Author Topic: I need to be enlightened or learned  (Read 3120 times)

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Offline VijchtiDoodah

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Re: I need to be enlightened or learned
« Reply #20 on: July 07, 2010, 02:40:51 am »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

this is quite superstitious nonsense imo... since it states particles acts diffrently if they are observed or not.

and this is also about dimensions and such... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyTxCsIXE4&feature=related

btw :p, these videos are kinda made for kids~ so bear with it

Those videos weren't made for kids, actually. They're from a movie about the supposed connection between quantum physics and supernatural forces called What the Bleep Do We Know!?, except most of the movie is complete bullshit.

The first clip shows what's known as the observer effect. It's real: if you don't observe photons during the double-slit experiment, the particles behave like waves; if you do observe them, they cease to behave like waves and instead behave like particles. The thing the movie leaves out is that in order to observe a particle you must have some way of detecting it like, say, shooting another kind of particle at it and seeing how they interact when they collide by recapturing the shot particle (this is how you observe the world, after all -- your eyes capture photons that bounce off of or emanate from objects in the world). But by hitting the particle with another, you've disturbed its initial state and so you won't actually see what it would naturally do.

By the way, that second video depends heavily on the novel Flatland. It's an interesting read if you're into that kind of stuff.

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Offline -Major-

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Re: I need to be enlightened or learned
« Reply #21 on: July 07, 2010, 02:54:35 am »
well... the movie is I guess for slightly older people. but this "dr. quantum" guy is made in a way that promotes kids to watch it.

Offline VijchtiDoodah

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Re: I need to be enlightened or learned
« Reply #22 on: July 07, 2010, 03:17:19 am »
Quote
It is also believed that we can go through walls (i know, wtf), but it has such a small chance, that we will probably need to simply push the wall for the rest of our lives to experience it.
This isn't true at all.
? That's what I have heard for string theory/ quantum physics O.o

Help me a little?

Quantum physics really doesn't say this. The idea came from the theory of quantum tunneling. That's a real phenomenon in which waves and wave-like particles can bypass certain barriers under special conditions. Parts of your computer are based on this principle and even certain proteins in your body use quantum tunneling to catalyze chemical reactions.

But you could never actually use quantum tunneling to move through a wall.

From a physical standpoint, and to the best of my knowledge, the distance that a particle can tunnel must be extremely narrow and the conditions must be very specific. Walls are neither extremely narrow nor do they fit the conditions required for quantum tunneling. Compounding the problem is the fact that all of the particles in your body are under completely different conditions at any one time -- there will never be a time in which they all hit an appropriately narrow barrier under those specific conditions at the same time. Thus, this could never happen.

From a statistical standpoint, it would require that every single particle in your body tunnel the exact same distance in the exact same direction at the exact same time (ignoring the requirements I wrote about previously). Though there is some infinitesimally small chance of this happening, it never actually will. This small possibility is probably what got people believing the myth in the first place, but again, the conditions will never be met physically.

These theories describe the behavior of quantum particles, not macroscopic objects like people and walls.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2010, 03:21:32 am by VijchtiDoodah »

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