I read something today that is a real tripper... It said - There is a theory that goes, as soon as one discovers what the universe is, it is at that point that the meaning will totally morph , invert into itself and create into something else. Something that would take evolutions to learn about. ANother theory is that this has already happened. crazy huh!
K that was a really bad recapp of that.... what i read was so much better, i wih i remebered it..... damn alcomohol taking all my brain... err msg runners
You mean the one from hitch hickers quide to the galaxy :- There is a theory which states that if anyone ever found the true meaning of the universe that it would instantly change into a more weirder and complex one. (It was a while since i read the book so its not exact) Turn the page it says.. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. If you read it somewhere else its just a copy of what he wrote.
You mean like the quantum observership principle? When one observes a system, one changes it simply by observing it. So yes, you are right.
How does observing a system change it? Does that mean your own definition changes, or the whole thing actually changes? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Blue: Nobody knows. Observing changes the way the system looks. If there is objective truth, then observing changes the system.
Do you remember what the meaning of the universe was before it changed? Perverted minds would like to know.
%BlueSoulRobot% asked: Formally, from the Copenhagen Interpretation: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Reduced to simpler examples: Suppose you have a glass of water and you want to measure its temperature. To do so, you stick a thermometer into the water. Once you do that, no longer are you measuring just the combined temperature of the water and the glass. Now you are measuring the combined temperature of the water, the glass and the thermometer. In order to extract from the system the information you desired, you had to directly interact with it, and by doing so you changed it. By your interference with the system it no longer behaves exactly like it did before you inserted the thermometer. Now, suppose you are in a room and ou are using ear plugs so you can't hear any sound. In the room with you is a penny. If you flip the penny and let it fall to the floor there is a 50%-chance it will land 'Heads', and a 50%-chance that it will land 'Tails'. If you turn out the room lights, flip the penny and let it fall to the floor, the Copenhagen Interpretation says that it is neither a 50%-chance it will land 'Heads' nor a 50%-chance it will land 'Tails' but a 100%-chance it will land both 'Heads' and 'Tails'. Similarly, for the sake of the thought experiment, let's assume that the penny will bounce when it hits the floor--either one meter to the left, or one meter to the right. In other words, when the lights are on, the penny has a 50%-chance of bouncing one meter to the left and a 50%-chance of bouncing one meter to the right. Turn off the lights and the Copenhagen Interpretation says that after flipping the penny it will have bounced one meter in both directions, at the same time, 100% of the time. Since you are curious to see if that is true, you turn on the lights, but your attempt to observe instantly forces the penny to be in one place or the other, and no longer can it be in both places at once. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Gee, Mr. G ... Shall we stand in the stream together? Thanks for the site. Take care Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oh! I understand that! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Thanks, Mr. G! It requires some twisting of my own complacent logic, but that's really something. I never thought of it that way before.... *wanders off in a blissful state*
btw: They were needed because if you heard the pennies hit the floor in the dark they couldn't be in both places at once because that's another means of observing. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I don't understand, surely its either gone one way or another... Just because <b><i>we</b></i> don't know which way its gone doesn't mean it has to go both. There is an answer (left or right), its just we dont know it. Can you explain?
With respect to Mr. G, I believe the penny experiment is a bit misleading. Quite often people inadvertently suggest that there is some mystical property of nature that is intimately connected and in some way effected by nothing more than a persons knowledge of it. From a philosophical or spiritual viewpoint, you're free to explore that possibility. But from a purely scientific viewpoint, it's definitely not the case. When physicists talk about the fact that the act of observing the microscopic world changes it, they do not mean that somehow nothing more than a human beings newfound awareness is responsible. They mean that to observe it, you have to DO SOMETHING TO IT. For example, to observe an electron you would have to bounce photons off it, and those photons effect it's motion. Mr. G's glass of water experiment describes the same principle. I may be wrong, but here's something similar to what I'm betting inspired the penny idea. If you were to fire a beam of electrons at a barrier with two slits cut out of it, you would of course expect some to go through the right slit, and some to go through the left slit, assuming of course that the beam isn't too narrow. If you were to place a phosphorous screen behind the barrier to record the impact of each electron and block one of the slits, you'd expect to see a particular pattern emerge. Block the other slit instead, and the same basic pattern would emerge on the phosphorous screen behind that slit. But if you were to repeat the experiment leaving both slits open, even though you might expect to see the same pattern form behind both slits, you will actually see a different pattern that is indicative of the idea that matter is both a particle AND a wave. In other words, as the waves of electron particles emerge from each slit on thier way towards the phosphorous screen, some wave peaks overlap, some wave troughs overlap, and some wave peaks and troughs cancel each other out. Now if we were to repeat the experiment yet again, with both slits open, but slow down the beam of electrons to the point where we are only firing one at a time, the same pattern will still emerge on the phosphorous screen if you wait long enough. Particles, separated in time, are still able to cancel each other out. Because of this, many physicists now believe that even though you might expect each electron to pass through either the left OR the right slit, it actually passes through both. In fact, it is believed that an individual electron, as it is fired at the barrier, simultaneously travels, or sniffs out, every possible trajectory in all of space before it arrives at it's final point on the phosphorous screen, and the final path it chooses to actually take in arriving at that point is the combined effect of every possible path there is. This seems even more ridiclous than a penny bouncing in two different directions at once in a dark room. If you turned the light on, you'd know once and for all. So, in the case of the electron, why don't we just look at both slits and find out which one it travels through? You can of course, but you'd have to fire photons at it which would change it's trajectory. It has been shown that if you disturb the experiment just enough to determine which slit the electron passes though, you CAN find out which slit it passes through, but you'll no longer see the wavelike pattern emerge on the phosphorous screen. Instead you'll see a pattern that suggests that each electron IS actually passing through only one slit. So, in the dark, when nobodies watching, electrons go roaming through every point in the universe simultaneously, but if you turn the lights on, they seem to stop and behave more in line with what you'd intuitively expect. If this isn't absurd, I don't know what is. However, I still don't believe that this is because nature changes it's behaviour just because we happen to become aware of it at a certain point in time. That's probably not what Mr. G was implying anyway. It only changes when we do something to it. Although I can usually bring myself to accept all manner of quantum outrageousness, the idea that a penny visits jupiter on it's way to the ground is a hard one to swallow (again, I'm sure that's not what was implied). It does follow a final path in the end, just like the electron, even when the lights are off. It's just nothing like what we would expect. I hope that clears things up somewhat fabled_dreamer, although I fear that because I couldn't think of a simpler or briefer way of explaining it, I've done more damage than good, lol.
observation and change Observing IS the process of change. Observation is the means by which we measure change. How would we know know that observing something caused it to change without first observing it?
I thought the concept of the "Multiverse" had gained a foothold among the brainiacs who try to make sense of such things.
