Can an electron be in two places at the same time?

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Mind Over Matter, Nov 1, 2011.

  1. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    The electron is a particle or a wave?
     
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  3. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    An electron has both particle and wave characteristics. But it is also considered a fundamental particle.
     
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  5. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    No, a shock wave has a very specific meaning. Being fast isn't sufficient. And we don't remove wave properties from quantum mechanics, if anything quantum mechanics puts in wave properties. Quantum mechanics is basically a model of how a wave function associated to subatomic objects behaves.

    You're continuing to misrepresent what science says. I suggest you find out what it says (ie read up on wave functions).

    Given your track record none of your suggestions are worth posting in this forum. You claimed to have evidence and that I didn't and now you're back tracking and having to basically redefine words. Hardly good contributions.
     
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  7. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    The correct answer is: None , because neither particle or wave fully describe his behavior.
     
  8. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed, neither the wave nor the particle nor the wavicle is the true and underlying form.

    Also, as an entity, the electron may act as fundamental in so far as created entities go, thereafter, but it doesn't have a forever type fundamental never-created nature since electrons can come and go in their new appearance and annihilation with their corresponding positrons. Somehow they come from a fluctuation and may go back to it ever as electron/positron pairs.
     
  9. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    2,387


    I claimed that there was a wave in the experiment, and no dot. That has more proof towards a wave than two electrons. The monitor is evidence, and that's what I said.


    ...And my words are in the dictionary.. bow ... front of a vessel... bow wave... wave at the front of a ship.. bow... curve... bow shock... curve at the front of a sun... shock wave.. a supersonic wave.

    Wikipedia...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_wave


    And wave functions... are OK in this thread, but I have eliminated them for my own purposes.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2011
  10. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    evidence?
     
  11. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    No one in the mainstream claims 2 electrons exist. There is a dot, the monitor displays it, the electron produces it. The mainstream explanation for the diffraction pattern is the wave function.

    You said a shock wave was one which travels around the Earth in 3 seconds. That isn't what a shock wave is. A shock wave has a specific definition in terms of pressure build up and rapid changes. There's no evidence there's a shock wave, bow or otherwise (it's a bit of an unnecessary label anyway), involved here. There's evidence of wave-like effects but not all waves are shock waves or we wouldn't need the 'shock' label.

    Can you provide evidence a shock wave is involved, over and above a 'standard' wave?

    It's funny you're so quick to go to "Look what everyone else says!" here when you completely ignore it when discussing physics.

    Because you don't know anything about them.
     
  12. Magneto_1 Super Principia Registered Senior Member

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    There are no such thing as point particles in nature. Point particles are a myth!

    Any stable matter entiity such as an electron must have volume to exist. If you have volume you are spread out in space and time.

    Electromagnetic Space

    \({r_{Compton}} \,\,\, \propto \,\,\, \frac{1}{m_{Mass}}\)

    Gravitational Space

    \({r_{Schwarzschild}} \,\,\, \propto \,\,\, {m_{Mass}}\)


    \({V_{ol}} \,\,\, = \,\,\, \frac{4\pi{}}{3}{r^3}\)


    See "Electron Image" Article: Coherent Electron Scattering Captured by an Attosecond Quantum Stroboscope

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Here is very short video of "Electron Image":

    Electron Image Video


    Best
     
  13. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    Magneto, you know full well that picture doesn't represent the structure of a single electron. It is a complex diffraction pattern formed from a scattering experiment. I know you know this because I was the one to tell you. In fact, when you last linked to a paper with such pictures I even quoted the figure captions which explicitly contradicted what you claimed the paper said. You've changed which paper you link to but you're still making the same mistake.

    Why are you lying so blatantly? You link to the paper, so people can read it for themselves and see that it isn't an imaging of a single electron but the pattern built up from scattering particles, lots of particles.

    Like I said to Pincho, you're welcome to discuss the topic specifically but if you want to peddle your crap there's a forum for it. The fact you're posting something you know has been debunked on this forum, in a thread where the debunker (me) has recently posted in, is just daft. The question is whether you're doing it oblivious to your mistake or you are knowingly being dishonest.

    So which is it, are you oblivious to the fact your "This is a picture of an electron!" claim is false or are you knowingly lying?
     
  14. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    2,387
    Which proves that you jumped on my post when all of the thread was off topic scientifically.. which is what I said you had done. You had a bias against my post, but not the ones talking about electrons in two places at once. And now that you have posted what science says.. then nobody is allowed to post otherwise.
     
  15. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Wrong.

    Try reading:

    One electron in two places at once is not the same thing as two electrons.
     
  16. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    This is the second time you haven't read the thread title today.
     
  17. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Wrong again!
    The thread title is "Can an electron be in two places at the same time?".
    That's the discussion.
    It is not about TWO electrons.
     
  18. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    AlphaNumeric said 2 electrons not me.
     
  19. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    19,252
    Do try to read what he wrote.
    He stated that
    which was a reply to your post saying
    Now, one more time: two electrons is NOT the same as ONE electron in two places, therefore your claim that
    is wrong.

    And neither was a bias against you shown.
     
  20. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    This is a science thread, I'm not going off topic with you in here.
     
  21. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Too late.


    AN/ Prom, feel free to delete/ redirect my posts to the idiot pointing out that he's an idiot.
     
  22. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    *sigh*

    The original question arises from the seemingly strange result seen in the double slit experiment. Someone unfamiliar with quantum mechanics and its use of wave functions might think it's a paradox or something unexplainable. As such there's nothing unscientific about asking for clarification in the form of a question.

    My initial response to you was to comment on the fact you weren't addressing the question with an answer based on science but your own misguided and frankly delusional views about aether. You have a thread elsewhere with 'bow shock' in the title where you lax lyrical about your particular take on things via an aether. Hence when I see you saying something about bow shocks here it's an immediate red light. The ensuing discussion only
    justified my initial feeling, that you weren't saying anything scientific or even trying to answer the original question in a meaningful way, you just wanted another excuse to talk about your own work. Magneto's trying to do it too, it's a standard sign of hacks.

    People can present other ideas if they are based on something reasonable. Just pulling nonsense out of nowhere without any justification is not reasonable. In your case it's actually worse than that. Because you're previously talked about your particular take on things via your obsession with aether and claiming you can reproduce the entire universe with just 1+(-1)=0, no more maths than that (a laughable claim I've shown to be false several times), then I know just how little you have behind your claims. If Rpenner suddenly pulled out a pet theory then I'd have no idea what was behind it or the level of rigor involved as it'd be the first I'd have heard of it. In your case your track record stands against you, only made worse by you having a currently active thread about bow shocks for people to see just how far off the mark you are.

    Yes, for the reasons I just explained. As for things like "What about an electron being in two places at worse", there's a number of reasons that's okay to discuss. Firstly, it might naively seem that way given the diffraction properties of even single electrons. Secondly, the double slit experiment is one of the more conceptually interesting (and perplexing) experiments in quantum mechanics. Thirdly, quantum mechanics can resolve the 'issue' without needing to say the electron is in two places at once because the wave function does away with even the concept of the electron having a well defined position! And fourthly if you go all the way to quantum field theory then you can interpret positrons as electrons going backwards in time and thus you could view an electron and positron combining to make a photon as the photon 'reflecting the electron back in time' so the entire process involves just 1 electron but it's moving in two directions in time and this is in two places at once. Heck, someone (I think it was Wheeler) suggested that if you took this to its limit then every electron and positron in the universe is just the same electron bouncing back and fore through time.

    The reason these aren't to be dismissed as quickly as your nonsense is that such points of view follow from the mathematical formulation of quantum field theory, which also produces exceedingly accurate quantitative testable predictions which have been rigorously tested. You have nothing but "I made this up and since I'm so awesome at music I must be good at physics!"

    I know you don't like people puncturing your little make believe world where you pretend to be a genius at everything but sometimes you need reminding you're just plain incompetent and ignorant. If I'm wrong about your claims feel free to provide a quantitative model derived from your claims which accurately describes such phenomena and which we can immediately compare with experimental data. Anything else is you just arm waving.
     
  23. Vishwanath Rao Registered Member

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    According to the double slit experiment electron's have the properties of both waves and particles if this is true then yes they can be at two places at once but according to quantum physics anything with mass however minute cannot be at two places at once.
     

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