Author Topic: Physicists Finally See Light as a Particle and a Wave at the Same Time  (Read 13255 times)

Offline LionKing

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 426
Quantum Entanglement & Spooky Action at a Distance


not sure I understood. is he saying that they neither communicate faster than light nor do they have information inside them?

EDIT: and this teleportation trial that succeeded between Tenerife and La Palma islands..I want a clarification: does the third particle that afected the first one get teleported  meaning it was vanished from la palma ? or did it stay there and changed the spin of the first particle on la palma, which changed the spin of the second on tenerife gettign the same spin of the third particle without that third particle being moved ??
« Last Edit: June 18, 2015, 06:57:48 AM by LionKing »
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!”
 Rumi

Offline Cat Not Included

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 78
well, the QM says that it is an extension of our consciousness. We put it to observe, so it is not separate from our consciousness
Please note: I am NOT a quantum physicist, or even much of a mathematician. I'm just repeating things second-hand.
As far as I've seen people explain the whole "consciousness and quantum physics stuff", they've basically said "all this wavefunction and observer stuff is just a mathematical model. Don't read more than that into it".

By way of analogy (and please understand that this is JUST a rough analogy with many flaws, but hopefully it gets the point across), when considering the effects of the moon's gravity on something on Earth, we can treat the moon as if it were a single point, and that gives an accurate mathematical model. That doesn't mean the moon IS a single point, just that the math works if we treat it as one.

Does that make any sense?
The quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" very clearly predates personal computers.

Offline LionKing

  • Mars
  • ***
  • Posts: 426
well, the QM says that it is an extension of our consciousness. We put it to observe, so it is not separate from our consciousness
Please note: I am NOT a quantum physicist, or even much of a mathematician. I'm just repeating things second-hand.
As far as I've seen people explain the whole "consciousness and quantum physics stuff", they've basically said "all this wavefunction and observer stuff is just a mathematical model. Don't read more than that into it".

By way of analogy (and please understand that this is JUST a rough analogy with many flaws, but hopefully it gets the point across), when considering the effects of the moon's gravity on something on Earth, we can treat the moon as if it were a single point, and that gives an accurate mathematical model. That doesn't mean the moon IS a single point, just that the math works if we treat it as one.

Does that make any sense?

excuse my English but I am not sure what do you mean that the moon is not a single point here
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!”
 Rumi

Offline ka9q

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3014
It's the concept of "center of mass", sometimes incorrectly called "center of gravity". It was originated, to my knowledge, by Isaac Newton. He showed that for the purposes of computing the effect of a rigid object's gravity on something, you could treat that object as though all its mass were concentrated at a single point. Then you use Newton's Laws of Motion on that infinitesimal object. E.g., if all the earth's mass were concentrated at its center, the Moon would still orbit it exactly as it does now, and the earth-moon system would still orbit the sun as it does now.

But this is just a mathematical trick that saves a lot of calculation while getting the same correct result. It doesn't mean that the earth's mass really is concentrated at one point.

Offline Cat Not Included

  • Venus
  • **
  • Posts: 78
But this is just a mathematical trick that saves a lot of calculation while getting the same correct result. It doesn't mean that the earth's mass really is concentrated at one point.
Thank you for the excellent explanation ka9q! I was struggling with how to explain that.
I guess I'm probably at the point of knowledge where I know just enough to get myself in trouble.  :P
The quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" very clearly predates personal computers.

Offline ka9q

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3014
You're welcome. It's a general principle in physics that we have to be careful with our mathematical models lest we read too much into them. Concepts like center of mass, quantum wave functions and the like are useful because they make it easier to predict the outcome of an experiment in the real world, but that's not always the same thing as providing insight into what's "really" going on.

When Newton devised the center of mass concept, he showed that if you divide up a large, massive object like a planet into a whole bunch of little objects stuck together, each with a mass and its own position, and then compute and add up all the gravitational forces on some distant object from these teeny little objects, you get the same answer as a far simpler calculation: pretending that all of those little masses are piled on top of each other at a single, tiny point in space corresponding to the real object's center of mass. It means that a black hole and an ordinary star with the same mass will have exactly the same gravitational effect on some planet orbiting it, but it does not mean that the star and a black hole are the same type of object!

In fact, you also have to be careful with more ordinary uses of the center of mass. Newton's result is strictly true only for a spherically symmetric object. Real planets are usually not symmetric, with fast-rotating objects like Jupiter (or even the Earth) very decidedly so. If you ignore the planet's true shape and just model it as a point mass, you'll get almost the correct orbital path for a satellite but not quite right. You'll see "perturbations" from classical 2-body motion. To get the right answer you have to take the planet's true, detailed gravity field into account because it changes depending on where you are, not just how far you are.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2015, 02:21:30 AM by ka9q »

Offline raven

  • Uranus
  • ****
  • Posts: 1639
Not just Jupiter either. The moon's mascons (i.e. mass concentatioons) make long term orbits very tricky. I wonder what that will mean for c Apollo style moon missions with a CSM style orbiter,  extended over longer periods.

Offline ka9q

  • Neptune
  • ****
  • Posts: 3014
Yes, that's right, plus you have significant perturbations from the earth even at low lunar altitudes (remember the earth is ~88x heavier than the moon).

I've since heard that there are a few special values of inclination that are unusually long-lived, but I don't know the details.

The perturbations of a lumpy gravity field aren't just a nuisance, sometimes they actually have a practical use. Every rotating planet or moon has an equatorial radius larger than its polar radius; the actual shape is a "prolate spheroid" rather than a perfect sphere.

Jupiter spins so fast that its oblateness is actually visible to the eye in a telescope.

The difference in polar and equatorial radii for the earth is 21.3 km, which is considerably higher than Mt Everest. This equatorial bulge nudges an orbiting satellite slightly to the west or east depending on the angle at which it crosses the equator, causing the orbital plane to precess around the earth's axis. If you get the right combination of altitude and inclination, this precession will exactly match the earth's motion around the sun so the satellite will always pass over the same local time on the earth below. This is very useful for earth reconnaissance satellites such as weather, spy, earth resources, etc. Nearly all of the satellites launched from Vandenberg AFB in California go into these "sun synchronous" orbits.