It is a matter of energy density maybe. The environment of the electron has a particular energy density and as the energy density increases, the electron is excited into releasing a photon?
But what is energy density? Are we saying that there must be other stuff around other than the source and the target? I think a single neutron by itself in a vacuum will nearly always decay in a half-life of about 12 minutes.
If there is "other stuff" around other than the particles themselves, it would be the energy density of space itself. If so, it could be said that there is no empty space, i.e. no voids because every point in space has energy density of some level.
OK, I think I finally understand what you mean. So the waveform always collapses whenever one particle interacts with another particle right? Do these particles really encompass any type of particle? In other words, are we talking matter particles, force particles etc?
My answer, particles have duality, they are waves when the wave form "rules" and they have location when the particle form rules Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. We are talking the cutting edge; things we don't know for sure because we don't have instruments capable of seeing there. We are into the "uncertainty" of the wave form. But particles are a combination of force and energy, wouldn't you agree?
That is pretty "unstable" and is what lead me to consider the possibility that the neutron was created from a hydrogen atom at the core of a hydrogen star. That is quite a different take from Big Bang nucleosynthesis but who can be sure about exactly how accurate our time lines are?
Well we all know that Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! But I take it from the above posts that it is your (and many others) interpretation of Scrodingers cat that the waveform will collapse with the interaction with another particle right?
Actually neutrons can be created in electron-positron collisions. No need to be inside a star. You can do it here on earth. Edit; I think maybe this is wrong. Looks like the largest thing they could produce was about 250 GeV. Not enough for a neutron.
Even so, alpha or beta decay produces positrons so there will naturally be matter anti/matter interactions when heavy nuclei exist. That would be after nucleosynthesis had progressed to the point of the heaviest nuclei though wouldn't it?
Yes, but to be clear, the mind experiment is about the probability of the decay within the first hour. It might or might not have released the poison and so if we abide by the uncertainty principle, the fate of the cat is uncertain until someone looks at the cat, right?
Well, the fate of the cat is uncertain to us until we see the cat obviously. But the fate of the cat has been determined if we are going by your interpretation of an "observer"
WahoooPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'm glad I finally understood what u were talking about Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I once asked a believer in Schrodinger's experiment to turn around. When he did, I smacked him in the back of the head. He turned back and angrily demanded "What did you do that for?" I said "Do what?"
What, are you being paid by them? Don't work your commercials into threads! Pshaw! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Anyway RTCW-ET is way better. We should start a Sci-team.
Yep. It should however be understood that not all types of information will cause collapse (which is the reason why we can observe a wave).
Can I take that to mean that waves can overlap without causing collapse, but when collapse occurs, an information event has occurred?
As stated in my early posts in this thread, the word "observation" has mislead many who are ignorant of quantum mechanics. I recommended it be Replaced everywhere by "classical interaction" and defined "classical" in an early post also. The current drift in this thread to term "information event" in not nearly as confusing as "observation" but it still has the focus wrong. I suspect, it is sub consciously a stand in for "measurement" which tends to bring back the idea that someone is looking or observing. The collapse of the mixed state wave function does not require any measurement be made. No "information production" is require. Infact, quite often information is lost when the classical interaction results in heat. Go back and read my early four post if you want to understand, instead of speculate among yourselves.
The problem is that this is metaphysics. There is no way to prove what those photographic plates show (and whether they are classical or not) until someone looks at or otherwise tests their classical nature. You can assert that a cat is always a classical object (as distinguished from the statement "an observed cat is always a classical object"), but there is no way to scientifically prove the state of an unobserved cat at the present time. There are still a variety of different metaphysical interpretations of quantum mechanics: many-worlds, Copenhagen, deBroglie-Bohm pilot wave interpretation, the transactional interpretation, etc. None is provable or disprovable and they all offer different answers to the question. I tend to favor the decoherence approach (that glaucon aptly stated), that suitably large collections of quantum objects can interact with their environment in ways that cause them to become entangled with that environment. When this happens, the proper description of the quantum event will necessarily include its environment and can give the appearance that the wave function has collapsed. That said, I recognize that this too is not really provable. The reason Einstein debated whether the Moon existed when nobody was observing it is because it felt the answer was intuitively obvious. What he found was that many disagreed with his "obvious" conclusion and he was unable to convince them to the contrary. It's not because they were dumb to think the Moon might enter into a superposition when not being observed, it's because the answer was not subject to scientific inquiry. Perhaps someday we will discover some way of testing he Many Worlds interpretation, for example, and we will find proof of the immense series of orthogonally generated universes. If Many-Worlds is right, there are no (or at least need not be any) superpositions, not at any level of reality.
Any kind of interaction would be an "information" event... that includes wave interaction. The type of information would be the deciding factor for a collapse (ex. a definitive location).
