In essence, general relativity explains what gravity really is – roughly speaking, it is a curvature of spacetime. Spacetime is dynamical since any matter (any non-zero mass/energy density) curves it – sources its curvature, as we say. I guess, Dr. Lanza could throw his argument “spacetime is not real” on the table in 1905, but not after 1915: it is actually possible to detect dynamics of spacetime – and the Nobel Prize 1993 in physics was awarded for exactly that (check out Google for details).

b) general relativity leads to several important conclusions such as, for example, existence of horizons (in cosmological context as well as for black holes). To put it brief, horizon essentially means that an infinite time is needed for a photon emitted inside horizon to reach the area outside it.

c) There is no problem with “coupling” special relativity with quantum mechanics – this is what quantum field theory does, the area of physics which took off back in 1950s. The real problem is to “couple” general relativity with quantum mechanics – that’s what the buzz is currently about in cutting edge physics (as it was for the last 50 years). I cannot believe that Dr. Lanza could have missed this.

d) In quantum mechanics experiments involving wavefunction collapse and EPR paradox information cannot be transferred. This is simple to understand, really. Surely, you know what’s the polarization of the photon far away if you measure the polarization of the entangled particle, but try inventing a way to exploit this knowledge – try to send some information via EPR.

e) decoherence. Actually, wavefunction collapse does not only happen if we, ourselves, try to detect the properties at a quantum object. It is enough if the quantum object interacts with another, nearly classical, object or – even better – with environment. For macroscopic objects, with sizes of the order the ones we are dealing with in our everyday’s life, decoherence time is shorter than sec. That’s why we are mostly dealing with classical objects in everyday’s life, and that’s why quantum mechanics was only discovered in 20th century. Whether you want it or not, you are sitting on a classical stool in front of a classical table.

g) a process of quantum measurement does not really have much to do with conscience. Canonically (in Heisenberg’s interpretation of quantum mechanics for example), any interaction of a quantum object with a classical device can be considered a “measurement”, since it leads to wavefunction collapse.

Probably, Dr. Lanza would be able to incorporate all these ideas into the version 2.0 of his book, so, I guess, there is really no point in criticizing his ideas this way. There is a much more important issue related to his constructions. Any theory can only be denoted as such if it has a predictive power, i.e., if it predicts something. I think, Dr. Lanza’s theory has a fatal flaw – it explains everything, but it does not really predict anything, and it is really impossible to come out with a physics experiment that would determine whether Dr. Lanza is right.

In this respect, his ideas are no better than any religion – which by the way also explains everything we see around us by stating that it was God’s Will for the world to look like we see it…

Instead of conclusion, let me strengthen Dr. Lanza’s arguments for the sake of fun

Of course, physicists won’t understand

Actually, I believe, I understood the idea quite well. Lanza’s point is that any measurement really includes a human factor, and no measurement device can be considered fully classical. If so, wave functions will never ultimately collapse – they will seemingly “collapse” only in our minds, simply because our perception of reality is not perfect (that is, not complete). This idea has its right to live, I guess, but the problem is that Dr. Lanza does not throw enough arguments on the table to support it. Ultimately, it means that he won’t be crucified for his work (and he seems to want it – as I would imply after reading one of his interviews). iInstead, most probably his work will be soon forgotten.

P.S. Dr. Lanza has a co-author, astronomer Bob Berman. I don’t mention him in this review since I was unable to determine what’s his particular contribution into the book – actually, I believe, would Dr. Berman even read the book, he would at least pick some of the errors and misunderstandings mentioned above and advice Dr. Lanza how to present his ideas more appropriately.

P.P.S. Yep, and about anthropic principle… you see, it is not really anthropic. The very same physical laws and values of physical constants are necessary to make a piece of rock – in this sense, you could denote the Anthropic Principle as the Lithic Principle (the first who made this observation – several decades ago – was actually Carl Sagan). At which point life “enters the equation” is really unknown.

Post from: NEQNET: Non-equilibrium Phenomena

Biocentrism: book review

We discriminate between the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects according to the value of the filling factor . The latter characterizes the many-particle wave function describing behaviour of electrons in the sample. effectively depends only on which Landau levels are filled and which – aren’t, i.e., on and ultimately on Landau levels themselves (that is, the value of magnetic field we apply to the sample).

Integer quantum Hall effect is the situation when is integer. It is fairly understood by using approximation of the weakly interacting electron gas in external magnetic field.

Fractional quantum Hall effect corresponds to the situation when is fractional The approximation of weakly interacting electron gas turns out to be inapplicable. Nevertheless, it seems to be possible to explicitly write down the many-body (multiparticle) wave function describing behavior of electrons in the sample, and one can somewhat understand its structure by visualizing collective excitations in the electronic liquid as electrons with quanta of magnetic flux attached to them (these excitations were denoted as anyons).

The logic of composite fermions proves to be possible to explain almost all FQHE states except the ones corresponding to filling factors with even denominator. The state is of especial interest for a theorist – as it seems, it corresponds to non-abelian anyons.

Although this is pretty much all we currently know about quantum Hall effect in a nutshell, my discussion of it wasn’t terribly deep. If you are a graduate student eager to explain the nature of mysterious FQHE state, reading my blog posts won’t probably be enough for you to start working on the problem.

What will be enough? As you may imagine, enough will be if you read a nice textbook on the subject. Some weeks ago, I have put a hand on such a textbook and wanted to share my experience with you. The book I am talking about is the one by Daijiro Yoshioka, called “The quantum Hall effect“.

The book is simply great and really stands separately from other text books on the quantum Hall effect. Why do I think so? First of all, it contains everything you need to know about QHE. Second, it is good for a student – because the author cared to add exercises after every Section, and there is no better way to get some understanding of the subject than solving a couple of nice related problems. Last but not least – it is short (!), that is – readable. You’ll need a week/couple of them to go through it (especially if you already know quantum mechanics), and you are on the train. Even if you decide to postpone solving puzzle , you can be sure that you’ll know enough to talk to experts about quantum Hall effect and don’t seem to be ignorant outsider to them

Let me go quickly through the book. Yoshioka starts explaining what are the systems where and what are the conditions under which the quantum Hall effect effect can be observed (as well as how it was originally discovered).

Then, he explains all relevant quantum mechanics you need to know (and even has a short introduction into Anderson localization which is a fascinating topic by itself).

Of course, he explains integer quantum Hall effect in details, but discussion of the fractional Hall effect is where the book really shines (he extensively discusses the Laughlin’s variational method – one of the best and clearest explanations why it works – and composite fermions).

Finally, he even talks about and states – not bad for the basic level textbook on the quantum Hall effect!

Well, anyway, to conclude – I’ve read it and have found that it was a great investment of time. It also gave me a lot of fun.

Cheers.

Post from: NEQNET: Non-equilibrium Phenomena

228. Book review: D. Yoshioka. The quantum Hall effect