Off Topic Dark Matter and other Astronomy information.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151118-watch-this-video-to-understand-the-biggest-idea-in-physics

 

Einstein for dummies.

When we can explain what mass actually is, and then explain action at a distance, we will be able to explain a lot more.

No one is even close to either.

 

Quite interesting that. Requires a bit of thinking, obviously as guy has thought about it for a decade


The flash and the circle, is that not the brain processing a fixed position of the flash while continually processing the green circle. The appearance of the flash in centre of the circle stops the brain processing the circle for that one instant, so at that instant the flash is in the circle, we don't see the circle?

Optical trick? The brain tricking us not the graphic the guy had up?

EDIT: I think it might be that we cannot focus on two objects at once that causes the circle to appear ahead of the flash, flash appears, it takes our focus but the circle has moved on into peripheral vision, where the brain cuts out the transition. Maybe the speed of the circle is relevant, if slower, the circle can mvoe to peripheral vision and still be there with the flash once the brain readjusts.


I'll have to watch that vid a few times, good find

 

Don't be focusing on the circle bbf Focus on the red dot


Reminds me of wave particle duality, can't fix a particle's exact position and measure momentum at the same time.


Your peripheral vision cannot process a fixed position for a moving object, it can process a stationary object. Your focus on an object cannot predict momentum very well. The brain uses peripheral vision information for extrapolation of momentum. The circle moving in peripheral vision is not a circle, it's like a wave, of circles.

So looking at the red dot has your brain predicting the momentum of the circle. The flash is behind the circle because it has no momentum to extrapolate. So the brain shows both the stationary position of the flash and the extrapolation of the circle's momentum at the same time.

Only the speed of the circle creates the illusion as the speed of the circle will define the brain's parameters for working out momentum. The faster the circle the father behind the flash gets.

The slower the circle moves the less momentum there is to extrapolate and the circle and flash would begin to sync more and more as the circle incrementally slowed.


How I see it anyways.

 

#higgsboson

 

If we understood action at a distance and mass then we'd know what gravity is Red. We don't

 

Yet.

 

I think the shaft of revelation, to me anyway, is how our universe, to us, is a version of reality constructed by our senses. Now, saying that I'm not going to jump to the same conclusions of Wheeler did in explaining the collapse of the wave function in the dual split experiment as being being down to our conciousness - I really do think that is putting man on a pedestal again; akin to saying the universe was created just for us, etc. But then again, anything counter-intuitive is scary, a bit.

What neuroscience does tell us though is that 'time', as we perceive it, is an illusion. For sure, the universe experiences entropy and the arrow of time, in this case, is true. But we live in the (slight) past, our brain is always making predictions about the future and filling in gaps (especially visual ones) and reality is, depending on your semantics, not 'real' For instance, is grass green? My dog, like most mammals, sees in monochrome. To him it's a shade of sepia. We see it differently. What is real?

That's just vision. Our senses lie and can be tricked. Having a late family member who suffered from schizophrenia (who was treated with a chemical cocktail that just numbed her brain, imo) I was really fascinated with that stuff. Hope for many, I would say, in that research, as I honestly think modern life and the drugs planted willy-nilly throughout our food chain is doing untold damage to our brains and wellbeing, especially young, developing ones.

Food for thought, but that's they point. Don't decry Newton, Einstein, Faraday, Clerk-Maxwell, etc for not knowing all the answers. I'm quite at peace with the knowledge that I'll leave this life without anything like all questions answered, and in the words of Johnny Nash, the more I find out, the less I know. But isn't it brilliant fun to be human and ask these questions?

Wise words Johnny, wise words.

 

LATEST NEWS

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When two electrons are entangled (top), a measurement on one instantly determines the state of the other (bottom), no matter how far away it is.

More evidence to support quantum theory’s ‘spooky action at a distance’

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Staff Writer

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By
Adrian Cho
28 August 2015 2:15 pm
78 Comments
It’s one of the strangest concepts in the already strange field of quantum physics: Measuring the condition or state of a quantum particle like an electron can instantly change the state of another electron—even if it’s light-years away. That idea irked the likes of Albert Einstein, as it suggests that something can travel faster than light and that reality is somehow determined by the measurements we make. But now, a team of experimenters says it has clinched the case for this concept, sealing up loopholes in previous demonstrations.

"This is an absolute landmark paper in quantum physics," says Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University, Nathan, in Australia, who was not involved in the work. "There can no longer be any reasonable doubt that the physical world is profoundly different from our everyday intuitions." Christopher Ferrie, a physicist at the University of Sydney in Australia, notes that for many physicists, the issue was settled long ago. "Poll any physicists of my generation or later and they will be completely unfazed by [it]," he says. The real advance, he says, is in opening the way for ultrasecure quantum communications technologies.

The experiment was performed by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and colleagues. Hanson declined to discuss the paper, which is posted on the arXiv preprint server, as it's under review at an undisclosed journal.

The experiment involves a concept called entanglement. Consider an electron. Like a top, it can spin in one direction (up) or the other (down). Bizarrely, quantum theory says that the electron can also spin equally both ways at once—although if you measure it, the quantum state will "collapse" so that you'll find the electron spinning either up or down with equal probability. How such a measurement is made is important. According to quantum theory, you can’t simply read the spin directly; you have to use an analyzer that can be set, a bit like a dial, to a particular orientation to see whether the electron is spinning that way or the opposite way. In the case of the both-ways spin, setting the analyzer vertically leads the electron to collapse into the 50-50 result.

Even weirder, two electrons can be entangled so the spin of each electron is completely uncertain, but the two spins are completely locked together and correlated. Suppose then that Alice and Bob share two entangled electrons and each has an analyzer set vertically. If Alice measures her electron and finds it spinning up, she knows instantly that Bob's is spinning down, even if he's a galaxy away. That "spooky action at a distance" bothered Einstein, as it suggests the quantum wave describing the electrons collapses at faster-than-light speed. It also suggests that the "reality" of an electron’s spin state—what is knowable about it—isn't determined until the electron is measured and the quantum wave collapses.

Einstein found this idea unpalatable. He argued instead that quantum mechanics was incomplete—essentially, that "hidden variables" encoded in each electron but outside the scope of the theory determine the results of Bob's measurements. That concept obviates faster-than-light collapse, because the determining factor travels along with Bob's electron. It also jibes with the notion that measurements reveal some aspect of the world that exists independently of them—just as we assume the color of a tennis ball exists before we look at it.

However, in 1964, British theorist John Bell found a way to test the difference between collapsing quantum waves and hidden variables. According to quantum theory, if Alice and Bob tilt their analyzers to different angles, they should no longer see perfect correlations in their measurements. For example, suppose Alice keeps her analyzer vertical and Bob tilts his by 45°. Then, if Alice finds her electron spinning up, the chance that Bob will find his electron spinning down—defined in his new orientation—is only 71%. Bell imagined that Alice and Bob repeatedly varied the orientations of their analyzers. He proved mathematically that hidden variables would produce correlations weaker than a certain limit—spelled out in a formula called Bell's inequality. Collapsing quantum waves could yield stronger correlations. The formula offered a litmus test for determining whether the hidden variables were really there.

Bell also explained that the faster-than-light collapse of the waves wouldn't necessarily violate relativity's prohibition on faster-than-light travel. Because Alice cannot control the results of her measurements, she cannot use them to send Bob information faster than light. She and Bob can merely confirm the correlations after the fact. That is now the standard interpretation of relativity.

In the 1970s, experimenters began taking measurements designed to see whether Bell’s inequality holds. They consistently found correlations stronger than hidden variables allow. Those results generally convinced physicists that Einstein was wrong. Either quantum waves must indeed collapse faster than light, or the results of measurements could not be predestined by hidden variables: Until an electron spinning both ways is measured, it literally spins both ways.

However, performing an airtight test of Bell's theorem is tricky, and in recent years physicists have fretted over "loopholes" that would allow some effect other than the instantaneous collapse of quantum waves to skew the results. Now, Hanson and 18 colleagues claim to have done the first loophole-free test of Bell's theorem.

To test Bell's idea, physicists must make sure that no influence other than that of the measurements can travel between the electrons in the time it takes to perform the measurements. That's a tall order, as light travels 299,792 kilometers per second. Hanson and colleagues separated the two stations with their electrons by 1.28 kilometers on the Delft campus. That gave them 4.27 microseconds to perform both measurements before a light-speed signal from one station could reach the other.

The researchers still had to entangle the distant electrons. To do that, they first entangled each spinning electron with the state of a photon that they then sent down an optical fiber to a third station between the other two. Only if the two photons arrived simultaneously and interfered with each other in just the right way would the electrons become entangled, through a process called entanglement swapping. Fewer than one out of 150 million photon pairs registered the right interference signal. Still, the researchers could start the measurements on the electrons before the photons met and go through the data afterward to find the trials that worked. In the preprint, they report 245 successful trials in 22 hours of data-taking.

Finally, the physicists have to close the loophole that opens if they can't reliably read the electrons' state. Such a failed measurement could obscure the true correlations between the electrons' spins. To overcome that, Hanson's team used individual electrons trapped in atomic-size defects in diamonds cooled to near absolute zero. In the defects the electrons easily maintain their delicate spin states and can be manipulated with microwaves and light. The physicists measured the spin of each electron with greater than 95% efficiency.

With both loopholes nailed shut, the researchers see a clear violation of Bell's inequality—torpedoing Einstein's hidden variable and vindicating collapsing quantum waves. "The only significant concern one could have about this paper is the small data set, which means the result is not as surely established as one would ideally like," Wiseman says. "But I am sure this will be rectified soon."

It's always possible to dream up even wilder loopholes, Ferrie says. But the experiment closes the ones that might be used to attack certain developing quantum technologies, such as schemes to use entangled particles to securely distribute the keys for encoding secret messages in so-called "device independent quantum key distributions." "This is a huge technical milestone," Ferrie says, "and prerequisite for many future quantum technologies, which are sure to enable the probing and eventual understanding of new physics."

*Correction, 30 August, 9:47 a.m,: The story has been changed to correct a mathematical mistake in the explanation of Bell's argument.

#noneuclidean

 

Great stuff, Red. Just a quick question from a thicko about measurement - is it the conscious act of measuring that causes the collapse/action, or is it some some passive reaction to simply being measured? What I mean by that, and bearing in mind Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle, do 'we' cause it? I have the same problems as Einstein. But obviously not the same intelligence!

 

Yes.

 

Then I'm reminded of the cartoon Rarg, if you've ever seen it. Wonder if we consciously or sub-consciously create the universe then? We then go round in another, unanswered question as to what consciousness and self actually is.

Jonny Nash has a lot to answer for.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Smacks of religion to me.

Question - if our consciousness creates the universe, what created the atoms in our brain that create our consciousness that create the universe?

Is causality the biggest illusion of all?

 

If we create the universe-either consciously or sub-consciously, then where did the previous 14 billion years worth of stuff come from before we got here?

All this is fascinating, but beyond my puny brain.
Going back to the green grass thing- pigments absorb or reflect light according to their properties. Grass reflects the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum regardless of who the observer is (unless quantum theory has pissed on my chips there as well). So you and your pooch are exposed to the same thing, you just have different detection capabilities.

 

?

EDIT: I get you now, "we don't know.. yet"

I'm a genius

 

I like the counter intiutive stuff as long as it doesn't diverge from reality. Agree on the universe interpreted by senses, I often say information creates reality.

The reason I have to watch the video a few times is I try figure out what is physically before getting into the concept, otherwise the concept can lead you to diverge from reality. Another thing was the Kublai Khan's "temperal problem" I say it as a problem of distance, logistics, topology and positions, not an issue of time perception though you can use it to make an example in a concept but that is what I mean by concepts diverging from reality.

That's why physical defining of what is happening with vision when you see the circle and the flash is important to keep in mind before going off down a conceptual path, while we can conceptualise this in terms of time, for me I don't see it as relevant to the physical world.
A slight evolutionary deviation with our eyes and we probably wouldn't perceive the circle as being ahead of the flash, making the perception thing meangingless to us. interpretation, often in this kind of subjet is everything. I seem to interpret stuff differently, I am only interested in the physical explanations which are as simple as possible.

What neuroscience does tell us though is that 'time', as we perceive it, is an illusion. For sure, the universe experiences entropy and the arrow of time, in this case, is true. But we live in the (slight) past, our brain is always making predictions about the future and filling in gaps (especially visual ones) and reality is, depending on your semantics, not 'real' For instance, is grass green? My dog, like most mammals, sees in monochrome. To him it's a shade of sepia. We see it differently. What is real?
This takes me back to the fallacy of the circle and flash. Creating concept out of perception and making it real is kind of useless. We start to create a false reality.

What is real is what you can physically exchange information with. You touch something it is an exchange, who cares if there is a delay processing it, so what if there is a lag, it does take time to process information so this is no surprise to anyone surely that we have a slight lag. We know it takes time for signals to get around. I don't buy time as anything but a human construct to measure a linear procession. But it is just my opinion.


That's just vision. Our senses lie and can be tricked. Having a late family member who suffered from schizophrenia (who was treated with a chemical cocktail that just numbed her brain, imo) I was really fascinated with that stuff. Hope for many, I would say, in that research, as I honestly think modern life and the drugs planted willy-nilly throughout our food chain is doing untold damage to our brains and wellbeing, especially young, developing ones.

I agree our senses can be tricked of course. Tricks of perception though are just that, tricks. When we understand how the eye works and how the brain inrterprets we can create all the little perception tricks we want, doesn't make a lick of differene, and importantly, the late family member, RIP, was assisted by physical intervention.
People can take placebos knowing they are placebos but apparently just the action of taking the pill every day seems to have a psychosomatic effects. So that I find interesting as they perceive they are taking a sugar pill but the brain has different ideas.

Food for thought, but that's they point. Don't decry Newton, Einstein, Faraday, Clerk-Maxwell, etc for not knowing all the answers. I'm quite at peace with the knowledge that I'll leave this life without anything like all questions answered, and in the words of Johnny Nash, the more I find out, the less I know. But isn't it brilliant fun to be human and ask these questions?

Never decried Newton I wish he was around later when we had atomic physics in hand as his equations could have been more complete. I only said he wasn't peer reviewed cos some fool was saying peer review is the measure of scientific fact, Maxwells equations are equally as important as Einsteins.

Astrophysics text books still dont teach plasma physics and we now know that the universe has so much molecular plasma, most of it invisible, that Einstein didn't know of.. it's hardly logical to model a universe without one of it's core componentsm, and if one accepts plasma, then they have to question everything.

What some on here get insulted about is I dare to question the gods with reasonable questions like I am not decrying them, I bothered to learn a bit of their work after all. Not up at all on Faraday tbh. All brilliant people no doubt.

There is a delay in everything in the universe not just our perception, nothing happens without information being passed along, that takes time. I think the closest thing to instant information exchange is the exchange of force between quarks.

 

If just thinking something makes it really happen, then in your face, Kyliie and Danni. And I do literally mean, evidently, in your face.

 

More clear evidence of Schmidt NASA fraud.



NASA 2012 Siberia temperature record 112 years

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http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=222254000003&dt=1&ds=1


NASA 2015 Siberia Temperature record. 115 years

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http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=222254000000&dt=1&ds=14


That's how you claim over 1c warming when the data says .7c, by cooling the past.

Surely anyone can see the fraud here? If you make the past cooler you make the warming curve steeper, pure trickery. Erasing history too.

Compared

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Most def mad **** That's what the quantum activist says anyway yet I am still waiting on my adamantium? skeleton and claws