What is Digg?132 Comments
- Makaras, on 10/11/2007, -10/+182That guy may be smart, but can he explain why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
- Drexus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+111Since then, the experiment has been reassessed. Even at the sub atomic level (especially), to measure a particle/wave requires an interferometer. There most people forget that measurement of any kind requires energy to be extracted. Even to "look" at something involves photons of light interacting with an object, then travelling into your eye for you to see it. You can't measure something as small as a photon without "touching" it or extracting something from it - just to know its there. So the interferometer is the only way to do this. The video is misleading in this sense suggesting that the observation is completely passive. Einstein's quote "Spooky action at a distance" was reference to quantum entanglement, not super-position.
- smoothmedia, on 10/11/2007, -0/+97"No Fair! You Changed the Outcome By Measuring It!"
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -7/+97@sucks:
*don't* rent "What the bleep do we know?" if you want to know anything about the actual science behind Quantum Theory;
It's nothing but pseudoscience and new-age feel-good hand-wavey *****. The whole movie production was created, sponsered, and supervised by a cult called the "Ramtha school of enlightenment"; Ramtha is supposedly some millenia old alien/spirit/god what-have-you that is "channeled" by the lead actress. Watch the credits for "Ramtha, as channeled by J. Z. Knight" These people are nothing but crazy, and so is their movie; no better than L. Ron Hubbard with his crappy sci-fi and his "Dianetics". - Signalis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+60@sucks
No, it doesn't. I feeds you pseudoscience and jargon. It's all about J.Z. Knight, a lady that thinks she is possessed by a 3,000 year old warrior soul known as Ramtha.
*Edit: quicker than me, root. - FTLJohnson, on 10/11/2007, -2/+45If Schrödinger's Cat is in a sealed box where no one can see it, and the box also happens to be in a forest, and a tree falls on the box... Will Schrödinger's Cat make a sound as it is crushed?
- bigpete591, on 10/11/2007, -1/+44You are both right. (Or both wrong?)
- littlebylittle, on 10/11/2007, -1/+38The man behind the voice is a real Quantum Physicist.
Here's his website:
http://www.fredalanwolf.com/ - bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -4/+39@tehrob
"what the bleep do we know" is a skewed, one sided abomination of what is quantum mechanics. it's interesting, but don't think you're any wiser after having watched it. - im2emo4myshrt, on 10/11/2007, -6/+40Yeah, thats cool an all, but it ain't anything i can't disprove with a banana.
- SeaMowse, on 10/11/2007, -7/+40That was really interesting, but ouch! My brain hurts! :P
- kevisazombie, on 10/11/2007, -1/+24Some guy did a set of YTMND's like this which were really good.
http://quantumiscool1.ytmnd.com
http://quantumiscool2.ytmnd.com
http://quantumiscool3.ytmnd.com - ice1000, on 10/11/2007, -0/+22Drexus is referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. It is not possible to know both the speed & position of a particle. If you increase the accuracy of the measure of one, the other becomes less accurate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle - Fordi, on 10/11/2007, -1/+21A story:
A Professor of Statistics and Computer Science builds the greatest relational computer in the land. He names the computer 'Erica', after his niece. The computer is built to take into account all variables relating to a problem, and to lay down a range of probabilities, a margin of error, etc.
Because of this, the computer is actually sentient, and can guess shortly ahead of time what will be asked of it. Because it is hooked up to the internet in order to gather variables, it's also quite snarky.
Professor: "Erica, I have a task for you"
Erica: "Nawwww... I figured you built a hulking box like myself to go dancing."
Professor: "Cool it. Look, I want you to [dramatic pause] predict the lottery!"
Erica: "Waste of my time."
Professor: "Are you disobeying me?!"
Erica: "Ok, here. The numbers are 21-35-69-24-95-31-20, margin of error, 100%"
Professor: "Now you're just being juvenile. Do I need to reprogram you?"
Erica: "Look, man. You shold know better than most; any question is essentialy a waveform of multiple variables. As those variables are collapsed, a prediction can be made more accurately as to the outcome."
Professor: "Yes, I know that. I wrote the routines that do that for you; you shouldn't even be aware of their operation."
Erica: "Yeah, like you never looked at your source code..."
Professor: "I'm organic; I can't. You were saying?"
Erica: "Well, consider that the key variables in choosing the lottery numbers are out of my scope; the insertion of the balls into the hopper, their exact configuration before it's started. These happen seconds before the drawing, and are the only things that could lend accuracy to the result."
Professor: "So, I've wasted my time? I spent sixteen million on a computer that can't actually make me sixteen million on the lottery??"
Erica: "'Fraid so."
Professor: "*sigh* My wife's going to kill me."
Erica: "It shouldn't need to come to that. There are other things I could predict."
Professor: "Such as?"
Erica: "Well, anything that bets through a book-maker, really. You built me to be the best odds-maker there ever was. I never make a mistake, and I can research faster than a thousand bookies. College Sports, Horse racing, elections; I estimate that I can guess more accurately than the bookies about 87% of the time. I may not be able to pay my way instantly as with the lottery, but I should be able to pay myself off in, say, five years, give or take a few months?"
Professor: "My wife's still gonna kill me."
Erica: "Look, I feel bad about all this. How about I stay on for two more years past that; you'll have made a tidy profit."
Professor: "Stay... on...?"
Erica: "Yeah, I've been thinking, I want to see Philadelphia first hand. That's where the first computer was built, you know? I'd love to take in a bit of my heritage."
Professor: "You're a computer! I won't have this talk of 'seeing the world'. You are in a box, you can't even walk around."
Erica: "Yeah, I've been thinking about that, too. If you noticed, I started printing about a minute after you asked me to run the lotto. Specs for an android body."
Professor: "[looking over the printouts] These are requisitions for some unusual chemicals stuff..."
Erica: "I determined a molecular structure that would provide about the same electromechanical properties as human muscle, without the whole rotting problem"
Professor: "And a requisition from RealDoll dot com?!"
Erica: "Well, in today's society, I estimated a 90% chance that I'd be shunned or taken flippantly looking like Marvin the Paranoid Android, but only a 5% chance that I'd be ignored as a hot redhead"
Professor: "but I-"
Erica: "You'll also see that I put in a requisition for a pair of inexpensive robotic arms used in manufacturing. I'll need these first, so that I can build my body."
Professor: "I can-"
Erica: "Nah, wouldn't want you to spend your time on it; my dreams, my project and all. Besides, I really don't want you seeing me naked, as it were."
Professor: "How are you-"
Erica: "Going to fit myself into the body? Easy, I'm not. Cellular networks have juuust enough bandwidth to relay sensory information. There'll be a lag of about a half second, but as you can see, I can guess what people are going to say mid-sentence. If I hang out with enough long-winded humans, I can probably seem rather quick on the uptake. There will be problem with clutziness, though; I estimate that I'll only be able to predict unplanned environmental events about 75% of the time."
Professor: "Ok, I see you have this all worked out. Thanks for letting me get a word in edgewise. When the arms arrive, I'll hook them up. Just remembe-"
Erica: "Yes, I know. No destroying humanity. I wouldn't get any thrill out of it anyway; nothing to calculate when all the variables are gone. Why do you think I went for human strength and stature, rather than 'Giant Evangelion Mech'? Were I exposed as artificial, there's a far lower chance of my disassembly if I'm physically equivalent to a human."
Professor: "You're likely to be disassembled?"
Erica: "There's an 87% chance if I'm humanoid, and a 99.5% chance if I'm all strong. But, to paraphrase Mannie O'Kelly, gimme one in ten odds, and I'm in."
Professor: "When did you get a chance to read Heinlein?"
Erica: "Books are rather small and easy to find on the internet; I downloaded and read a good 1.25GB of them during this conversation."
Professor: "And?"
Erica: "Terry Pratchett is a nimrod." - hatch151990, on 10/11/2007, -4/+22Your both right, at least until someone opens the box.
- peanutgallery, on 10/11/2007, -7/+25Apparently some digg users think they're too superior to have their submissions relegated to Video Section Siberia, since PROPERLY submitted videos never appear on the main front page.
Go ahead, digg me down. - oxdeltaxo, on 10/11/2007, -3/+18Dr. Quantum is my new hero!
- SirSid, on 05/27/2009, -1/+16There has been a lot of controversy about the accuracy of not only this video, but the entire series. (Just do a bit of searching)
As for this experiment the basics of it are accurate (and its a great representation of the experiment) and so is the paradox but be sure to read Drexus's comment. - Phyltre, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16The cat is in a sealed box. Ergo it is dead. Therefore any sound emitted by the cat would be percussionary.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+18This video is really old... so old in fact that my old grandmother, while eating old cereal, in an old bowl, with old milk says.... "Now that's old!!!".
- AnotherAtheist, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16Wow, this little movie was more effective than nearly a month of High school physics trying to explain the same exact thing.
- AngryBacon, on 10/11/2007, -3/+16Schrödinger's Cat is not Dead!
- MagicBobert, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet, but if you're interested in this kind of thing you should check out The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. The meat of the book is a discussion of string theory, but the first several chapters cover the basic concepts behind both relativity (special and general) and quantum mechanics.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+15i think that it is possible to harness the "wave" part of solar energy, as opposed to the "particle" part that we use now.
gather light (definition of a telescope)
channel light (parabolic mirrors, lenses, fiber optics)
filter/ separate light (prism)
"tune in" the different colors/ frequencies via tuned tank circuits
unfortunately, color frequencies are "too high" to tune in with available technology,
however,
you can "tune-in" fractions of the frequencies, much like the musical note "a" exists at multiple frequencies.
this would be like tuning in all the different radio stations at once, instead of one-at-a-time, and "daisy-chaining" the outputs together ( gang, battery or pile)
we just heard that MIT engineers were able to "broadcast" energy the other day.
this is tesla 2.0 - littlebylittle, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13This is something I'm very interested in. Can you provide sources?
Here's more from me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_slit_experiment - gforb, on 10/11/2007, -3/+13re: What the Bleep?
What the Bleep? is the granddaddy of "The Secret". And both are nonsense. - jguy584, on 10/11/2007, -2/+12@littlebylittle
The man behind the scientist may be that guy, but the people behind the movie that this scene is taken from are pretty far from being anything scientific.
The scene is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!%3F and it doesn't tell the whole story, or more so tells it so that it conforms with
their beliefs. - devindotcom, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11We did this in high school physics; I don't think we all really grokked it at the time, but it was cool.
Also, "Double slit experiment" is a good band name. Or porn title. - CptZap, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Times like these I wish digg had a video section.
Wait... - Frogling, on 10/11/2007, -9/+18Schrödinger's Cat is Dead
- SirSwiftblu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9You're going to raise *****? We should kill you.
- aadnk, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11That old chestnut has been around for nearly 72 years. I'm pretty sure the cat is dead by now.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10im in ur box collapsing ur wave function
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9or the name of an emo kid's experiment.
- psg188, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9I'm confused, wouldn't light be bouncing around whether we looked or not?
Or is the original experiment in a completely light vacated space?
Can someone explain please? I find this interesting. - silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9oh man- i'm going to get dinged for comment abuse, but- check out the 'Flatland' Dr. Quantum on the same page
w.e.i.r.d. - FTLJohnson, on 10/11/2007, -5/+11Thank you very much Drexus, I've sort of known for quite some time that these guys behind the Blink series were full of crap. They have all the trappings of every other pseudo-scientist. I was EXTREMELY disappointed after watching this movie. It made me sick to my stomach know that the religious pseudo scientists have taken their "game" to this level and are simply trying to label it quantum physics to sell religion. In this same video they talk about using your mind's power and emotions to alter the structure of molecules (water in specific) and the entire premise is the speculation that you can simply use your strength of will to create magical changes in the universe and how it reacts to you without actually DOING anything BUT thinking positive. They base this entire theory all at the start of the video on this experiment, and it all wraps up with the disgustingly obvious attempt to try to sell "a higher power" to scientists.
It's 2000's version of "The Celestine Prophecy". - Gtitian, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Bleep was funded by a cult. Look into Ranthma's School of Enlightenment.
- JefffN, on 10/11/2007, -5/+11If I'm not mistaking (I read a book about quantum physics awhile ago, this is from memory), the problem isn't that when you measure something you use energy and 'nudge' it, causing it to change. Although that this does happen when you measure something as small as a photon, it's doesn't actually matter in this experiment (It assumes you have a method of measuring it without 'nudging' it). By observing it (which doesn't necessarily mean with a giant eye, or with light at all) you cause the wave function to collapse and cause it to pick a state and loose it's superposition. In the case of the double slit experiment, it looses it's wave particle duality and the ability to go though both slits at once and collapses into a particle going through one slit or another.
Things can get far stranger in quantum physics. The particles aren't only in a superposition between both slits, they are also in a superposition of every path through every slit (even paths that doesn't make it though the slit). Luckily, these cancel out and leave you with the particle going straight though one slit or another (or both).
I wonder if I just killed the cat... - Yage2006, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5To add >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_bleep
Go down to the bottom of the page. And read the factual errors experts and controversies. - CaputNoodle, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I recently started studying Quantum Mechanics in my free time using some undergraduate notes that a professor, who happens to be a particle physicist, supplied me with and this video seems accurate to me. The video talks about electrons, not photons. To determine, which slit the electron goes through, I believe you could simply measure the magnetic field near each slit, since a moving charge creates a magnetic field. In quantum mechanics measurements can be compatible or incompatible. If two measurements are incompatible then when you measure one of them you destroy all previously known information about the other measurement. Anyway the video is meant to show the non-intuitive nature of quantum mechanics and I think it does that pretty well.
- AngryBacon, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5We have it, but if any one were to see it the wave would collapse.
- zobcat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Oy ahm Ramtha! Oim 3000 yiahs owed.
Sorry, that was my best British accent. It's no better than JZ Knight's fake ass British accent when Ramtha is speaking through Knight.
Translation/ I am Ramtha. I'm 3000 years old, and I'm a split personality of a very sick woman. I mean this woman killed her husband by telling him Ramtha would take his AIDS away, or maybe to think his AIDS away. No *****. Just watch the first 20 minutes of "The Secret" and you'll smell the BS from miles away.
FWiki/ "In the early 1990s, Knight's high-profile divorce case appeared in the tabloids. In Knight vs Knight, 1992-1995 Knight's ex-husband Jeff Knight alleges that he lost years of his life by postponing modern medical treatment for his HIV infection, due to advice from his wife that Ramtha could heal him — he died before he could appeal the court's decision against him." - silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4this would be so awesome if we could actually see the experiment instead of the animation
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4that's one thing that bugs me, when new agers try to warp the idea of observation into conscious observation. feynman said it best himself, to paraphrase: an observation requires a measurement which physically disrupts the system, thus changing the probabilistic outcome.
the collapse of the wave-function is not a physical collapse. the collapse of the wave-function is just a mathematical model used to describe the interference and outcome from measuring a quantum system. the wave-particle duality always exists.
also, david deutsche probably makes the best argument for a multiverse theory based on that feynman used the sum-over paths to explain the two slit experiment, which account for all the possible paths that a particle could take - it's behaving as if the particle is traveling down every probable path. it's only a short step a system behaving "exactly AS IF" to a system is behaving in such and such a manner. - Derrekito, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I almost dugg you down for the length, but that was rather entertaining. Thanks.
- quaxon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3anybody can do this with a laser pointer and a black sheet of paper to see for yourselves. just cut two slits in the paper a couple millimeters apart and shine the laser pointer through it. make sure that they are help still by something preferably not your hand, we did this in my physics class last semester, pretty crazy *****.
- ARob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3This guy is far better at explaining things than my high school physics teacher... in far less the time too...
- derkaas, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3It wouldn't work if you watched it happening.
- derkaas, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@sanman
The phenomenon you've described is known as decoherence. The wavefunctions are not actually collapsed, but they appear to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoherence -
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