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.'"
Entangled atoms for FTL comm? (Score:2, Interesting)
Do I read that right and they created entangled atoms, giving us possible faster than light communications? Or is this just the usual journalists misreporting of scientific facts?
Quantum theory means the world may be a simulation (Score:4, Interesting)
Now assume someone with insufficient knowledge about such a universe who tries to model a simulation to get predictions, much like having for of war in a strategy game - when a unit disappears into fog of war (since x turns ago), it would be essentially in all places that in could reach in x turns at once.
An interesting question then might be, is then human knowledge and usage of quantum theory a desired property of the simulation, or an artifact that invalidates the simulation results?
Physicists Don't Seem too Philosophical (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the whole point of the cat-in-a-box: if an electron can be superposed, why not a whole cat? And what does that say about reality, if the quantum theory makes no sense? E.g. our sense of reality says the cat is either alive or dead, not both. Hence, shouldn't an electron be one or the other? Q.T. says no.
That "why" issue is the sort of thing that troubled a philosopher-type like Einstiein --- someone who wonders "why?" compulsively is likely to keep on digging. The physicists seem happy to crunch the numbers, do an experiment and see if it agrees with the numbers.
Which is in keeping with my observations of physicists: they are essentially applied mathematicians. Mathematicians (like Einstein) are a different sort.
Re:Quantum theory means the world may be a simulat (Score:2, Interesting)
Schrodinger's cat is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html [phobe.com]
Re:wouldn't that be... (Score:2, Interesting)
Einstein was right, these guys are still on crack! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like saying, something happens in reality only the very moment you know it. Turn on CNN, and all what they are reporting on, just happened at that very moment you learnt of it, and if you did not hear it or know it, then it did not happen! Crack!
An electron has a specific velocity, whether any person knows it or not. The probability distribution of the electron's velocity (wavefunction) is not a property of nature as Heisenberg states, but a property of our minds (lack of complete information). When that value is finally measured, we have a single value rather than a wavefunction (complete information). It is our minds that have changed, not reality. Therefore it is crack to say the electron has many velocities (wavefunction) before measurement but as soon as it is measured, it collapses (wavefunction collapse) into a single value.
The strangest part of this is that this blatant confusion has not totally incapacitated the usefulness of quantum mechanics. Imagine what will happen if more physicists could get their ducks in line and properly understand why Quantum mechanics works. Einstein was on track. Others have followed him and been able to do great things, although clearly disagreeing with the "spooky action at a distance" "copenhagen" interpretation. Such as Schrödinger, Edward Thomson Jaynes, the father of "maximum entropy".
ET Jaynes wrote about the possibility of doing a thesis under Oppenheimer:
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/etj.html [wustl.edu]
Oppy is Oppenheimer.
Quantum mechanics works, there is no question about it. The question is why does it work. IMHO, the majority of physicists today are backing up the wrong tree -- the copenhagen interpretation. Further progress is, thus being hindered.
Re:Einstein was right, these guys are still on cra (Score:2, Interesting)
look up Bell's inequality. You will see that *no amount* of extra information 'hidden' from us but carried by the particles can explain the observed phenomena of both EPR entangled particles and the distribution of states observed at one end.
QM in that sense is not shown to be incomplete by EPR. it is truly non-local. Or there are many universes. It is not at all the case that an electron 'has a velocity' and we don't know it. It really does only have a velocity when we know it. This *is* very difficult to accept, and is why people dream up things like many universes to get round it, but they just shift the apparent absurdity elsewhere. Or they just grumble that they can't accept it and it must be wrong, like Einstein did.
And it's evolution that's hard to swallow? (Score:5, Interesting)
The real kicker is that evolutionary theory makes sense on an intuitive level. Random variation + natural selection = genetic change. Genetic change + time = a lot of change. Divergent change = speciation. I'm no scientist--I'm not even that bright. But the ideas are simple and elegant if you make even a token effort to understand. Not so with quantum mechanics. It means what again? If any thse creationists or ID advocates were actually moved by their supposed skepticism about methodologial naturalism, they would be up in arms about quantum mechanics. Instead you hear what from them? Silence. The only branch of science that their profound, deeply conscientious, implacable intellectual integrity can concern itself with is the only one that has implications for a simplistic reading of Genesis. Every time I read "I'm no creationist, but I can't stand by when our children are sold half-baked theories as fact!" I want to crack up laughing. Quantum mechanics is such an easier target because maybe 50 people worldwide really understand it (okay, I'm exaggerating, but by how much?) and high school teachers probably don't make a large percentage. If the issue were just the nature of methodological naturalism, or the limits of human knowledge, or the nature of science, then evolution would never be the easiest target. But as it is, it's the only target.
Perhaps I'm coming late to this realization. Despite my noted cynicism, the very act of debate requires a little respect for the opposing view. But if the opposition is just flat-out lying, not only about their facts, but about their very motivating premises, then what is there to talk about? I guess it had to come to this eventually--if the other side really thinks you are working for the devil, you can't help but call them kooks sooner or later. What else is there?
No, this post o' mine didn't address quantum mechanics. It's just that the sheer inscrutability of the subject (to me) got me to wondering--where are all the gadflies who normally come out of the woodwork with dire warnings about passing off rank theory as fact? Where are the lessons in the scientific theory, the exhortations to "prove" it before we poison the minds of the next generation?
Question about Q-phys (Score:1, Interesting)
over the seemingly more 'classical':
Why shouldn't they have definite but not simultaneously measurable properties with a clumsy photon? Why can't they just have some chaotic function altering it from one state to the next that we don't know how to predict?
Alternately, if schroedinger's cat is in an alive/dead superposition in the box, then if the cat experiences a sane and straightforward set of experiences yet the outside-of-box observer claims it to be in an alive/dead combo state, then outside the box observer and inside the box observer's consciousness lines must potentially deviate. If the cat experiences no trouble at all, but the observer measures it to be dead then they're already in different 'universes' from one another.
So my last questions: is everybody else around here soulless zombies due to the great improbability that I'd be traveling along the same path as the 'conscious' ones? If not, why the heck are all you people following my conscious line for (or me yours)? That is, if multiple consciousness can occur at the split points, yet any one consciousness experiences a fluid and non-confusing pathway then how do the others experience anything.
Where do they come from, who/what experiences it? Maybe we're all really the same person separated by whatever localized state our matter based brains are configured for, then given all possibilities we experience all of them, one after another after another. brrrrrrrr.. spooky!
Our perception of reality (Score:2, Interesting)
Faster than the speed of light (Score:4, Interesting)
Bohr responded with a six-page essay in Physical Review that contained but one simple equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. In essence, he said, it all depends on what you mean by "reality."
This reminds me of the quote by the great Neil Peart "the more we think we know about, the greater the unknown."
The other explanation (Score:5, Interesting)
The real surprise here is how very limited our intelligence is, and how little of the true universe we are able to percieve. It is a terrible conceit to believe that we are a neutral observer capable of impartially observering the universe. We literally create our reality by observering it because our reality is a tiny three-dimensional slice of all possible realities. The universe isn't weird, we are just hopelessly myopic.
This interpretation has the benefit of proving Einstein right. God does not play dice with the universe. Since it is commonly accepted that God would transcend the Universe, his conciousness would be at least five-dimensional. He would be simoultaneously aware of all possible paths into the future. When we pick one, we experience a true free-will choice, but the transcendent observer knows which path we will pick - without affeting the nature of the choice iteself. As a side benefit, free will and omniscience are reconciled, and one of the major arguments against the existence of God crumbles into dust.
We aren't programs in the Matrix, we are ants in an ant farm - trapped in a tiny little slice of reality.
Re:Question about Q-phys (Score:2, Interesting)
Check it out here:
http://www1.union.edu/~malekis/QM2004/qm_heis3.ht
Re:I'm a smart man... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here's to the atom bomb (Score:1, Interesting)
The first real application of quantum mechanics is the laser (or the maser). But being the foundation of the CD-ROM somehow doesn't seem as heroic as being the foundation of a technology that roasted some hundred thousand civilians. I don't get it.
Two Views of the Universe (Score:1, Interesting)
The QM theory troubled Einstein especially because that way of thinking no longer worked anymore. For the first time, there was something truly, and irreducibly, random. Stuff happens, and it happens one way half the time and the other way the other half of the time, and there is nothing anyone in this universe can do about it. What is amazing is that even within this randomness, the "old" order is preserved.
We should keep asking ourselves, "Why?" Why does the universe behave this way? Is this really the end of the story or are there more fundamental principles of motion to understand? We should explore the standard theories and experiment and see how close they are to reality. We ask this question almost knowing we won't get a good answer. But we discover all sorts of neat things along the way.
On the separation of philosophy and physics, they aren't that separated after all. The difference is that physicists go out and do experiments, while philosophers talk about doing experiments. There is a large group of physicists--the theoretical physicists--that really blur the lines between philosophy and physics. What's really interesting is to listen to philosophers and see what they have to say about QM, at least those that really understand it. Yes, you can take physics and treat it as a tool. "We know X, Y, and Z, and that's it." But I am telling you, that isn't interesting. What is really interesting is asking, "Why is X, Y, and Z X, Y, and Z and not A, B, and C?" That's where new ideas come and ground-breaking experiments are proposed.
I sat through a class on particle quantum physics, and I watched as the professor pulled out charts from experiments he personally ran. "This is the predicted behavior. As you can see, it matches up pretty well, within the margins of error. It's always exciting when you get something so right. Except for these completely unexpected spikes here, here, and here. What causes these spikes? We don't know. But whatever it is, it is interesting, and we are spending a great deal of time and effort trying to understand these spikes. I have some ideas, my colleagues have others, and I am sure some of you have your own. I can't predict which ideas are correct and anyone who says they can is a fool. We have to look more and figure things out before we can say for sure what causes these spikes."
We have made significant progress since Aristotle first started writing things down and being methodical about his observations. But we are nowhere near the goal of understanding the universe. And what we do know seems to say we can't ever know what makes up the universe.
and Bellarmine was a founder of heliocentrism ;) (Score:2, Interesting)
Consider that during Galileo's trial, Cardinal Bellarmine supposedly said "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin." Should we say then that Bellarmine was 'a founder of heliocentrism'?
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Birth_(Christ
This is Pseudo-Scientific Juornalism (Score:3, Interesting)