I'm bored so ask me anything.

[Alavatar]

I take issue with the word useful.

The energy wave exists. Whether or not some thing recieves it doesn't matter as to it's nature. Light exists, and all creatures see it differently. Bees see into a specturm we don't.

Dogs hear pitches we can't. So if I blow a dog whistle in the presence of a human and a dog, it's a sound, but if I remove the dog, it's no longer a sound?

Again, it's being egocentric to say that something is useful, or defined because we say it is. Some one hearing the energy wave doesn't change it's natuer. I might reshape it as it bounces of the object and moves in a different direction, and it might cause a chain reaction, such as nerves sending signals, eardrums vibrating and so forth. But those are reactions to the energy wave.

I just thought I would put in my 2 copper.

Sound is nothing more then vibration of mass at specific frequencies. As such, it is only considered sound if there is a receiver that can translate the frequency as sound. While the vibration caused by the crash of a falling tree would exist it is only considered 'sound' when something is around to hear it.

So, no receiver means no sound, but that does not mean there is an absence of energy transfer.

[Shecky]

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

I'll field this one.

There's an absolutely clear answer to this one. I'll even step you through the process so you can replicate the results in your own home:

1) Turn on recorder.
2) Clap with one hand.
3) Play back result.

That'll answer your question sure as shootin'.

Oh, and Borr? That's precisely right - the pseudo-altruism of "save the planet!" is off-base for any practical purpose. Some people think we should off the human race so Mother Earth can be "left alone". We ARE the dominant species, but it behooves us to balance our dominance to make sure that the planet can keep on SUPPORTING us as the dominant species. See, self-interest can be a GOOD thing.

Heinlein said it best:

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.
In the case of "Naturists" such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.
As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women — it strikes me as a fine arrangement — and perfectly "natural" Believe it or not, there were "Naturists" who opposed the first flight to old Earth's Moon as being "unnaturaI" and a "despoiling of Nature."

PS Lor? I really have figured out how to clap with one hand. No joke. Think about it and you'll be able to do it, too.

[Dane_McArdy]

Recent, perhaps. Total, not even close. The fact is we are the dominate species on the planet for the moment, everything else is in competition to compete for resources with us. Frankly, Yea US!

Natural Selection is good, as long as you are not selected for extinction.

I didn't say total. Man hasn't been around long enough. But we are a speices that has actively caused the extinction of many many speices, and many of our actions are causing speicies to head towards extinction.

Pushing the current system closer and closer to collapse.

Yes, all speices compete. But there is a balance, that keeps the system going. There are checks and balances. Like preditor to prey.

Man has eliminated it's checks. We aren't a source of food for another animal. We have lowered the death from diesease. We control our food source.

Boo us. If you can't see that we are starting another system collapse, then there isn't any hope for the survival of humans.

And great quote Shecky. That's just how I feel. We are part of nature, and not set aside from it, as much of western ideaology, philosphy and religion tries to make us.

And what happens to nature, what we do to nature, we do to ourselves. Nature developes diesease, virus' and many deadly things that don't seem good. Who says that we are one of the good guys? When nature doesn't need something anymore, it goes away.

[Vardak]

And what happens to nature, what we do to nature, we do to ourselves. Nature developes diesease, virus' and many deadly things that don't seem good. Who says that we are one of the good guys? When nature doesn't need something anymore, it goes away.

Our discussion has shifted from greenhouse gasses and pollution control to survival of the species. A reasonable shift I suppose a reflection of the gravity of the issue.

It is mankind's nature to consume and to believe otherwise is a bit like the shark saying "fish are friends not food." Earlier I suggested that global warming was a result of natural processes over which man had limited control. The question is; does the benefit obtained from control of greenhouse gasses outweigh the cost?

Is our belief that we can control nature simply self delusional.

The extinction of man is inevitable, but hopefully not tomorrow.

[Shecky]

I didn't say total. Man hasn't been around long enough. But we are a speices that has actively caused the extinction of many many speices, and many of our actions are causing speicies to head towards extinction.

Pushing the current system closer and closer to collapse.

Yes, all speices compete. But there is a balance, that keeps the system going. There are checks and balances. Like preditor to prey.

Man has eliminated it's checks. We aren't a source of food for another animal. We have lowered the death from diesease. We control our food source.

Boo us. If you can't see that we are starting another system collapse, then there isn't any hope for the survival of humans.

And great quote Shecky. That's just how I feel. We are part of nature, and not set aside from it, as much of western ideaology, philosphy and religion tries to make us.

And what happens to nature, what we do to nature, we do to ourselves. Nature developes diesease, virus' and many deadly things that don't seem good. Who says that we are one of the good guys? When nature doesn't need something anymore, it goes away.

It could even be said, and with great evidence, that man is his own predator. We're pretty efficient at killing ourselves off, even when we think we're trying to save ourselves (e.g., inadvertently breeding superbugs that are resistant to all the vaccines and 'cides). In a way, our attempt at circumventing Darwin's presence (immunizing people, treating people with illnesses who would otherwise die, etc. - all the humanitarian things we should do) is succeeding... in making the species weaker. Look at how much of the race's resources is going towards saving people whom nature is attempting to kill, and ask yourself how much MORE of our species' energy is going to be put towards this in the future. We're not really making the species stronger; we're setting ourselves up for a massive die-off if there's even a little hiccup in the human race's health-care system. That, of course, would be nature's way of telling us to stop breeding and to stop saving the weak (please don't think that I believe that humanity SHOULD have a die-off; I'm just saying that it's getting more and more inevitable). The only real problem with this is that if we do something that REALLY kills ourselves off big-time, we'll take a big chunk of the biosphere down with us.

[JayDubya]

So, they introduce radiation to "watch electrons" and suddenly, they behave differently.

And man thinks they are smart.

I'm not a high-energy physicst, so I may get this wrong. Any HEP people out there, please feel free to correct.

When the electrons leave the gun, they are just clouds of probability, and they can occupy multiple locations.

In order to observe this electron, you have to hit it with a photon (or any other particle). Do we agree? You can't "see" something without photons reflecting from that thing and hitting your eyes, yes?

But at the instant when the photon intersects with the electron's "probabilty cloud", the electron has to decide whether the photon hit it or not. So it rolls some dice to determine exactly where it is, relative to the photon that intersected its cloud.

But that very effort of rolling the dice to determine its exact location causes the "probability cloud" to collapse into a single point - essentially the electron is no longer a cloud, it is a particle.

Thus the reason the experimental result changes when something observes it. It's not the observer, so much as the photons that must be allowed to hit the electron in order to make observation possible.

[Vardak]

I'm not a high-energy physicst, so I may get this wrong. Any HEP people out there, please feel free to correct.

When the electrons leave the gun, they are just clouds of probability, and they can occupy multiple locations.

In order to observe this electron, you have to hit it with a photon (or any other particle). Do we agree? You can't "see" something without photons reflecting from that thing and hitting your eyes, yes?

But at the instant when the photon intersects with the electron's "probabilty cloud", the electron has to decide whether the photon hit it or not. So it rolls some dice to determine exactly where it is, relative to the photon that intersected its cloud.

But that very effort of rolling the dice to determine its exact location causes the "probability cloud" to collapse into a single point - essentially the electron is no longer a cloud, it is a particle.

Thus the reason the experimental result changes when something observes it. It's not the observer, so much as the photons that must be allowed to hit the electron in order to make observation possible.

This is as good an explanation as is necessary for the ongoing discussion. The point here is that observation inevitably alters the experiment. In order to demonstrate that a wave of energy with the potential to produce sound, actually produces it you must provide a reciever, which alters the experiment.

[JayDubya]

In a way, our attempt at circumventing Darwin's presence (immunizing people, treating people with illnesses who would otherwise die, etc. - all the humanitarian things we should do) is succeeding... in making the species weaker. Look at how much of the race's resources is going towards saving people whom nature is attempting to kill, and ask yourself how much MORE of our species' energy is going to be put towards this in the future.

Just to be fair - the asteroids, comets, supervolcanoes, death clouds, minature black holes and other extinction-level events in the Earth's future do not care whether there are 100,000 super-fit human beings living on an Eden-like paradise, or 9 billion not-so-fit human beings living on a somewhat scuffed up planet. All of those humans, and virtually all of the mammals and large non-mammals will be equally dead.

The advantage of 9 billion not-so-fit humans is the ability of their accumulated brains to create new technologies, new innovations that will get us, and our animal friends, off of this planet, out of this solar system.

While I recognize the chance of this occuring in our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes are small, they are not zero. We can do no greater service to our animal friends and our own species than to leave the cradle of Earth and take them with us.

[Dane_McArdy]

I'm not a high-energy physicst, so I may get this wrong. Any HEP people out there, please feel free to correct.

When the electrons leave the gun, they are just clouds of probability, and they can occupy multiple locations.

In order to observe this electron, you have to hit it with a photon (or any other particle). Do we agree? You can't "see" something without photons reflecting from that thing and hitting your eyes, yes?

But at the instant when the photon intersects with the electron's "probabilty cloud", the electron has to decide whether the photon hit it or not. So it rolls some dice to determine exactly where it is, relative to the photon that intersected its cloud.

But that very effort of rolling the dice to determine its exact location causes the "probability cloud" to collapse into a single point - essentially the electron is no longer a cloud, it is a particle.

Thus the reason the experimental result changes when something observes it. It's not the observer, so much as the photons that must be allowed to hit the electron in order to make observation possible.

So, to observe the electron, we have to interact with is, by hitting it with a photon. And at no point do people think that this just might effect the behavior of the electron?

Because without hitting it with a photon, we get an interference pattern and decide that because we do (Based on what we EXPECT to see, and then not getting that). Because we set prescribed ideas on behavior, and then when we don't get that, decided what it must mean, rather then finding out what it really means.

Man's math and science is filled with man's mistaken beliefs. And yet, we think that just because we "observe" we have discovered the truth.

Then a decade later, we have a new truth, because someone "observed".

[Dane_McArdy]

This is as good an explanation as is necessary for the ongoing discussion. The point here is that observation inevitably alters the experiment. In order to demonstrate that a wave of energy with the potential to produce sound, actually produces it you must provide a reciever, which alters the experiment.

But we aren't just observing the experiement. We are introducing a new element into it, and then making the conclussion that observation changes the behavior of of the electrons. When in fact, hitting the electrons with photons changes the behavior of the electrons.

We made it all up.

[Shecky]

Just to clarify:

Electrons do not "exist as a cloud of probability". That's just mathematicese to say, "We don't know and can't know without interfering, so statistics tell us it should probably be here. Or here. Or here. You get the idea." The electron is where it is, and we do not have the ability to DETECT its location without INTERFERING with its location, so, from our anthropocentric perspective, it "exists as a cloud of probability." In other words, we've got some pretty good guesses.

It exists. It's THERE. We just can't TELL it's there without making it go elsewhere.

[Dane_McArdy]

Just to clarify:

Electrons do not "exist as a cloud of probability". That's just mathematicese to say, "We don't know and can't know without interfering, so statistics tell us it should probably be here. Or here. Or here. You get the idea." The electron is where it is, and we do not have the ability to DETECT its location without INTERFERING with its location, so, from our anthropocentric perspective, it "exists as a cloud of probability." In other words, we've got some pretty good guesses.

It exists. It's THERE. We just can't TELL it's there without making it go elsewhere.

Exactly! Also, we do one experiment, the one shooting metal balls through one and two slots, to see the emerging pattern.

We do the same with electrons, and expect the same pattern, but we don't get the same pattern. The pattern we get is the interference pattern you get with waves.

Since we can't see the electrons, we introduce photons. Since we really don't understand or know the nature of electrons, and still don't we really can't say the photons are NOT having an effect on the behavior of electrons.

[JayDubya]

Just to clarify:

Electrons do not "exist as a cloud of probability". That's just mathematicese to say, "We don't know and can't know without interfering, so statistics tell us it should probably be here. Or here. Or here. You get the idea." The electron is where it is, and we do not have the ability to DETECT its location without INTERFERING with its location, so, from our anthropocentric perspective, it "exists as a cloud of probability." In other words, we've got some pretty good guesses.

It exists. It's THERE. We just can't TELL it's there without making it go elsewhere.

Shecky, there are two factors involved here - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (the thing you're talking about) and quantum mechanics. If an electron is always a particle, it can only go through one slit in the double slit experiment. But a cloud of probability can go through two slits, and create interference patterns.

Non-collapsed electrons do just that - they go through both slits at the same time and create interference patterns. Collapsed electrons go through only one slit.

And quantum bits are not "possibly true or false, we just don't know" - they are literally true and false at the same time.

[JayDubya]

Since we can't see the electrons, we introduce photons. Since we really don't understand or know the nature of electrons, and still don't we really can't say the photons are NOT having an effect on the behavior of electrons.

I think we just said the photons are having an effect on the behavior of the electrons....

If you're going to be a skeptic about quantum mechanics, fine. But it seems to be that you should be even more of a skeptic about Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Even the scientists involved admit that they don't have a good idea of what increased cloud cover will have a positive or negative effect on overall warming trends.

Quantum Mechanics is very well understood and experimentally proven to accurately demonstrate quite a bit of the behavior of the universe, to the point that a physicst who claims QM is "invalid" is pretty much labelled a quack.

Are we at the end of the road of understanding how the universe works at the sub-atomic level? Of course not. It will turn out that QM is wrong in some ways or in certain situations. But Newtonian mechanics are still incredibly useful, even though they are technically "wrong" at the atomic level. I think you can expect the same out of QM - useful and meaningful 99.9% of the time.

[cdbd3rd]

Just to clarify:

Electrons do not "exist as a cloud of probability". That's just mathematicese to say, "We don't know and can't know without interfering, so statistics tell us it should probably be here. Or here. Or here. You get the idea." The electron is where it is, and we do not have the ability to DETECT its location without INTERFERING with its location, so, from our anthropocentric perspective, it "exists as a cloud of probability." In other words, we've got some pretty good guesses.

It exists. It's THERE. We just can't TELL it's there without making it go elsewhere.

LOL. Love it.
We're chasin' that neon rainbow...

/withers under the weight of silent stares..... sidles back to his chair on the sidelines.

[Vardak]

This is as good an explanation as is necessary for the ongoing discussion. The point here is that observation inevitably alters the experiment. In order to demonstrate that a wave of energy with the potential to produce sound, actually produces it you must provide a reciever, which alters the experiment.

But we aren't just observing the experiement. We are introducing a new element into it, and then making the conclussion that observation changes the behavior of of the electrons. When in fact, hitting the electrons with photons changes the behavior of the electrons.

We made it all up.

Which is exactly my point, to observe we must add an element to the experiment. A camera, a microphone, photons, our senses, something must be added to detect or measure the result.

[Lorein_Azura_Childs]

I'll field this one.

There's an absolutely clear answer to this one. I'll even step you through the process so you can replicate the results in your own home:

1) Turn on recorder.
2) Clap with one hand.
3) Play back result.

That'll answer your question sure as shootin'.

Oh, and Borr? That's precisely right - the pseudo-altruism of "save the planet!" is off-base for any practical purpose. Some people think we should off the human race so Mother Earth can be "left alone". We ARE the dominant species, but it behooves us to balance our dominance to make sure that the planet can keep on SUPPORTING us as the dominant species. See, self-interest can be a GOOD thing.

Heinlein said it best:



PS Lor? I really have figured out how to clap with one hand. No joke. Think about it and you'll be able to do it, too.

Figured id throw that one into the arena since its on the same level with falling trees and how much wood can a wood chuck chuck.

[Vardak]

Are we at the end of the road of understanding how the universe works at the sub-atomic level? Of course not. It will turn out that QM is wrong in some ways or in certain situations. But Newtonian mechanics are still incredibly useful, even though they are technically "wrong" at the atomic level. I think you can expect the same out of QM - useful and meaningful 99.9% of the time.

That .1% is a heck of a lot more intriguing than the 99.9 though. Leave it to Jay to pull both of these conversations together.

[Shecky]

I think we just said the photons are having an effect on the behavior of the electrons....

If you're going to be a skeptic about quantum mechanics, fine. But it seems to be that you should be even more of a skeptic about Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Even the scientists involved admit that they don't have a good idea of what increased cloud cover will have a positive or negative effect on overall warming trends.

Quantum Mechanics is very well understood and experimentally proven to accurately demonstrate quite a bit of the behavior of the universe, to the point that a physicst who claims QM is "invalid" is pretty much labelled a quack.

Are we at the end of the road of understanding how the universe works at the sub-atomic level? Of course not. It will turn out that QM is wrong in some ways or in certain situations. But Newtonian mechanics are still incredibly useful, even though they are technically "wrong" at the atomic level. I think you can expect the same out of QM - useful and meaningful 99.9% of the time.

An English-speaking particle physicist (by this I do NOT mean an American/Canadian/Brit/etc. physicist - I mean one who can speak Human English and make himself understood by laypeople LOL) will tell anyone a few things: QM, as with any theory, IS not the LAW but merely a description of the part of it we can observe, and it contains the seed of human fallibility and perspective. As with Einstein's brilliant relativity, every single higher-physics theory, no matter how "proven", has always turned out to be a decent rough approximation for the time but ultimately incorrect, as you willingly note. Directly related to this, he will also tell you that QM and the HUM MUST be understood as "We don't know but we have a decent idea based on our limited ability to observe." It would be hubris to claim that the particle does and does not exist or is and is not in X position; we simply don't have the data.

Yet.

[Dane_McArdy]

I think we just said the photons are having an effect on the behavior of the electrons....

If you're going to be a skeptic about quantum mechanics, fine. But it seems to be that you should be even more of a skeptic about Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Even the scientists involved admit that they don't have a good idea of what increased cloud cover will have a positive or negative effect on overall warming trends.

Quantum Mechanics is very well understood and experimentally proven to accurately demonstrate quite a bit of the behavior of the universe, to the point that a physicst who claims QM is "invalid" is pretty much labelled a quack.

Are we at the end of the road of understanding how the universe works at the sub-atomic level? Of course not. It will turn out that QM is wrong in some ways or in certain situations. But Newtonian mechanics are still incredibly useful, even though they are technically "wrong" at the atomic level. I think you can expect the same out of QM - useful and meaningful 99.9% of the time.

I don't have much faith in man created explainations of how the universe or nature works, so yes, I don't have much faith in QM. Because if you pay attention to the history of science and math and all the things that man has invented, you see that it's always being corrected and changed.

if it was so true to begin with, why would it change? Simple, we observed and decided this is what it means. Then someone comes along with better toys and say, Oh no, this is what it means.

And just because something works, doesn't mean we understand it. What is happening is we are trying to define what it means, without understanding it.

And from the sounds of it, many of you are just repeating scientific dogma.

Once we believed the world to be flat, it was a fact based on the observations and what was known at the time. But now it's not.