Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Science

Time Doesn't Exist 375

Meshula writes "An interesting article suggesting that time is an illusion of perception has appeared at New Scientist. "...quantum mechanics supports it. In 1929, the British physicist Nevill Mott and Werner Heisenberg from Germany explained how alpha particles, emitted by radioactive nuclei, form straight tracks in cloud chambers. Mott pointed out that, quantum mechanically, the emitted alpha particle is a spherical wave which slowly leaks out of the nucleus. It is difficult to picture how it is that an outgoing spherical wave can produce a straight line," he argued. We think intuitively that it should ionise atoms at random throughout space. Mott noted that we think this way because we imagine that quantum processes take place in ordinary three-dimensional space. In fact, the possible configurations of the alpha particle and the particles in the detecting chamber must be regarded as the points of a hugely multidimensional configuration space, a miniature Platonia, with the position of the radioactive nucleus playing the role of Alpha. " It's worth a read. "
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Time Doesn't Exist

Comments Filter:

E = MC ** 2 +- 3db

Working...