Physicists bid farewell to reality?

Nature ^ | 4/18/07 | Philip Ball

[Lancey Howard]

This kind of stuff will make you go crazy and grow hair on your palms.

[hellbender]

Uh oh. You mean the “ether” is going to make a comeback?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

This is a pretty silly article. One of many popular articles on the subject of quantum stupidity. Objects are made of elementary particles, not the other way around. Why is it so surprising that elementary particles do not behave like ping-pong balls or cars? The author says "objects have specific features and properties—that a ball is red" and he then wishes to transmit the sentiment of surprise to the reader, in that elementary particles are not like balls. Why should they be? And this silliness is extended further when objects are imagined to behave like elementary particles: "imagin[e] what would have happened if you had tried to cross the road when a truck was coming...". What a pile of metaphyisical rubbish.

Trucks are not big elementary particles. Cars and ping-pong balls are not made of little cars and little ping-pong balls. The point of atomic theory is that objects are made of elementary things and objects owe their properties to elementary things. There's no logical reason whatsoever to turn this around and expect the elementary things to have the properties of objects. And to say that objects can behave like a big elementary thing, is just a metaphysical contradiction. It's like being flabbergasted at the fact that muscle cells do not have arms and legs.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

What about the recent episode on Discovery Science about Supermassive Black Holes? That, was one wow! of an eye-opener. Like, now they can prove a super massive black hole created our universe.

Dunno about the TV show, but rubber scientists already want you to think they are manufacturing black holes in your back yard... Horatiu Nastase, The RHIC fireball as a dual black hole, 2006.

[Kevmo]

bump for later reading

[RunningWolf]

There are no particles, there is only ‘particle physics’ :-)

[Matchett-PI]

"Like, now they can prove a super massive black hole created our universe."

There have been too many black holes in the news lately and I'm sick of them.

[SunkenCiv]

Reality was just takin' up space anyway.

[tophat9000]

bump

[MK11]

black holesbians?

[Matchett-PI]

“black holesbians?” ~ MK11

The Justice Brothers - Jesse and Al

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com
SEARCH: Justice Brothers
RESULT: 1-20:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/tools/search.member.html

RushLimbaugh.com Home
AUDIO, MP3 PODCASTS, MORNING UPDATE: All Wednesday’s multi-media here on one page
Do Your Show Prep: Wednesday’s Total Stack of Stuff: All the articles, ...

---

2 Tony Blair Risks Wrath of Justice Brothers
I wonder if the Justice Brothers, when they hear about this, are going to make
a trip overseas. BLAIR: The black community — the vast majority of whom in ...

---

3 Trucker Loves the Justice Brothers
RUSH: All right, I’ll tell you what, as a special bonus to Alex in Jacksonville,
we’re going to play the Justice Brothers again because he said he might ...

---

4 Duke Case Reveals Liberal Racists for All the World to See
Oh, by the way, we have a brand-new Justice Brothers commercial. ... What if we
all have to go through the Justice Brothers, Sharpton and Jackson, ...

---

5 Duke Case Reveals Liberal Racists for All the World to See
We do it within the program content, and the Justice Brothers received amazing
... What if we all have to go through the Justice Brothers, Sharpton and ...

---

6 All Duke Lacrosse Charges Dropped
Of course, this could be a case, we’re all speculating here, we’re wondering
during the break if this is an opportunity for the Justice Brothers, ...

---

7 Rush Parody Archive
(The Justice Brothers Return) Rev. Al Phone Sings... (Rev. Al Calls Obama) (”Barack
the Magic Negro- That’s What the LA Times Called Him”) ...

---

8 RushLimbaugh.com Home - Friday April 13
Blair Risks Wrath of Justice Brothers! The reverends may need to go give the Brit
PM a talking to. “Why should Sharpton and Jackson, these two race hustlers ...

---

9 RushLimbaugh.com Home - Wednesday April 11
Trucker Loves the Justice Brothers · An instant review from a Dittohead out on the
... Illustrating Absurdity: Parody: The Justice Bros | Respeck | Shanklin ...

---

10 Audio Page: April 11, 2007
Trucker Loves the Justice Brothers Listen To It! Windows Media Player | RealPlayer
Big Oil Profits Are Not Obscene Listen To It! ...

11 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

12 EIB Interview: Michelle Malkin
There were 31000 enemy aliens interned in justice department camps, ... he’s got
all his bands of brothers and they’re sitting there wondering today why we ...

---

13 The Speeches of Ronald Reagan
Government must work for the goal of justice and the elimination of unfair ...
We are our brothers’ keepers, all of us. And I hope the message will go forth ...

---

14 The Speeches of Ronald Reagan
I carry with me the memory of a Christmas Eve when my brother and I and our ...
The Commission is an important part of the ongoing struggle for justice in ...

---

15 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

16 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

17 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

18 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

19 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

---

20 We Stand for Free Speech and That’s What Threatens the Left
But let’s face it, the Justice Brothers are on a role. Sure they got their hair
mussed with Duke. But, you know, they’re on a roll. ...

[dr_lew]

Do you know how your computer works?

It works because QM has taught some among us how
to play on atoms and electrons like they were a piano.

Is your computer an object? Do you have any idea
whatsoever what goes on inside it?

NO YOU DON’T !!!

[snarks_when_bored]

"Our paper is not the end of the road," he says.

The road? What road? I don't see no stinkin' road.

[Mike Darancette]

Allied to this assault on reality was the apparent prediction of what Albert Einstein, one of the chief architects of quantum theory, called 'spooky action at a distance'. Quantum theory suggests that disturbing one particle can instantaneously determine the properties of a particle with which it is 'entangled', no matter how far away it is. This would violate the usual rule of locality: that local behaviour is governed by local events.

Faster than light communications?

[SunkenCiv]

The yellow chunks are the corn.

[rimshot! — literally!]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BTW for the ping!

[Erasmus]

And for that matter it is not absolutely impossible for winged monkeys to fly out of my posterior.

[Erasmus]

It certainly takes branes to create an alternate universe!

< }B^)

[Erasmus]

I stayed in a quaint little hotel in Freiburg once. There was a sign over my bed that said,

“Heisenberg may have slept here.”