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Can't sleep. Give me some interesting topics to look up on search engine.
- Thread starter biteme
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Imnotdutch
butler monkey
Big Black Bitches with a midget fetish.
B
BrothaBill
Guest
Interactive dualism!!! I'll resonate the exercise thread and bump it.
B
BrothaBill
Guest
Exactly!! Thats what Im saying or better yet if he is doing pushups in the woods and no one is there to see him, is he alive or dead? is he doing pushups? The answer is both yes and no and neither, he is in a wave-superficial state as discussed in the famous schrodingers cat in the box thought problem. How do you prove the cat is really in the box without first observing it. But like Stephen Hawking proposes, in order to observe it you change it.
The question was raised: "If a man alone in the woods speaks, and his
wife cannot hear him, is he still wrong?"
I have considered this question in light of the principles of Modern
Physics and offer my thesis.
In the year 1900 Max Planck discovered that the energy of light is
quantified. In 1905 Albert Einstein used Planck's Constant to write the
theory of the Photoelectric Effect, that light behaves as a particle
when it comes to energy transfer. Louis de Broglie proposed that
particles can have a wave nature and this fact was later verified.
These discoveries led Neils Bohr to propose a radical theory of the
atom, which was partially successful in explaining the emission spectra
of the hydrogen atom. Neils Bohr was compelled to introduce the
Principle of "Complementarity," that light is both a particle and a
wave.
The modern theories were extended when Max Born showed that the
distribution of energy was a function of probability. Further, Warner
Heisenberg wrote the Principle of Uncertainty, which says that it is
impossible to determine the exact location of an electron and the vector
direction of its momentum at the same time.
This was followed with the master stroke penned by Erwin Schrodinger.
Using the "Psi function" of Quantum Mechanics, Schrodinger could map the
"wave field" of any particle, thus giving us a theoretical explanation
for the structure of an atom and the entire periodic table of the
elements.
The Quantum mechanics predicts that a wave of a single frequency would
stretch out to infinite proportions, the superposition of a narrow range
of frequencies produces a standing wave function which can be localized
to a much more precise location. Thus the electron and its position
within an atom becomes a cloud of probability.
From this I infer that there are such states as being right and being
wrong, within certain parameters of uncertainty. Applying the Psi
function, the more vague the statement of the man the greater the
probability of him being correct. The narrower and more specific his
utterance the greater the likelihood of his being wrong.
Also, the Principle of Complementarity assures us that if a man alone in
the woods speaks, and his wife can not hear him, he is BOTH right and
wrong until he comes out of the woods.
In the analogy of Schrodinger's Cat, the cat in the box is both dead and
alive until someone opens the lid. The act of observing the phenomenon
determines the outcome.
Thus, the inevitable conclusion is that it doesn't matter what the man
says only his wife can determine whether or not he is correct.
Online!
BrothaBill
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Today, 05:59 AM #36
BrothaBill
All Natural
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hard question, able to jump realities at will and move between particle world and Wave world. You will find it hard to believe, but its that simple, if you believe, then its real, I think therefore I am
Posts: 38 Re: Exercise related math problem
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a night spawned of banshees. Heavy sheets of rain poured onto the tiny town of Paris Crossing. Roofs leaked, eaves overflowed, and downspouts gushed rivers onto cobbled pavement.
Any sane person would have sought shelter, preferably warmed by a roaring fire behind locked window and door; any sane person would have listened to the "old brain" that remembered how scary things could hide in dark corners; any sane person would have opted for a rain-check.
But Professor Fillmore Gottlieb was rarely described as sane. What he was known as by the town's people of Paris Crossing and the students at Brandywine University where he taught physics was "mad as a hatter". And that was when he was sober. When Professor Gottlieb went on a "bender" which had happened more and more frequently of late, insanity had been observed washing its hands and muttering about defamation suits.
The professor pulled a shabby raincoat around his thin body and removed a twisted paper bag from an inside pocket. He took a bottle from the bag, downed a couple of swigs and surveyed his surroundings-the alleyway of the Painted Lady-and his condition-wet, bordering sopping. "Here, kitty, kitty". He tried to form his large teeth into a friendly smile. Animals liked that.
A cat huddled under the shelter of a garbage can lid and refused to acknowledge the professor's gambit. Even a cat knew a sneer when he saw it. The cat edged further under the lid.
"I have a nice kitty treat." The professor staggered closer to the cat. "You like liver, don't you?" Professor Gottlieb pulled something raw and bloody from his pocket and waved it toward the garbage lid.
The cat hadn't eaten a decent meal for a week. Hunger nagged at him. "Come on, take the bloody liver. It's all fine for you to be picky about character and smells and auras, but we've got a mutiny down here. If we don't eat something soon we're going to…going to…do something really, really bad." The cat stretched his neck and sniffed.
"Got you!" The professor grabbed the cat by the ruff of its neck and sneered-smiled.
Later, atop a steep, craggy hill in a castle-like ruin.
The cat found himself awakening from a deep sleep. Around him was only darkness and quiet. At least he was out of the rain, he conceded; but his paw felt funny, like it was being jabbed by a needle, which it was.
The cat did the only thing he knew how to do; he tried to run away.
"It's no use." A voice said from the darkness.
"Who are you?" The cat said with surprise, mostly because for some reason, he was suddenly able to talk.
"The Grim Reaper." The voice replied. "You can call me Death."
"How about I call you later?" The cat tried some cat humor on Death, but the cat wasn't very good at it and even in the darkness he could tell that Death wasn't impressed.
"Was that a joke?" Death said in the monotone that is the full range of Death's ability to express emotion.
"Sorry. Don't hold it against me, but I hadn't expected to see you, well-not that I can see you-so soon.
"Nobody ever does." Death patted the cat on the head.
"So, how soon do we leave? Or do I get to pull the "nine-lives" trump card?"
"It's not my decision." Death yawned.
"Who decides then?" The cat asked.
"That." Death pointed in the darkness, but of course the cat didn't see a thing.
"What?" The cat felt around inside the box.
"It's a radioactive particle." Death explained.
"I don't get it." The cat, who hadn't studied physics and had never heard of Schrödinger's cat, was mystified.
"If the particle decays, you die." Death said. "But there's a catch."
"Fish, I hope." The cat tried some more cat humor.
"I got that." Death tried to chuckle; but of course, it came out monotone. "The particle can't decay and you can't die unless someone observes it." Death continued. "It's a "reality collapsing of the universe thing" invented by "You Know Who".
Meanwhile.
The professor adjusted an IV bag with a long tube that disappeared inside a hole drilled into the side of a wooden box. The box was on a long metal table resting on a chipped linoleum floor that spanned a cave-like room, which was, of course, the mad professor's lab. And in keeping with the madness theme, Professor Gottlieb had furnished the room with boiling beakers, whizzing gizmos, formaldehyde containers of body parts, chains and pulleys with platforms that rose to the ceiling, spidery cobwebs, scurrying rats, and a sidekick named Ego.
"I don't get it." Ego, permanently hunched into a position of subservience, limped to the table and looked up at Professor Gottlieb with his one good eye.
"Of course, you don't, Ego, you poor wretched creature." The professor's eyes glowed as steel in a blast furnace. "I, Professor Fillmore Gottlieb, will prove once and for all that quantum theorists are as crazy as-as crazy as-"
"You are?" Ego folded his hands and smiled up at the master.
"That's what they all say, isn't it? That I'm crazy. Well, you won't hear me spouting nonsense about multiple universes dancing on the head of a pin. You won't hear me ranting about reality bending and collapsing only when it is looked at.
"Well, I see what you mean." Ego chased a bug and stuck it in his mouth. "But, I mean, isn't that sort of like the tree falling in the forest thing?"
"Of course not, totally different." Professor Gottlieb poured a drink from a whiskey decanter. The liquid sloshed in his shaking hands.
"Pardon me for speaking, master." Ego grabbed another bug. "But isn't the universe by its very nature observer-dependent? Sort of an "I exist, therefore I am" conundrum, as it were. How can we know we exist if nobody confirms it?"
"Must you keep mouthing that gibberish?" Professor Gottlieb took a drink from the glass. "Poor Ego, how can I explain the workings of the universe to your poor, simple and childish mind?"
"I spoke out of turn; forgive me, master." Ego limped over to a corner and sat down to eat his bowl of gruel. The bugs had given him an appetite.
"Observe and learn, Ego." Professor Gottlieb pointed at the box. "Inside are a cat and a radioactive particle. There is a fifty-fifty probability that the particle will decay and if the particle decays, the cat will die-correct?"
"Not according to quantum physics," Ego said dripping gruel from his mouth, "the cat can't die, the particle can't collapse, unless someone observes it. The cat is half-dead and half-alive until you open the box."
"Idiot!" Professor Gottlieb threw the glass at Ego. "The cat will die and the particle will decay or not decay whether I open the box or not. The cat is either alive or dead." The professor poured another drink.
Meanwhile.
"Is that true?" The cat, who had heard all, asked death.
"All true, I'm afraid." Death tapped a shoe. "Meanwhile, my appointments are backing up in a most untidy fashion. You wouldn't believe the schedule I have to keep. I'm already four thousand, three hundred and eighty five souls behind. And "You Know Who" is a stickler about overtime. Hate's it."
"Which part?" The cat, who could only hold onto a single thought at a time, continued, "that I'm half-dead or half-alive or a falling tree won't make a sound unless somebody's there?"
"All of it." Death tapped his shoe some more. "I really hate being kept waiting."
Meanwhile.
"But how will you know if you're right or wrong?" Ego limped over and rubbed the master's sleeve.
"That is my genius, Ego, my man." Professor Gottlieb rubbed his hands together and laughed a diabolical laugh. "I don't plan to open the box for years."
"But the cat will starve to death." Ego eyed the box.
"Wrong, again, Ego." Professor Gottlieb fondled a bag attached to the tube. "The cat will be fed by this tube until he either dies by the particle or from natural causes. When I open the box, I expect to find nothing but bones, therefore proving that the cat has died and the particle has collapsed, observed or not."
Years later.
Professor Gottlieb leaned against his cane and adjusted his false teeth so that the clicking sound wasn't so loud. "Confound it, Ego! Where did you disappear to?"
"Sorry, Master, but my lumbago is at it again, and my rheumatism is acting up today." Ego, even more limping and hunched than before, looked up at the Professor through glass-bottle thick lenses that covered his one good eye.
"Today's the day, Ego." The professor ran a hand through his thin white hair capturing several loose tufts.
"Is it Wednesday again, Master?" Ego looked confused. "Seems like only yesterday it was Wednesday."
"It was Wednesday yesterday, you idiot." Professor Gottlieb walked over to the box. "No, Ego, today is the day I go down in history. Today, we open the box."
"What box?" Ego scratched his head.
"The cat box, you moron." Professor Gottlieb puffed out his chest. There was the sound of chalk as a rib cracked.
"Do we have a cat?" Ego looked around; but with eyesight failing, he could see nothing beyond his own grubby hands.
"Tah Dum!" Professor Gottlieb opened the box.
Now, here is the way things happened. The world proceeded to spin as a vortex inside a kaleidoscope might be inclined to do. It morphed and formed a spiral whirling into the fathomless blackness of space. If Death had owned a surfboard at that moment, it would have been declared a Kahuna as it rode the waves of probabilities that collapsed along the great highway of the universe. Finally, reality settled like a pinball at the bottom of a spiral.
And death-what happened after all the waiting, foot tapping, and sighing? Death got exactly what it had come for. Professor Fillmore Gottlieb.
The cat observed and ran away.
The question was raised: "If a man alone in the woods speaks, and his
wife cannot hear him, is he still wrong?"
I have considered this question in light of the principles of Modern
Physics and offer my thesis.
In the year 1900 Max Planck discovered that the energy of light is
quantified. In 1905 Albert Einstein used Planck's Constant to write the
theory of the Photoelectric Effect, that light behaves as a particle
when it comes to energy transfer. Louis de Broglie proposed that
particles can have a wave nature and this fact was later verified.
These discoveries led Neils Bohr to propose a radical theory of the
atom, which was partially successful in explaining the emission spectra
of the hydrogen atom. Neils Bohr was compelled to introduce the
Principle of "Complementarity," that light is both a particle and a
wave.
The modern theories were extended when Max Born showed that the
distribution of energy was a function of probability. Further, Warner
Heisenberg wrote the Principle of Uncertainty, which says that it is
impossible to determine the exact location of an electron and the vector
direction of its momentum at the same time.
This was followed with the master stroke penned by Erwin Schrodinger.
Using the "Psi function" of Quantum Mechanics, Schrodinger could map the
"wave field" of any particle, thus giving us a theoretical explanation
for the structure of an atom and the entire periodic table of the
elements.
The Quantum mechanics predicts that a wave of a single frequency would
stretch out to infinite proportions, the superposition of a narrow range
of frequencies produces a standing wave function which can be localized
to a much more precise location. Thus the electron and its position
within an atom becomes a cloud of probability.
From this I infer that there are such states as being right and being
wrong, within certain parameters of uncertainty. Applying the Psi
function, the more vague the statement of the man the greater the
probability of him being correct. The narrower and more specific his
utterance the greater the likelihood of his being wrong.
Also, the Principle of Complementarity assures us that if a man alone in
the woods speaks, and his wife can not hear him, he is BOTH right and
wrong until he comes out of the woods.
In the analogy of Schrodinger's Cat, the cat in the box is both dead and
alive until someone opens the lid. The act of observing the phenomenon
determines the outcome.
Thus, the inevitable conclusion is that it doesn't matter what the man
says only his wife can determine whether or not he is correct.
Online!
BrothaBill
View Public Profile
Send a private message to BrothaBill
Find More Posts by BrothaBill
Add BrothaBill to Your Buddy List
Today, 05:59 AM #36
BrothaBill
All Natural
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hard question, able to jump realities at will and move between particle world and Wave world. You will find it hard to believe, but its that simple, if you believe, then its real, I think therefore I am
Posts: 38 Re: Exercise related math problem
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a night spawned of banshees. Heavy sheets of rain poured onto the tiny town of Paris Crossing. Roofs leaked, eaves overflowed, and downspouts gushed rivers onto cobbled pavement.
Any sane person would have sought shelter, preferably warmed by a roaring fire behind locked window and door; any sane person would have listened to the "old brain" that remembered how scary things could hide in dark corners; any sane person would have opted for a rain-check.
But Professor Fillmore Gottlieb was rarely described as sane. What he was known as by the town's people of Paris Crossing and the students at Brandywine University where he taught physics was "mad as a hatter". And that was when he was sober. When Professor Gottlieb went on a "bender" which had happened more and more frequently of late, insanity had been observed washing its hands and muttering about defamation suits.
The professor pulled a shabby raincoat around his thin body and removed a twisted paper bag from an inside pocket. He took a bottle from the bag, downed a couple of swigs and surveyed his surroundings-the alleyway of the Painted Lady-and his condition-wet, bordering sopping. "Here, kitty, kitty". He tried to form his large teeth into a friendly smile. Animals liked that.
A cat huddled under the shelter of a garbage can lid and refused to acknowledge the professor's gambit. Even a cat knew a sneer when he saw it. The cat edged further under the lid.
"I have a nice kitty treat." The professor staggered closer to the cat. "You like liver, don't you?" Professor Gottlieb pulled something raw and bloody from his pocket and waved it toward the garbage lid.
The cat hadn't eaten a decent meal for a week. Hunger nagged at him. "Come on, take the bloody liver. It's all fine for you to be picky about character and smells and auras, but we've got a mutiny down here. If we don't eat something soon we're going to…going to…do something really, really bad." The cat stretched his neck and sniffed.
"Got you!" The professor grabbed the cat by the ruff of its neck and sneered-smiled.
Later, atop a steep, craggy hill in a castle-like ruin.
The cat found himself awakening from a deep sleep. Around him was only darkness and quiet. At least he was out of the rain, he conceded; but his paw felt funny, like it was being jabbed by a needle, which it was.
The cat did the only thing he knew how to do; he tried to run away.
"It's no use." A voice said from the darkness.
"Who are you?" The cat said with surprise, mostly because for some reason, he was suddenly able to talk.
"The Grim Reaper." The voice replied. "You can call me Death."
"How about I call you later?" The cat tried some cat humor on Death, but the cat wasn't very good at it and even in the darkness he could tell that Death wasn't impressed.
"Was that a joke?" Death said in the monotone that is the full range of Death's ability to express emotion.
"Sorry. Don't hold it against me, but I hadn't expected to see you, well-not that I can see you-so soon.
"Nobody ever does." Death patted the cat on the head.
"So, how soon do we leave? Or do I get to pull the "nine-lives" trump card?"
"It's not my decision." Death yawned.
"Who decides then?" The cat asked.
"That." Death pointed in the darkness, but of course the cat didn't see a thing.
"What?" The cat felt around inside the box.
"It's a radioactive particle." Death explained.
"I don't get it." The cat, who hadn't studied physics and had never heard of Schrödinger's cat, was mystified.
"If the particle decays, you die." Death said. "But there's a catch."
"Fish, I hope." The cat tried some more cat humor.
"I got that." Death tried to chuckle; but of course, it came out monotone. "The particle can't decay and you can't die unless someone observes it." Death continued. "It's a "reality collapsing of the universe thing" invented by "You Know Who".
Meanwhile.
The professor adjusted an IV bag with a long tube that disappeared inside a hole drilled into the side of a wooden box. The box was on a long metal table resting on a chipped linoleum floor that spanned a cave-like room, which was, of course, the mad professor's lab. And in keeping with the madness theme, Professor Gottlieb had furnished the room with boiling beakers, whizzing gizmos, formaldehyde containers of body parts, chains and pulleys with platforms that rose to the ceiling, spidery cobwebs, scurrying rats, and a sidekick named Ego.
"I don't get it." Ego, permanently hunched into a position of subservience, limped to the table and looked up at Professor Gottlieb with his one good eye.
"Of course, you don't, Ego, you poor wretched creature." The professor's eyes glowed as steel in a blast furnace. "I, Professor Fillmore Gottlieb, will prove once and for all that quantum theorists are as crazy as-as crazy as-"
"You are?" Ego folded his hands and smiled up at the master.
"That's what they all say, isn't it? That I'm crazy. Well, you won't hear me spouting nonsense about multiple universes dancing on the head of a pin. You won't hear me ranting about reality bending and collapsing only when it is looked at.
"Well, I see what you mean." Ego chased a bug and stuck it in his mouth. "But, I mean, isn't that sort of like the tree falling in the forest thing?"
"Of course not, totally different." Professor Gottlieb poured a drink from a whiskey decanter. The liquid sloshed in his shaking hands.
"Pardon me for speaking, master." Ego grabbed another bug. "But isn't the universe by its very nature observer-dependent? Sort of an "I exist, therefore I am" conundrum, as it were. How can we know we exist if nobody confirms it?"
"Must you keep mouthing that gibberish?" Professor Gottlieb took a drink from the glass. "Poor Ego, how can I explain the workings of the universe to your poor, simple and childish mind?"
"I spoke out of turn; forgive me, master." Ego limped over to a corner and sat down to eat his bowl of gruel. The bugs had given him an appetite.
"Observe and learn, Ego." Professor Gottlieb pointed at the box. "Inside are a cat and a radioactive particle. There is a fifty-fifty probability that the particle will decay and if the particle decays, the cat will die-correct?"
"Not according to quantum physics," Ego said dripping gruel from his mouth, "the cat can't die, the particle can't collapse, unless someone observes it. The cat is half-dead and half-alive until you open the box."
"Idiot!" Professor Gottlieb threw the glass at Ego. "The cat will die and the particle will decay or not decay whether I open the box or not. The cat is either alive or dead." The professor poured another drink.
Meanwhile.
"Is that true?" The cat, who had heard all, asked death.
"All true, I'm afraid." Death tapped a shoe. "Meanwhile, my appointments are backing up in a most untidy fashion. You wouldn't believe the schedule I have to keep. I'm already four thousand, three hundred and eighty five souls behind. And "You Know Who" is a stickler about overtime. Hate's it."
"Which part?" The cat, who could only hold onto a single thought at a time, continued, "that I'm half-dead or half-alive or a falling tree won't make a sound unless somebody's there?"
"All of it." Death tapped his shoe some more. "I really hate being kept waiting."
Meanwhile.
"But how will you know if you're right or wrong?" Ego limped over and rubbed the master's sleeve.
"That is my genius, Ego, my man." Professor Gottlieb rubbed his hands together and laughed a diabolical laugh. "I don't plan to open the box for years."
"But the cat will starve to death." Ego eyed the box.
"Wrong, again, Ego." Professor Gottlieb fondled a bag attached to the tube. "The cat will be fed by this tube until he either dies by the particle or from natural causes. When I open the box, I expect to find nothing but bones, therefore proving that the cat has died and the particle has collapsed, observed or not."
Years later.
Professor Gottlieb leaned against his cane and adjusted his false teeth so that the clicking sound wasn't so loud. "Confound it, Ego! Where did you disappear to?"
"Sorry, Master, but my lumbago is at it again, and my rheumatism is acting up today." Ego, even more limping and hunched than before, looked up at the Professor through glass-bottle thick lenses that covered his one good eye.
"Today's the day, Ego." The professor ran a hand through his thin white hair capturing several loose tufts.
"Is it Wednesday again, Master?" Ego looked confused. "Seems like only yesterday it was Wednesday."
"It was Wednesday yesterday, you idiot." Professor Gottlieb walked over to the box. "No, Ego, today is the day I go down in history. Today, we open the box."
"What box?" Ego scratched his head.
"The cat box, you moron." Professor Gottlieb puffed out his chest. There was the sound of chalk as a rib cracked.
"Do we have a cat?" Ego looked around; but with eyesight failing, he could see nothing beyond his own grubby hands.
"Tah Dum!" Professor Gottlieb opened the box.
Now, here is the way things happened. The world proceeded to spin as a vortex inside a kaleidoscope might be inclined to do. It morphed and formed a spiral whirling into the fathomless blackness of space. If Death had owned a surfboard at that moment, it would have been declared a Kahuna as it rode the waves of probabilities that collapsed along the great highway of the universe. Finally, reality settled like a pinball at the bottom of a spiral.
And death-what happened after all the waiting, foot tapping, and sighing? Death got exactly what it had come for. Professor Fillmore Gottlieb.
The cat observed and ran away.
Imnotdutch
butler monkey
biteme said:
Somebody I used to work with used to search for that.........so I guess there must be pages out there that cater for it.
B
BrothaBill
Guest
hahahaha! nono not thinking at tall, im a boxer...thi twas a from a discussion ahwile back. You asked for something, I was just bored enough to go back and qote it. A lil something for tke LSd crowd. I myself had a great convo with a myself girl tonight. Too bad Im still hung up on mysself from a breakup 6 months ago. Oh well
B
BrothaBill
Guest
biteme said:
Thanks man, but thats the catch she is worth it. She said quit drinking and come back in a year. Hears the deal. I got drunk one night and we lived together. She said get out and we cant live together. I left, but had no place to go; I came back and walked in. She threated to call the police, I said no let me call them for you and I did. I hit myself with the phone and they arrested her for assault. I quit drinking, went to treatment, apologized to everone she worked with and quit my job and become a boxer.. going to vegas shortly...im going to be famous hahaha
herse some more of that thought on physicsGod hahahaha! The argument that lasted for at least five fucking years!! Neil, Andrew, Shawn, Mike. Use this as brief history of your theory or rather an addendum to senses and perception in regards to Descartes method of radical doubt. DO NOT open this box in group! hahaha!
rationalism vs Empiricism ways of finding the truth!
Intro to the duality of man, Shite this is going to be way too long just to make my point that Ive been talking about for a coupla weeks.
Descartes vs locke
Id, ego, superego Freuds model.** Compare to head split with one little guy on each side with rope in between. ego= good part, id= opposite, uncontrollable, Superego, mediator between the two. Duality of man. Alcohol numbs the superego! Unleashes the ID.
ego= Dr Jekyll, Id= Mr Hyde
What is alcoholism?? Is there a cure? disease model. Continuum.
Principle of complementarity: duality of man. Both right and wrong!
Psi function: Duality
rational and empiricism: duality of truth, tie it all together
Use this as a handout dont go to deep, time limit, they have a lifetime to read this and understand it. remember your audience, Lynnwood haha!
Here's a conundrum: To understand my collage, you would have to know a lot of physics. Yet someone with a lot of physics wouldn't be interested in a presentationlike this because it would be too elementary. That leaves a question: What's the audience for it?
Why bring in Schroedinger's cat at all? What's the point? The famous thought experiment contains so many details. Fuck, on and on this went. Every fucking time we drank for years at some point this goddamn argument would come up hahahahaha!. Someone had thought of new way to look at the conundrum. The others would get pissed like me, but we all did it, we all brought it up. Hell Im the one that started the argument in the first place. I think I picked it up out of the movie Prince of Darkness that I saw when I was 14 and Now Im 31 and Im still going on about it. I know all those guys think about it from time to tome like I do haha!! I remember Neil, Andrew and I were in tricities in Andrews RV and this came up. Shawn, Neil, Scott years before. IT never ends hahahha! I shall infect the group with this conundrum! Better to make up your own story illustrating some of the quantum principles.
Give this is as part of presentation handout to further make the point. Duality! what does it mean? What are all the combinations of numbers that might be multiplied together to produce a number 400 digits long?
The fastest computers on Earth could groan and wheeze for eons and still not spit out the answers.
Is the problem trivial, a brain twister for laid-off mathematicians but of no practical significance?
Hardly. The Central Intelligence Agency would love to be able to do that kind of factoring. It would help crack security codes.
To undertake this sort of problem requires a quantum computer. A quantum computer will factor a thousand billion billion billion computations at once. It will use atoms or parts of atoms, not transistors, to do its computations. And that will permit incomparable miniaturization.
Now all we have to do is actually build the thing.
Poul Jessen is working on how to manipulate the unthinkably tiny realms that must be controlled in order to make quantum computers a reality. To begin to grasp the problems involved in building a quantum computer, you must first understand that matter in the atomic realm doesn't behave like matter in the everyday world. The rules are different.
Imagine you're playing pool. You approach the table for the break. You know which ball is the cue ball.
But if there were little pool halls down inside the atom, as you approached the table for the break, the cue ball might seem a bit odd. It would have neither one position nor several. Think of it as somewhat cloudy, not the distinct cue ball of everyday reality.
In the visible world, if, after the break, you shoot the cue ball at a second ball, you'll have a rough idea -- if you're any good at pool -- of the direction the second ball will take off in, as well as its speed.
But in the atomic pool hall, there's a certain unpredictability afoot; the cue ball might, once in a while, pass right through the ball it's aimed at and proceed straight off the table; or it might bounce back.
So the atom and its constituents operate by one set of rules, and the rest of creation operates by another. The atom is governed by quantum mechanical rules, our visible realm by the classical mechanical rules set forth by Sir Isaac Newton.
Until fairly recently, physicists thought that the twain never met.
Now they've changed their minds.
Today, physicists like Jessen are trying to increase the reach of quantum mechanical rules. They would like to be able to put them to work in some parts of the visible world, Jessen said -- such as in high-speed computers.
"You could, for example, make a computer memory bit that would be on and off at the same time," Jessen said. "That's the kind of thing we'd like to do for quantum computers. But that's a long way off. Jessen's work, funded by the National Science Foundation, is far more basic than making a quantum computer. Among other things, it involves trapping and manipulating single atoms. It also involves shielding them from disturbance -- called "noise" -- coming from the outside world.
Jessen did some atom trapping back in 1998. That year, he and his students created what's called an "optical lattice." They shot laser beams at other laser beams and created interference patterns. These optical lattices could trap atoms of a certain kind, ones that had neither positive nor negative charge.
The atoms would come to rest in the lattice like eggs in an egg carton, Jessen says -- if you chilled the atoms to just shy of absolute zero.
The beauty of this is that once the atoms are trapped in the lattice, Jessen says, they remain almost perfectly isolated from the surrounding environment. That's crucial.
If you don't box the area off from the world around it -- the one governed, ordinarily, by Newton's classical mechanics -- "noise" from the environment can disrupt your experiments, Jessen says. [MY SOURCE SAID OF THE PRECEDING SENTENCE: "NOT TRUE. WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY IS 'TO SEE THE SUBTLE EFFECTS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, YOU HAVE TO BOX THE AREA AWAY FROM THE ORDINARY RANDOM THERMAL CRASHING AND SMASHING CAUSED BY THE LARGER NEWTONIAN WORLD.' THEN HE ADDED: I GOT A LITTLE EXCESSIVE WITH 'RANDOM THERAML CRASHING AND SMASHING' SO YOU'D GET THE IDEA."]
"The 'noise' can perturb the quantum object and wash out all of the quantum 'weirdness' that we can use to make quantum computers."
This year, Jessen and his team took another step in the understanding necessary to build a quantum computer. They discovered how to coax a single atom into being in several places at the same time.
They started by creating -- again with lasers -- what can be thought of as two wells of light. In the world of classical mechanics, a single atom could sit in one well OR the other. Under quantum rules, though, a single atom can sit in one well AND the other at the same time. [MY SOURCE SAID: "MY SUGGESTION: 'A SINGLE ATOM CAN 'SORT OF' SIT IN ONE WELL AND 'SORT OF' SIT IN THE OTHER AT THE SAME TIME, A PHENOMENON CALLED SUPERPOSITION." THEN HE ADDED: "DON'T THINK HARD ABOUT WHETHER THE ATOM IS 'REALLY SITTING' OR 'SORT OF' SITTING UNLESS YOU WANT TO BECOME A PHYSICIST. ANOTHER WAY TO CONCEIVE IT IS THAT THE ATOM HAS AN ATTRIBUTE PARTLY IN ONE WELL AND PARTLY IN THE OTHER." ]
Jessen and company managed to coax an atom to occupy both wells at the same time. In fact, they got the atom to occupy several positions simultaneously, with each "atom" about 150 nanometers from its neighbor. In other words, they were about 150 billionths of a meter apart; that's about 1,500 times the size of an atom.
Moreover, the atom acted in a second weird way.
"Over the course of a hundred microseconds," Jessen says, "the atom moved through a barrier that according to classical physics it should not be able to penetrate."
The next step, Jessen says, is to produce the existence of something in more than one place at a time at a larger scale.
But the more you scale up, he says, the harder it is to insulate the area from outside disturbance
"As we make ever larger quantum systems," Jessen said, "we also need to learn how to protect them."
Until Jessen and his colleagues -- and other researchers elsewhere who are working on quantum computing -- succeed at that and other problems, the CIA won't be reaping benefit from the code-cracking power of this kind of computing.
On the other hand, when scientists do isolate and orchestrate atoms in a quantum mechanical computing environment, they'll be able to reach some sort of ultimate in computer miniaturization -- and speed.
The chief limit on a classically designed computer’s speed is the size of its building blocks: transistors. For transistors to work faster, they must be made smaller. Today, transistors no more than a few hundred atoms wide exist -- but the cost of achieving further reductions would be huge.
What we need here, obviously, is a quantum leap. This is going to go way, way over their heads...But tonight, I was really annoyed by the way they were acting. I felt like they were saying "DUH! Dont you get it?" to me! When in fact, what I was discussing with Dave and he knew where I was going, I could tell, was so far beyond what they were saying. ANd they were acting superior. I shouldnt do this to them, OOOHH well, maybe this might inspire them or at least give them a headache!! I usually dont discuss this stuff with anyone b/c well they dont need this interruption in their lives. To ponder these endless conundrums. But its funny when you meet someone and they have done the same thing. You just know who each other is. We both ran a lap around the circle! hahaha! how many times, you ask? hahaha! too funny, quantum says the answer is....hahahahaa!
