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Quantum Physics Parts Ways With Reality
aeoneal sends us to PhysicsWeb for news guaranteed to induce headache in those wedded to the reality of, well, reality. Researchers from the University of Vienna have shown the violation of a stronger form of Bell's inequality known as Leggett's inequality. The result means that we must not only give up Einstein's hope of "no spooky action at a distance," we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking. From the article: "[Studies] have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption — realism, locality, or both — is discordant with quantum mechanics." From the Nature abstract: "Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned." Only subscribers to Nature, alas, can know what features those are, as PhysicsWeb doesn't tell us.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
sounds like some meetings i've been in
closing my eyes at the age of four i knew the reality around me did not exist, so nobody could see me!
If you ask me, most of the people studying this sort of thing lost touch with reality long ago...
This comment is always the first post, as long as you are observing it. That's because by observing this comment you are not observing any previous comments, therefore they cease to exist!
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking
Does this mean that sticking your head in the sand actually works?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
this is a test to see if unread comments on slashdot really exist
if you are reading this, congratulations, you have participated in bringing this comment into reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... for news guaranteed to induce headache in those wedded to the reality of, well, reality.
It's a no brainer that marrying a real woman would be more trouble than marrying a virtual woman.
The universe uses portal-based rendering. The only question now is, is it Direct3D or OpenGL?
A site can still get slashdotted even if I don't look at it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Are you a proton?
Time to get some new words, because QM has gone off the deep end as to what those words they're using actually mean...Words with actual meaning are used in a way entirely separate from their meaning, because scientists, by and large, could not be bothered to coin genuinely new terms...Quantum Mechanics is a terrible term in and of itself...
That is because "spooky weird LSD-like shit goin' down" takes too long to say.
Table-ized A.I.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's really quite simple. Think of video games: the computer only renders the portion of the game that the player can observe (plus some nearby stuff for buffering, etc.). The Matr^H^H^H^HUniverse must act the same way to save on processing power.
I am the center of the universe.
Why don't they just throw some more Tacheyons at the problem?
It always worked on Voyager.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
God does not use float.
Yes, well, you'll have to understand that this is second hand, what some prophet understood from God's dumbed down explanation to someone who doesn't even have the concepts to understand it all.
:P
Think explaining Linux or the Internet to my old grandma (otherwise a smart woman, but doesn't even have a computer) and see if you don't end up dumbing it down to "it's like some tubes" oversimplification to get it over with. Now think she goes forth and writes a book about it. Ouch. It's not going to be very accurate, to say the least.
I mean, I can just think God explaining a player wipe to Moses:
God: "So we just reformatted the hard drive and re-installed from backups."
Moses: "Uh, what's a hard drive, Lord?"
God: "Well, it's this thing, like a magnetic disc, where everything is stored. All you see around you is on it."
Moses: "So, like a flat platter lord? And it carries the whole world?"
God: "Ah, wth, yeah, the world is on a plate. Whatever. So, anyways, we reformatted it..."
Moses: "My Lord, what's a reformat?"
God: "We wiped it clean, really?"
Moses: "Wiped the whole world, Lord? How is that even possible?"
God: "(Gah, I'll never get to the bottom of it.) You know, rewrite it all... if you will, cover it all with the same value."
Moses: "With a value?"
God: "You know what? With water."
Moses: "Like a flood, Lord?"
God: "Yeah, I flooded the damned thing. Everything was cross-linked and corrupted anyway."
Moses: . o O (Damned? Corrupted? So the world must have been sinful and angered the Lord.)
God: "So, anyway, then we reinstalled the prototype files for everything from the backup and respaned them everywhere..."
Moses: "Curse this feeble mortal mind, Lord, you've lost me."
God: "You know, prototypes? Like a definition of each animal? A master copy of each animal, one per sex? Male lion, female lion, male zebra, female zebra..."
Moses: "So you had one male and one female of each species stowed away somewhere safe?"
God: "Yep."
Moses: "On a... what was the word, Lord? Backup?"
God: "Uh, a big boat. Really big boat. I told this guy Noah to put one of each there."
You can see where it's going
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.