It's all just because of the double slit experiment, right? In that case changes that occur from any kind of detection devise is just because of how small the system is that we are talking about. It collapses the wave so to speak. If a light wave is larger than what is being "observed" it affects the outcome. The problem is observation, it's just a function of how small the system is that is being discussed and therefore speaking of it in terms that we use in everyday life is meaningless because the "world" we are discussing is too small for that to have any meaning.
Yeah that old chestnut. My understanding of that is as you suggest, viz. wavefunction collapse is attributed to interaction of the system with something (as has to happen in any observation of it) rather than signifying any requirement that a conscious "observer" be present. No physicist I know seriously imagines the display on his instrument ceases to read if he goes off for a coffee. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I think I read somewhere that in the original discussion of the Copenhagen interpretation Bohr et al did write of "observation" collapsing the wave function. However this seems to have been a rather infelicitous choice of words, opening the floodgates to all sort of woo almost a century later Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. Deepak Chopra and similar people have made millions out of it.
I think that's the biggest "problem" with quantum physics, it's "strange" because we try to compare it to our everyday life and it makes no sense to do so. It's true that it is "strange" enough just on its face but much of it is just because of the analogies that we try to make than make no sense.
There's a lot in that, certainly. rpenner, whose views on this forum I greatly respected, was I think in the "shut up and calculate" camp on this: the model is the maths and the maths works, so don't expend a lot of energy on pictorial analogies or metaphysical heart-searching. But it is only human to ponder what these models may signify, I suppose
I agree that it would be odd to not question or understand the model. If you job is to use the math then shut up and calculate is the right approach. If you want to shine the light on the theory than you should wonder how it works. There is another interpretation that says it's probabilistic only due to our lack of information but there is another that says it's just a fundamental issue (probability) and that's just the way it is. I think I tend to feel that later way myself.
As I have been quoting from a excellent book The Invention of Space and Time and a few other articles which contend TIME does not exist In threads no agreement BUT no reply to show, what evidence is there there of TIMEs existance? Anyone? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I like how you think. Not everyone thinks about it that way, though. It seems to me, that in order to observe anything at all, a physical system would have to exist in the first place. (to be observed) But, if there is a way that something could 'exist' which can never be detected in some way, there would likely be no difference between that and non-existence. (right?) Is time relevant only to our understanding of it? Seattle, okay, that's a good point. lol
i posted this in rivers thread in response to rivers question about what is possible and what is not possible brian greene & michio kaku(big think ) are amazeballs
He is basically correct. Space and time [as we know them] evolved at a short period post BB, about 10-43 seconds. I say "as we know them" because we do not really have any evidence about before and our laws of physics and GR fail us at that period. Even if all actions stopped, atomic and molecular etc time would still pass. And of course when Einstein first came up with GR, he fudged slightly with what we call the cosmological constant, which made the universe/space/time static, that is not expanding...this was at a time when it was thought to be static. Time in such a universe still passes. Hubble later of course showed that the universe/space/time were expanding, and Einstein declared it his greatest blunder. Certainly the question of time at best is debatable, and any question really is the question of whether it is fundamental..... here is a short explanation by Sean Carroll.... And of course space and time are in many ways interchangeable...so if space is real, then so to is time, and of course spacetime.
the following should explain that far better then I wegs, if it at all confuses..... https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_spacetime.html
from, https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_spacetime.html Another corollary of Special Relativity is is that, in effect, one person’s interval of space is another person’s interval of both time and space, and one person’s interval of time is also another person’s interval of both space and time. Thus, space and time are effectively interchangeable, and fundamentally the same thing (or at least two different sides of the same coin), an effect which becomes much more noticeable at relativistic speeds approaching the speed of light. Einstein's former mathematics professor, Hermann Minkowski, was perhaps the first to note this effect (and perhaps understood it even better than Einstein himself), and it was he who coined the phrase “space-time” to describe the interchangeability of the four dimensions. In 1908, Minkowski offered a useful analogy to help explain how four-dimensionalspace-time can appear differently to two observers in our normal three-dimensional space. He described two observers viewing a three-dimensional object from different angles, and noting that, for example, the length and width can appear different from the different viewpoints, due to what we call perspective, even though the object is clearly one and the same in three dimensions. The idea perhaps becomes even clearer when we consider that our picture of the Moon is actually what the Moon was like 1¼ seconds ago (the time light takes to reach the Earth from the Moon), our picture of the Sun is actually how it looked 8½ minutes ago, and by the time we see an image of Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system, it is already 4.3 years out of date. We can therefore never know what the universe is like at this very instant, and the universe is clearly not a thing that extends just in space, but in space-time Due to the relativistic effects of previous section can be considered an example of this: whereas the stay-at-home twin’s progress through space-time was wholly through time, the traveling twin’s progress was partly through space, so that his progress through time was less than that of the stay-at-home twin (so that he aged less). Therefore, as Einstein remarked, “For us physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent”, and these concepts really do not figure at all in Einstein’s justifiably famous formula, E = mc2, which we will look at in the next section.
YES and I requested if anyone had evidence of the existence of TIME to please post Not a single reply As you must know evidence comes in many forms ie such as properties So the request is still waiting to be answered Can anyone provide a property of TIME and how was/is this property detected? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Please explain how? How about giving a name to the property of TIME which you claim is such proof I posted about non existent TIME at a particular moment and have done so again During the arbitrary moments of my postings changes occured So connect the dots for me how this proves TIME Thanks Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Michael345: in the following example, a chaser begins at point five, and a runner begins at point three; 5C 4 3R 2 1 In the final presentation we may see that the chaser is at point three, while the runner has made it to point one. From this final example alone we may conclude that the chaser never caught the runner, however it is only with the inclusion of the building TO the final example that we see the chaser move to 5,4,3 BEFORE the runner moves from 3 to 2, to 1. 5 4 3RC 2 1 This is time. To have time means you are alive (you haven't died yet, but also that you will.)
Oh you are talking about change occurs because stuff AGES I'm OK with that so park that to one to one side Now what PROPERTY of TIME ie is it AGEs hight - width - or length? Frequency perhaps? Colour? Or another property I haven't mentioned? Continue with my enlightenment Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!