quote:Derailing is a fact of life, but on the third post? That has to be some kind of record.
And it gave me an idea! To wit, I am going to derail this thread in the very first post, thereby setting an unbeatable record! And, incidentally, making my very first (as far as I recall) fluff thread. Speaking of which, fluff threads are really kind of boring, don't you think?
Which raises the rather interesting question of what actually goes on when a quantum wave function collapses. (Believe it or not, I spent an enjoyable hour discussing this the other day, and got paid for it, at that.) In the Schrødiner's cat experiment, just when does the cat wavefunction collapse? We certainly know damn well that the cat is either alive or dead - no macroscopic object is in a superposition of states! I've heard it suggested that this might have to do with the mass of the object, and that a unification of GR with QM (well, QFT, to be more general) would answer the question. What do you think?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I think babelfish are a great idea. That way, I could watch Hindi movies without bothering with the subtitles.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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How can a thread be derailed on the first post if the last sentence is "What do you think?"
P.S. Macroscopic objects CAN INDEED be in a superposition of states. That's my condition every morning when I get out of bed until my first sip of coffee.
Posts: 90 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:I've heard it suggested that this might have to do with the mass of the object, and that a unification of GR with QM (well, QFT, to be more general) would answer the question. What do you think?
There was a fascinating article in Discover just last month about this. A British physicist believes that you can reconcile gravitation with quantum mechanics by asserting that it takes some form of energy -- proportionate to the size of the well -- to maintain a gravity well. He's played with the numbers, and believes that this energy requirement actually causes the waveforms of larger objects to collapse in order to minimize the amount of "effort" spent to maintain multiple gravitational fields.
According to his numbers, a field the size generated by a human being should cause a collapse in a trillionth of a trillionth of a second; a field generated by a speck of dust, however, would take considerably longer.
It's his theory that it should take up to a quarter second for something around half a micron in size to collapse into a single state. He intends to test this by manufacturing a mirror to those specs and bouncing lasers off it. According to this theory, the mirror should be in superposition long enough to permit multiple laser impacts; when it collapses, only a single terminus will remain for the beam.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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(yes, I was kidding...or I think I am, as I have never actually had a cat omlette, at least not that I know of...) Posts: 325 | Registered: Aug 2002
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To wit, I am going to derail this thread in the very first post, thereby setting an unbeatable record! ![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
And, incidentally, making my very first (as far as I recall) fluff thread. Speaking of which, fluff threads are really kind of boring, don't you think? ![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)
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