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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 16, 2009 17:47:55 GMT
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5918050.eceA leading quantum physicist who believes science alone cannot explain "ultimate reality" has been awarded the world's largest monetary prize for his contribution to religious thought.
Bernard d'Espagnat, 87, was today announced as the winner of the £1 million Templeton Prize, founded by the late US multi-millionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir John Templeton to honour scientists who contribute to progress in religion.
Dr d'Espagnat, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Paris-Sud university, believes that science cannot fully explain "the nature of being". You know I can't help but think we haven't fully engaged with the philosophical implications of Quantum physics, in part because of the many different interpretations and the fact you can't really test to tell which one is correct. The most generally accepted one, the Copenhagen interpretation, appears to eventually require an observer outside the universe in order to make it real. Conciousness causes collapse is simply too wacky for a lot of people, particularly those who think it doesn't shows enough 'blind pitiless indifference'. The many worlds interpretation seems too silly for me (wouldn't we notice the universe splitting?!). Either way it seems that the universe we inhabit isn't the dismal void beloved by scientific materialists.
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Post by bernard on Mar 16, 2009 23:02:55 GMT
The idea of an 'outside observer' could be misleading. It's my understanding that the 'observer' doesn't need to be a concious observer, just another particle that is affected by the collapse in states. I think it's called the quantum zeno effect.
While 'observer' needn't mean 'God', it does raise the question of an outside to the universe. Supposedly this outside also has an outside, which has another outside, in order to be observed and therefore exist.
I think a wise man once said "if you think you understand quantum physics... ...you don't understand quantum physics"
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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 17, 2009 10:02:12 GMT
I defiantly don't understand quantum physics. I own a couple of books on it, but I keep having to re-read them.
On the outside observer issue, my understanding is that the wave-function collapses when new "information" is learned. That implies some necessity for comprehension of that information, which suggests that consciousness is required for it to work; on the Copenhagen Interpretation at any rate. I know the 'many worlds' interpretation is preferred in cosmology.
As to why Quantum physics is so weird, I think the answer is that if it were not set up in this mysterious way, a whole host of things would not work properly. No Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; no workable stars. No Pauli Exclusion Principle, well, would have a very boring universe indeed.
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Post by bernard on Mar 17, 2009 14:45:37 GMT
I disagree. The word 'learned' implies comprehension by an intelligence, but 'learned' is your word. Whenever the state of a particle or system causes a change in the state of another particle or system, you could say information is passed from one to another. The very word 'information' implies encoding, which implies intelligence, but that is a trick of language.
Take Schrodingers cat. This thought experiment relies on the box being a closed system, something not practically possible on the macroscopic scale. The box itself is reacting to the particles inside it. Schrodinger only used the the experiment as a way of exposing the absurdity of quantum affects when applied to macroscopic systems. We know a cat cannot be both alive and dead.
I'm getting most of my ideas for this argument from an article in new scientist (the tabloid redtop of science periodicals, i know. bear with me...). The study in question was trying to send single entangled protons down a optic cable. The set-up required two cables running side by side, and it was found that individual photons would occasionally 'migrate' from one cable to the other, through a particle-impermeable barrier. To prevent this, the second cable was lined with particles that would react with a proton if it came into contact. The result was that no photons ever migrated again, because if they did they would be 'observed' by these particles. The presence of said particles collapsed the waveform before the particle could migrate in its spooky quantum way.
I'm not sure if I could find the article again - it was in a pile of back-copies where i used to work.
On a tangent, new-scientist's website pulled an article on "How to spot a religious agenda" after it attracted 41 pages of comments!
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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 17, 2009 16:37:15 GMT
I'm getting most of my ideas for this argument from an article in new scientist (the tabloid redtop of science periodicals, i know. bear with me...). The study in question was trying to send single entangled protons down a optic cable. The set-up required two cables running side by side, and it was found that individual photons would occasionally 'migrate' from one cable to the other, through a particle-impermeable barrier. To prevent this, the second cable was lined with particles that would react with a proton if it came into contact. The result was that no photons ever migrated again, because if they did they would be 'observed' by these particles. The presence of said particles collapsed the waveform before the particle could migrate in its spooky quantum way.! This sounds interesting and very similar to an experiment by Raymond Chiao (described here by John Gribbin www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/quantum.htm)Essentially they set up the classic double split experiment, but with polarising filters set up to 'label' the photons as they went through. This makes the interference pattern disappear. They then added a third filter which scrambles the information about which photon went through which hole, when this happens the interference pattern appears again. Interference should only appear when single photons go through both slits at once without being measured. In this case they are being measured but the information is being scrambled, yet it still seems to 'know' how it should behave. Thereby photons which start out on their journey behave in a different way for each experimental setup, as if they knew in advance what kind of experiment they were about to go through. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experimenten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraserIn the experiment from the new scientist the introduction of a 'detector' into the system appears to have been enough to change its path. I don't know if that's a proper 'collapse of the wave function' it could be an example of Quantum decoherence. In such cases its an appearance of collapse rather than an actual collapse. I would try to sketch out what the difference is but frankly my brain is hurting. The 'how to spot a religious agenda' thing was highly amusing. They meant to aim it at the discovery institute but they way it came across was very antagonistic. Ironic given that the majority of early modern science had an explicit religious agenda. |
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Post by unkleE on Mar 17, 2009 20:38:31 GMT
I thought the observer had to be outside the system being observed (however that is defined). Thus another particle within the system being observed would not qualify. Is that correct?
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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 18, 2009 11:21:25 GMT
Unklee, yeah that sounds about right. I think the observer outside the system is critical, except in the many worlds interpretation, which is why it continues to gain a following.
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Post by lzzrdgrrl on Mar 19, 2009 16:41:59 GMT
Take Schrodingers cat. This thought experiment relies on the box being a closed system, something not practically possible on the macroscopic scale. The box itself is reacting to the particles inside it. Schrodinger only used the the experiment as a way of exposing the absurdity of quantum affects when applied to macroscopic systems. We know a cat cannot be both alive and dead. And apparently, we can't even know if an electron is positive or negative........ Between a discussion of Kierkoff's voltage and current laws and circuit nodal analysis, our instructor in 'practical physics' expressed the notion that, perhaps, Benjamin Franklin was right and that in a battery current flowed towards the negative pole...... The standard line we had for electrons, protons and other atomic bitty parts were that they were conventions, entities of collected attributes whose basic proof of being was that they made sense of the indicators and physical evidence that we did have access to. Things like a meter pointer deflection, a trace on a 'scope or a second degree burn from picking up a fully charged motor capacitor unawares........ |
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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 19, 2009 17:28:08 GMT
Take Schrodingers cat. This thought experiment relies on the box being a closed system, something not practically possible on the macroscopic scale. The box itself is reacting to the particles inside it. Schrodinger only used the the experiment as a way of exposing the absurdity of quantum affects when applied to macroscopic systems. We know a cat cannot be both alive and dead. And apparently, we can't even know if an electron is positive or negative........ Between a discussion of Kierkoff's voltage and current laws and circuit nodal analysis, our instructor in 'practical physics' expressed the notion that, perhaps, Benjamin Franklin was right and that in a battery current flowed towards the negative pole...... The standard line we had for electrons, protons and other atomic bitty parts were that they were conventions, entities of collected attributes whose basic proof of being was that they made sense of the indicators and physical evidence that we did have access to. Things like a meter pointer deflection, a trace on a 'scope or a second degree burn from picking up a fully charged motor capacitor unawares........ You sounds like you know what you are talking about (either that or its an extremely clever bluff). Any idea if Unklee and I right on the Copenhagen interpretation?. |
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Post by lzzrdgrrl on Mar 20, 2009 2:34:53 GMT
Some of the four-year students preferred it from the tin  ........ I took a quick scan of the wiki article and the 'wave-function collapse' refers to a reification of the entity under observation to the sum total of those observations and measurements. I think the example of the blind men and the elephant was actually used in class. One saying that the elephant was like a piece of rope, another saying a tree trunk, and so on. This demonstrated that a basic understanding of quantum physics will serve an electronic engineer so far as it was useful, but it didn't exhaust all possibilities. I know I had a devil of a time grasping the transistor effect, and this for an 'observer' outside of the system but well within the universe. An observer outside of the universe could well be baffled by what goes on inside. The box remains a box, there is no idea of the cat inside..... Many students liked, even adored the 'many worlds' solution, mainly because it entailed many worlds. I was not so much into science fiction....... This is longer ago than I'd like to think about.  The fortunes of war brought several sharp career changes and now I'm a contract worker providing housekeeping services to disabled senior citizens ....... So; I think you are (both) right in that the apparent 'collapse' is a fault of the observer either by incomplete measurement or limited imagination and that 'outside' observer status is a given, even though being mired in the waveform-collapse pit is all but certain.... |
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The fortunes of war brought several sharp career changes and now I'm a contract worker providing housekeeping services to disabled senior citizens .......