Quantum Trickery - Einstein's Strangest Theory 531
breckinshire writes "The New York Times is running an interesting story on Einstein's strangest theory. The theory was brought to light this past fall when 'scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms into a "cat state." [...] These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time.' It is an interesting writeup for even the uninitiated and also concentrates on Einsteins role as a 'founder and critic of quantum theory.'"
Founder? (Score:3, Funny)
Correction: (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, this term was coined by Nikola Tesla and refered to his observations of the violent sub-molecular reaction created when a cat with a cheese pizza tied to its back is dropped onto expensive carpeting. What, you didn't think that his silly "death ray" is what caused the Tunguska event, did you?
Ah ha (Score:5, Funny)
wouldn't that be... (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't that be Schroedinger's strangest theory?
They forgot one: (Score:5, Funny)
Or something happy to have its tummy rubbed only to bite you seconds later.
Don't expect to understand. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Support one of the non-registration required si (Score:3, Funny)
Super Super position. (Score:0, Funny)
This partical takes all of its possible positions at once thought out all of time.
This can be called the supersuper position.
The reason we experience time and all the superpostions of the one particle can be analog to some form of measurement.
If the one particle and all its positions define space and time these attributes can also exist in one point. So they do. This means that observing any state of the particle at any time or position can change the superposition or the supersuperposition directly at any other point/time.
Therefor nothing is predetermined and faster then light travel is slow by any standard.
There, the known multiverse explained by an Anonymous coward.
Say it with me : We are all the same particle, all the time.
(I'm so good at this BS ! )
Retep Vosnul
Here's to the atom bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Why do they always have to use the atomic bomb as an example of the applications of quantum mechanics? It really gives it a bad name.
Re:Maybe they observed wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but wouldn't the act of observing the slip up change it's state?
These guys are in a "cat" state.... (Score:3, Funny)
And then, the two scientists began spinning clockwise and counterwise at the same time....
Sudoku (Score:2, Funny)
Quantum Enlightenment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Support one of the non-registration required si (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Founder? (Score:5, Funny)
spins both directions? (Score:3, Funny)
I want to teach a cat to surf... (Score:3, Funny)
most successful theory in history? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Founder? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course there was a single founder, but his identity is uncertain. Whenever you ask a scientist, you can't be certain beforehand who he'll name; you can only say that the founder will be named as a certain person with certain propability.
And PKD failed to address... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One point of clarification (Score:1, Funny)
Here are some online resources because I don't feel like trying to do fields work in ascii [or on a text processor at all].
Starting with Maxwell's equations [wikipedia.org] and doing much of the work listed in the wiki entry (which agrees with my written sources so I won't bother to rewrite the math here), one eventually comes up with the Electromagnetic Wave Equation [wikipedia.org]. Eventually you come up with Index of refraction [wikipedia.org]. And you find that Vp(light)=C/Np and Vg(light)=NpC for the ordinary case.
[The following assumes that light is traveling through a magnetoplasma, weakly ionized gas with a magnetic field impossed on it. Like earth's atmosphere for example)
For the other cases (any time when the following aren't true: K perpendicular to B and E is parallel to B) Vg(light)=NgC where Ng is given as:
Ng=Np+(1-Np^2)^2 [ 1/(XNp) + Y^2sin^2(theta)/(2Np(1-X)^2) +/- 2(1-X)^3Y^2cos^2(theta)-XY^4sin^4(theta) / (2XNp(1-X)^2sqrt(Y^4sin^4(theta)+4Y^2cos^2(theta)
Where theta is the angle between E and B (B is the impossed field not the Magnetic component of the EM wave)
X=Wp^2/W^2, Wp=the principle freq of the plasma and W = freq in rads.
Y= eB/(mW), e charge of electron (unsigned) and m = mass of electron.
Doing any amount of research on this, it can be shown that a high frequency wave (10GHz region) will travel at a vastly different speed than a 10 kHz wave will through a magneto plasma like earth's atmosphere.
I guess the whole point of this was to show that the speed of light DOES change in differnt materials. It is not bouncing back and forth like the parent would have you believe. And yes, I note that since index of refraction (n) is between 1 and 0 and since C/n is always >= C in this case, it means that the PHASE velocity of light exceeds C. But the group velocity never does and Ng is always >=1. The group velocity is the part of the light that may carry information. It's the part you would see, so its speed is the one that can't exceed C w/o killing causality.
This is a bug in physics (Score:2, Funny)
From the article:
These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across the galaxy.
Any halfway competent C programmer can easily see this is simple pointer aliasing. Physics was clearly written in C++ - albeit with a very high precision floating point library. What is happening is that, to save memory on the galaxy, most of the different atoms we perceive are actually just the same one, aliased using pointers. There is some neat code in Physics.cpp which detects when an atom is modified and makes a mutable copy as required. Clearly in this case (with the atom, cat, whatever) something is fux0red in the code and it's not making a copy; hence modifying one atom modifies the perceived value of several. Fortunately as soon as a human observes it, atom->View() is called, and a stable copy of the atom is created and from then on the bug kinda disappears (all the atoms go about their business as normal).
As a bug, it probably got noticed in beta, but was considered low priorty, however now there's such a fuss about it, I'd expect an online patch to stop the scientist hax0rs exploiting "the Quantum effect" any millenium now, so don't go writing it into your world view.
(Incidentally, this is why people die, it's to avoid problems with them knowing too much and causing stack overflows, but that's another story)
Re:Correction: (Score:2, Funny)
I thought it was supposed to be a slice of buttered toast strapped butter-side up to the cat's back; the feline-toast turbine, which operates on the principals of:
1 - A cat always lands on its feet.
2 - A slice of buttered toast, when dropped on an expensive carpet, will always land butter-side down.