Volume 2, Issue 1, pages 17-31
W. M. Stuckey [Show Biography], Michael Silberstein [Show Biography] and Timothy McDevitt [Show Biography]
Mark Stuckey is a Professor of Physics at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, USA. His PhD thesis was in relativistic cosmology from the University of Cincinnati working for Louis Witten in 1987. His work in relativistic cosmology contributed to a movement to correct misconceptions in the mass media and introductory astronomy textbooks about Big Bang cosmology. In 1994 he started study in foundations of physics with the goal of interpreting quantum mechanics in order to develop a new approach to fundamental physics. In 2005, he and a colleague in philosophy of science (Prof. Silberstein) achieved the first part of that goal by creating the Relational Blockworld (RBW) interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 2009, a colleague in mathematics (Prof. McDevitt) joined the collaboration and helped bring the goal to fruition with the development of an RBW approach to quantum gravity and the unification of physics based on modified lattice gauge theory. In 2012, the corresponding modification to Regge calculus in Einstein-deSitter cosmology was used to fit the Union2 Compilation supernova data as well as LambdaCDM without accelerating expansion, dark energy, or a cosmological constant. In 2015, RBW and its associated new approach to fundamental physics are well-developed and being brought to bear on the dark matter problem.
Michael David Silberstein is a Full Professor of Philosophy at Elizabethtown College, a founding member of the Cognitive Science program and permanent Adjunct in the Philosophy Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is also a faculty member in the Foundations of Physics Program and a Fellow on the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences. His primary research interests are foundations of physics, foundations of cognitive science and foundations of complexity theory respectively. He is especially interested in how these branches of philosophy and science bear on more general questions of reduction, emergence and explanation. In 2005, he and a colleague in physics (Prof. Stuckey) created the Relational Blockworld (RBW) interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 2009, a colleague in mathematics (Prof. McDevitt) joined the collaboration and helped bring to fruition the development of an RBW approach to quantum gravity and the unification of physics based on modified lattice gauge theory. In 2012, the corresponding modification to Regge calculus in Einstein-deSitter cosmology was used to fit the Union2 Compilation supernova data as well as LambdaCDM without accelerating expansion, dark energy, or a cosmological constant. In 2015, RBW and its associated new approach to fundamental physics is being brought to bear on the dark matter problem.
Tim McDevitt is Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Elizabethtown College. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1996 at the University of Virginia and has spent significant time working both in and outside of academia. He has been at Elizabethown College since 2005 and he enjoys engaging in interdisciplinary research with colleagues in other disciplines.
In a July 2014 Nature Communications paper, Denkmayr et al. claim to have instantiated the so-called quantum Cheshire Cat experiment using neutron interferometry. Crucial to this claim are the weak values which must imply the quantum Cheshire Cat interpretation, i.e., “the neutron and its spin are spatially separated” in their experiment. While they measured the correct weak values for the quantum Cheshire Cat interpretation, the corresponding implications do not obtain because, as we show, those weak values were measured with both a quadratic and a linear magnetic field Bz interaction. We show explicitly how those weak values imply quantum Cheshire Cat if the Bz interaction is linear and then we show how the quadratic Bz interaction destroys the quantum Cheshire Cat implications of those weak values. Since both linear and quadratic Bz interactions contribute equally to the neutron intensity in this experiment, the deviant weak value implications are unavoidable. Because weak values were used successfully to compute neutron intensities for weak Bz in this experiment, it is clearly the case that one cannot make ontological inferences from weak values without taking into account the corresponding interaction strength.
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