Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Quick, someone mod him down before he shortens all of our lives!
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.
I'm doing my share of shortening the life of the universe by increasing entropy. Right now I'm rubbing my hands together, both in glee, and to create excess heat. Muahahaha.
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.
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
Do I also shorten the life of this post by reading it?
Don't worry, dupes are on the way...
Let's hope God is a slashdot editor.
Table-ized A.I.
Cut it out, you madman!
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.
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Do I also shorten the life of this post by reading it?
Dammit! I already made that joke when I submitted the article, and Zonk edited it out of my summary. I thought the whole thing was just silly, but it was such a good opportunity to be a smartass that I submitted it anyway. And look what happens. YOU get all the comedic karma. Perhaps the humor couldn't manifest itself until AFTER the submission had been observed? My original headline was "Mankind damages universe by looking at it," which was far more fun. Oh well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Philosophy, Science, and Oedipus walk into a bar...
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Thus extending the life of the universe. Keep it up!