That's absurd. The interference patterns in the two-slit experiment are still created even when the intensity is reduced to the point that there is never more than one photon traversing the slits at a time. The QM rules apply to every wavicle, not just to aggregations.
I think you misunderstand the post you're replying to. For each photon fired in the two-slit experiment, the photon can register at ANY point on the detector -- that's a fact. It is only once we have fired many photons that we find fewer photons registered in certain areas and more photons registered in other areas, which cannot be explained in classical terms.
Sorry to burst some bubbles, but I believe this analogy is not correct:( In fact it is not really possible to analogize quantum mechanics with anything classical, which is what people are getting at when they say that nobody really understands it.
In the experiment in TFA, they never found out which slit any particular photon went through. They have only collected some data about the average behaviour of the total set of photons. TFA suggests the scientists gathered a statistic somewhat like "X photons went through slit 1 and Y photons went through slit 2". Even here, I do not believe this is correct as I have worded it. I haven't read the paper at the article is based on, however if we follow the explanation of the first paragraph of your post, we will have an interference pattern that looks a bit different to the 50-50 one, where the possible paths between the two points have a greater 'density' of going through one of the particular slits. I would imagine that as you gradually change this ratio from 50-50 through to 0-100 the pattern would morph until it ended up being a one-slit diffusion pattern.
The rest of your post makes the same mistake as early efforts to explain the 'uncertainly principle', which was initially thought to be something like: "The particles have exact positions and momenta, but any attempt to measure them must disturb the system'. It was fairly quickly found that this was wrong, and the particles actually do not have well-defined positions and momenta (this is implicit in Schrodinger's equation and other such equations, the 'uncertainty principle' just describes a fact of the mathematical description of what a wavefunction is).
So photons only go through both slits in the function that describes their movement, not in reality.
Certainly, photons behave according to the function that describes their movement. However, what is 'reality' is an open question (this is known as the interpretation of quantum mechanics). Some interpretations say that the photon travels through one slit but we cannot know which; some say that the function describing their movement *is* reality, and some say that 'reality' only consists of the photon's emission and its detection; not the stuff in between.
You fail, DOOM had strafing. Circle-strafing was important in player-vs-player combat. You could either use the default setting of a strafe-toggle (which is just about unusable IMO), or actually bind keys to strafe-left and strafe-right.
Consciousness doesn't even require non-deterministic physics.
Says who? Consciousness cannot yet be explained by science, so I don't see how you can rule out that its explanation would require non-deterministic physics (or any other particular type of physics).
Also, the statement "QM is non-deterministic" seems to be getting parroted a lot on this thread. Actually it is a question of interpretation whether or not QM is deterministic. Certainly, unitary evolution (Schrodinger's equation etc.) is deterministic, and in the Everett interpretation (and others), that is the only process that occurs.
The article basically says "We shouldn't jump to conclusions just because consciousness and quantum theory are both weird" , with an extra page full of waffle to pad it out. I didn't learn anything substantial from this article and I doubt anybody else would have either. The article doesn't propose anything useful of its own, nor does it successfully debunk any other proposal.
It doesn't even understand what "jump to conclusions" means. Penrose is cited as doing that for the WMAP result, but in fact what he did was propose a theory (that turned out to be wrong). That's what science is about. People propose theories or hypotheses, and then people try to prove or disprove them, perhaps discovering new truths along the way. There's no 'shame' to be had in theorizing something and turning out to be wrong, nor does that make the scientist 'bad' if he does propose a wrong theory at some time.
They just proved that it was not a not-round shape. That doesn't mean it is round. It seems to me a simpler explanation is that the electron has/no/ shape or structure.
For entry number 8, http://illusionoftheyear.com/2011/the-exchange-of-features-textures-and-faces/ , the Flash thing doesn't display properly. It says to "move the slider" but there is no slider (just a 255 that you can't alter), and there are no "Harry and Dobby" in Demo 1. The others all work fine. Tried in Firefox and IE latest versions. Have latest Flash (10.3).
I'm not sure I understand the question. It seems the guy is just asking whether he should rent space from Rackspace etc. , instead of physically building and self-managing a web server. Wasn't this question around long before "the cloud" buzzword came in?
In the version I read, there were 8 special tables, the guy would indicate the destination square by standing behind the table for the rank, and then moving to the table for the file. (Just conveying the destination square is almost always good enough for the player to figure out the intended move)
If anyone complains about an account then PayPal freezes it, without explanation to the account holder. They've always done this, and not just for high profile accounts. The only solution is to not use PayPal if it would inconvenience you to lose all the funds on your account.
You are completely wrong and do not understand relativity
All space-time events exist and they all have coordinates (x,y,z,t). Space-time is a fixed structure that does not 'evolve' - time is within it. The fact that there is no 'universal time', aka. no privileged frame of reference, just means that there is no fundamental values of the coordinates. Each observer reckons the coordinates to be different. Observers on Earth reckon the 't' coordinate of this supernova to be 64 million years smaller than the 't' coordinate of local events. Observers in other places may reckon a different value. There are many events that we do not know about yet, but may know about in the future.
Here's a thought experiment to disprove your view. Let's say we get in a superfast spaceship which can cover the distance to the supernova in 100 million years (of Earth time), and travel back to the site of the supernova. We collect samples from the site and analyse their age. We return to Earth and deliver the news. On earth , 200 million years pass before we get the news, but the results of the research would be that the samples had aged 164 million years when we collected them (not 100 million as you might expect if you consider that the supernova did not happen until we noticed it).
Not angular velocity. Say for argument's sake our galaxy and the other one are stationary with respect to each other. Then, sometimes our system will be hurtling towards the other galaxy and sometimes it will be hurtling away (depending how far around our galactic orbit we are).
Not sure what the point of this is, as the same theory by which you judge the guy died a few hours ago, also says that these wormholes are impossible. You can't eat your cake and have it!
In our inertial reference frame, it happened ~64 million years ago. In the star's reference frame, it also happened ~64 million years ago. It's true there is no such thing as a universal reference frame, so one can certainly construct inertial reference frames (e.g. with large velocities relative to us) where the event occurred at different times. Even 'now' (in that reference frame). But the velocity difference between us and the supernova is modest (in the grand scheme of the universe) and thus our two references frames roughly agree about simultaneity and so on.
Not really, the relative velocities are sizeable, when you consider our rotation about our galactic centre. Imagine this fraction of a degree of rotation of the simultaneous space within spacetime, but taken out to the distance of 64 MLy - it's now a difference that is large in magnitude. (We should really do an exact calculation I suppose..)
It's a strange misconception that people interpret relativity to mean that all space-time events on our past light-cone are 'now'. Relativity doesn't say that. It includes a well-defined concept about what is in the past, what is in the future, and the boundary between them being 'now'. We are not immediately aware of all space-time events on the 'now' plane... because it takes time for their signals to reach us. But when we receiving signals we are able to reconstruct and deduce what happened at previous moments. It is true that inertial reference frames do not agree on what 'now' means, and thus don't agree on simultaneity. But within a particular inertial reference frame, there is a meaningful concept of 'now'.
I don't think it is all that meaningful. The past and future only intersect on the exact point where our observer is. Everything else on the so-called "simultaneous space" is inaccessible. The future is the contents of the future light cone, the past is the contents of the past light cone. Events outside this are neither future nor past. As you already pointed out, by simply changing the direction/speed we are moving in, we can adjust any event in this 'outside' zone from being a 'future' event to a 'past' one or vice versa (where I use those terms to refer to being ahead of or behind the simultaneous space, respectively). So I do not think 'future' and 'past' are meaningful in the contexts of these 'outside' events.
What a load of crap. You sit on your computer all day and have probably never even been to any wilderness, it's easy to say with hindsight what you would do.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misunderstand the post you're replying to. For each photon fired in the two-slit experiment, the photon can register at ANY point on the detector -- that's a fact. It is only once we have fired many photons that we find fewer photons registered in certain areas and more photons registered in other areas, which cannot be explained in classical terms.
Sorry to burst some bubbles, but I believe this analogy is not correct :( In fact it is not really possible to analogize quantum mechanics with anything classical, which is what people are getting at when they say that nobody really understands it.
In the experiment in TFA, they never found out which slit any particular photon went through. They have only collected some data about the average behaviour of the total set of photons. TFA suggests the scientists gathered a statistic somewhat like "X photons went through slit 1 and Y photons went through slit 2". Even here, I do not believe this is correct as I have worded it. I haven't read the paper at the article is based on, however if we follow the explanation of the first paragraph of your post, we will have an interference pattern that looks a bit different to the 50-50 one, where the possible paths between the two points have a greater 'density' of going through one of the particular slits. I would imagine that as you gradually change this ratio from 50-50 through to 0-100 the pattern would morph until it ended up being a one-slit diffusion pattern.
The rest of your post makes the same mistake as early efforts to explain the 'uncertainly principle', which was initially thought to be something like: "The particles have exact positions and momenta, but any attempt to measure them must disturb the system'. It was fairly quickly found that this was wrong, and the particles actually do not have well-defined positions and momenta (this is implicit in Schrodinger's equation and other such equations, the 'uncertainty principle' just describes a fact of the mathematical description of what a wavefunction is).
Certainly, photons behave according to the function that describes their movement. However, what is 'reality' is an open question (this is known as the interpretation of quantum mechanics). Some interpretations say that the photon travels through one slit but we cannot know which; some say that the function describing their movement *is* reality, and some say that 'reality' only consists of the photon's emission and its detection; not the stuff in between.
Translation: I'm bitter I didn't think of this myself so I will just spew arrogant hubris
Mouse input doesn't work for me (Firefox 4), is that just not implemented or am I encountering a bug?
Also, zooming out (+) doesn't work, but you can zoom in with "Insert" and there is no way to zoom out.
You fail, DOOM had strafing. Circle-strafing was important in player-vs-player combat. You could either use the default setting of a strafe-toggle (which is just about unusable IMO), or actually bind keys to strafe-left and strafe-right.
Consciousness doesn't even require non-deterministic physics.
Says who? Consciousness cannot yet be explained by science, so I don't see how you can rule out that its explanation would require non-deterministic physics (or any other particular type of physics).
Also, the statement "QM is non-deterministic" seems to be getting parroted a lot on this thread. Actually it is a question of interpretation whether or not QM is deterministic. Certainly, unitary evolution (Schrodinger's equation etc.) is deterministic, and in the Everett interpretation (and others), that is the only process that occurs.
Consciousness is simply the ability to have a mental model of one's universe, with oneself as a separate entity within that model
So, a camera in front of a mirror is conscious?
You can have quarks, radiation, positrons, muons...
There might be entire galaxies of antimatter that contain no electrons
The article basically says "We shouldn't jump to conclusions just because consciousness and quantum theory are both weird" , with an extra page full of waffle to pad it out. I didn't learn anything substantial from this article and I doubt anybody else would have either. The article doesn't propose anything useful of its own, nor does it successfully debunk any other proposal.
It doesn't even understand what "jump to conclusions" means. Penrose is cited as doing that for the WMAP result, but in fact what he did was propose a theory (that turned out to be wrong). That's what science is about. People propose theories or hypotheses, and then people try to prove or disprove them, perhaps discovering new truths along the way. There's no 'shame' to be had in theorizing something and turning out to be wrong, nor does that make the scientist 'bad' if he does propose a wrong theory at some time.
They just proved that it was not a not-round shape. That doesn't mean it is round. It seems to me a simpler explanation is that the electron has /no/ shape or structure.
For entry number 8, http://illusionoftheyear.com/2011/the-exchange-of-features-textures-and-faces/ , the Flash thing doesn't display properly. It says to "move the slider" but there is no slider (just a 255 that you can't alter), and there are no "Harry and Dobby" in Demo 1. The others all work fine. Tried in Firefox and IE latest versions. Have latest Flash (10.3).
I'm not sure I understand the question. It seems the guy is just asking whether he should rent space from Rackspace etc. , instead of physically building and self-managing a web server. Wasn't this question around long before "the cloud" buzzword came in?
Any way of listing which articles are included in the result circle?
For example I'd like to see what the 405 interesting things about Florence are!
I guess you haven't heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Waltonthis guy
Could you explain what dx means?
In the version I read, there were 8 special tables, the guy would indicate the destination square by standing behind the table for the rank, and then moving to the table for the file. (Just conveying the destination square is almost always good enough for the player to figure out the intended move)
If anyone complains about an account then PayPal freezes it, without explanation to the account holder. They've always done this, and not just for high profile accounts. The only solution is to not use PayPal if it would inconvenience you to lose all the funds on your account.
You are completely wrong and do not understand relativity
All space-time events exist and they all have coordinates (x,y,z,t). Space-time is a fixed structure that does not 'evolve' - time is within it. The fact that there is no 'universal time', aka. no privileged frame of reference, just means that there is no fundamental values of the coordinates. Each observer reckons the coordinates to be different. Observers on Earth reckon the 't' coordinate of this supernova to be 64 million years smaller than the 't' coordinate of local events. Observers in other places may reckon a different value. There are many events that we do not know about yet, but may know about in the future.
Here's a thought experiment to disprove your view. Let's say we get in a superfast spaceship which can cover the distance to the supernova in 100 million years (of Earth time), and travel back to the site of the supernova. We collect samples from the site and analyse their age. We return to Earth and deliver the news. On earth , 200 million years pass before we get the news, but the results of the research would be that the samples had aged 164 million years when we collected them (not 100 million as you might expect if you consider that the supernova did not happen until we noticed it).
A correct idiot though!
Not angular velocity. Say for argument's sake our galaxy and the other one are stationary with respect to each other. Then, sometimes our system will be hurtling towards the other galaxy and sometimes it will be hurtling away (depending how far around our galactic orbit we are).
For a better explanation than I have offered so far, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rietdijk%E2%80%93Putnam_argument
Is this a new slashdot meme?
Not sure what the point of this is, as the same theory by which you judge the guy died a few hours ago, also says that these wormholes are impossible. You can't eat your cake and have it!
In our inertial reference frame, it happened ~64 million years ago. In the star's reference frame, it also happened ~64 million years ago. It's true there is no such thing as a universal reference frame, so one can certainly construct inertial reference frames (e.g. with large velocities relative to us) where the event occurred at different times. Even 'now' (in that reference frame). But the velocity difference between us and the supernova is modest (in the grand scheme of the universe) and thus our two references frames roughly agree about simultaneity and so on.
Not really, the relative velocities are sizeable, when you consider our rotation about our galactic centre. Imagine this fraction of a degree of rotation of the simultaneous space within spacetime, but taken out to the distance of 64 MLy - it's now a difference that is large in magnitude. (We should really do an exact calculation I suppose..)
It's a strange misconception that people interpret relativity to mean that all space-time events on our past light-cone are 'now'. Relativity doesn't say that. It includes a well-defined concept about what is in the past, what is in the future, and the boundary between them being 'now'. We are not immediately aware of all space-time events on the 'now' plane... because it takes time for their signals to reach us. But when we receiving signals we are able to reconstruct and deduce what happened at previous moments. It is true that inertial reference frames do not agree on what 'now' means, and thus don't agree on simultaneity. But within a particular inertial reference frame, there is a meaningful concept of 'now'.
I don't think it is all that meaningful. The past and future only intersect on the exact point where our observer is. Everything else on the so-called "simultaneous space" is inaccessible. The future is the contents of the future light cone, the past is the contents of the past light cone. Events outside this are neither future nor past. As you already pointed out, by simply changing the direction/speed we are moving in, we can adjust any event in this 'outside' zone from being a 'future' event to a 'past' one or vice versa (where I use those terms to refer to being ahead of or behind the simultaneous space, respectively). So I do not think 'future' and 'past' are meaningful in the contexts of these 'outside' events.
What a load of crap. You sit on your computer all day and have probably never even been to any wilderness, it's easy to say with hindsight what you would do.
There are more scientists in India than anywhere else in the world !!!
I'm sure there are, when astrologers are included