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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.'"
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.
I won't pretend to be an expert, but I don't see how passive observation using the naked eye is any more likely to screw up the universe than passive observation using any number of more scientific methods. If so, just by existing we would cause all the same problems.
Either way, what it really depends on is whether we're inside or outside of the box. If we're outside the box we may cause the events to collapse by observation, but if we're inside the box, then we're fine...As long as the universe doesn't open the box, in which case we're either fine or dead or both.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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.
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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.
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It isn't observation by a sentient being that causes the wave function to collapse, its interaction. The point being made by Schroedinger is that observation inescapably means interaction and thus affecting the quantity being measured.
light from the supernova would be interacting with the earth regardless of whether scientists were there.
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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.
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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.
Is this a bit like how when more people are listening to the radio, they have to turn the transmitter power up to counteract all the extra people sucking the signal out of the air?
Then who is to say the universe being destroyed is our fault?
Perhaps it was alien scientists 10,000,000 years ago in another galaxy, observing the universe like we are, who fucked everything up first.
I think the following line from tfa sums it up nicely
"just as a watched kettle never boils." i.e. doesn't change a thing
I am sorry, Wikipedia was not on the reading list at Oxford.
Explaining Stern-Gerlach by reference to observation is an uhga-buhga approach to Quantum Physics. OK if you want to take the poision that the universe computes using lazy evaluation you can make an unfalsifiable theory out of it.
A much simpler interpretation is that the interaction in the z plane causes the x plane to defocus and vice versa because the two are aspects of a single attribute which is kind ow what you would be expecting if you thought about the fact that we model electrons with TWO spin states, not FOUR which is what you would need if the x and z polarizations were independent.
Electrons having only two spin states is kinda intrinsic to the standard model thingie.
No, electrons do not say 'whoops I just hit a measurement instrument, I have to remember to do something wierd'. Electrons behave the same way whether someone is watching or not.
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You Sir are an ugly troll. The grandparent wasn't painting an entirely clear picture (not wrong, just incomplete), but you are taking misunderstanding to a whole new level. You must've taken an introductory physics course and stopped your pursuit of physics there, thinking you now now it all ( Yay Newton! Einstein who? Heisenwha? ). By observing the photon with whatever instrument (eyeballs, photoreceptor, etc) you're transferring energy. The GP said nothing of these thing all happening instantaneously or anything necessitating time travel. The GP also was not confused about whether the photon was/was not generated by the object. What I think the GP was getting at was that he thinks that "spooky action at a distance" does not happen. By observing photons here on Earth we are not instantaneously altering state light-years away. I tend to agree with him. One hypothesized way in which we could change the state is by forcing a photon that's part of an entangled pair into a known state by observation, forcing the counterpart into a state (instantaneously). TFA is pretty weak on details. Anyways, I mod you "-2 Improper Use of Comma and Improper Use of F-bomb in Same Sentence". Dickhead.
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