"Knowing the path is not the same as walking it," said Morpheus to Neo.
Peter Higgs didn't know he was going to discover a particle. ​Now that he has, Higg's Wiki entry describes the history thus:
Higgs proposed that broken symmetry could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, proposed by several physicists besides Higgs at about the same time, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, detection of which became one of the great goals of physics.[8  

The 'Higgs mechanism' turns out to be the breakage of symmetry in the electroweak field. You'll know from my writings that I'm no fan of symmetry, and agree strongly with Frank Close in this regard (Lucifer's Legacy - a great read). SUSY seemed to me to have too many scientists up her skirts and not enough brains to see what was really going on.
This mechanism exists as a field, where asymmetry rules ok, enabling mass to have a place in a scheme where the maths says mass shouldn't be. Again from Wiki (love or hate this really useful reference point): 
​A key feature of the necessary field is that it would take less energy for the field to have a non-zero value than a zero value, unlike all other known fields, therefore, the Higgs field has a non-zero value (or vacuum expectation) everywhere.

Over at Quantumology's Facebook group, live discussions are going into the mix so that we can look at these anomalies more deeply. Physicists are there, along with those who've never been a physicist, and some who never wanted to. Everyone is on the same quest - to dig into these questions deeply enough to find some serious answers surfacing from the digging. Come and check out the excavations!
Live Videos every Monday at 6.00pm GMT

Here I must confess that I've only just looked into this one. Recently it seemed to pop up all over the place with that demanding gesture that science seems often to flourish, proclaiming there's something in there worth knowing. So having stumbled across the Scholarpedia entry, which makes for a lot of reading but seems to be worthwhile (all quotes bar the first one are from there), the basics of Bell's Theorem come to an unusual kind of light. 

A lot of things, it seems. There are variables, hidden variables and invariables in quantum mechanics, tricky even for Einstein to pin down. John Bell was intrigued - possibly even annoyed by - hidden variables, and probed deBroglie/Bohm's pilot wave theory for answers. From Wikipedia : "The many-particle case shows mathematically that the energy dissipation in inelastic scattering could be distributed to the surrounding field structure by a yet-unknown mechanism of the theory of hidden variables." And Wiki goes on to say, "For a hidden-variable theory, if Bell's conditions are correct, the results that agree with quantum mechanical theory appear to indicate superluminal(faster-than-light) effects, in contradiction to relativistic physics."!

The problem Bell turned into a theory was published late in the day for particle physics, in 1964; you'll see in the story why it is that science gets itself tangled up in the maths, why scientists find it so hard to step away from conventionally accepted principles, and why nonlocality has proved to be such a pain in the ass. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen conspired to quash nonlocal phenomena in the 1930s giving rise to what's now known as the EPR Paradox. Rants raged.

Bell's Theorem means that everything gets to be non-local. No exceptions. Except for the exception in real life, when we get to experience direct contact with those furnishings and beings in our immediate spacetime. Even then, though, we still may be left with room for doubt - doubt which Einstein famously disliked. For something to exist and be nonlocal, it has to be a beable, which I read to rhyme with 'beagle' for a while, and to be a beable means it is able to be present in a version of observable reality. Being Beable is also dependent, with some deference to the Uncertainty Principle, on asymmetry - inequalities, in other words - which leans heavily towards the argument for uniqueness being underpinned by the U.P..

Nevertheless the Theorem can't go so far as to account for a Multiverse, where any version of anything that's possible can theoretically exist at the same point in Bulk spacetime, so Multiverses are mentioned only in post-published despatches. Bell seems to have concentrated on the observer-subject paradox and the problem of disentangling apparatus from particles subjected to experiment. That this problem exists at all is hugely elucidating, for how therefore do we disentangle ourselves from the everyday situations and relationships we face? Can we? Or can we not?

The Scholarship study from which most information has been taken for this post comments on the Multiverse as follows: 
A formulation of a version of the many-worlds interpretation which includes, in addition to the wave function, some local beables, was presented in a recent paper, but it was found by the authors to be non-local. The question of whether a many-worlds (or relational) approach can be taken advantage of to create a local (and empirically viable) theory thus remains open — as does the question of how seriously one should take a theory of this type, should it be successfully constructed. ​For prediction regarding the likely outcome of such a theory being proposed, see below*.

Bell's Theorem itself sets up a paradox, for in defending nonlocality it also insists on locality being a fundamental necessity and true to our observation of reality, it is. To cover this, there exists a "no-conspiracy assumption", described thus: "The "no conspiracy" assumption... is strictly speaking just that — an additional assumption (beyond locality) on which the derivation of Bell-type inequalities rests."

So then we have inequalities setting up our version of spacetime: "...the crucial assumption from which one can derive various empirically-testable Bell-type inequalities is locality. (Bell sometimes also used the term local causality instead of locality). Bell explained the "principle of local causality" as follows:
The direct causes (and effects) of events are near by, and even the indirect causes (and effects) are no further away than permitted by the velocity of light, In relativistic terms, locality is the requirement that goings-on in one region of spacetime should not affect — should not influence — happenings in space-like separated regions."

But they do, influence that is, and we see evidence of this all the time in our relationships with people, situations, opportunities and random events. We experience synchronicity because of this influence, and know instinctively that a Thing in one region of spacetime can have a direct - nonlocal - effect on anOther. For these, and other reasons, we cannot definitively dismiss an integration of quantum mechanics into classical physics as being a sound, affordable probability.

Bell has contributed, as much as anyone in the quantum field, to the belief that reality is a flexible commodity. That he avoids Everett in his interpretations is perhaps unsurprising but that leap of faith is waiting to be made by someone else, unafraid to face the *Ninja gauntlet of fierce opposition* that would undoubtedly ensue. Meanwhile, what his Theorem can do for us is to shore up the certainty that we do have an effect, no matter what we do, on the world at large, and since we have no idea what may come from those effects, we might as well trust that all is ​as it's meant to be, and get on with the Purpose, whatever that is.

The Speed of Light - it's everywhere. Constantly in-your-face, it's the speed limit nothing can break, it's a measurement of spacetime, and it's something that photons themselves don't experience at all. Check out this article from 2014 in Phys.org - to quote author Fraser Cain:
 According to relativity, mass can never move through the Universe at light speed. Mass will increase to infinity, and the amount of energy required to move it any faster will also be infinite. But for light itself, which is already moving at light speed… You guessed it, the photons reach zero distance and zero time.
Note the words "according to relativity". Relativity doesn't help anyone get rid of those pesky infinities that keep turning up in quantum calculations. Relativity says that wherever or whatever you are, you're relative to something. And in the quantum world, the most significant relationship relating to reality is that of the observer with the subject. 

​Time has a special relationship with light. For brief elucidation on that relationship, see this article on space-time. And for more fun with Infinity, see here. If you type "infinity in quantum equations" into your search engine, you'll find lots of scientists claiming lots of different things, including the option that infinity doesn't exist.

One day, there's going to be a revelation. A big announcement to tell us that the Solar System has been expanding, along with the rest of the Universe, all these billions of years and that Mars was here before us. There was life on Mars, they'll say with all the conviction of the deeply shocked, when Mars was here in the Goldilocks Zone, which of course it isn't now, and never can be again, its time here in Fairytale Land past and gone, dust to red dust.

We're going to learn that Venus is next in the procession of precessions and will arrive in the Goldilocks Zone we now inhabit in roughly six billion year's time, with luck before the Sun loses its capacity to sustain life and in good time to make the most of all that methane churning around. Venus is literally a fire of storms, a methane melting pot of global proportions - that's why it flashes different colours in the night sky.

Of course, such an announcement would put deep dents in certain belief systems and rock boats in powerful waters, so no need to hold our breath - it might never happen, not in our lifetime. For planets to pass through Goldilocks Zones and enjoy a few millennia of life-bearing idyll would mean most (if not all) solar systems spawn life at some point, so there'd be nothing unique about us at all, except perhaps our quaint take on the laws of physics - adhesion to the Standard Model plus Planck constraints and light-speed busily limiting potential for advances of mind.

A vacation in the Goldilocks Zone may be relatively short-lived, and if we don't use our time well, well, we've wasted it.

This place where dreams are made of, 93,000,000 miles from the Sun, is a bit of an enigma. You won't find NASA being pinned down to a distance definition. On Quora, the fuller answers are a bit baffling but there's a general consensus that it stretches between Venus and Mars. Wikipedia is a bit more helpful. Whatever the case, we don't need to worry about it. Porridge will still be porridge. The question of when the porridge arrives given the options of a 5D continuum is much more relevant than whether it's real or not. Knowing how to live life in the Multiverse must surely be a valuable tool to have, and let's face it, we're all trying to free ourselves of something.

Coincidentally, the Moon is exactly the right size to afford a total eclipse. Exactly the right size. Given a 92,466,000 mile gap between Moon and Sun, that's a pretty neat trick of relativity. All the possible options in the Universe - we get landed with that one. Hail Griffin, he showed us all the way, and did we listen?
Are we not listening still?
Perhaps we never will.

There will be scientists visiting (thank you for coming ^) putting all this down as Woo, incurable sockpuppetry, charlatanism and all kinds of other isms in fear and trepidation of answering difficult questions. Maths doesn't cut it all the time, it's great in a Pi but put maths into quantum porridge and it's going to be lumpy, as you've all proven beyond doubt to everyone including yourselves. Some scientists might feel a bit sick at having some non-scientist sticking their nose into dimensions that don't concern them, but that's only because they're afraid of having to visibly think hard, dump the sums and not know the answer immediately. No self-respecting scientist betrays the mathematical grail in front of others.

Our place in the Multiverse is of humongous importance, and proportionally the greatest riddle we may ever have to solve. How we improve relations with our planetary cohabitants and what comes of understanding how to handle our reality better is anybody's guess, but for sure, only physics can lead the way. Even if it is only our physics, unlike anyone else's - out there where we don't dare go yet there may be all kinds of other physics waiting to get heads around. However many heads you might have. Handy to have three if you want to save time tasting things. 

UPDATE 2020
Quantumology's Facebook group now hosts Live Videos - join now to take part in the discussions!

Scientists say the Uncertainty Principle is simply a case of not being able to take two measurements at the same time. Brian Cox called anyone who thought differently a "purveyor of tripe" and many other orthodox positivists would say the same.

If you really think the fact that we are all unique, every grain of sand and snowflake is unique but it can't have anything to do with Uncertainty, I'd venture to say you were wrong, and Heisenberg might even agree. 

Image credit: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-multiverses-measure-problem-20141103/

​Electrons are fuzzy things, not pinpointable because they don't really live like that - they zing their way round and through several dimensions at once and somehow land up here long enough to fend off the pesky Positrons. So not being able to pin down an electron, which is where this whole uncertainty-principle thing first started, is one thing. Not being able to pin down anything at all is more like it.
​

There's talk about ever-decreasing circles when things get worse on repetition; they made a TV show about it in the Eighties. Does that mean our discourse follows ever-increasing circles when things get better? I've had a few scenarios shadow me through life that I'm clearly supposed to learn from, and right now I'm studying geometry in the context of application to such things as sunflowers.
The Fibonacci sequence, being what you'd call 'irrational', is there in nature at every turn, from shells to pine cones, with the ratio between the numbers of the sequence being known as the Golden Ratio, being represented by the Greek letter Phi, and being everywhere we look. 

On the trail of evidence for natural geometry, it came to my attention on looking for examples of irrational numbers that (coincidentally or otherwise) Schroedinger's Wave Equation is also represented by the Greek letter Phi; in Comments to the link attached, you'll find Jonathan noting that It is commonly believed that waves make up the sub-atomic particles which may be the reason why Schroedinger (or someone) chose it to apply to quantum field theory. However, as evidenced by the Wiki entry here on what's called the 'Schroedinger functional', anything that doesn't readily lend itself to renormalisation is still finding it hard to be fashionable.

Schroedinger devoted himself largely to causality and chance (or lack of it) in natural law, and a comprehensive precis of his thought process can be read here. His dwelling on such matters led him to create a wave equation which smoothly evolves through time, just as the Fibonacci sequence smoothly evolves the growth and development of natural things like thistles, roses, and spiral galaxies. The unpopularity of Schroedinger's wave equation in preference to something that can be algebraically calculated in avoidance of those pesky infinities (noting that in Wiki's Fock space definition the author doesn't even mention Schroedinger) says a lot about the mind set still prevalent in quantum mechanical fields, and not a lot about the logic of applying schemes universally adopted by Nature to the quantum paradoxes pondered upon by Man. Men, then. Usually, anyway.

What does this mean for us? That depends on your intuitive relationship with coincidence, or any leaning you have towards synchronicity being circumstantial evidence for powers greater than our own. Fibonacci, Schroedinger and other minds of historical note have been pondering and surmising on the underlying laws of nature for a long time now, and with quantum mechanics at the front of our potentials for New Physics, there's no time like the present for linking the facts as they stand with the fortunes inherent in our own world-line. Time is in reality a far cry from the lineage of onward-marching arrows we mistook for something other than entropy - the wave form we ride may well perpetuate in resonance to the Fibonacci sequence and be dancing merrily to Schroedinger's tune. Would this make sense of life's events coming back to haunt us from time to time? Could it be that what we are given (to experience) and what we learn as a result are in keeping with a pattern at the baseline of creation? For it seems to me that every time we dovetail a piece of life's puzzle with a quantum mechanical principle, we come up with freedoms of infinite probability and an allowance in the small print to accept things as they are, no need to struggle against What Is. Life is hard enough without taking the full weight of its variables on our own shoulders. Some things, they say, are meant to be. Why stop at Some, when the irrationality of All is so evidently preferred by Nature?

Bias being a tendency to shift current in a certain direction electronically, or for fabric to lie in a certain way haberdasherally, in terms of human relations it's described by the online dictionary as, "inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair." An overview of bias and how it becomes embedded lies behind the picture looking suspiciously like a Fibonnaci spiral.
When it comes to science, and quantum physics in particular, we have a situation wherein one group of people (those who write and understand equations, let's call them the EQ) are biased against another group of people (those who neither write nor understand equations, the Non-EQ) resulting in a seemingly unfair tendency for the EQ to dismiss the thought processes and ideas of the Non-EQ based on inability to do maths. As someone who only knows their native language might find themselves dismissed by someone who doesn't speak it. Bias can produce dark dangers of its own.

The EQ argument goes that an argument must be logical, empirical, and mathematically sound before it can even be a point worth making. Logic is mathematical, logic circuitry methodical, as in semiconductors. Now that quantum computers have flown into orbit, classical logic gates now have quantum counterparts, only a quantum logic gate is not restricted to 1 or 0, but has free rein in superposition, and a quantum computer can even produce entangled states. Reading a popular entry on their measurement, the author says that, "This type of value-assignment in theory occurs instantaneously over any distance and this has as of 2018 been experimentally verified for distances of up to 1200 kilometers.[8][9] That the phenomena appears to violate the speed of light is called the EPR paradox and it is an open question in physics how to resolve this. Originally it was solved by giving up the assumption of local realism, but other interpretations have also emerged." 

Other interpretations? Follow the link and you will find it most elucidating, citing as it does seven challenges to scientific interpretation of quantum mechanics, boiling down to the fact that you can't really measure the immeasurable. Oxford Physics lab is making a fair feast of efforts in researching new technologies, though, as linked behind their picture. But we still find that, fundamentally, mathematics doesn't cut it when it comes to quanta, for the world as seen from a quantum perspective doesn't conform to classical physics, and never has, which is why it's always been a problem that can never go away.

Seasons don't go away either. As we get older, we see more patterns in the changing year, we know when a season comes early or late, we sense the shift from summer to autumn, winter to spring. We observe environmental alterations, such as loss of wildlife and climactic warming. We don't need to apply these things to mathematical formulas to know and accept that they are there. So why is the bedrock of our existence so apparently dependent on calculus for its definition?

"There's nothing logical about magic," someone recently said to me. Yet the odds against our lives existing at all are somewhat other-worldly, and not just in the probability of being resident in a Goldilocks Zone. The chance of a universe setting up its construct to support life as we know it in the first place is apparently unfathomably unlikely. Logically we could argue that it's illogical that we are here. But the earthbound mind that cannot bring down an ethereal argument into an empirical formula collapses its packet into What Is, to question it not, or at least no further than necessary in order to make the maths work. Infinity will always be a problem underpinning quantum processes, which is why an EQ has to resort to renormalisation as frowned at by Feynman, who called it "dippy", even though his diagrams are all over it, and if you want to know about renormalisation this insight from Physics Forums as probably as good as it gets.

With issues like infinity, non-local entanglement (which laughs at the 'constant' of light speed), uncertainty (preventing true measurements of anything on the move), and superposition (the two [or more, depending on how finite things are] states that anything is in at any given time) struggling with duality (you're made of particles right now, but aren't you a wave form when you're not looking?)... well, the constraints on which maths so fervently relies don't look very solid from where I'm standing. I don't have the answers, I just think about this stuff, a lot... as you can tell, it's been a few years now and the bias against free thought is still rigorously maintained, its only defence seemingly being as someone commented at me, "there's no language other than math," not that such an argument sounds very logical, but then, am I missing something?

Entanglement is no new kid on the block but it hasn't said much yet, other than through Einstein. LiveScience gives the run-down behind the spooky image here.
The trouble with this phenomenon is that it doesn't have a relationship with time. Entanglement is an instantaneous, simultaneous response to stimuli shared between two particles (or two bodies of material, for it's being shown to occur in larger things than first thought) irrespective of distance. And that causes a few headaches with the equations.

Last month the first-ever photograph of an entangled photon pair was promoted as a herald to new types of technology. You can read the review from Science Alert behind the picture of said pair.
​The big question is, how does anything get entangled in the first place? Is there a definitive point at which things are entangled, or is it a case, being devoid of any conditional time measurement, that entanglement occurs in advance of its physical evidence? Are these photons (and all other entangled things) destined to be cleaved together and subsequently find each other so paired? Could entanglement, per se, be a real-life physics love story? This is not such a stupid question. For people get entangled just as particles do. Love can lead us a merry dance for a lifetime, and when it does, there's nothing you can do about it.

When you've experienced entanglement.... you know when you've been Tangled. A study on the effects of consciousness applied to entanglement is previewed behind this beautiful image of tangled balance. On the understanding that the phenomenon is not confined to subatomics, but applies on the grander scale of Everything, the job at hand would seem to be to get the symmetry of our entanglements right, which is a bit of a tough call when you consider the flotsam our minds have to deal with in everyday living. Photons might not have much to think about in the course of their lives, but they live beyond time, without considering matters of constraint, and they continually give themselves up and pull themselves back to freedom in their eternal dance with electrons. Is that so very different from the relationships we have with those people to whom we would consider ourselves most entangled? Probably not. The matter of life after matter is another topic for hot debate, but  photons can speak for themselves. 

Personally I don't see the Entanglement conundrum going underground any time soon. In fact we could be right on the cusp of New Physics, a revolutionary era mooted by the latest generation of scientific thinkers who are quietly considering the implications of oscillation as we speak. While academics seek holy grails among darknesses in the universal soup, entanglement could come to mean more than the sum of spacetime. It could mean the beginning of the end for the Standard Model. About time too.

Much is being made of Time at the moment, as the idea of retrocausality takes hold and quantum computers take steps closer to reality. Those now-familiar Advanced and Retarded waves are crashing together in a sea of Presents while we bob along our personal time tunnel blind to the future, tied to the past, doing our best to make life work. Meanwhile, science hears calls to relax its grip on the oars of positivism, the swell of social tide lending weight to the metaphysical in time for religion and politics to reveal certain unpalatable truths.

This era, the likes of which have not been seen in our lifetime, stands to carve the last of our testaments on the planet, for Fermi's Paradox has caught us up. Money has us cornered and there is nowhere to run, save into its clutches or away from civilization, as a hunted animal must face its fate or disappear from its tormentors.  

Personally I've just had a run-in with Time - read about it here. This experience adds to the stack of events on my world line demonstrating metaphysics first-hand, and I'll not be alone among the myriad of people caught by similar happenstance, some of whom report their encounters on social media while most in probability keep it to themselves. Clarion or sentinel, the feeling grows that we're on the edge, something has to break and we are part of that something, waiting, watching, longing to dance, fearing the fall but knowing we're going anyway, maybe to be the last of our kind.

"Now a new revolution is on the verge of answering that question, based on insights from the other great physics surprise of the last century: quantum mechanics. Today’s revolution offers the potential for yet another rewrite of space-time’s résumé, with the bonus of perhaps explaining why quantum mechanics seems so weird." quantum mechanics seems so Read the full story where the world falls into a black hole.

When you thought Time couldn't get any weirder beyond the idea of past and future co-existing and imparting equal influence on the present, you now have to consider entangled time, where the presents of aeons long past are meeting those existing now, time after time, if you like, a swathe of light cones promising that, just as suspected, everything under the sun has been done; we relive a turmoil of past and futures no market could ever hope to harvest. 

Behind the man walking the invisible bridge you'll find more elucudation on entangled time. Fair enough, methinks, that spooky actions at a distance should prove as omnipotent as the Uncertainty Principle, waving from the rafters where none have gone before save those who've already crossed the great divide - colonists not remotely concerned with the Kardashev scale who've already made the jump to zero-point would know better than to interfere with the likes of us. We're still busy crossing the sea of Time as we know it, from life as we know it to something else, something more or something less, a classic case of relativity in juxtaposition.

Independence in the Universe is eloquently captured by this Royal Society article whose author has entangled the nature of non-locality with our relative position in spacetime. We're alone in our motion through systems of life, even if the fusion of quantum-mechanical states ensures we're all in this together. We have to work hard to get our own handle on our version of What Is with the tools at our disposal, reliant on science to hand us the subtle knives sharp and ready for use, as essential staff would serve the surgeon while he works, oblivious of the moral implications, on a detail salvaging more than the sum of the parts on which he operates. The collective seeks a positive outcome, as the surgeon seeks to save life, and there is no going back to the innocent oblivion from whence we came, there is only the certainty of entropy to insist we stay true to the forward track. I'll join you there - love you being here, for we are legion if there is only one of us.

​Fermi's Paradox suggests the death of civilizations is a commonplace event. There are no civilizations left alive in the Local Fluff close enough for us to find or communicate with, but there are probably billions gone before in their Goldilocks Zones, and billions to come ad infinitum. We're still wondering about the infinity of the Universe and we might well wonder forever more. 

Fermi's contribution to the world of quantum mechanics is vast, but his input to the paradox bearing his name is slight. It's said that he engaged in a conversation in the summer of 1950. Michael Hart put the idea to paper in 1975 that civilizations reach a point of singularity wherein they self-destruct, so the chances of two civilizations of similar technological advancement existing in the same galactic neighbourhood are too slim to be potentially possible.

We can clearly see we're careering towards such a singularity, ourselves, on this planet - the unstoppable race towards Doomsday not slowing up any time soon, about to cross the inescapable line with you and me as bystanders, watching it happen in slow motion, like the spagettification of a lifetime into the last dense drop of quark-gluon plasma a Singularity has to become before... before the laws of physics break down and we don't know what happens next.

Yet even Royalty has no advantage in pulling the stops on the system of self-destruct, because we are effectively in our own black hole in spacetime, from a ‘consciousness' point of view - there will be little left of what we know when that point is reached. Meantime, we've got to go through spaghettification which could mean anything to us in relative terms, since inside the event horizon time passes just the same as it always has, relatively speaking. Only the observer sees you locked in a warp of infinity. The same infinity that scientists try all the time to get rid of. Anyone noticed time speeding up?

Here we are then, merry observant spaghettifees watching renormalised disaster strike from all sides and helpless to do anything about it. Except think. We can think all we want, intelligent beings that can comprehend a Universe. Think ourselves into being a bit more double-slit, where choices are made in advance of probability and wave forms can take you for a different kind of ride. ​​