I've little-to-no idea about the subject but I found the following article interesting (sensational as it is), particularly the notion that merely observing subatomic particles actually alters 'events'. Of course, being the Romantic twit that I am, I wondered if this has implications for all sorts of phenomena...
Quantum Physics
- Thread starter SteveJ
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Ive recently really got into quantum physics. Having read a lot on the subject, ive grown a whole new appreciation for the human race. how we as a species have been able to produce people that have been to understand this subject and create theories about the universe is remarkable.
I havent read this article yet but that idea about observing subatomic particles being affected by the observer is strange, but my understanding of it isnt so much that the universe 'knows' it is being observed and then changes things but more to do with the fact it is so hard to genuinely observe these things, that the process needed to observe them actually changes how they act. Is this the uncertainty principle? I think its linked with the concept that if you can observe such a basic particle such as an electron, I.e see WHERE it is, its impossible to also see what it is doing and where it is going. Yet if you can obserbe what it is doing, you cant observe where it is.
Hopefully we have some nerds on here who have a better understanding of it cause I love this subject.
Relativity (particularly time/space dilation) still astounds me and that's 80 years old
I havent read this article yet but that idea about observing subatomic particles being affected by the observer is strange, but my understanding of it isnt so much that the universe 'knows' it is being observed and then changes things but more to do with the fact it is so hard to genuinely observe these things, that the process needed to observe them actually changes how they act. Is this the uncertainty principle? I think its linked with the concept that if you can observe such a basic particle such as an electron, I.e see WHERE it is, its impossible to also see what it is doing and where it is going. Yet if you can obserbe what it is doing, you cant observe where it is.
Hopefully we have some nerds on here who have a better understanding of it cause I love this subject.
Relativity (particularly time/space dilation) still astounds me and that's 80 years old
Quantum mechanics is 80 years old as well. I don't think it'll stop being confusing anytime soon though.
I think the reason we alter experiments on the nano scale when observing them is that you only need very small perturbations to change, say, the energy of an atomic system. A lot of the ways (if not all) we observe this stuff is capable of introducing these perturbations to the given system. I think. It's some time since I studied quantum mechanics at such a fundamental level. And we mainly dealt with the mathematics of it.
Interestingly, the space/astronomy exploration thread after a few posts became the 'theoroetical physics' thread.
Anyway, it doesn't say more than what two people think. Of course that the observation changes things (contrary to the old belief that with just obseving you don't affect the experiment or whatever it is) but can we affect that much the universe?
Mandatory video for anyone who is interested on quantum mechanics:
Anyway, it doesn't say more than what two people think. Of course that the observation changes things (contrary to the old belief that with just obseving you don't affect the experiment or whatever it is) but can we affect that much the universe?
Mandatory video for anyone who is interested on quantum mechanics:
Oppa quantam style?
all I have to say on the matter is
Read a ridiculous piece recently on "temporal entanglement". We've known for a while that particles can be entangled over great distances, but a couple of Israeli researchers recently managed to entangle two photons that don't exist at the same time.
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/announcement/view/60
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/announcement/view/60
Obvious dig at Moyes is obvious.
Redcafe posters =
I read a while back about how in a study with unstable uranium that radioactively decays when left alone but as soon as people begin watching it, it stops decaying, which may be the opposite to what is suggested.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037843719190048H
Quantum Zeno effect
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037843719190048H
Quantum Zeno effect
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Surely by simply existing we are observing the universe?
Entanglement in general is something I still don't think I totally get. Is there actually a cause-effect relationship between the particles? I think I've had this conversation on here before and was told that you couldn't use it for example as a FTL communication device, but I'm still not entirely sure why. Clever people, over to you.
We are just particles that have assembled into entities which are somehow able to ponder their own origins. But no less a part of the Universe than anything else.
Nor do I. In fact by definition, QM is the subject where we never know what we are talking about.
So I am struggling to understand the theory then because it's not making any sense to me. By that logic, simply existing means the Universe is being observed, which means the Universe is destroying itself because of its own existence?
I don't believe that's the way to think about it. It's that they are actually paired, and when we tinker with the one, it collapses it's wave (think like the statistical representation of it's location), thereby freezing it into the reality we see. Since in any given reality, the particles will have a relationship, they will be paired. So it's not that you did something to one particle and it had to message the other. It's that, of all the possible realities, your actions 'caused' (a misleading word) one to be settled on. All realities would still have the particles paired. Somehow that's supposed to make sense.
There are some fun anecdotes about crazy Danish scientists getting into heated debates about how this all works. What is the scope of these realities?Copenhagen interpretation... many worlds... many minds... Collapsing universes... If you wait long enough, you will show up on the other side of that wall in front of you. Are there multiple universes in parallel, some with dead vs alive cat? Is there one where braddyrak gets the girl or Moyes gets the sack?
I think "observation" here means observation at the quantum level, i.e. not just looking at something normally.
Or, we know what we're talking about yet also have no idea what we're talking about, simultaneously.
I understand the context at which "observation" is being used, however said observation is only present with consciousness is it not? Therefore (unless I am completely missing the point or a point) it seems to me the theory says conscious observation may destroy the universe, as even on the quantum level the particles are still observed by each other aren't they? However consciousness is a non-entity created by the brain, which is made up of the same particles to begin with so it surely can't have that kind of effect. Or am I just completely missing something here?
This is the example that helped me understand.
The argument is best illustrated by using red and white socks to equate to entangled particles.
Let’s say you have two shoe boxes and in one of them you place a pair of red and in the other a pair of white socks but you pick them blind close the lids and don't look.
Now one of the boxes is transported to the other side of the universe.
When you look inside the box you can find out the colour of the socks in the other box. No problem yet fairly straight forward. The socks were always one colour or the other.
Now let’s say you conduct an experiment which requires the socks in your box to have a certain pink quality to them or be both red and white. It works just fine until someone looks in the other box at which point it doesn't work anymore.
How does looking at the socks change the physical state of the other socks instantly and over vast distances?
Disclaimer, all jokes about boxes or socks are the responsibility of the maker.
Not really, you'd be agreeing with how other physicists would describe the situation like this one talking to New Scientist:
Krauss’s claim is controversial. Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology maintains that the quantum Zeno effect does not require humans to make observations of light. “Galaxies have ‘observed’ the dark energy long before we evolved,” he says, as they were affected by it and were encoding information about it. “When we humans in turn observe the light from these galaxies, it changes nothing except our own knowledge.”
However even if you go with the consciousness angle, there's the question of who else is looking. Ig you believe (as I do) that life is not confined to planet earth then it's a pretty safe bet that someone has already looked at this before.
On quantum mechanics more generally, the idea of an observer can be misleading. As humans we try to express things in terms of analogies based on things we understand like waves and particles, but those are mental and mathematical constructs, not reality. At the level of the very small and the high energy, the analogy breaks down. The particle doesn't become a wave (or vice versa) - it remains something that is neither of those things, something more like a statistical probability.
Ok that's quite enough sciencey stuff - what about the possible implications, if any, for the credibility of (allegedly) paranormal phenomena?
This is why I only bother with classical physics. Everything was beautiful before those damn Germans (Planck, Einstein et al) came in and fecked stuff up
.....
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
A phenomena may not be understood, but that doesn't make it outside nature.
A phenomena might even be disputed or dismissed, sometimes for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean that scientists won't embrace it later. Plate tectonic theory went from "unscientific speculation" to obvious explanation in the late 60s and that's about huge events and relatively easily measured effects.
Where the term supernatural means "not easily reproducible in lab conditions" it may just mean we're missing part of the story.
Bringing it back to quantum physics. There's a device widely used in electronics called a zener diode that uses what often gets called quantum electron tunneling to perform its duties. At first glance classic electrical theory says that it can't work, but quantum theory says that it can, and it does.
Any particular phenomenom you've got in mind Steve?
A phenomena may not be understood, but that doesn't make it outside nature.
A phenomena might even be disputed or dismissed, sometimes for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean that scientists won't embrace it later. Plate tectonic theory went from "unscientific speculation" to obvious explanation in the late 60s and that's about huge events and relatively easily measured effects.
Where the term supernatural means "not easily reproducible in lab conditions" it may just mean we're missing part of the story.
Bringing it back to quantum physics. There's a device widely used in electronics called a zener diode that uses what often gets called quantum electron tunneling to perform its duties. At first glance classic electrical theory says that it can't work, but quantum theory says that it can, and it does.
Any particular phenomenom you've got in mind Steve?
Some very interesting & informative posts here. Thanks for that, folks. 
@ jo: These days, I tend to think that a great number of 'supernatural phenomena' have their origin in our minds/brains, and not in anything 'external'. I've seen and heard curious things practically all my life but lately I find that most can be explained by non-supernatural factors, and even purely personal ones; so, really I was wondering about the observation element of the OP story & if it possibly ties-in with everything from the initially excellent hit-rate in ESP tests - a hit-rate which declines on extended repetition - to the occurence of ghost sightings in reputedly haunted places.
See, I recently read an amazing book (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes*), one which is either championed as either a work of far-sighted genius or, alternatively, the work of a crank. This book really opened my eyes to the sheer power and influence of the mind upon a reality that, in essence, we may actually create for ourselves.
@ jo: These days, I tend to think that a great number of 'supernatural phenomena' have their origin in our minds/brains, and not in anything 'external'. I've seen and heard curious things practically all my life but lately I find that most can be explained by non-supernatural factors, and even purely personal ones; so, really I was wondering about the observation element of the OP story & if it possibly ties-in with everything from the initially excellent hit-rate in ESP tests - a hit-rate which declines on extended repetition - to the occurence of ghost sightings in reputedly haunted places.
See, I recently read an amazing book (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes*), one which is either championed as either a work of far-sighted genius or, alternatively, the work of a crank. This book really opened my eyes to the sheer power and influence of the mind upon a reality that, in essence, we may actually create for ourselves.
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I'd never heard of that book, but from what I can tell most scientists seem to lean towards the "crank" part rather than the "genius" part.
Yeah, it's a controversial theory at best. But it's interesting (to me at least) because it offers, amongst other things, an explanation for the human penchant for religion in which God or gods have no part, despite the beliefs of the adherents - instead, everything of this kind is 'merely' the product of the developing human consciousness.
QM raises two fundamental problems imo, both are somewhat philosophical in nature. The first relates to the inconsistencies between standard, deterministic causal laws that seem to govern macroscopic reality and the irregular probability laws that govern the microscopic, sub-atomic world. Since both are basically the same world, we haven't yet come up with a viable theory of everything to explain how this could be - although string theory is alleged to provide the answer.
The second problem relates to the interpretation of unobserved objects as highlighted in the above double slit cartoon or in the measurement problem that still seems to plague most of interpretations of QM, and as highlighted here....
The second problem relates to the interpretation of unobserved objects as highlighted in the above double slit cartoon or in the measurement problem that still seems to plague most of interpretations of QM, and as highlighted here....
Speaking from ignorance, I admit, but...is this basically a problem concerning time and our conception of it rather than the supposedly curious behaviour of particles?
In dynamical systems (subset of classical mechanics), chaotic processes usually coalesce into a single deterministic motion, such as a double compound pendulum, or turbulence over a wing, or vibration. The minutae of these processes aren't understood as clearly as what the aggregate effects are on large systems.
Of course quantum mechanics takes a different approach, it's interesting to see the range in thinking.
Nu-ooo.. More of a problem with the definition of "observer"
How's that, chief?
This is a cool analogy between the problems arising from the theory of gravity and the problem arising from quantum weirdness: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/quantum_weirdness_an_analogy_from_the_time_of_newton/
Nah, what I said isn't true I think, it's not a problem of what-is the observer. I was reading the thread backwards
Time from quantum entanglement: an experimental illustration... emergent time?
The psychological/cultural basis for religion/belief in god is pretty simple - it's just a response to primitive man's fear and powerlessness in the face of nature.
Probably so, mate. Jaynes believed that their supposed 'voices of the gods' resulted from stress...just as many modern schizophrenic people hear voices and/or hallucinate in times of stress.
I'm just watching a Horizon repeat on the Senses - a good watch if you haven't seen it. All about the brain's role in interpreting, extrapolating and even fabricating the story based on sensory information that's either incomplete or extraordinary. A lot of supernatural phenomena (witnessing them and maybe even failing to witness them) could have their roots in this.
I came for my free cash.