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Relativity Finally Meets Quantum Theory?
prion86 writes "Physisist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast) believes she has found a way to blend relativity with quantum theory. The article can be found on the Scientific American site."
Such a mentalistic approach to quantum mechanics is a fairly odd approach to take. For starters, it seems to be much more anthropocentric than we would usually like physics to be, indeed when Wigner first suggested a mentalistic theory of wave function collapse in the 1950s, people thought he had gone mad. The other problem is identifying exactly what kind of mind counts as an observer; does a rabbit observe? Maybe we want something more intelligent than that? How about a chimpanzee? If we start at this point, then we simply ask ourselves, how about if we made the chimpanzee a tiny bit less intelligent, an infinitessimally small amount less. Do we still want to allow him to be an observer? Of course we do. Now, let's repeat the process a near infinite number of times. What do we have? Something much less intelligent being an observer that we didn't initially want to be one. The same argument applies if we start from a human also. We have to define some threshold of intelligence, therefore. But this is hideously arbitrary and not the kind of pattern that we want to see in nature or in our scientific theories. The term observer is difficult to define, and does not, therefore, lend itself to inclusion in a well defined theory of physics. See my post on quantum observers for further complaints.
I'd like to see more stories like this on slashdot. It would be nice if we could spend more time contemplating real science and less time bashing microsoft.
I for one spend to much time being bitter at microsoft and not enough doing interesting things.