What is a field, really?

Question

There was a reason why I constantly failed physics at school and university, and that reason was, apart from the fact I was immensely lazy, that I mentally refused to "believe" more advanced stuff until I understand the fundamentals (which I, eventually, never did).

As such, one of the most fundamental things in physics that I still don't understand (a year after dropping out from the university) is the concept of field. No one cared to explain what a field actually is, they just used to throw in a bunch of formulas and everyone was content. The school textbook definition for a field (electromagnetic in this particular case, but they were similar), as I remember it, goes like:

An electromagnetic field is a special kind of substance by which charged moving particles or physical bodies with a magnetic moment interact.

A special kind of substance, are they for real? This sounds like the authors themselves didn't quite understand what a field is so they decided to throw in a bunch of buzzwords to make it sounds right. I'm fine with the second half but a special kind of substance really bugs me, so I'd like to focus on that.

Is a field material?

Apparently, it isn't. It doesn't consist of particles like my laptop or even the light.

If it isn't material, is it real or is it just a concept that helps to explain our observations? While this is prone to speculations, I think we can agree that in scope of this discussion particles actually do exist and laws of physics don't (the latter are nothing but human ideas so I suspect Universe doesn't "know" a thing about them, at least if we're talking raw matter and don't take it on metalevel where human knowledge, being a part of the Universe, makes the Universe contain laws of physics). Any laws are only a product of human thinking while the stars are likely to exist without us homo sapiens messing around. Or am I wrong here too? I hope you already see why I hate physics.

Is a field not material but still real?

Can something "not touchable" by definition be considered part of our Universe by physicists? I used to imagine that a "snapshot" of our Universe in time would contain information about each particle and its position, and this would've been enough to "deseralize" it but I guess my programmer metaphors are largely off the track. (Oh, and I know that the uncertainty principle makes such (de)serialization impossible — I only mean that I thought the Universe can be "defined" as the set of all material objects in it). Is such assumption false?

At this point, if fields indeed are not material but are part of the Universe, I don't really see how they are different from the whole Hindu pantheon except for perhaps a more geeky flavor.

When I talked about this with the teacher who helped me to prepare for the exams (which I did pass, by the way, it was before I dropped out), she said to me that, if I wanted hardcore definitions,

a field is a function that returns a value for a point in space.

Now this finally makes a hell lot of sense to me but I still don't understand how mathematical functions can be a part of the Universe and shape the reality.

Answer 1

I'm going to go with a programmer metaphor for you.

• The mathematics (including "A field is a function that returns a value for a point in space") are the interface: they define for you exactly what you can expect from this object.

• The "what is it, really, when you get right down to it" is the implementation. Formally you don't care how it is implemented.

  In the case of fields they are not matter (and I consider "substance" an unfortunate word to use in a definition, even though I am hard pressed to offer a better one) but they are part of the universe and they are part of physics.

  What they are is the aggregate effect of the exchange of virtual particles governed by a quantum field theory (in the case of E&M) or the effect of the curvature of space-time (in the case of gravity, and stay tuned to learn how this can be made to get along with quantum mechanics at the very small scale...).

  Alas I can't define how these things work unless you simply accept that fields do what the interface says and then study hard for a few years.

Now, it is very easy to get hung up on this "Is it real or not" thing, and most people do for at least a while, but please just put it aside. When you peer really hard into the depth of the theory, it turns out that it is hard to say for sure that stuff is "stuff". It is tempting to suggest that having a non-zero value of mass defines "stuffness", but then how do you deal with the photo-electric effect (which makes a pretty good argument that light comes in packets that have enough "stuffness" to bounce electrons around)? All the properties that you associate with stuff are actually explainable in terms of electro-magnetic fields and mass (which in GR is described by a component of a tensor field!). And round and round we go.

Answer 2

You say:

she said to me that, if I wanted hardcore definitions,

a field is a function that returns a value for a point in space.

Now this finally makes a hell lot of sense to me but I still don't understand how mathematical functions can be a part of the Universe and shape the reality.

You don't have to use super-complicated examples such as electromagnetism. I'll give you two examples which I hope will make it more clear; let me know if this helps.

Example 1: Temperature

You might have come across that the higher you climb (on Earth or somewhere else, but let's think of Earth) the colder the air gets, at an typical rate of about 6ºC per kilometer (it depends on various factors, but this is a ballpark value); in meteorology, this is known as the lapse rate: the rate of temperature drop with altitude.

Now suppose you're observing a large, uniform terrain (e.g. a "flat desert"). If you want to ask:

What is the temperature of the air at a point $(x,y,z)$?

then you'll ascribe a certain value of temperature for each point. But to make a "table" to give the temperature for every point is certainly impractical! You try instead to use a function, an application, that gives the value of the temperature for each point: $$ f : (x,y,z) \mapsto f(x,y,z) $$ I'll use a clearer nomenclature: $$ T : (x,y,z) \mapsto T(x,y,z) $$ So this is a function with arguments in a $\mathcal{R}^3$ space (three-dimensional space, $\mathcal{R}\times\mathcal{R}\times\mathcal{R}$) which gives values in a 1-dimensional $\mathcal{R}$ space. Those values represent the values of the temperature at each coordinate $(x,y,z)$ of $\mathcal{R}^3$. Instead of writing $T(x,y,z)$ you can be more "practical" and write just $T$ as shorthand (especially when you're some calculus in an exercise).

That function represents a field -- the temperature field.

"But what's the use of that?!"

What does it look like? If you have the ideal case of a perfectly flat "desert" and an idealized atmosphere, the temperature field will be something like: $$ T(x,y,z) = T(x,y,z_0) - \frac{dT}{dz} (z-z_0) $$ Some notes:

1. In this situation, the temperature only varies in the vertical; it looks the same at any place over the desert -- there is really no depedence in the coordinates $x$ and $y$. Because of that you could make it easier for you and shorten the expression to just $T(z) = T(z-z_0) - dT/dz$.
2. In case you don't know/forgot: $dT$ is how much the temperature $T$ varies when you increase your height by a small (infinitesimal!) amount $dz$.
3. Don't worry about the minus sign next to the rate. It's put there by hand to have the expected physical meaning. When you go from a height level $z$ to $z+dz$, the temperature should decrease, from $T$ to $T-dT$ where $-dT < 0$, so that $-dT/dz$ is negative (it "takes away" from the temperature as you increase the altitude $z$). Example: from $z=1000$ to $z+dz = 1001$, the temperature should drop from $T$ to $T-0.006$ where $T$ is the temperature at level $z=1000$. Of course, that small value is because $0.006/(1001-1000) = dT/(dz+z-z) = dT/dz = 6$ Celsius per km.
4. I've intentionally abused the expression above to make it easier to understand. A more appropriate expression would be (if you've studied "integrals" in calculus) something like $$T(x,y,z) = T(x,y,z_0) - \int\limits_{z_0}^z \frac{dT}{dz} dz\ .$$

You have to give the temperature at a certain level $z_0$ of your choice to represent a specific case; it can be at the surface, $z_0 = 0\ \mathrm{meters}$. That function you have there represents the temperature field for that situation. If you have a "hot spot" -- e.g. you light up a candle -- then the temperature distribution (the field!) will be different, and the mathematical expression to describe the temperature field will be different (more complicated).

So this temperature field describes what is the temperature over that "desert air". It represents a quantity which has a spatial distribution. You can make it much more shorthanded if you just ignore the frontier condition $T(z_0)$ at a certain vertical level $z_0$ (which is arbitrary!) and write the field as $$-\frac{dT}{dz}\ .$$

Example 2: Wind velocity

The example above illustrates a scalar field: the value of the field at each space point takes a scalar value ("just a number"). Not all fields are scalar. An example is the velocity field, which represents the velocity (direction and magnitude!) of the air at each point.

You can write it as $$\vec v : (x,y,z) \mapsto \vec v(x,y,z)$$ and for each point $(x,y,z)$ it describes what is the direction and magnitude of the air displacement at that point, the vector $\vec v$ at that point.

What does it look like?

(The mathematical expression?) Well, it will depend on the situation of course! The expression can be impossibly complicated to write analytically. You certainly won't write the velocity field (or the temperature field) for the air inside your living room -- it's too complicated to write a mathematical expression! The best you can do is

1. Know a few laws or expressions or (more correctly) models, perhaps deduced from first principles, to describe how the conditions of a tiny piece of air will be influenced by the conditions of the neighbouring regions. Those models can be very simple or more elaborate; in the latter for meteorology, you just use computers to do the complicated ballance for each and every "air cell". In the example 1 with the temperature above, there is no horizontal dependence, but the rate at which the temperature varies vertically depends on the temperature, pressure, etc on top of the "tiny air box/cell/element" and on the bottom -- those are the ones who produce an effect.

2. Make some simplifications about the initial conditions, such as knowing what is the temperature along the walls and assuming (for example) there aren't "hot spots" or if there are, they're too insignificant to spot the difference against the situation where there aren't hot spots.

Example 3: the electromagnetic field

When you put an electrically-charged tiny particle (test particle) near a metalic plate (for example) that has an electric charge itself (like the plate of a large capacitator, for example), in the most general and broad case the force that the particle will feel will depend on where the particle is relative to the charged plate.

The force the test particle feels has a magnitude as well as a direction. If you put the test particle in another position, if will feel the force with a different intensity and direction.

You could put the test particle in many different places around the plate and measure the electric force felt by the test particle. And you collect the direction and intensity of that force. If you are able to condense that description of the magnitudes and directions of the electric force felt by the particle, you're writing it as a field, $$\vec E : (x,y,z) \mapsto \vec E(x,y,z)\ .$$

You can interpret the electromagnetic field as nothing more as a "mash-up" of both the electric force and magnetic force that a test particle will feel at each point of space.

OK, but can you "touch" a field?

As a final note, I'll say the following; this question is more subject to discussion. Personally, I don't quite think about "touching" a field or it being "material"; I don't know how you're supposed to "touch" temperature.

The field represents the set of values for a quantity on a given space, and thus we arrive at your teacher's comment. In the classical physics sense that I've presented above, you can interpret the fields as "our way" of describing something that it's there, in a shorthand (a mathematical expression instead of a "spreadsheet of values"). In that case, I see the concept of field mixing up with the "thing" that it's representing. I won't debate that because I'm not sure I can explain better.

Answer 3

From the way fields are actually used in physics and engineering, and consistent with the mathematical definition, fields are properties of any extended part of the universe with well-defined spatial boundaries. (The latter may be missing in case of infinitely extended objects, e.g., the universe as a whole - if it is infinitely extended.)

Causality is reflected in the fact (that makes physical predictions - and indeed life, which is based on the predictability of Nature - possible) that to a meaningful (and sometimes extremely high) accuracy, changes with time in the complete set of fields relevant for a particular application are determined by the current values of these fields.

Being properties of objects, fields cannot be touched but they can be sensed by appropriate sensors. In particular, several human senses probe properties of fields close the surface of the corresponding sensors:

• Eyes for sensing oscillations of the electromagnetic field passing through the lense,
• ears for (a) sensing oscillations of the pressure field of the air and (b) sensing the direction of the gravitational field,
• the skin for sensing stress fields and temperature fields close to the body surface,
• the tongue for sensing chemical concentration fields close to the surface of the tongue.

More specifically, a field is a numerical property of an extended part of the universe, which depends on points characterized by position and time (though the time dependence may be trivial). It is called a scalar, vector, tensor, operator field etc., depending on whether the numerical values at each point are scalars, vectors, tensors, operators, etc., and a real or complex field depending on whether these objects have real or complex coefficients.

Fields are the natural means to characterize numerically the detailed properties of extended macroscopic objects. This can be seen on a very elementary level. (It also applies to microscopic objects, but there the characterization is much more technical.)

All macroscopic objects possess a number of fields, most of them natural in the sense that all humans in our current technological culture experience in their daily life aspects of these fields either with their own sensors, or with technical gadgets known to be sensitive to these.

• always a scalar mass density field telling how the mass of the object is distributed in space and changes with time,
• in case of uneven composition such as rocks, concentration fields of the various chemical substances it contains.
• in case of nonrigid objects such as fluids, a vector velocity field (or several for each chemical substance), describing the local velocity of the mass flow.
• always a scalar temperature field telling how the temperature of the object is distributed in space and changes with time,

• always a stress tensor field telling how the mechanical forces inside the object are distributed in space and changes with time.

• in case of electrically active objects such as coils or capacitors, a scalar charge density field telling how the charge of the object is distributed in space and changes with time, and a vector current field describing the local velocity of the charge flow.

Not tangible objects such as the space between material objects also have space-time dependent properties, and hence associated fields, namely the (in nonrelativistic case scalar) gravitational field, the (vector) electric field and the (vector) magnetic field.

Hardly visible in everyday life, but very important in physics is an additional field, the (scalar) energy density field telling how the internal energy of the object is distributed in space and changes with time.

Additional fields are employed by physicists whenever the above fields are either not sufficient to give a complete description of the phenomenology they are interested in, or not sufficient to give a tractable theoretical description of the processes.

Causality is implemented by means of parabolic or hyperbolic differential equations relating the derivatives of the fields.

Answer 4

Ok there is only one good answer to this. It is found in a book Local Quantum Physics, by Rudolf Haag, master of QFT, page 46, first paragraph:

Yet the belief in field-particle duality as a general principle, the idea that to each particle there is a corresponding field and to each field a corresponding particle has also been misleading and served to veil essential aspects. The rôle of fields is to implement the principle of locality. The number and the nature of different basic fields needed in the theory is related to the charge structure, not to the empirical spectrum of particles. In the presently favoured gauge theories the basic fields are the carriers of charges called colour and flavour but are not directly associated to observed particles like protons.

More or less, it meets answer by Newman.

Answer 5

Field is tool which we use to implement the fact that Quantum Field Theory gives meaning to local measurements (those that can be performed in one space-time point, or more realistic, in small space-time region around that point). That is why fields depend on space-time coordinates. In canonical quantization, fields are self-adjoint operators, which means that these are observables in principle, and that all observables can be built from them. In Feynman path integral approach to quantization (which is equivalent to canonical), fields are ordinary functions of space-time coordinates, if they correspond to bosonic fields from canonical quantization. To fermionic operators from canonical formalism correspond Grasmann numbers in path integral approach. Fields are real in operational sense, that we can define them, build theory using them and make predictions for observations.

As far is known there is no Quantum Field Theory that works for any (arbitrarily) large energy scale, as it is possible that very short distance physics is best described by theory other than QFT (string theory, i.e). So asking about if field is real or not can only be put into point of view of some theory. Exact position and momentum of particle is real and useful concept in classical mechanics, for example, but in Quantum Mechanics this sort of determinism was lost.

Answer 6

I think the history of the field concept helps to understand what it means today. There's a reference to Nancy J. Nersessian's paper ""Faraday's Field Concept" where she says:

The specific features of Faraday's field concept, in its 'favourite' and most complete form, are that force is a substance, that it is the only substance and that all forces are interconvertible through various motions of the lines of force. These features of Faraday's 'favourite notion' were not carried on. Maxwell, in his approach to the problem of finding a mathematical representation for the continuous transmission of electric and magnetic forces, considered these to be states of stress and strain in a mechanical aether. This was part of the quite different network of beliefs and problems with which Maxwell was working

So for Faraday and Maxwell, the field was seen as a substance responsible for transmitting the effects of force and so doing away with action at a distance.

Today, the field concept is still used to account for action at a distance as measurable effects which propagate between separate points, but without force or aether as a substance. Gauge field theories, for example, use particles called gauge bosons to transmit the fundamental forces of nature between separated particles.

Answer 7

Some remarks from the history of the field concept.

Kepler has invented his 3 laws explaining how planets orbit around the Sun.

Newton discovered his gravity law, that replaced Kepler's 3 laws. According to Newton, massive bodies attract each other at a distance.

Pierre-Simon de Laplace did not accept the concept of the "action at a distance". He assumed that:

1. Massive body generates a "substance" in space around it, and "intensity" of this "substance" depends on a distance to the massive body. Nowdays this intensity is called gravitational potential.

2. This "substance" acts on other massive body, and the acting force is proportional to the gradient of the intensity.

In other words, two massive bodies do not act directly on each other, but each body is a source of "substabce" called "field", and then field acts on other body.

What's the difference? It is as follows:

1. From the Newton's law Laplace derived equation for the field only (known as Laplace equation). The same field can be derived by various combinations of sources, and once you know the field (or, to be more precise, it's gradients) in the area where massive body is located, you don't need to care about the sources of this field in order to identify the force acting on the massive body at this area.

2. The concept of the "action at a distance" is not comptible with special relativity in a sense, that if the position of the massive body will change, it will not cause immediate change of the force acting on other body. Hence, with the concept of field modern physics describes this as following: change of the position of the massive body causes gradual chenge of the field, with the subsequent (but not immediate!) change of the force acting on other bodies.

Answer 8

I enjoyed @dmckee answer but would like to add that fields are primarily a mathematical tool, with definite rules taken over by physicists in their effort to describe the observed world.

In abstract algebra, a field is a commutative ring whose nonzero elements form a group under multiplication.

I will also add that in classical physics, fields are defined as well, with no need of virtual particle exchanges to be useful in calculations .

And my third observation is that there exists the old pythgorean view of the world, that "God continually geometrises" ( if I may coin a word), or the so called "platonic ideals", in modern words : given the mathematics reality will follow the mold.

Answer 9

a field is a function that returns a value for a point in space.

Now this finally makes a hell lot of sense to me but I still don't understand how mathematical functions can be a part of the Universe and shape the reality.

Actually, you are right. They cannot. Even classical fields, like the electric field, are not real. The electric field describes the force which would act on a test particle if a test particle were present. It does not describe anything real when there is no test particle.

The way to understand this is to recognise that the laws of physics do not describe fundamental reality. They describe relationships between physical, or measured, quantities, where, in the words of Eddington “A physical quantity is defined by the series of operations and calculations of which it is the result.”

In this case, even space is not real. Space consists of results of measurements of position (real and imagined), where a measurement of position describes a relationship between an object and its environment. We can only say where something is if we say where it is relative to other matter (e.g. a reference frame). We cannot say where it is in space. In the macroscopic world, objects always have position because they are always interacting with their environment. This is no longer true in quantum mechanics. A particle may have so few interactions with other matter that the concept of position is not well defined. We can only give a probability for where the particle would be found if we were to carry out a measurement of position.

Probabilities are not real. They mathematically quantify human assessment of likelihood. From probabilities we can define probability amplitudes, using the Born rule, and by delving deep into the mathematical structure of probability theory and Hilbert space (treated as a quantum logic) we can derive Schrodinger's equation, which is needed to preserve the probability interpretation. This shows that the probability amplitude has the mathematical properties of a wave function, from which familiar interference effects are found. It also shows that there is no physical wave.

Dirac showed the Dirac equation for describing a relativistic particle quantum mechanically. From there the photon is introduced, along with interactions between photons and electrons. This is quantum electrodynamics. The relativistic description of interactions requires the definition of field operators, which create or annihilate particles. The entire description takes place within the context of a mathematical structure which is an extension of probability theory. This enables us to say, with certainty, that while particles are real, fields are not.

I have given a full conceptual account in The Large and the Small and a rigorous mathematical treatment in The Mathematics of Gravity and Quanta

Answer 10

Field is an extension of topological idea of contunuation.

Continuity of something across whole topologically connected space is what makes a field, generally.

Consider Stokes-Gauss-Ostrogradsky theorem (casual div case) $$\int_{\delta \Omega} \mathbf V \cdot\mathbf{dn} = \oint_{\Omega} \mathtt{div}\,\mathbf V dx\,dy\,dz, $$ your ability of drawing continual ordered sets $G:=\{\mathsf{r_1},\mathsf{r_2},\mathsf{r_3},...\}$ to form covergent series approaching "border" $\delta\Omega$ of some closed area $\Omega$ is necessary for this statement.

Answer 11

Questions of this kind are very much to do with the connection between seeing and understanding. Take, for example, the process whereby we came to grasp what was going on around us when we were babies. The retinas of our eyes received the same sort of light illumination as they do now, but we were at first unable to process the information in an insightful way, so as to conclude things like "a cup is there", or "a tree is there", etc. Later on we became familiar with cups and trees and we found it helpful and appropriate to say that such things are real, and the main reason for this is that we find ourselves to be in a community of reasoning and communicating beings (humans) who come to agree that they all see the cup or the tree and agree sufficiently on what it is, so that it can be named.

In physics the classic example of a field is the electromagnetic field. What happens there is that we find that some types of object experience a force when we put them somewhere, and the force varies in a smooth way as we move them around. Eventually we build up a more complete understanding of how this force varies, and we come to understand that the object carries something we call "charge". Eventually we end up with a detailed understanding, for example encapsulated in Maxwell's equations and in the energy and momentum associated with the electromagnetic field. So, just as before we said "the tree is there", now we are prepared to say "the field is there", not because we can see it directly, but because we can observe its effects and because we have a coherent understanding which enables us to say that those effects are all to do with one identifiable understandable notion, namely a spread-out "something" that is correctly and precisely described by a bunch of equations that we can all agree.

If I had to define an electric field, I would define it as "that which gives a force on a charged object". If someone then pressed me to a more thorough statement, then I would first go to the classical relativistic language of tensor field, and then, when pressed further, I would go to quantum field theory. These are all ways of filling out the description of whatever it is that we are talking about when we say "electromagnetic field". But to me it seems bizarre to say that all this is a description of something which is "not real" or "not there really". Of course it is real, and there. I can stub my toe on it.

Indeed, every time you ever stubbed your toe, you stubbed your toe, in part, on the electromagnetic field which contributes to the way solid objects repel one another when they are brought close.

Answer 12

I had the same question a few months back. I decided that I want to look into the History of Physics on how the concept of Field came into Physics. I can list you some references which can embark you on the same journey I had gone through. Good Luck.

Just go through the same order as it is listed below:

• Ernan McMullin (2002). "The Origins of the Field Concept in Physics" (PDF). Phys. Perspect. 4: 13–39. DOI:10.1007/s00016-002-8357-5
• Why is Maxwell's Theory so Hard to Understand? by Freeman Dyson. click here
• A Report on Quantum Electrodynamics by Schwigner. click here
• Everything is made up of fields by Sean Carrol. click here
• The History and Present Status of Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime by Robert M. Wald. click here

If you go through all these material, surely you will appreciate the work done in physics and all your questions will be answered.

Answer 13

in QFT, most precise theory ever, physical reality is made of quantised fields. So how can a field not be real? For exame Electrons around atoms are described as probability densities of quantum fields.

The distinction between physics and mathematics is very artificial and subjective. At the fundamental Level there is no difference between them. And your question is more philosofical or metaphysical /metamathematical but so what, philosophy too is not separable fundamentally from physics.

That being said, There are different levels of reality. For example some gauge fields classically need not necessarily be real. For example in classical physics force fields are considered most real. But in QM electromagnetic potential shows its reality in subtle forms even with electric and magnetic fields being zero - aharanov-bohm effect

Answer 14

Mathematical functions aren't real, so your intution is correct there. However, they model somethimg that is real. Your struggle with the field concept is quite natural, after all, physicists attempted to construct a mechanical description of the field - they called this the aether - in early modern physics after Newton but continually ran into road-blocks. Its only beginning with Faraday that we begin to see the field concept shorn of mechanics.

This raises the question of the reality of the field concept.

The EM field is taken to be real, for example, because it is able to carry momentum and energy, just like particles of matter.

Answer 15

Ah, the idea of the field as interface. That's the whole philosophy of the source field method introduced by Schwinger. Treat the field as a perturbative source, and watch how it kicks the system under study. But always, at the end of the day, we have to take the limit as the source field goes to zero. The interface is fictitious after all, right? We only imagine the interface, or not?

And then there's the S-matrix approach introduced by Heisenberg for philosophical reasons, with the philosophy carried to extremes by Chew with his bootstrap model. Bypass fields entirely, and only focus upon the asymptotic past and asymptotic future. Only the asymptotic future is observable. But it's not like we're living in the asymptotic future, are we?

The interface analogy might work for a classical simulation, but not a quantum simulation. Quantum mechanics changes everything. Sure, for a classical simulation, the programmer can implement a read-only query function call which otherwise doesn't affect the simulation. But that's impossible for a quantum simulation, and our universe is quantum.

Say there's a programmer out there in heaven implementing the program simulating our universe. This programmer is the demiurge, a god but not God. Say this demiurge wishes to implement a read query for transcendent angels in heaven to call to query internal states of our universe. Now, let's say a transcendent angel Eve comes along and wants to eavesdrop our thoughts. What a snoop! Quantum information theory tells us Eve can't eavesdrop without affecting the system, i.e. our universe, and in principle, the mere act of calling the query can be detected within our universe. See, we would become entangled with Eve.

If both heaven and earth are quantum, epiphenominalism is impossible.

Or maybe Eve wishes to avoid detection by only accessing the query at the end of the simulation? Would that work? No, because of the retrocausal effects of the query. See delayed choice experiment. Take note, metaphysics-hating positivists, in principle, transcendent angels in heaven can produce measurable effects in our universe. Or if Eve is really careful, she can avoid snooping whenever there are experimenters trying to measure her effects? Isn't that a common complaint heard by skeptics?

OK, maybe the demiurge wanted to be deistic and not implement any read query interfaces. But that demiurge would also have to prevent retrocausal influences from the end of the simulation. That can only be done if the end result of the quantum simulation is exactly uncomputed, erasing everything. From nothing, back to nothing. We might as well not even exist, and no one in heaven will know about us.

So maybe the demiurge wasn't deistically inclined and left trapdoors to allow angels to influence our world with their will.

Or maybe the demiurge simulated our quantum universe on a classical computer. Let's just assume he has exponential resources to waste. But to read our universe, he still has to choose a decoherent histories realm anyway, anthropically selected upon our existence and conditioned upon other factors as well, like our history. Heaven is still detectable.

The lesson of quantum mechanics is there has to be a transcendent observer observing us.

A closed quantum system of which we are a part can never have definite outcomes, and more importantly, doesn’t have and can't have a preferred basis. A quantum universe can never be closed if it were real.