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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?
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
You have hit the nail on the head. Scientists, like everyone else, are entitled to believe whatever they like. In that regard science has common cause with religion.
Scientists seem to be having problems understanding the complexity of reality and are turning to mysticism. Any conclusion that depends on mysticism is automatically suspect in my book. It's back to the primitive practice of inventing a god or demon to account for things we don't understand.
What next? Prayers and holy water before observations?
Those scientists must think outside the box... :D
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
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
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.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
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!