Anyone remember that Slashdot article a few months back about the radio pulse technology that would allow for nice high speed, wide area wireless? It operated within the noise threshold of normal radio broadcasts, and if you weren't "in sync" with the transmitter, it wansn't possable to detect it against background radiation at more than 20-30 ft from the source. Good luck spotting that from a few lightyears away...
It's not quite that clear-cut. Ever hear of the experiment with two slits? The idea is that if you aim a light at a barrier with to slits in it, you'll get an interference pattern on a screen placed behind it. The intent is to prove that light is a wave. However, what happens if you send a single photon through this system? Things get interesting. The single photon, an observable particle, travels through both slits and interferes with itself. Now, let's have some fun. Place photon detectors in each of the slits, and see if we can figure out what happens. The results are quite odd. When you're watching both slits to see which path the photon takes, it actually *does* take one path, and does *not* interfere with itself. You don't get an interference pattern on the screen, you get two points. So, it's not just that light sometimes acts as a particle and sometimes acts as a wave, light actually *is* a particle or *is* a wave, depending on how it is observed.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone remember that Slashdot article a few months back about the radio pulse technology that would allow for nice high speed, wide area wireless? It operated within the noise threshold of normal radio broadcasts, and if you weren't "in sync" with the transmitter, it wansn't possable to detect it against background radiation at more than 20-30 ft from the source. Good luck spotting that from a few lightyears away...
It's not quite that clear-cut. Ever hear of the experiment with two slits? The idea is that if you aim a light at a barrier with to slits in it, you'll get an interference pattern on a screen placed behind it. The intent is to prove that light is a wave. However, what happens if you send a single photon through this system? Things get interesting. The single photon, an observable particle, travels through both slits and interferes with itself. Now, let's have some fun. Place photon detectors in each of the slits, and see if we can figure out what happens. The results are quite odd. When you're watching both slits to see which path the photon takes, it actually *does* take one path, and does *not* interfere with itself. You don't get an interference pattern on the screen, you get two points. So, it's not just that light sometimes acts as a particle and sometimes acts as a wave, light actually *is* a particle or *is* a wave, depending on how it is observed.