My High School physics (constructive/destructive interference) inclines me to predict that the Double Slit Experiment will produce nulls (the probability of detecting a photon will be zero) where the path length from one slit is a half wavelength difference to the path length to the other. By the same means I predict there will be peaks where the path length differences are a whole number of wavelengths difference and these peaks will result in the detection of 4 times as many photons as would be detected from either slit in isolation. It would be helpful if Quarkhead could show how the vector space of wavefunctions (in the Schroedinger formulations) predicts the same (experimental) result. I do not mean to suggest for one moment that I think Quarkhead is in any way 'wrong' - only that there are many ways to skin a cat.
That was in response to Seattle's incorrect assertion that solar system is not a quantum system. You are also falling in trap because of very small value of De Broglie wavelength, it is quantum system, I want to find out what all are the eigen states superimposed or otherwise associated with it and what will collapse mean if some one at far end of uNiverse decides to measure this....I hope you got the idea of thread.
I appreciate your frank admission that despite your more than average education in Physics and mathematics, you find such terminology problematic. I too have decent education in Physics, maths and chemistry, and I find some of these usages quite disturbing. On this forum I can safely conclude that only those who are invested in these will support such or those who just wish to follow blindly. The quantum (no pun) of those who follow blindly is much higher.
You admit that you are not conversant with the subject beyond a level, still you can call it crank? None can stop you. Actually you follow a very basic rule, do not question the authority...let others question them...call them cranks till they manage to prove something. That's OK, because majority is so incompetent in such matters, that above philosophy works safely most of the time and you, being one such, will always be in majority company.
We all die in a great burst of released energy. At quantum scale the effect is the same, when the wave function collapses, a tiny bit of energy is released. But, IMO, the term "observation:" is ambiguous. In an experiment of that nature we can only observe the effect from a particle (photon) striking a measuring device, thereby collapsing the wave function and observing the result after the event. Why else would we have built the Cern collider?
For site technical staff: Pl refer to #26 by write4u, lot of text is hidden as clear when I have taken this post in my quote in #27.. I was surprised when I found more text in the quote than the original post, I rechecked and the mismatch is still there. PS: it seems to have resolved. Gives me an impression that I took him in quote while he was editing.
No, because the gravitational force causes every wave function to collide and collapse, in a great burst of energy. That we can observe (measure), after a relatively long period of time, from a safe distance.
Forgive me God for not taking you seriously. Not a lot of original contributions to science have come from sciforums, especially from someone talking about an alien collapsing the waveform of our solar system. The system isn't coherent and therefore can't be collapsed (it's already collapsed) and it's too small to matter anyway. Why don't you try answering a few of your own questions and then state the relevance. Also state exactly what you are questioning and what better evidence you have for your viewpoint. It's easy to question "authority" but if the authority is scientific knowledge it's pointless if you have nothing better and nothing that can make the same kind of predictions and withstand the same degree of testing.
You jump to the conclusion too soon. Nothing is too small, its all relative, think of LIGO detection that is sub protonic dimension and the amount of press it got. What do you mean that our solar system is already collapsed? From what to what? And how and why it got collapsed?
My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's hard to have a coherent system in the first place. The Earth (or Solar System) is made up of sub-atomic particle and they would all have to be coherent for there to be a waveform that was not collapsed. Obviously, whatever you find is going to be exactly what you would find according to Classical Theory because we do live in the world and Classic Theory has been a good predictor on that scale. This is like talking about time dilation at everyday speeds. It's pointless.
Sometime I wonder whether those who support mainstream text fully, do they understand the subject fully or they just follow it without understanding. This is a discussion forum, majority of mainstream supporters or alternative baiters are not conversant about the subject which they claim to support. Still they troll or ridicule those who raise questions, crapping the thread in the process and creating hostility but conveniently getting away because majority here is mainstream non objective supporters. For example I challenge Exchemist and Seattle if they could put it down what is the physical relevance of collapsing. Seattle claims that our solar system is already collapsed, can he explain it.
In the very second post, I told you about scaling and quantum nature of everything including that of our universe/solar system. You objected and even claimed that it is not quantum system, but corrected your position in later posts. That correction is welcome learning. Look at the sky, every square inch of distant sky contains multitude of galaxies and each galaxy has multitude of solar systems. So if you set your telescope (measuring observer) to one such solar system, then it will be like observing an electron here, so what does collapse signify in case of measurement or observation of a very distant tiny spec called solar system?
I haven't changed my position on anything and I've answered your question in the post that you quoted.
The "spec" was a great distance from the observer and it took a long time for the wave function to arrive for observation. The spec itself may not even exist anymore.
