/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3217397]

Something might or not happen. So both it happened and didn't. The cat is half dead.

It's hard to put this in my mind. How does it apply to the particles involved? I want to understand the quantum phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.3217413]

There are no particles until you open the box and collapse the waveform.

[Anonymous No.3217423]

>>3217413
There are no particles until I observe them and thus, I change them in one way or the other, you mean? But how?

[Anonymous No.3217427]

http://youtu.be/qWYBtPpLIc0

[Anonymous No.3217430]

>>3217423
The possibility of either existing is a substantial thing. By opening the box you collapse one into being real.

The cat is a bad example since it would never feasibly be anything but a sub-atomic particle in the example.

[Anonymous No.3217437]

You're going to jail, man

[Anonymous No.3217438]

>>3217430
>real
Alright that wording is shit.

[Anonymous No.3217439]

>>3217423
Only god may observe particles.

[Anonymous No.3217440]

the particles are in a superposition, you can think of it as the particles being in more than one place at the same time. when something interacts with them, the particles make a choice as to where hey are and then they are at that location.

[Anonymous No.3217446]

>>3217440

>the particles make a choice

Oh science, what hast thou become?

[Anonymous No.3217450]

>>3217427
Thanks for the simple explanation in this vid.... wtf.

>>3217430
But whatever happends will happen anyway whether I open the box or not, right? I just want to understand the connection between the cat allegory and the real world.

[Anonymous No.3217457]

>>3217450

>I just want to understand the connection between the cat allegory and the real world.

There is no connection. The cat allegory only exists in the heads of deluded scientists.

[Anonymous No.3217485]

>>3217450
>But whatever happends will happen anyway whether I open the box or not, right?
no, the act of opening the box chances the system and collapses the wave function.

[Anonymous No.3217488]

>>3217457
Okay, so fuck the cat story. What the fuck is the principle of quantum physics?

[Anonymous No.3217499]

>>3217488
at the base?
1) alot of things come in certain values, such as spin that can only be 1/2 or -1/2 for a electron and cant be any value.

2) you cant know some things at the same time, such as momentum and position.

thats about it.

[Anonymous No.3217504]

>>3217485
Not OP here, but that just sounds like a load of crap to me. Is there any real reasoning behind that theory? The "collapse the wave function" idea seems to have been produced simply because there was no better explanation at the time. What makes humans so special that we can collapse the wave function, where other matter cannot? I'm very ignorant about all this, so I apologize if I'm making an idiot out of myself.

[Anonymous No.3217510]

>>3217499
What about quantum entanglement and superpositions?

[Anonymous No.3217516]

>>3217397
Basically we arent sure yet. but its a theory that will work for now.

[Anonymous No.3217523]

>>3217504
see
>>3217499
the whole wave function thing is basically caused by number 2. and its not that humans collapse it, there is nothing special about us. when something interacts with the wave function it gets entangles with that wave function. the correct way to look at it is that the person looking at the electron or something sees it at position 1 and 2, and the second person sees the first person looking at the electron at position 1 and looking at it at position 2. alot of people say that there is a limit that when the system gets too large it will collapse but we dont know.

[Anonymous No.3217528]

>>3217397
What is the √x.
>±
Note this is + or -. Not both. One happens the other doesnt. It takes a higher math to understand which one is the answer.

[Anonymous No.3217534]

>>3217510
this is an example: you know the overall spin must be 0 of 2 particles so it can be -1/2 and 1/2 or 1/2 and -1/2, but you cant measure it in all direction (property no 2) so it is both -1/2 and 1/2 until we measure it (in a superposition), but if we measure the first particle and it is 1/2 we now instantly know the second one is -1/2, (entanglement.) ass you can see, it comes from those 2 points.

[Anonymous No.3217538]

>>3217528
Not so much as a higher math then as an objective perspective. math is objective so it allows it.

[Anonymous No.3217541]

>>3217534
>until we measure it
it should be until we measure it in one direction, becuase the particles dont know in what direction we are going to measure it it needs to be in a superposition.

[Anonymous No.3217554]

The problem with these things lies in the need people have to still talk about definite states.

For example say we are talking about spin up or spin down when it could be either.
Before observing it people usually say that it is spin up and spin down.. but in reality it is NEITHER spin up nor spin down, nor is it both.
It is simply something completely outside of our normal experiences, it is a something else.
It only BECOMES spin up or spin down after you observe it.

So you don't say that "it happened and didn't", that is false. It is simply in a state of having happened and not happened (a superposition).

Does that make any sense? It's really difficult to explain....

[Anonymous No.3217561]

>>3217488

The principle is that as yet we do not have a complete account of quantum phenomena, and therefore are forced to make do with probabilities and uncertainties.

[Anonymous No.3217562]

>>3217397
I assume you're refering to schrodinger's cat. Image you're driving down the road that is representative of you're life. Every choice in your life, made or not made puts a fork in the road with every possible selection that could of been made reguarding said choice. Thus for every choice made/not made a parallel universe represents each of those decisions made/not made. In one universe the cat is dead, another alive, yet another the cat was never put in the box to begin with.

Now this idea of quantum phenonmenon is not understood, but merely observed. Now quantum mechanics is understood reguarding "big" things and there behavior in reality (apples are acted upon by forces like gravity, etc etc). Sub-atomic particles do not always behave in the same way we expect these "big " things to. This goes back to the Bohr-Einstein debate and how photos are particles until they are waves, and then are seen as particles when measure again at a particular point.

I wish i had more insight for you, I can't even find the words to articulartes my own thoughts on the subject merely what i have gleen from other sources.

[Anonymous No.3217569]

>>3217504

It's not that.

Quantum states that the position and spin of an electron becomes empirically certain at the moment of observation.

Scientific idealism, one might say.

[Anonymous No.3217574]

>>3217561
The principle is that you know nothing of QM. how do you explain the <span class="math"> K_S[/spoiler] and <span class="math"> K_L [/spoiler] mesons with probability?

[Anonymous No.3217605]

>>3217562

>I assume you're refering to schrodinger's cat. Image you're driving down the road that is representative of you're life. Every choice in your life, made or not made puts a fork in the road with every possible selection that could of been made reguarding said choice. Thus for every choice made/not made a parallel universe represents each of those decisions made/not made. In one universe the cat is dead, another alive, yet another the cat was never put in the box to begin with.

This is an absurdity. Every point in time would therefore give an infinite number of divergences, and the simplest understanding of it would be impossibly complex.

Parallel universes are another phantasmagoria of the scientist's mind.

[Anonymous No.3217644]

>>3217605
>Every point in time would therefore give an infinite number of divergences
yes, that is the multiworld hypothesis.

>and the simplest understanding of it would be impossibly complex.
QM is well equipt for working with things like this, of course something like 10^20 particles cant be modeled, but lets say 10 particle reacting can be moddel, even with the "infinite splittings" because you simply work with the complete wavefunction that contains all the infinite positions/speeds/other.

[Anonymous No.3217687]

OP here, I was at the phone. Yes, you are helping. I'm just observing the discussion now. I realize it's something difficult to explain, specially because, I see, it's very particular of small particles and their behavior, which is different from our "human sized world".

But what I get from the quantum problem of the Schrodinger's cat at first glance is that it's a matter of perspective. Instead of seeing things as one or the other and then observing that is one of the two things earlier predicted, there is something else to take in consideration that makes this stance false. I just don't understand what is this something else.

Observation changes what is being observed, because we cannot know certain things at the same time (either I fuck with the particle's position or velocity in order to know the other, as I recall an example someone told me). Observing is interacting and interacting means I changed the observed object. Correct?

So, uh, let me see, it's like particle A and B were in a closet giggling and interacting in secret, when particle C gets in the closet, A and B show to him one of the possible things they could have been doing in the secret closet?

[Anonymous No.3217716]

>>3217605
so because you cant quantify it, and it is beyond human comprehenstion, it has to be assume it's false?

Boy i bet teaching you was a real pain in the ass "I don't understand it, therefore it isn't real"

[Anonymous No.3217741]

>>3217687
>either I fuck with the particle's position or velocity in order to know the other

thats the measurement paradox (or problem, p-something) the uncertainty principle is more fundamental in that even if you make no measurement, the position and momentum arnt specific values.

>closet analogy
I guess you can say that.

[Anonymous No.3217773]

>>3217562
This is not the cat experiment at all. The quantum difference is not the detail of the cat's conscious life-- that's the end result. The difference is in the particular action itself.

Schrodinger's words in the thought experiment were:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

It was an attempt to consider how the discreteness of quantum mechanics could impact the macroscopic world.

[Science !!V9NwDn3l+KQ No.3217800]

>>3217716
>>so because you cant quantify it, and it is beyond human comprehenstion, it has to be assume it's false?
>The birth of an atheist

[Anonymous No.3217816]

>>3217397

You've forgotten your prescription again, OP

[Anonymous No.3217848]

>>3217716

Being beyond human comprehension and not existing are convertible terms. It is absurd to suppose that any means exists for knowing and speculating on what one posits as 'beyond all knowledge and speculation'.

To be object means to be knowledge for the subject, and nothing besides.

[Anonymous No.3218148]

>>3217800
Very shitty logic.

A birth of a retard.