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Posted on 01/02/2005 1:30:09 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
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It is a wide misconception that Einstein's theory of relativity led to the atomic bomb. In fact, it played no role because the bomb requires only non-relativistic physics. Of course, AE did sign the letter to Roosevelt and this could have been a factor in the decision but even that is cloudy. In any case E = mc^2 was entirely irrelevant to the bomb just as it had been for developing chemical bombs (which also convert mass-energy to kinetic and thermal energy).
bump!
Remember, 2005 is the World Year of Physics!
Just about every piece of "modern" technology, from the transistor to the solar cell, has something to do with something Einstien did.
He's a biggie, alright.
One of the most interesting things about Bell's work is that it might imply temporal as well as spatial non-locality.
There are folks trying to investigate it now, and so far the results seem to indicate time is local the way we used to think space was.
Are you thinking of the "watched pot" effect?
Determinism, AFAIK, is the ability to say unequivocally in what state the system is. That does not exist for an unobserved system.
Whether or not a system, once observed and then set aside, "relaxes" back to indeterminacy is something I do not remember. It has been too long since I've reviewed QM.
My understanding is that that's the case when viewed by both theories of relativity.
Gravity for example slows time. Your clock is faster than mine when you're on top of a tall building. This has been confirmed by very accurate measurement.
If you're on the surface of a black hole, time stops - rather time becomes meaningless.
Time also varies relative to speed. If you're traveling near the speed of light your time is seen as very fast relative to me (by me), normal to you. The electron synchrotron uses this to produce x-ray radiation from a fast moving electron. It's only radio wave frequency to the electron, but sped up ten thousand times to us.
Each frame of reference has it's own time and will usually disagree with everyone elses. "What time is it?" becomes meaningless as does "Now."
This is all relativity stuff and here the speed of light is sacrosanct. Bell's Inequality and Aspect's experiments results if interpreted one way "prove" signals/information can travel faster than light. Interpreted another way, assuming the light speed limit, "prove" nonlocality. This view was expressed by a physicist this way:
"An elementary particle is not an independenttly existing unalysable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reach outward to other things.:
Hope this relates to your reply. I'm only a rank layman, I happen to be reading a book on this stuff right now…
I also am just a grunt, but I have Bell's work "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics", as well as many others.
While much of the math is daunting (I had calc in college) the inequalities are easy enough for an eighth grader to understand. Remarkable work. There would almost seem to be some sort of underlying matrix, except part of his early work rules out the "hidden variable" theory.
My personal view of the universe is that it's almost like a bunch of transparencies laid one upon the other. Each transparency has a complete picture on it, but you can never see the whole until you stack them all up and look at them. David Albert (Epistemology, Physics, Columbia U) talks about various properties (momentum, position) being in some sense orthogonal.
So it's all tremendously interesting. But I think I felt better as a youngster when I suffered the delusion that it is all knowable and understandable.
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