by EndofMysteries 60 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
WOJ - Sam/Kate is an honest person, exploring questions, keeping an open mind and deliberately pulling a few legs in the process.
Sam enjoys debate for the fun of it. Don't take the bait if you don't want to.
She will be a bigger skeptic than me one day.
snare,cofty,cantleave, Thanks for the support guys. It means a lot.
WOJ,
I am sorry if I offended you, I need this place atm, I am a very lonely isolated gal, who still believes in God. Like cantleave says I do forget sometimes that loads are reading my posts. I love science and religion, like cofty says one day I may be an atheist. Please have a merry xmas. Mods please let me play, I will try and be more discreet in future.
Snare, good joke for a double post. I enjoyed it!!
Love to you all Kate xx
Yeah i dit it on purpose....
BTXB said-
Keyboard Cat beat me out of a gig playing in the dark corner of a coffee shop, so of course I'm bitter. Given the chance, I might try a two slit experiment on that feline to check it's wave/particle properties.
Well, there's a physics lab in Switzerland looking to run Schrödinger's cat thought experiment as a real-life experiment: perhaps KC is looking to supplement the tip jar income with a day-gig?
BTW, many people don't understand that Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, an argument taken to it's most extreme conclusion to make a point:
Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum. [2] The thought experiment illustrates quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment remains a typical touchstone for limited interpretations of quantum mechanics. Physicists often use the way each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat as a way of illustrating and comparing the particular features, strengths, and weaknesses of each interpretation.
The observer effect is of relevance to the issue, and according to this article, a physicist has proposed a way to test the model currently in use:
Cats that are both dead and alive, atoms that “know” when you are staring at them and parallel worlds that harbour any and every possibility: quantum theory has always thrown up some bizarre ideas. Now, for the first time, it may become possible to test one of its very strangest.
Quantum theory is the most successful framework for understanding the universe that we have, providing predictions that are borne out to a stunning degree of precision. But there’s a problem: no one actually knows how to interpret it. Albert Einstein, one of its architects, spent much of his life plotting its overthrow, because of the peculiar picture of reality – or “spookiness”, as he liked to put it – that it revealed.
One such odd feature is that, according to quantum physics, the act of observation changes the universe. An unobserved event, according to quantum lore, has neither happened nor not happened: it exists as a mathematical object called a wave function, which describes all possible versions of realities, and which only breaks down into one or other when we make an observation. A molecule may actually exist in what is called a “superposition”, which means an impossible coexistence of apparently contradictory possibilities, being both a dot-like particle and a wave that ripples over a distance some 1,000 times greater.
To come up with a more tangible example of just how odd this view of reality is, Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment in 1935 starring a cat that is neither dead nor alive. Only when we take a peek inside the box does the wave function “collapse” into one actuality: there is either a dead cat, or a live one.This model of reality is known as the “Copenhagen Interpretation” – but not all physicists accept it. Some claim that the very act of observation causes the universe to split: I see a live cat, but in another universe, a different me sees a dead one. This is the so-called “Many Worlds” interpretation, which dates back to 1957.
If we’re honest, most scientists simply ignore this issue – first, because they’re as baffled as the rest of us, and second, because however you interpret it, the current mathematics of quantum theory gives the right answer, and it has long been assumed that there is no experiment that can determine which, if either, interpretation was right. Hence the third interpretation: “Shut up and calculate!”
However, in recent years, proposals have been made to explain what really goes on, by introducing a mechanism for collapse into quantum mechanics, rather than simply assuming that it happens. Recently, one of the biggest names in physics, the Nobel prize-winner Steven Weinberg, posted a blueprint online of models that can explain why molecules and cats never let us witness a superposition, but instead “collapse”.
The earliest and most well-known of these new models is known as the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber-and-Pearle theory, or GRWP, which was proposed in the 1980s. In this theory, wave function collapse is a consequence of the vast numbers of atoms in a measuring apparatus interacting with whatever is being observed. This mission to upgrade quantum mechanics has been continued by others.
Now, there is finally a prospect of lifting this debate beyond dry philosophy by actually testing the GRWP proposal, with the help of a clever experiment devised by Markus Arndt’s team at the University of Vienna (in collaboration with Klaus Hornberger in Duisburg). Using ultra-precise instruments known as matter wave interferometers, the team hopes to spot tell-tale signs that can reveal if one of the modified versions of quantum theory is correct and test how real the wave-function collapse is.
The interferometers are named because when two wave functions meet, they can interfere with one another – cancelling out where a peak meets a trough and reinforcing where peaks align. If wave function collapse is linked to millions of atoms being present, as GRWP says, this interference pattern should be less pronounced or even vanish when there are sufficiently big clusters of atoms. “Nature will decide who is right,” says Arndt.
If his experiment challenges (or refutes) GWRP, it would be the simplest outcome and back the “shut up and calculate” pragmatists. But if it suggests that GRWP is correct, it could provide the first real evidence that the universe does not split into parallel worlds: that the possibilities of a living and a dead cat do indeed collapse into one reality when we look at it.
Any such experimentally verified deviation from traditional quantum predictions would mark a revolutionary turning point in physics – spurring the debate over what the wave function really means and cracking open a door to reveal a deeper level of reality. Let’s just hope ours is one of the universes in which the experiment works.
Sam, you do realize that a wind-up merchant is just another way to say troll?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wind-up
It refers to someone who posts on message board s and newsgroups with the intention to cause as much disruption as possible by goading others.
The thing is, you do say nonsense and intentionally repeat falsehoods (eg your intentional misquoting of Einstein's words about science and religion, despite repeated explanations), as if to goad a response to correct you so your willful ignorance isn't perpetuated by others. That's not helpful for anyone, esp in a climate where there's so much crapola in the air already from JW lies. Granted, you may kiss-up to people and conclude your posts with "luv you to bits", but it strikes many as insincere, when a better way to show your 'luv' would be to change your profession from a wind-up merchant to something more honorable.
Whatever your motivations, admitting to being a troll seems like a rather-questionable strategy to get people to take you seriously...
Adam
EoM, The last link about partial electron charges seems unrelated. No mention of two slit experiment or wave properties.
"The easiest way to explain is the video animation..."
I don't need an "easy way". We covered a chapter per week in my QM class, with weekly quizzes. Just because I got a B in that class doesn't mean I need things "dumbed down" with cartoons and little words. LOL.
There's lots of bizarre stuff in QM (particularly if we were discussing quantum entanglement). And like I said, I don't consider myself an expert on QM. But when the assertion is that only the difference between having film in the camera and not having film in the camera completely changes the results of an experiment from straight line results to random chaos, I hoped there would be some kind of proof.
It sounds to me like some theoretical physics and philosophy (and religion) has gotten confused in the mix.
adamah: "BTW, many people don't understand that Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment"
Great. Now you tell me. Do you realize how much poison and radioactive material you could have saved me?
But then, I'm an engineer, not a physicist. So this discussion has me perplexed between the old expression, "A watched pot never boils," and the QM nulite, "If you're not watching the pot, none of it exists." And I'm all, like...
Yeah, I'm not a physicist either, and entanglement blows my mind. The subatomic level seems to operate by its own rules as the macroscopic world, and I simply accept that photons demonstate wave-like and particle-like properties, even simultaneously (i.e. they're not mutually exclusive, as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle requires for position and momentum).
BTXB said-
Great. Now you tell me. Do you realize how much poison and radioactive material you could have saved me?
Well, it's easier just to take an unwanted cat to the pound, than going through the pretenses of conducting physics experiments...
Here's an old photo of Schrödinger's cat reacting to the proposed experiment:
My nightmare:
Adamah, i feel sorry for your Keyboard...
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/113/the-story-of-schroedingers-cat-an-epic-poem
May 7, 1982
Dear Cecil:
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schroedinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously live and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, the other I ain't.
If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will and won't see you in Schroedinger's zoo.
— Randy F. , Chicago
Cecil replies:
Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though — my theory permits us to judge
Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at —
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom — whatever — but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring — or pushing up daisies?
Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough shit.
We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons — you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed —
Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability — certainty, never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.
God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.
I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried —
In vain — until fin'ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he's in heaven — but five bucks says he ain't."
— Cecil Adams
