"Two answers: particle physics explains how sub-atomic particles interact. Quantum physics is about probability and a finer level of reality." -- How does this go against anything I wrote...? "I keep noticing that you get quite upset with people who know about science and tell the truth about it. Is it just because it flies in the face of your beliefs, or something more?" -- Saying I know how an event unfolds does not give me the right or the credibility to claim that I know WHY such an event occurs as such, or at all. That's all I'm saying
Not at all, this is totally new. Something they've been trying to perfect for some time that gets around the earlier problems of measuring aspects of matter in real time. It's a great step forward. MelT
Saying I know how an event unfolds does not give me the right or the credibility to claim that I know WHY such an event occurs as such, or at all. That's all I'm saying No, it wasn't. If it were that simple you and I would not have had our many conversations. MelT
the why of all of this is open to interpretation. i dont even think theres a reason, it just kind of is.
We are all pure conscious awareness, there's no way of proving that we're anything other than that with our limited senses and underdeveloped brains. Go take a week up in a mountain and do vipassana meditation for 5-8 hours a day without entertainment of any kind. If you want to fast during this time that could help as well. When you come down off that mountain, your idea of reality should become much clearer. And when I say 'clearer' I mean to say that reality won't be clear at all...and thats the best part. Most people define their reality by the external, but nothing could be further from the truth.
those are my thoughts almost exactly actually. i did a bunch of shrooms once and everything just kind of 'made sense'. i am just fascinated by the nature of the reality we live in. but reality itself is what you describe.
Exactly -- it comes down to interpretaion (interpretaion: which necessitates an interpretor). Is there a higher purpose and picture we can't "see" or is there not? I respond, as an individual, to this question in manner similar to Kierkegaard... Kierkegaard writes, "What does this mean? It means that ignorance is the invisible point of convergence of the two paths. Ignorance can be reached and that is where the path veers off... 'Subjectivity and Truth'."
Hey Melt, I had nothing better to do and have been looking over the links and the shift from Quantum entanglement to precision spectrostuff and Im curious to know other than advancing information transfer methods eg computers etc What has it actually contributed to date in regards to comsmology? In particular the "theory of everything"? Im not trolling, just bored and looking for some motivation to understand the basic aspects of Quantum mechanics/logic.
It's just one part of the whole, relative and dependent upon what level of matter you're looking at, QM is and isn't about 'cosmology' in itself, it's about, for want of a better word, an 'interface' level between matter and energy, the wave/particle 'duality' but that's very much an over-simplification. The following is interesting: A deep link between two seemingly unconnected areas of modern science has been discovered by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Geneva. <div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div> \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t</div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t</div></div> </div>While research tends to become very specialized and entire communities of scientists can work on specific topics with only a little overlap between them, physicist Dr Nicolas Brunner and mathematician Professor Noah Linden worked together to uncover a deep and unexpected connection between their two fields of expertise: game theory and quantum physics. Dr Brunner said: "Once in a while, connections are established between topics which seem, on the face of it, to have nothing in common. Such new links have potential to trigger significant progress and open entirely new avenues for research." Game theory -- which is used today in a wide range of areas such as economics, social sciences, biology and philosophy -- gives a mathematical framework for describing a situation of conflict or cooperation between intelligent rational players. The central goal is to predict the outcome of the process. In the early 1950s, John Nash showed that the strategies adopted by the players form an equilibrium point (so-called Nash equilibrium) for which none of the players has any incentive to change strategy. Quantum mechanics, the theory describing the physics of small objects such as particles and atoms, predicts a vast range of astonishing and often strikingly counter-intuitive phenomena, such as quantum nonlocality. In the 1960s, John Stewart Bell demonstrated that the predictions of quantum mechanics are incompatible with the principle of locality, that is, the fact that an object can be influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings and not by distant events. In particular, when remote observers perform measurements on a pair of entangled quantum particles, such as photons, the results of these measurements are highly correlated. In fact, these correlations are so strong that they cannot be explained by any physical theory respecting the principle of locality. Hence quantum mechanics is a nonlocal theory, and the fact that Nature is nonlocal has been confirmed in numerous experiments. In a paper published in Nature Communications, Dr Brunner and Professor Linden showed that the two above subjects are in fact deeply connected with the same concepts appearing in both fields. For instance, the physical notion of locality appears naturally in games where players adopt a classical strategy. In fact the principle of locality sets a fundamental limit to the performance achievable by classical players (that is, bound by the rules of classical physics). Next, by bringing quantum mechanics into the game, the researchers showed that players who can use quantum resources, such as entangled quantum particles, can outperform classical players. That is, quantum players achieve better performance than any classical player ever could. Dr Brunner said: "Such an advantage could, for instance, be useful in auctions which are well described by the type of games that we considered. Therefore, our work not only opens a bridge between two remote scientific communities, but also opens novel possible applications for quantum technologies." And... For the past eight years, two French researchers have been bouncing droplets around a vibrating oil bath and observing their unique behaviour. What sounds like a high-school experiment has in fact provided the first ever evidence that the strange features of the quantum world can be reproduced on a macroscopic scale. <div><div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div> \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t</div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t</div></div> </div>Now, many researchers are asking if the oil-bath experiments can provide insights into quantum mechanics and more specifically why particles can behave as waves and waves can behave as particles. In this month's issue of Physics World, Jon Cartwright takes a closer look at some of the key experiments performed by the French pair but finds that not all quantum physicists are convinced that they will lead to a deeper understanding. The French physicist Louis de Broglie was the first to describe wave-particle duality in 1926 but the phenomenon has since been very difficult to understand because no-one has ever observed something being both a particle and a wave in the everyday world. That was until 2005, when Yves Couder and Emmanuel Fort found that when droplets of oil were released onto the surface of a vibrating oil bath, they started to bounce up and down instead of becoming immersed in the liquid, creating a series of waves beneath them. By adjusting the amplitude of the vibrations, they could make the droplets land on the crest of the waves and bounce around the bath. These wave-droplets -- or "walkers" as the researchers called them -- appeared to be the first evidence of wave-particle duality on a macroscopic scale. The waves could not exist without the droplets and the droplets could not move without the waves. In the years after the initial experiments, Couder and Fort used the oil bath to perform several of the classic experiments in quantum mechanics -- including Young's double-slit experiment -- and found that the walkers exhibited many similarities to the entities used in the original experiments. One area where the walkers' analogy with quantum mechanics fails, however, is entanglement -- the weirdest quantum phenomenon of all that describes how the physical state of two particles can be intricately linked no matter how far apart in the universe they are. For this to happen, a wave must occupy a very high number of dimensions so particles can affect one another over large distances, faster than the speed of light. However, in a walker system the waves will always occupy just two dimensions, given by the length and width of the oil tank. "If one thinks of [entanglement] as central to quantum theory, it cannot possibly be reproduced in the [walker] system," Tim Maudlin of New York University told Physics World. Indeed, the magazine contacted a number of physicists and philosophers with a background in quantum foundations, and found that most were sceptical that the walker systems could shed light on the mysteries of the quantum world. On whether Couder and Fort's work can inspire physicists to find a theory deeper than quantum mechanics, Cartwright concludes: "It may be too soon to tell, but one point does seem clear: every time they look, the researchers find more ways in which walkers exhibit supposedly quantum behaviour." </div>
Sorry, one more: Physicists working on a 60-year-old experiment to understand the origin of matter in the universe have uncovered a new tool for studying the movement of tiny particles along a surface, such as a virus travelling along a cell membrane. The new tool utilises ultra-cold neutrons (UCNs) that move slower than most people can run and will allow scientists to map the movement of tiny objects with previously unattainable precision. This discovery, made at the Institut Laue-Langevin, the world's flagship centre for neutron science and the home of ultra-cold neutron research for over 25 years, is published today in Crystallography Reports. <div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div> \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t</div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t</div></div> </div>Since their discovery in 1969, UCNs have been used by experimental physicists to answer fundamental questions about the universe, such as the origin of matter and how gravity fits into the standard model of particle physics. They do this by collecting them in traps and monitoring properties such as their energies or lifetime at high precision. However, the average storage time of the UCNs in their traps was always much lower than expected, affecting the quality of observations. In 1999 Dr Valery Nesvizhevsky and colleagues at the ILL discovered a new phenomenon that might explain these losses. They found that occasionally a UCN in the trap was given a small thermal 'kick'. This occurred in just 1 out of every 10,000,000 collisions, but the origin of this 'kick' was unknown. As other hypotheses were ruled out, Dr Nesvizhevsky started to consider the influence of the nanoparticles or nanodroplets which were known to populate a layer immediately above the surface of most materials, including those of the trap's interior. To tests this hypothesis Dr Nesvizhevsky and his colleagues returned to the UCN apparatus at the ILL. They placed samples with nanoparticle surface layers of known size distribution into the UCN trap and observed the interactions. The team discovered that the change in UCN energy was induced by 'billiard-ball-like' collisions with moving surface nanoparticles, thus providing the first proof that these nanoparticles are not stationary. The low energy levels of UCNs means they usually bounce off the inner walls and remain in the trap. However these shots of extra energy caused by the interaction with the nanoparticles gives them just enough energy either to overcome gravity and escape out of the top of the chamber, which is left open, or to pass right through the chamber walls. This phenomenon has two very dramatic consequences: It could explain discrepancies in the results of 60-year-old experiments measuring the lifetime of the neutron, the results of which differ by about 10 seconds, much more than the reported uncertainties would allow. A precise figure could affect conclusions on the origin of matter in the early universe, as well as on the number of families of elementary particles existing in nature, and could modify models of star formation.\t It also gives science a brand new and uniquely accurate tool for studying for the very first time how nanoparticles move around and interact with material surfaces, particular through van der Waals/Casimir interactions, in all kinds of natural and human-made systems. Currently no other techniques exist to make these measurements. Potential applications of this technique are vast and include the production of chemicals and semiconductors, catalytic converters, integrated circuits used in electronic devices and silver halide salts used in photographic films. The tool could also be used to study for the first time how biological molecules move along a surface such as viruses along a biological membrane. For their next experiments, Valery and his colleagues have secured further beam time at the ILL and will be inviting scientists from various disciplines to provide samples from their own research for analysis with UCNs to prove the validity of this new technique. Dr Valery Nesvizhevsky said: "We found this brand new scientific tool by chance. We never thought UCNs might have such practical uses. The implications of these findings for fundamental physics are sure to be a hot topic and I expect there will be some debate as to how much these thermal kicks contribute to the uncertainties around the lifetime of the neutron measurements. However the potential in this new technique for studying nanoparticle dynamics is a certainty and we look forward to working with researchers from across the scientific disciplines to realise its potential."
The theory of Everything = For the past eight years, two French researchers have been bouncing droplets around a vibrating oil bath and observing their unique behaviour. What sounds like a high-school experiment has in fact provided the first ever evidence that the strange features of the quantum world can be reproduced on a macroscopic scale. However In this month's issue of <em>Physics World, Jon Cartwright takes a closer look at some of the key experiments performed by the French pair but finds that not all quantum physicists are convinced that they will lead to a deeper understanding.</em> "If one thinks of [entanglement] as central to quantum theory, it cannot possibly be reproduced in the [walker] system," Tim Maudlin of New York University toldPhysics World. Indeed, the magazine contacted a number of physicists and philosophers with a background in quantum foundations, and found that most were sceptical that the walker systems could shed light on the mysteries of the quantum world. On whether Couder and Fort's work can inspire physicists to find a theory deeper than quantum mechanics, Cartwright concludes: "It may be too soon to tell, but one point does seem clear: every time they look, the researchers find more ways in which walkers exhibit supposedly quantum behaviour. Sarcasm?
Absolutely. I'm just pulling files off science daily that look vaguely interesting for you to read. The trouble is that SD is a clearing house and will publish any research with a science backing, basically they accept press-releases so publish reports from fringe researchers too. If you want to go through the articles yourself there are enough to keep you going for a few years www.sciencedaily.com Try this one, much more general: Like small children, scientists are always asking the question ‘why?'. One question they've yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. <div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div>\t\t\t\t<div> \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t</div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t</div></div> </div>Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published 14 May in Nature Communications. We know that things that follow quantum rules, such as atoms, electrons or the photons that make up light, are full of surprises. They can exist in more than one place at once, for instance, or exist in a shared state where the properties of two particles show what Einstein called “spooky action at a distanceâ€, no matter what their physical separation. Because such things have been confirmed in experiments, researchers are confident the theory is right. But it would still be easier to swallow if it could be shown that quantum physics itself sprang from intuitive underlying principles. One way to approach this problem is to imagine all the theories one could possibly come up with to describe nature, and then work out what principles help to single out quantum physics. A good start is to assume that information follows Einstein's special relativity and cannot travel faster than light. However, this alone isn't enough to define quantum physics as the only way nature might behave. Pfister and Wehner think they have come across a new useful principle. “We have found a principle that is very good at ruling out other theories,†says Pfister. In short, the principle to be assumed is that if a measurement yields no information, then the system being measured has not been disturbed. Quantum physicists accept that gaining information from quantum systems causes disturbance. Pfister and Wehner suggest that in a sensible world the reverse should be true, too. If you learn nothing from measuring a system, then you can't have disturbed it. Consider the famous Schrodinger's cat paradox, a thought experiment in which a cat in a box simultaneously exists in two states (this is known as a ‘quantum superposition'). According to quantum theory it is possible that the cat is both dead and alive – until, that is, the cat's state of health is ‘measured' by opening the box. When the box is opened, allowing the health of the cat to be measured, the superposition collapses and the cat ends up definitively dead or alive. The measurement has disturbed the cat. This is a property of quantum systems in general. Perform a measurement for which you can't know the outcome in advance, and the system changes to match the outcome you get. What happens if you look a second time? The researchers assume the system is not evolving in time or affected by any outside influence, which means the quantum state stays collapsed. You would then expect the second measurement to yield the same result as the first. After all, “If you look into the box and find a dead cat, you don't expect to look again later and find the cat has been resurrected,†says Wehner. “You could say we've formalised the principle of accepting the factsâ€, says Wehner. Pfister and Wehner show that this principle rules out various theories of nature. They note particularly that a class of theories they call ‘discrete' are incompatible with the principle. These theories hold that quantum particles can take up only a finite number of states, rather than choose from an infinite, continuous range of possibilities. The possibility of such a discrete ‘state space' has been linked to quantum gravitational theories proposing similar discreteness in spacetime, where the fabric of the universe is made up of tiny brick-like elements rather than being a smooth, continuous sheet. As is often the case in research, Pfister and Wehner reached this point having set out to solve an entirely different problem altogether. Pfister was trying to find a general way to describe the effects of measurements on states, a problem that he found impossible to solve. In an attempt to make progress, he wrote down features that a ‘sensible' answer should have. This property of information gain versus disturbance was on the list. He then noticed that if he imposed the property as a principle, some theories would fail. Pfister and Wehner are keen to point out it's still not the whole answer to the big ‘why' question: theories other than quantum physics, including classical physics, are compatible with the principle. But as researchers compile lists of principles that each rule out some theories to reach a set that singles out quantum physics, the principle of information gain versus disturbance seems like a good one to include...." MelT
In what way? The above is 'after' QM, just the physical manifestation of it. QM explores why matter is there in the first place. At this level, existence is very hard to define, we are probability more than reality, it goes much deeper than the cycle of matter. It predicts action, events, shows how reality is non-local and much stranger than our level of realty. But are you actually asking something else with your response above? MelT
Melt im new to this but doesnt quantum deal with the tiny atoms behavior based on probability which would mean no predetmined order? Wasnt that einstein argument which was proven incorrect. The second part question would be humans move through this random quatum world in singularity and our actions id say are a part our reality and quantum world predictable based on probability?