Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Posted on 09/26/2006 4:23:06 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
Let the puns begin...
Trying hard to understand the explanation of how looking at something can actually nudge it. Where do the electrons come from when we look at something? Yes, I know I am a moron. Very interesting post.
"Physicists say they have made an object move just by watching it."
Physicists have a habit of describing what they have discovered in ways that interest the public, but are not really accurate--at least not accurate if you would ask the average guy.
If you've got a particle, you can't just "watch it." It's too small. You use a probe to see if it's there. Or you might shine a light on it, if it's big enough. You use high tech equipment to measure its charge, and that will give away its position.
Of course, when you do any of those things, the particle is nudged a little bit. When you touch it with a probe, shine light on it, or test its charge, it moves.
It would be more accurate to say that they are making it move by "touching it," but then that would not be such a big headline.
It's not the looking at something that moves it. See my earlier post. What moves it is that you can't see it unless you bounce something off it, like light or electrons, or something else. Your eye detects the light that comes from the object, but first the light has got to reflect off the object.
Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Sometimes I can look at a woman and actually move her 10 feet or more... away from me.
Trying hard to understand the explanation of how looking at something can actually nudge it. Where do the electrons come from when we look at something?
Electrons interact with other electrons via the electromagnetic interaction, which is mediated by photons. If no photons are exchanged, no interaction take place (ignoring virtual photons and tunneling subtleties). So, essentially, if no photons are exchanged, nothing is seen, and if photons are exchanged, a disturbance in the motion of the seen (and the seer) takes place.
Okie dokie. Got it. Thanks!
LOL!
I have the same mystical power over men.
looking for love in both the wrong places
What time did you want me over again? : )
Physicists say they have made an object move just by watching it.
I can do that after several bourbons. I can even put the same object in 2 or 3 places at the same time. Nothing new here.
hmmmmm.....are you an auto mechanic?? ;)
Can you cook?
hmmmmm.....are you an auto mechanic?? ;)
No, a voyeur. (laugh)
works even without photons or any particle exchanged with a detector.
If you obeserve interference of a single photon with itself on a double slit it is strange enough - because it seems to contradict the fact that it is only ONE photon. But even more strange - if you detect which slit it DID NOT take - interference will brake down.
Either you know, where a particle is a distinct time OR you know what impulse it has (speed, mass and direction) that's a LAW not a desricption of the unfitness of scientist or technicians to measure more precise.
Seeing the interference defines wich impulse the photon had so you can't have that AND know where it was at a certain time - even if you have found that out by looking where it NOT has been leaving it only one possibility.
A more abstract explanation might be given by string theory.
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