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Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory
The New York Times ^ | December 27, 2005 | Dennis Overbye

Posted on 12/28/2005 1:42:38 PM PST by snarks_when_bored

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To: snarks_when_bored

Seriously now, we don't actually HAVE unobserved cats, do we? They might like us to think so but a cat in a box is going to be measurable every time. They, and everything else macro, just don't go all at once into that unmeasured, unobserved state.
Only that little divine spark meets the radioactive atom at the OK Corral. The rest of the cat gives us the score later, no? The rest of the cat doesn't really change; in fact it stops changing, if it comes up dead.

Well if S. did have a cat I hope he called it Plato. ;)


41 posted on 12/28/2005 2:41:12 PM PST by Graymatter
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To: HOTTIEBOY

Most of these guys are just capitalizing on the inability of the public (and more importantly, the guys who fund this research) to understand what they are doing, and what it proves or doesn't prove. They do an experiment, make grandiose claims, and no one challenges their conclusions. Since it's all academic anyway at this point, no one has any incentive to challenge it.

I'll agree that there is a mystery, but it's largely a mystery that they all have a financial and academic interest in perpetuating, and that raises the question of whether they've created the mystery themselves. They seem to focus on Einstein's 60 year old discussion of this topic. They debunk his logic experimentally, and then conclude that they are therefore correct in their logic. It just doesn't follow.

Of course, the reason why they focus on Einstein's logic is that none of them has the cajones to take up where Einstein left off, and make the case against "quantum weirdness." In order to do that, you've got to have a competing theory, and these guys tend to be focused on experimental physics rather than theoretical physics.

Nothing much is going to happen to advance the field of quantum physics, I don't think, until some brilliant theoretical physicist is able to come to a theory that explains what matter is. Right now, they don't even know what "spin" is, so how on earth can they make these sweeping claims about a "cat state" without even knowing what it means?


42 posted on 12/28/2005 2:42:01 PM PST by Brilliant
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To: Brilliant
Okay, with that post, you've collapsed my state vector and I'm not in a 'cat state' now. Thanks...I needed that.
43 posted on 12/28/2005 2:48:19 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
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To: Pirate21

>>Kinda reminds me of trying to keep one's right leg spinning in a clockwise direction while drawing the number six in the air with one's right hand.

"Jellybeaners, jellybeaners, jellybeaners one and all..."
(Boomer reference: song we sang while simultaneously patting head and rubbing tummy.)


44 posted on 12/28/2005 2:48:23 PM PST by Graymatter
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To: Graymatter

The 'cat state' is an unobserved state (if such there be). Once you peek in on the cat, the superposition of states collapses to a single state (so it is said)...unless you hold that each state in a superposition is just as 'real' as any other and that, at each observation, a system splits into separate, equally 'real' systems that continue to develop in complete separation from each other. This bewildering, branching view of 'reality' is called 'the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics' and is the preferred view of 'reality' of many quantum physicists.


45 posted on 12/28/2005 2:56:03 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
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To: Brilliant
Most of these guys are just capitalizing on the inability of the public (and more importantly, the guys who fund this research) to understand what they are doing, and what it proves or doesn't prove. They do an experiment, make grandiose claims, and no one challenges their conclusions. Since it's all academic anyway at this point, no one has any incentive to challenge it.

Umm...do you know much about academia?

These guys have their conclusions challenged, often vociferously and viciously, by other scientists in the field, on a routine basis.

46 posted on 12/28/2005 2:58:50 PM PST by Strategerist
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To: Bloody Sam Roberts

But the Earth is not rotating in an isolated position. When an external body is included, the rotation is only one way.


47 posted on 12/28/2005 3:10:29 PM PST by furball4paws (The new elixir of life - dehydrated toad urine.)
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To: snarks_when_bored

Yes but can an entire cat ever be in the cat state? I'm reminded of the difference between ordinary, incoherent light, and laser light. There's too much cat, made up of atoms all on different pages, so to speak, for the aggregate (cat) to be in a cat state.

Zeno would have loved this stuff.

By the way, does the cat's observation count for anything?


48 posted on 12/28/2005 3:18:43 PM PST by Graymatter
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To: snarks_when_bored
This bewildering, branching view of 'reality' is called 'the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics' and is the preferred view of 'reality' of many quantum physicists.

In my reality an empty box placed in a room with a live cat will soon have a live cat in it.

49 posted on 12/28/2005 3:32:51 PM PST by OSHA (Deviled eggs may be better the 2nd day. No one knows for sure.)
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To: Strategerist

I doubt you'll find anyone who seriously argues Einstein's point in this day and age. Even when Einstein was alive, there were only two other physicists who seriously challenged the quantum mechanics theory, and they quickly dissolved into the ether, leaving Einstein's writings as the only real dissent from quantum mechanics.

At this point, quantum mechanics is considered to be gospel, which is ironic. And it's especially perplexing when one considers that it is inconsisent with relativity, which is also considered to be gospel. And even more perplexing when you consider that quantum mechanics has no explanation for the existence of gravity, yet clearly gravity exists.


50 posted on 12/28/2005 3:33:46 PM PST by Brilliant
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To: R. Scott

Another big WOW!
I love quantum mechanics – but then again, I never did believe in a classical “reality”. >>>>>>>>>>>>

Is reality really the "one illusion we all share"?


51 posted on 12/28/2005 3:36:21 PM PST by RipSawyer (Acceptance of irrational thinking is expanding exponentiallly.)
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To: Brilliant

bookmark


52 posted on 12/28/2005 3:37:47 PM PST by Mom MD
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To: snarks_when_bored
This bewildering, branching view of 'reality' is called 'the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics' and is the preferred view of 'reality' of many quantum physicists.
I prefer to think of it as more like the evil Mr. Spock on an alternate USS Enterprise in an alternate universe.
There is a universe somewhere where the mainstream media is honest, Saddam was the benevolent ruler of a peaceful country, Bush is an evil moron, and the Democrats aren't all stupid liars. And you thought that the dead/undead cat was weird? Just think of how weird this place would feel to us!

53 posted on 12/28/2005 3:39:49 PM PST by DallasMike (Call me Dallasaurus)
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To: bvw
In as much, as "already" is a meaningful-term QT-wise, the information is "already" at the other place. Or rather, "was" at. Was and is, that is. Or was. So be it.

The real trouble with time travel isn't becoming your own grandfather-that's nothing a broad minded and well adjusted family can't handle. No, the real problem is with tenses. How do you describe something that happened, but didn't happen anymore because you went back to two days before that event to prevent it from happening?
- Douglas Adams (RIP)

54 posted on 12/28/2005 3:40:06 PM PST by ThinkDifferent (I am a leaf on the wind)
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To: RipSawyer
Is reality really the "one illusion we all share"?

That sums up what Socrates is reported to have told Glaucon – what we see as “reality” is only a vague shadow of the True Form.
55 posted on 12/28/2005 3:44:09 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: Graymatter
Yes but can an entire cat ever be in the cat state?

You've placed your paw on the problem. Recent work suggests that above a certain level of molecular complexity, decoherence is unavoidable, and decoherence smears out the 'cat state' superpositions.

56 posted on 12/28/2005 4:01:54 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
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To: snarks_when_bored
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
--- Arthur C. Clark

"When a distinguished and elderly scientist tells you that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.
When a distinguished and elderly scientist tells you that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong."

-- Arthur C. Clark

Clark was much more than a science fiction writer.
He was a philosopher of science.

So9

57 posted on 12/28/2005 4:02:15 PM PST by Servant of the 9 (Trust Me)
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To: PatrickHenry

God knows....


58 posted on 12/28/2005 4:02:30 PM PST by onedoug
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To: RipSawyer; R. Scott
Another big WOW!
I love quantum mechanics – but then again, I never did believe in a classical “reality”. >>>>>>>>>>>>

Is reality really the "one illusion we all share"?

Who is this "we" to whom you refer?

So9

59 posted on 12/28/2005 4:05:31 PM PST by Servant of the 9 (Trust Me)
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To: snarks_when_bored
The article doesn't claim that superluminal communication (in the sense of relativity-violating information transfer) is taking place.

Right, I should have responded to post 19, which initially mentioned faster than light, not yours.

60 posted on 12/28/2005 4:15:16 PM PST by Right Wing Assault ("..this administration is planning a 'Right Wing Assault' on values and ideals.." - John Kerry)
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