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The Universe Damaged By Observation?
ScentCone writes "The Telegraph covers a New Scientist report about two US cosmologists who suggest that, a la Schrodinger's possibly unhappy cat, the act of observing certain facets of our universe may have shortened its life . From the article: 'Prof Krauss says that the measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the decay of the void to zero — back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving was falling rapidly.'"
Will it revert?
:-)
Or will it turn into a dead cat in a box
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Do I also shorten the life of this post by reading it?
"Pull the other one, its got bells on it! comes to mind.
Upon the first reading of the summary, this sounds retarded.
We don't send out EM to study the cosmos, we look at EM radiation that was already coming to us. What's the difference between harmlessly absorbing this radiation and measuring it with scientific instruments? The fact that we think about it?
What am I missing here?
Universe doesn't care about conscious observers. For example, slight heating of the Earth atmosphere by the light from SN1988 _also_ counts as 'observation'.
In fact, if an event changes macroscopic state of ANY physical object - it already counts as observation.
...have a privileged place in the universe that would fundamentally change the universe.
YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL.
This new theory suggests two things I see off the top of my head:
1. There is no other intelligent life in the universe, otherwise they would have killed the universe by looking at it.
2. The theory is flawed and the universe is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. We just don't understand all the process yet.
Personally, my money's on #2.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
quick, lets draw up some pointless laws against this!
good, fuck it!
as subject!
What we don't realize is all this study into quantum mechanics is falling right into Schrodinger's cat's hands. It wants us to make him an undead kitty so it can open a hole in the universe and let the infinite number of possibilities of it all flow into this one, and thus will take over the world. The only way we'll win this future battle is if we observe it enough that it goes away.
You stupid fucking humans are so predictable. Eager to feel powerful enough to effect things bigger than yourselves. Eager to feel guilty. Eager to believe that the sky is falling.
Track Announcer: And the winner is ... Number 3, in a quantum finish.
Farnsworth: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
always felt that reading slashdot was taking years of my life.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Don't look up!
Since God sees everything, the universe already ended.
You can postulate anything but unless you can present an experiment, you are no more plausible than any shaman.
So in other words if we all don Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses our chances of survival increase greatly. I guess you don't really need to be smart to get a degree anymore.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
On the reasonable assumption that we are not the only technologically advanced species in this universe, it would seem to me that we are not the only ones who might be trying to observe these phenomena. In that instance, given the scale of time and the potential numbers of potential observances of dark matter, it would probably have happened already.
Or perhaps it did happen and no one noticed.
END COMMUNICATION
With all due respect to the cosmologists and the journal which hosts their research, this is silly, and it is founded in misunderstandings of quantum theory.
There was a time when physicists were very concerned with the measurement problem, that quantum states evolve in a certain deterministic way aside from the times when a measurement is made, at which point the quantum state collapses into a singular state corresponding to the value which was measured.
In the last 30 years we know better, which is that the strange features of quantum states, like superposition in the case of Schrodinger's Cat or entanglement in the case of EPR 'action at a distance', rapidly vanish when the quantum system comes into contact with a macroscopic temperature resevoir --- the mathematics of QFT+Thermo has been worked out to show how temperature fluctuations cause the collapse. This solution to the measurement problem is called decoherence.
The only people left who say the measurement problem has to do with the conciousness doing the measuring seem to want the universe to be bizzare, but this desire is not enough when ho hum decoherence predicted by current theories is sufficient to account for our observations.
if this was true, porn would have disappeared with the rise of the web :)
That explains a lot! Everytime I stare directly into a light source, the light goes away for a while! The stronger or more "pure" the light, the longer it is affected by me staring at it.
Why, a few years ago I stared directly into a laser pointer, and to this day whenever I point it back into that eye, it generates NO LIGHT AT ALL.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Man hits/misses parked car. The Slashdot crowd is sympathetic/indifferent. The world does/doesn't go on.
English Period 4
Bhagavad-Gita Assessment
1)The philosophical beliefs of Plato strongly correlate with the beliefs expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita. One of Plato's beliefs is that True Knowledge can only be reached through contemplation, as with "That reason-method and discipline are one who see he [truly] sees..." (5:5). Also, Plato believed that the senses are not a reliable method for attaining understanding of Ultimate Knowledge, where the Bhagavad-Gita says, "The senses [only] on the objects of sense [describe]" (5:9). "As the embryo is covered by its membrane..." (3:38) describes much of what Plato thought in his Allegory of the Cave, in which the people chained inside the cave could only see shadows, and not the actual objects themselves.
2)My own personal belief strongly agree with much of the Hindu philosophy that we discussed. I do believe that all living things embody a soul, which is connected to an all encompassing, Along the same lines of this is how the Atman, ultimately, is just a part of the Brahman, and that the Brahman makes up the Atman. I also believe in reincarnation, and that a soul will ultimately reach a higher state of awareness, understanding and seeing much of the Higher Awareness. Similarly, in Hinduism, the Atman attains Enlightenment through a cycle of reincarnation, and attains this level of awareness by learning how to connect to Brahman. I also believe that souls can be reincarnated into any physical form, whether it be a living thing, a rock, planet, etc., anywhere in the physical universe. From what I could understand about Hinduism, Atman can be reincarnated into only living things. Also, I use meditation to help myself let go of things in my soul that are not part of God, or things that aren't of the Higher Power, and to refocus myself with God. This also follows much of the Hindu belief that the path of meditation will ultimately lead someone to Enlightenment. One of the main things that I disagree with Hinduism belief is that of the Caste, in which we are destined, according to our familial caste, to a certain social ranking and occupational destiny. I personally believe that each living thing does have a certain level of understanding of the Higher Reality, and that there are different levels this understanding, but I don't believe any being is held to a certain level of awareness, nor shunned for any action.
I sincerely hope this is a case of a reporter misunderstanding a scientist's statement.
Waveform collapse applies to quantum probabilities, not passive long-distance observations. They occur because an observer influences an observation; interfering with that which is observed is the only way one can observe it on the scales in which quantum phenomena occur. When observing the light of stars, no information is being sent back to the source; and the idea that consciousness somehow magically induces waveform collapse has all but died, favoring instead theories of quantum decoherence and the indroduction of new 'thermal' states during the observation process as the trigger for waveform collapse.
My only hope is that they've cooked up this idea simply to show how silly the idea of consciousness-triggered waveform collapse is; much like Schrodinger created the cat thought experiment to demonstrate what he saw as a flaw of the Copenhagen interpretation of superposition.
I'm not opening my eyes again. First I have to worry about killing a cat now I've got to worry about the whole damn Universe!
You know, I recognize most of the words in the article as being from astrophysics and quantum mechanics, but when you put them all together, they don't make a lick of sense.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If we stop observing Zonk, will he stop posting these annoying brain-damaged articles?
Oh would they stop with the "if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's around to hear it, is it in a state of quantum flux" crap. It's no more than a stupid scientific joke because there's absolutely no way to test it. I could say that until we observe certain things, they're tiny dancing banana creatures with sombraros and you couldn't prove me wrong either. If a quantum event happened and nothing "witnessed it" one of the two possibilities that could happen DID HAPPEN! There's no reason to think it didn't.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Quarantine by Greg Egan...is a great book which explores the idea that the wave function collapse caused by observation is something specific to the human brain, and the rest of the universe is starting to get a bit upset about humans carving up the universe by observing it.
Its a great read, and a good way to get a better understanding of (at least Egans' idea of) quantum mechanics.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Finally! The proof I always knew existed!
SETI@Home is an Al Quaeda plot dedicated to the destruction of the universe!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Probably one of the worst Star Trek The Next Generation episodes was the one where it turns out that warp drive was ruining the fabric of spacetime so everyone had to drive warp 5.5. Sadly I can't remember enough details to find the damn episode's name. They eventually ignored it the same way the ignored the first episode with the Klingons in the original Trek.
Even if this idea is unsubstantiated I can imagine the anti-science crowd taking this and saying we shouldn't do any science at all.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Then we would have just as likely have increased its lifespan. :-p
But obviously, it's more fun to focus on the more sensationalist, fearmongering, idea.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
They've all gone mad.
This idea is based on the assumption of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics -- the idea that wave-functions exist as superpositions of multiple states and that they're collapsed into discrete states upon observation. First, is an observer only a human being, an animate object or inanimate object? Seems to me that many inanimate systems self-propagate themselves through time, relying on the continuous collapse of wave functions -- without people looking at them. Second, in my mind the Copenhagen interpretation is impossible to prove because you can never really know what the wavefunction is doing before the observation, and this is why it's an interpretation. In this case, you couldn't know if the universe could actually be older than than it is, without our observation. At least this is my view as a statistical quantum mechanicist.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
So what makes a human being's conscious perception of faraway photons any more special than the surface of Pluto being gently heating by photons from a faraway supernova? The wave function collapses onto the photopigments of my retina, or it collapses onto a faraway rock. What's the difference. Why do physicists seem to think that a conscious observer's awareness of the event has any relevance whatsoever? And didn't physics get past this retarded way of thinking with decoherence theory -- the idea the wave functions collapse everywhere all the time? These guys are as bad as the dorks who used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around us.
Yet another popsci article more interested in promoting and perpetuating these titillating misinterpretations of/in science rather than responsibly explaining something interesting.
And I also hope it is already understood without my saying, that I am no where close to being a physicist and I didn't rtfa.
They are going to sue everyone in sight claiming their clients have been damaged because others looked at them in a funny way.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
However, the other issue here is what constitutes observation. I am very definitely not a physicist, but my feeble understanding of quantum mechanics suggests that the "observation" is at the micro level where quantum effects are significant. The very meaning of "observing" an electron is hard to understand in macro terms. It roughly translates as "bouncing a dirty great photon off it". If I tried to measure the speed and position of a passing car by firing an RPG at it, well definitely its momentum and a few other things would be affected by the observation. If someone in the car fires the RPG at me, it may hit or it may miss but neither outcome changes its velocity.
So what does it take to "observe" the Universe, or the dark matter in it? I guess the number of photons we would need to do a significant amount of observation would be rather large, and in any case it would take a few billion years before most of them had any effect.
The Schroedinger's Cat gedanken experiment is of course no such thing. It assumes the construction by human beings of an amplifying system to convert the effect of a single atomic decay into a cat killer. That's necessary because we have never experienced any such "cosmic amplifier" arising naturally. These physicists would need to propose how such an amplifer would arise and operate, otherwise it's just attention seeking.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Don't you guys know anything? Dark energy is telepathic, like that pitcher plant on Voyager. It KNOWS when you're looking at it, doesn't like it, and might snuff out the universe from pure spite.
In order to appease it we must either a) outlaw astronomy and destroy all terrestrial, orbital, and extra-orbital equipment that might allow us to observe it or b) detonate all nuclear warheads on earth simultaneously thus killing the human race and all potential observers (that we know of). The latter might seem a bit extreme, but think about it: we are not only threatening this planet, but all planets everywhere. The end of Earth is a small price to pay to save the universe.
QUICK! Everyone, close your eyes!
-- my sig got
please pass the crack pipe
Your post isn't made up of "dark energy", so observing it doesn't shorten its' life - it makes it longer.
Same as a watched kettle takes longer to boil.
Now if your post was from the dark side (for example, you were an M$ employee going on about te lower TCO and energy savings of Vista as it converts your laptop into a toaster oven), your post WOULD have shortened visibility as it quickly sinks to -666.
Kevin Smith on Prince
...I might be your uncle.
The german police will be pleased!
;P To me it sounds like they inhaled too much of the grass they burned in the garden ;)
Oh, and obligatory Professor Farnsworth quote: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"
And in seriousness, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It's very abstract to me
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
If all of the chineses look the universe at once... would cataclysm result?
Let's fight a war against all those astrophysicians terrorists! And stop looking at your dick in the mirror, just in case...
Observing only was a way to explain certain conditions in which changing a result happened when you tried to observe it.
First it was just silly way to explain the randomness. Now its a fact that the scientific method of observation need not apply.
http://saveie6.com/
Let's throw a blond bikini virgin into a volcano to see if that fixes it. (She won't date any of us anyhow.)
Table-ized A.I.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Yes, yes it is.
And you thought housing prices were already bad...
Table-ized A.I.
Universe is not human centric, but observing is... I wonder if a CCD camera is as damaging as human senses, and which point the damage is done?
TFA goes on to say that the recent reinterpretation of the source of soft x-rays is another example of astronomers "causing damage to the heavens." It actually implies that the x-ray astronomers caused the universe to lose one fifth of its mass.
We need to reign in these rogue astronomers, stat!! LOL
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
...Cat's Eye Nebula
Table-ized A.I.
Possibly died when I looked at it. Actually, it did. ='[
While observing attractive women I got too close and was maced. I'm sure I permanently altered her perceptions of men- and mace!! I might have even changed her schedule.
May be universe does not care about conscious observers, but cats sure do. Just try to observe any cat in your neighborhood and watch for its reaction.
The mice are gonna be pissed.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I mean, quantum physics states that to observe a particle's position or trajectory, you must first throw energy at it, thereby altering it. But in the case of the supernova stated in TFA's header, or any astronomical phenomena for that matter, all we are doing is passively gathering an infinitesimal amount of the radially emitted energy, which would have been absorbed by rocks in the ground if some high-tech gizmo wasn't there in an observatory instead.
Do I alter the sun by squinting at it, and does it take eight minutes to upload my observation back into the sun's hard drive? It's the same thing, and it sounds rather silly.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
the first is, as someone already stated, we aren't sending out photons to these distant objects to observe them. The photons come to us so the common way of observing something (hitting it with a photon) isn't being done in this case and in fact the opposite is occurring which means we aren't affecting it.
Second, (this is a long one) I'm currently reading "Decoding the Universe" by Charles Seife and he discusses information theory and how it relates to quantum and relativity theory. An interesting thing he discusses is decoherence and how a cat can't be in superposition but an atom can.
The problem is that decoherence happens too fast for us to measure the superposition for a cat compared to an atom. To prevent decoherence from happening you have to prevent something in the environment from interacting with it, that is to put the object in a complete vaccuum and cool it to absolute zero. This slows down and minimizes the chance of a particle interacting with the object you want in superposition. The bigger and warmer the object the harder it is to cool it, put it in a vaccuum, and prevent any atomic particle from hitting it. That's why cats and anything else on the macroscopic scale can't be in superposition.
Seife states that observing particles can actually slow radioactive decay because the observation continually resets its superposition but sometimes it will still decay. What makes it decay? Nature is making measurements too using vaccum flutuations (at the quantum level). Sometimes during the observation of the vaccuum flutuation the superposition collapses in a way to make the atom split (decay). Finally, my conclusion is that if Nature is making observations then the fact that we are observing supernovae shouldn't affect them anymore than Nature is already affecting them and the universe as a whole.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
1. There is no other intelligent life in the universe, otherwise they would have killed the universe by looking at it.
Perhaps they created a branching reality (multiverse theory), and in their reality they are gone. Maybe that solves the Fermi Paradox. Advanced civilizations wipe themselves out by observing too much. Curiosity kills the...well, um...cat. Are we about to win a Galactic Darwin Award also?
Table-ized A.I.
And a supergate that takes it's power from a black hole may do even more or do that not do anything?
This is what I never understood about this subject.... They say the cat is both dead and alive until we observe it... But what about the cat? Surely when the cat dies it's dead and "observed" itself as such, thus making our observation moot. Or somesuch. Again, a tree in a forest is not both standing and fallen until we look at it.... When it does/not fall/stand it doesn't make both a sound and no sound at the same time. And just say the universe DOES change due to direct observation... That doesn't mean we have to be the ones to observe it surely? Aliums might have observed it already? Or is the case of the cat saying that the state of an object might be a certain value, but in the realm of our own personal universe the state is not known until observed and... Well getting off track and confused there the point is... Well I'm not sure anymore but this news just seems a little ways off into the realm of fairytales to me.
Quantum physics don't work that way!
There is not a shred of evidence that conscious observation has any effect on matter that differs from systems that evolve without being consciously evolved.
All your waves are belong to us
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Season 7, Episode 9: Force of Nature
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
It might be just me, but that seems like a pretty presumptuous thing to assume. Just because I look at something means I can change it? My interpretation of the whole paradox wasn't in the observation, but the interaction with the object being observed.
Also, I bet Einstein's ghost is set to embark on a century long bender after reading this post...
In fact, if an event changes macroscopic state of ANY physical object - it already counts as observation. Indeed. I would go so far as to say that the event SN1988 and ensemble of sub-events within the event, for all practical purposes, "measured itself" while it was happening. The quantum coherence time/length of such a macroscopic situation would be very short (on the order of the scattering time/length) and would rapidly decohere to a macroscopic state. If that didn't do it, any coupling to the gravitational background at all would probably finish the job in the next microsecond.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
This is the same principal that made dinosaur bones appear in the ground when we doubted the bible and started looking for evidence of evolution.
God is taunting us.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1005391949403496551
...was a thought experiment, meant to ironically show what kind of BS this sort of thing is.
If you pump the box full of poison gas, the cat is f-ing dead, whether you've observed it or not. Schrodinger got a chuckle out of it.
Quantum mechanics says that the cat is not necessarily dead until it is observed, but that doesn't make it fact. It means that's a useful way to think about it under certain circumstances.
In absence of a natural phenomenon, like a clogged gas hose, that cat is dead. If we checked the relatively simple delivery system, the "experiment" merely points out a fundamental flaw in quantum mechanics.
In quantum physics, where the systems are difficult to observe, or unexplained, we can't "check the hose for blockage," and so we must assume that we don't know.
So this isn't a science report, it's a psychology workup.
There's a difference between saying a method is successful or useful, and saying that it explains everything down to the point that we are little gods affecting the universe.
The universe was going to poop out whether they detected "dark energy" or not. Their seeing it doesn't make the outcome more likely. It does, however, make the math work so that the predictions are now much more dire. All they're reporting is their own awareness.
--
Toro
Did naming the constellations esacalate the decay? Apparently mankind is the only influence. Previous civilizations are not relevant. Now the theosophic/racist/specist discussions begin.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
On Haloween Chuck Norris tried to scare himself while looking in the mirror.
However since the resulting implosion of the universe was not able to account for the presense of Chuck Norris, it simply reset.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
the scientists observing this were in a box and a cat was looking in on them?
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Translation: Yes, please ignore the imminent and proven threat. Lets focus instead on bogus things that make no sense and are not falsifiable.
The rest of the article is written by the same ignoramus and therefore sucks elephant gonads.
Liberty.
I read a book once called Quarantine that went like this. It was pretty good.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
"God doesn't play dice with kitties,"
said you, Einstein, so I ask thee:
We put the cat in
the box rife with toxin...
Is God rolling dice, or are we?
it kinda makes me proud that I might be partially responsible for the destruction of the universe. Its kinda life fulfilling in a way. Like knowing youve done something that will be remembered.
oh and for the record:
In soviet Russia the universe destroys YOU by watching it!
The observer effecting the out come isn't to be taken literally people.
When setting up parameters for a test, then can influence it's outcome, a person doesn't have to actually be observing anything.
People who claim mysterious effects on any scale outside the quantum scale are ignorant, or more likely, hucksters.
Saying the outcome is neither one of two (or more) states is strictly a philosophical thought exercise.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
shock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodingers_cat is photoshopped! it is not real.
It just goes to show: Every time you look at the stars, God kills a kitten (or a supernova).
SIGFAULT
Based on the Drake Equation there is likely to be some quantity of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe making similar observations. Why can't we just blame them?
Sorry.
Had to Fork it, as someone looked in the repo.
*Sigh*
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Will you stop spreading nonsense? it only give the illusion of power to psuedoscience crap sellers.
"To observe something, it must be interacted with. "
Incorrect.
Starlight is observed, but I do not interact with the star at all.
"The most common form of interaction involves a photon bouncing off of something,"
That photon is not part of what you are seeing, it is light 'bounced' from the object, NOT the object. No more then sound is the object.
"This involves a small energy transfer and/or a series of reactions between the "thing" used for observation and the observee. "
OMG, stop this person from breeding. There is no place on the world you could leave and not raise the average IQ.
There is no energy transfer, AT FUCKING ALL!
You are saying that photon are created when someone looks at something. Can't you see what non sense this is? You are also implying that this magic energy transfer happen backwards through time. I doubt you are smart enough to realize that.
"This is why observation causes a solidification of state, and/or change."
No it doesn't, not at all. What has happened is some stupid people took a quote out of context, and then applied what they thought it must mean to it.
I don't know who is more ignorant, you, or the people who modded you insightful.
As a side note I feel I shoud remind you that energy can not be destroyed or created. I get the feeling you missed that as well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...but I really think this is complete BS. You don't affect something that far away simply by being in the path of the light that came off of it millions of years ago. The universe just doesn't operate that way. You affect the light itself sure, but not the origin of the light. I suppose if you got hit with one of them entangles particles we keep hearing about you might affect it's twin but i understand that that is pretty rare.
by the same hubris that is innately human. "Consciousness" and how special it is, is a value judgement. I would say it derives from religion, but religion came as it's product. I know we want to understand, but this sounds like more harebrained extrapolation.
This article is pretty interesting from a philosophical point of view. One of the first things I realised is that if there is indeed an effect from our measurements it must mean that no sentient beings have been doing such measurements earlier in the lifetime of the universe.
I don't claim to know enough about quantum physics or the universe but this claim sounds like a load of crap. And on top of that, who really cares? Not a troll! really! Someone please explain the importance (or lack thereof) of this discovery.
Mod the universe up before it disappears!
Table-ized A.I.
So we don't see intelligent life because when they start looking at their universe they're likely to destroy it?
Nothing to see here, move along.
Remember, however, that some physicists hypothesize that the cat could observe itself, this, the experimenter is already too late.
This whole thing is non-sense. Single photons, like electrons, are mostly statistical objects, like public opinion. Human observation can, indeed, extract a small amount of energy more than was being lost to non-human (some would say inanimate) observation and destablize an ambiguous balance. Large groups of photons, however, are not so easily destabilized by such a small extra extraction of information/energy.
If dark matter exists in the masses we are talking about, the universe is itself observing the dark matter, and one thousand relatively small telescopes here could not alter that.
Looking towards another interpretation, our observation could definitely alter our _perceptions_ concerning the stability of the universe. (In our fear of the metaphysical, we assume far too much in favor of stability.)
joudanzuki
It's late, it's Friday, I'm talking colloquial English. Don't like it? I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave a moment ago to Danny, from the Hon. Member for Withnail. (Vis: "You can shove it up your arse, and fuck off whilst you're about it.")
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Somehow, the act of passively measuring the photon (which is just EM radiation under a different name) with scientific instruments changes the fundamental character of the interaction - that is, you "collapse the wave function."
I'd rather say that the measurement "collapses the wave function earlier" and this is what gives the "strange" result.
- In the first case, it's only at the point when an interaction occurs at the screen that an absolute event is distinguished.
- In the second case, an absolute event is established by interaction (or not) with the detector.
The results are consistent if you realize that interaction between discreet bodies is exactly what establishes the consensual reality of those bodies. Until they interact they do - in a very real sense - occupy their own distinct universes. In other words, until entity X interacts in some manner with entity Y neither one exists in any regard for the other. This can be extrapolated to chains of interactions, and you can draw your own conclusions about how that establishes common realities.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Psuedo-science like this makes me sick. "Just like a watch pot never boils..." BS! Come on, a watch pot does boil, and given that you aren't somehow changing it every time you look (say taking the lid off to look inside) and just staring at an open pot, it will boil just as fast if you weren't looking, and like the bad analogy, the science for observing distant objects is the same, despite our passive viewing of distant galaxies they will still continue doing what they normally do, unlike me, the universe can "GO" when other people are looking. I hope that most /. readers understand this as the avalanche of crap that it is. Shame with articles like this is that there are a lot of folks now probably walking around with their eyes closed, running into things and being a danger to us all, deathly afraid that observing things might cause the universe to collapse.
CLAP YOUR HANDS PETER!
What's the point in having a universe if we can't observe it? Wouldn't we have to observe the universe to know what would happen if we didn't observe it?
by observing it. What a load of ridiculous pseudoscience. Another matter is the fact that we have only observed this dark matter in the last 10 years. Since these things are so far away, this article is suggesting that our special human quantum powers can reach back through time. Stupidity at its worst, how the hell did this get on the front page?
Give us this day our garlic bread and lead us not into vegetarianism but deliver us some pizza.
I started typing, wandered off, and appear to have been beaten to the punch by everyone on the planet.
(And please note I wasn't trying to say this made sense, only explaining what the idea is.)
Pics or it didn't happen ;)
do people not even understand their own field? "observation" isnt talking about humans literally observing quantum particles, its talking about them interacting with things allowing us to infer exact information about them. a quantum particle is going to colapse if it interacts with anything at all, not just a humans eyeball.
Yah and if you believe that bull$#^+ then I am more than willing to sell you a book about how the Earth is actually only 6000 years old.
How long until a clueless lawmaker declares all scientific measurements illegal to "protect" the universe?
If by observing, you mean changing the quantum state in some way (like say, passing the particles through a magnetic field to measure their spin), and if, for some reason, those particles are entangled to particles that exist in the supernova, then you would be able to change the quantum state of a bunch of particles at the source via that "spooky action at a distance" that Einstein discovered. This is something that would (probably) not occur if the particles just smacked into the Earth's magnetic field...
But this is stretching -- we're only talking about a few particles in a freakin' supernova. I really think it's most likely that the reporter didn't understand what he was being told.
TFA refers to the Zeno effect, which I hadn't heard of before. This turns out to be an effect whereby the decay of a particle can be suppressed by continuous observation of the particle.
The thrust of the argument is that dark energy could spontaneously decay, resulting in a new big bang. The probability of decay decreases with time, and by observing dark energy the decay probability is reset back to its value at time zero due to the Zeno effect.
Being a very very amateur reader of quantum mechanics, all I can say to this is, OK if they say so. One thing I did run across is that wikipedia's entry for the Zeno effect claims it only applies to microscopic particles, not macro systems.
My question would be, wouldn't dark energy as a whole be considered a macro system? Surely an individual quantum of dark energy is not what humans observed. I would have no idea to whom I should address that question.
Relatedly, I find this paper to be very helpful.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Don't bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Don't bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Roll another one
Just like the other one
You've been holding on to it
And I sure will like a hit
Roll another one
Just like the other one
That one's burned to the end
Come on and be a real friend
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
>
> I'm in ur universe, peepin' ur void!
A paradox:
Schrodinger's Ceiling Cat is collapsing ur wave function.
Whenever you masturbate, Schrodinger kills a Ceiling Cat.
If Schrodinger's Ceiling Cat observes you masturbating, it dies.
If Schrodinger's Ceiling Cat observes you not masturbating, it lives.
Is the cat alive or not? Before you answer "Of course, it's dead, this is Slashdot!", remember that from the cat's perspective, it's the one that collapses the wave function. Whether or not you're whacking it at the moment SCC makes its observation isn't up to you, because until SCC makes the observation, your wankstate is what's superposed.
I remember reading a SF book about this not so long ago...Greg Egan - Quarantine The book was written 13 years ago, in 1995. You can find it here : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarantine-Greg-Egan/dp/0061054232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195873578&sr=8-1.
First off, I'm not a quantum physicist but I'm also not an idiot.
After rtfa, the biggest support given by the article was about observing microscopic particles. The claim is that observing these can stop them from changing, "just as a watched kettle never boils."
Have you ever watched a kettle until it boils? I did when I was 10 to disprove my Grandma.
The reporter doesn't know what he is saying and I would bet money those scientists are doing this to get a grant.
How about a twist: Consciousness is a fundamental part of the universe, that will revolutionize all our old paradigms of how we view and interact with it.
;)
;).. Makes thing interesting and no matter, all waves will dissolve soon anyways. In the meanwhile, it is so easy to be caught up in the scenery, rather than go within and search for its own true reality and potential.
;) I repeat: MAYBE ;)
;)
:)
The particles / waves will interact with whatever is there. The interaction will propagate throughout the whole universe as waves, ripples on the ocean.
What are humans physically, but ripples on the ocean of life? The wave rises, and in the end merges totally back into the ocean. During a normal lifespan, not a single atom or molecule will remain the same in our body for the whole time. In the end, _all_ physical traces of who we _thought_ we were will be scattered across the pond of the universe.
If we have a form of consciousness, why not a stone, or a photon, or a planet?
Of course, there is no proof of consciousness, but you have to be pretty unconscious to admit that there is nothing there!
It is so _easily_ felt that _YOU_ exist / have consciousness.. There is no need for thoughts at all.. In fact, thoughts will distract you from it.
How can you ever hope to _prove_ existence? For all you know, it is all just a _playback_ of a holo-tape in a bad episode of Star Trek and were just the statist. But still, you have some existence and it can very easily be recognized BECAUSE IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE UNIVERSE.
This will be modded down, ridiculed or ignored, a good indication of lack of consciousness in people who think themselves intelligent, and would rather get involved in complex intellectual masturbation, or some other way to escape the simple reality.
But this is okay, since every wave is unique and special in its own way. For the duration of the wave, most waves will not question itself or its own destination too much, but rather spend time quarreling with other waves, frustrating that not more attractive waves are around them or making more waves
Maybe this will even be modded Funny, which would maybe prove that God has a sense of humour!
Karma is excellent, but moderation alters the truth. So let me repeat God one more time, and get a real dent in moderation
A little more: God, God, God, God, God! Hah! Thisll be modded flamebait now =)
Btw, God is not a man with beard in white robes pointing a finger at you.
So there, happy moderation. I wonder what wave will collapse, and what not.
Pleeease, not "Interesting". That is SO boring.
Maybe +5 Underrated? That would be closer to truth..
But who am I, but a wave telling lies and smiling at the sun
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I told you not to read this! You have started the end of the universe!
"I think this line is mostly filler"
if the effect was caused by a phase shift then the interference pattern would still exist, but the pattern would change, but what happens is the pattern disapears because only waves make interference and the photon became a particle.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Does consciousness give rise to matter? Or does matter give rise to consciousness?
Or is it that there really is no such thing as consciousness, and it is just matter being funny?
Or, on the other hand, is it that there really is no such thing as matter, and it is just consciousness being funny?
Neither assumption has more evidence than the other. Either assumption leaves us with some odd seams that don't quite come together in our world view (which members of both camps are very quick to rationalize away, without success).
One problem I see with many attacks against the "consciousness is the ground of being" camp is a confusion between the general principle of consciousness and its particular manifestation in a particular person. Those who believe that matter is the ground of all being don't expect that one person, since he happens to be made of matter, should be able to display miraculous powers or otherwise have some special sort of ontological status. So why do they expect that those who believe consciousness is the ground of being DO believe that one person, since he is made of consciousness, should be able to display miraculous powers or otherwise have some special sort of ontological status?
My guess is because the religious nuts who actually DO believe that individual humans have miraculous powers tend to use the "consciousness is the ground of being" model to justify their myths. I would submit that attacking a metaphysical assumption because of the way some nuts misinterpret it is a straw man fallacy...or perhaps something of an ad hominem.
In any case, as far as I am concerned, the "which came first, matter or mind?" question is largely academic. What our best evidence (scientific and mythological (for what THAT is worth)) suggests is that the forces that give rise to reality as we know it are so unlike reality as we know it that we have a terrible time getting our heads around them. It may very well be that the distinction we draw between consciousness and matter is wholly arbitrary...a distinction without a difference which arises from current limitations in our understanding.
So, in sum, the jury is out, and remains out because there just isn't enough evidence either way yet.
So there is no higher being and we're all insignificant beings on an insignificant planet, cosmically speaking. That was then. Now we, the insignificant on the insignificant, has been observing the more significant and thus have shortened the life of the significant.
Rather shocking that an "I, for one, welcome our universe-curtailing overlords" wasn't FP. Then again they are us.
So if we don't look at something, it must not be there? What would happen if we did look? If I turn around and I hadn't seen a large hawaiian pizza there, that means that when I turn around it must be there. Hey look! A dead cat!
Vitalism
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
RTFBS stands for Read The Bullshit. (The F is silent.) Duh, I just finished RTFBSing, and I think these guys are nuts. This is not a troll. This is really my opinion on the matter. And that's all I have to say about that.
Well, I guess we know what Professor Chaos is up to now.
They are probably thinking about Zeno effect. But it only works in quantum mechanics, while the large scale Cosmos is described by the classical physics. So, it should not apply. The thing is already classical, not quantum. Perhaps because it is already entangled with my mind, including the cosmological constant.
If a tree falls....
Aliens are still observing it. The Universe is doomed to destruction.
Or... this is an evidence that aliens do not exist?
If I am reading this correctly does this mean that the closer we get to the answer to the universe the more likely it will destroy itself? You mean Douglas Adams actually got it right?
... He is clearly back in Old Testament "smite the unbelievers!" mode. Except apparently now the Egyptians run Windows and God has gotten bored with sending plagues manually and instead He has inserted them into a cron job. Pharoah's security consultants tried to root Moses' SnakeWare distro -- bad call.
We can further see that He is abandoning the New Testament by noting that God sent his only son to earth, and the SlashGod would have sent twins on the first day and then maybe two to three more in the next week, with another coming a year later in case you missed the Savior the first time. This would probably have required duping the Resurrection, but hey, omnipotence means never having to say you're sorry.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
New Scientist seems to have a habit of printing the worst kind of tripe. Slashdot really should stop giving them attention.
Ostriches worked this out ages ago.
It is interaction with a sufficiently complex that cause the wave function to collapse. Otherwise, the other system just gets entangled.
The question is how complex is complex enough? The only criteria we know is enough, is interaction with an intelligent observer, a.k.a. observation. Because observation is the only way we can determine the outcome.
What happens to a system when it is not observed is anyway philosophy, not physics.
"I observe, therefore I destroy!"
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
A well known Indian philosopher (whose name alludes me now) once said
The perceiver perceives the perception as an extension of perceiver
thereby corrupting the perception.
Isn't this the whole plot to Crisis on Infinite Earths?
"The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get." -Robert Smith
Wow. I watched a pot until it boiled to see if it could be done; out of curiosity. I didn't do it to compete with my Grandma. Shit. That's just ugly, dude. Go give your Bubby a kiss right now.
-FL
Said an alien spokesman, "It seems that our previous judgement of humanity being mostly harmless has been incorrect. We will install cameras everywhere on the entire planet to make sure that these humans are not causing any more damage."
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
This story suggests to me a new version of Fermi's paradox: "If we are not alone in the universe [and we are damaging it], where is everyone? [Shouldn't all the advanced civilizations allegedly populating the galaxies be shouting at us to "stop it NOW!" ?]
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
They talk over drinks...
Philosophy predicts things will go poorly.
Science tells him calmly, there is no way he can know that.
Oedipus starts a game of darts.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
You 'observe' things when they affect you or your equipment.
Thus it is impossible to avoid 'observation'.
Thus, what humanity did, didn't change anything, yet.
There is more 'danger' in the particle colliders which might create particles that normally don't exist. Not like i'm overly scared, i doubt they could amass more energy than to destroy a city.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
The cat is probably in process of dying,and the scientists don't know it.
Its doesn't depends on human brain to recognize/observe the death to be real.
Its like believing in God doesn't make it exist.Reality is external.
Schroedinger half-alive cat is bullshit.The probability doesn't make things choose both
incompatible states.
I was told if I reach the end, there will be cake. Yummy!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
You won't get any useful information by reading a Slashdot summary of a Telegraph summary of a New Scientist summary of a paper by Krauss and Dent on arxiv.org. Why not read the original paper, and decide for yourself?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.1821
Here's a thread on physicsforms.com about the paper, with 2 posts by Krauss (one of the authors):
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=199811
Doug Moen.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
The Bush administrations "War on Terror"
The more it's examined, the more absurd it seems.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Nigel Tufnel: Look... still has the old tag on, never even played it.
Marty DiBergi: [points his finger] You've never played...?
Nigel Tufnel: Don't touch it!
Marty DiBergi: We'll I wasn't going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.
Nigel Tufnel: Well... don't point! It can't be played.
Marty DiBergi: Don't point, okay. Can I look at it?
Nigel Tufnel: No. no. That's it, you've seen enough of that one.
You're BOTH wrong....AND right!! ... In ONE sub-version of the Multiverse, it was Isaac Asimov who wrote "9 Billion Names of God", (this is why you remembered it like that, freedom_joe.. since our brains are quantum-based probabilistic neural nets, some "leakage" happens when our consciousness jumps from one version of the Multiverse to the another version... this is such a common occurrence we rationalize it as "misremembering things") in ANOTHER, it was Arthur C. Clarke... ;-)
Brandon
I just knew it. Take one peek at The Man Behind the Curtain and its all over for us.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I never thought that cosmologists are that far out there.
I hope the author is not suggesting that if he gets funding he will do nothing about it.
Je me souviens.
I haven't posted a comment to slashdot in at least a decade, but I can't let this one pass.
One of the greatest misconceptions in quantum mechanics, one that took the better part of a century to clear up and exorcise from the theory, is that wave functions collapse upon observation. Bohr liked it philosophically, and von Neumann used it as an axiom in his mathematical treatment, but it causes more problems than it solves.
Griffiths wrote an incredibly clear book laying out the modern understanding in 'Consistent Quantum Mechanics.' There are lots of other tidbits floating around (Bohm-de Broglie pilot wave; transactional interpretation and the Feynman-Wheeler electrodynamics that gave birth to it), but this part at least is solid. There is no faster than light transfer of information, there is no spooky action at a distance, there is no collapse of the wave function. All these things show up because we mix up sigma algebras in our probability spaces, which is the basis of every classical fallacy in probability besides Bayesian statistics.
Remember kids, don't mix sigma algebras.
in the excellent little novel 'Quarantine'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(novel)
I think we should start saying 'site is damaged by observation' instead of 'site is slashdotted'
Science couldn't see it coming? Perhaps you meant what non-scientists call science couldn't help people to see the proverbial bar approaching; but if it's possible to see it, it will be seen better through the application of scientific knowledge.
The metaphysical question that has not been posed is "If the Universe is so fragile that mere observation will bring it to an untimely end, is it worth observing at all?" That oughta fry your noodle. But really, if the Universe produces observers, who will in the natural course of their existence, hasten the destruction of that same Universe, then Something Has Already Gone Terribly Wrong.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
The important point is not observation, it is interaction with another object, typically taken to mean measurement.
Prior to the expansion phase, the universe was confined to a size less than the Plank length. The entire universe was a single quantum phenomenon. All parts were in complete interaction. The expansion phase didn't change that. Observing/measuring isn't going to do diddly to the (previously) single quantum event we know as the universe.
I'd like to see the math on this one. It may contain the glaring goof that prevents us from merging gravity with the other forces.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I apologize for the confusion, but in our work, causality is not implied.. we are not
implying that by observing the universe you are destroying it.. we simply raise the
question at the end of our paper of whether cosmological observations can constrain
the nature of the quantum mechanical wavefunction of our universe in a way that allows
us to infer we are not in the late decaying tail, if the universe is metastable.
LMK
Oedipus starts a game of darts ...with some tipsy milfs
If the Drake Equation is any good at all, there are likely to be hundreds of millions of other civilizations in the universe. It's certainly reasonable to assume that a good portion of them have observed/are observing/will observe the universe as well. Why pin the blame on just us?
Does it STILL collapse the wave function? What if I'm slightly off...what if I'm WAY off. How perfect must my observation be to collapse the function?
Presumably this is talking about distant supernovae, I think one is 7.7 billion years old and a couple wer 5 billion years old. In other words halfway back to the Big Bang.
The suggestion of TFA is that no sentient creature has ever observed these supernovae in the past 5-7 billion years and along comes humanity, which in its first decades of being able to view distant supernovae are now responsible for a horrible cosmic crime. Of course this does suggest another rotten potential reason behind the Fermi paradox, that a quantum reality reason could be why we don't see other sentient beings, but it seems far more likely, even if the interpretation of the scientist in TFA is correct, that we are not the first race to see those supernovae, nor the only race to be watching it in the past million years even.
It has got to be amazing hubris to suggest that of all the countless galaxies in the universe that could be home to life able to view these supernovae, that we are the only people around in the past five billion years to see it. To say this guy's ego is big, is the ultimate understatement. Must be fun to think you are the smartest guy in the universe.
This sort of sounds like what these guys are saying at Kango about their struggles with SEO - Google, in observing and recording, has caused significant change in the environment. It sort of spirals in on itself...
Damaging the Universe By Observation?
Hah no.
As probable as a infinite improbability drive that requires a cup of thee to operate, i say.
Also it would depend on ones definition of damaging. Deem it cosmos' nature, i say.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
No
_____
Thank you.
Britney
Okay.. So does this mean that looks really can kill??? :)