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Quantum mechanics flummoxes physicists again
Nature ^ | 7/22/10 | Jon Cartwright

Posted on 07/24/2010 5:35:11 PM PDT by LibWhacker

A fresh take on a classic experiment makes no progress in unifying quantum mechanics and relativity.

If you ever want to get your head around the riddle that is quantum mechanics, look no further than the double-slit experiment. This shows, with perfect simplicity, how just watching a wave or a particle can change its behaviour. The idea is so unpalatable to physicists that they have spent decades trying to find new ways to test it. The latest such attempt, by physicists in Europe and Canada, used a three-slit version — but quantum mechanics won out again.

In the standard double-slit experiment, a wide screen is shielded from an electron gun by a wall containing two separated slits. If the electron gun is fired with one slit closed, a mound of electrons forms on the screen beyond the open slit, trailing off to the left and right — the sort of behaviour expected for particles. If the gun is fired when both slits are open, however, electrons stack along the screen in comb-like divisions. This illustrates the electrons interfering with each other — the hallmark of wave behaviour.

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: double; doubleslit; electrons; experiment; mechanics; photon; physics; quantum; quantummechanics; slit; stringtheory; triple; tripleslit
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To: AustinBill

I thought you might be able to add to comment #20.


21 posted on 07/24/2010 7:35:24 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
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To: LibWhacker

I take issue with one part of the explanation, which minimizes how strange the phenomenon is: it’s not that the electrons or photons interfere with each other, it’s that the electron or photon interferes with itself. If the two slit experiment is done with a slow emitter so that only one electron or photon passes the screen at a time, the interference pattern is still there!


22 posted on 07/24/2010 7:36:15 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: James C. Bennett
Would heavy betting affect the outcome?
23 posted on 07/24/2010 7:37:09 PM PDT by kbennkc (For those who have fought for it freedom has a flavor the protected will never know .F Trp 8th Cav)
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To: kbennkc

The outcome of your financial status, most likely, LOL!


24 posted on 07/24/2010 7:38:50 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
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To: Jack Hydrazine

The electrons travel in a medium we can neither detect, nor describe by any means, and that appears to transcend time.


25 posted on 07/24/2010 7:39:26 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Obamacare is America's kristallnacht !!)
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To: editor-surveyor
The electrons travel in a medium we can neither detect, nor describe by any means, and that appears to transcend time.

I understand the former part, but how do you arrive at the latter?

26 posted on 07/24/2010 7:42:21 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
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To: LibWhacker

Headline should perhaps read, “Intelligent Designer continues to confuse Brilliant Human Experts in Quantum Physics”


27 posted on 07/24/2010 7:49:08 PM PDT by patriot preacher (To be a good American Citizen and a Christian IS NOT a contradiction. (www.mygration.blogspot.com))
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To: James C. Bennett
there is no way of observing a sub-atomic particle without affecting the particle, directly. In other words, if you were to imagine the electron as a ball, in darkness, the very act of shining a hypothetical “light” to detect its reflection off of the “electron” has an effect on the electron itself. That is the scale we’re talking about here.

Which begs the question - what is the "light" we're shining?

28 posted on 07/24/2010 7:50:36 PM PDT by GOPJ (..Liberalism is Intolerance..- - Freeper Eric in the Ozarks)
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To: James C. Bennett

“but how do you arrive at the latter?”

.
By the seeming instantaneous interferance.
.


29 posted on 07/24/2010 7:50:48 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Obamacare is America's kristallnacht !!)
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To: patriot preacher

Yes, that is the obvious 10,000 pound elephant that they have to pretend that they do not see in the jewelry box.


30 posted on 07/24/2010 7:53:09 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Obamacare is America's kristallnacht !!)
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To: AustinBill
It’s only a mystery to those who stubbornly cling to a 19th century view that mind must somehow be an emergent property of matter. What quantum mechanics has been telling us, in excruciating detail, for over a century is that what we call physical reality is an emergent property of consciousness.

Thank you for that breath of fresh air. To listen to modern biophysicists go on and on about "emergent consciousness" from enough complexity rather than through enough complexity is utterly maddening.

31 posted on 07/24/2010 7:53:45 PM PDT by Talisker (When you find a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be damn sure it didn't get there on it's own.)
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To: GOPJ

A good question. Perhaps that is the source of the apparent interference, as well as the behaviour of the slits themselves being changed each time a particle passes through it, to affect the following particle.


32 posted on 07/24/2010 7:56:35 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
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To: wendy1946
some magical creature with properties of goth elephants

http://fxb.worth1000.com/entries/524910/goth-elephant

33 posted on 07/24/2010 7:58:57 PM PDT by Sloth (Civil disobedience? I'm afraid only the uncivil kind is going to cut it this time.)
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To: fhayek
Amoebas are closer to humans than we are to God.

Galileo didn't think so. In his Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems he remarked that the human mind could know a mathematical truth with equal surety to the Divine mind, even if only a few such truths compared to the Divine mind, to which every truth was always present. This passage was cited as one of the textual points offensive to the church, "that he asserted some equality between the Divine and human mind in geometrical matters."

34 posted on 07/24/2010 8:03:14 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: Jack Hydrazine

Bump


35 posted on 07/24/2010 8:07:51 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: James C. Bennett

Re this topic, take a look at Wheeler’s thought experiment and actual implementations of it. Here’s an OK starting place: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler’s_delayed_choice_experiment?wasRedirected=true

Too tired to get into it. Let’s just say it get very weird, with some clearly atemporal (from our frame of reference) aspects.


36 posted on 07/24/2010 8:09:14 PM PDT by piytar (Journomarxists didnt go away. They just moved to a more secure venue...)
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To: SirJohnBarleycorn

You got it.

These guys are all going about it wrong. If any of them (there are some, and I read their works) knew God then they would be doing totally different sets of studies from totally different points of view.

Let there BE light.

Lets see.... 4 dimensions.... #4 Duration, #3 Height, #2 Width, #1... anyone? LENGTH. Pure and singular length with no mass, no width, no height. What we call light is NOT what these guys are measuring. You cannot measure an infinite singular dimension of reality. You can only measure the effects of the interactions of them with each other. In the case of light, and the old particle or wave, you have an effect of the 1st upon the 4th. Duration itself is the interference. Try to do the slit test without time. Bet you will NOT see that funny trick. Now, of course you won’t because “light moves at C khp” and thus duration is required to see it? Right?

WRONG. Wrong, wrong wrong. Light IS. The word of god says HE is the light. And within him there is NO Parallax. Which means no crossing, turning, bending.

And God is what? OUTSIDE, BEYOND time. He that, INHABITTETH eternity.

It’s right there, in plain Kings James English and our godless scientists can’t see it and keep performing the same silly tests and scratching their heads.


37 posted on 07/24/2010 8:11:55 PM PDT by RachelFaith (2010 is going to be a 100 seat Tsunami - Unless the GOP Senate ruins it all...)
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To: AustinBill

so are you saying that things we call “scientific fact” could
be an artefact of our consciousness only?

How about this... our minds are too feeble to understand
physical reality. And that everyone lives by some type of faith
or trust in some”thing” outside of their sensorium, whether they
acknowledge it or not.


38 posted on 07/24/2010 8:28:23 PM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and diamonds, and harder to find.)
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To: AustinBill
"It’s only a mystery to those who stubbornly cling to a 19th century view that mind must somehow be an emergent property of matter. What quantum mechanics has been telling us, in excruciating detail, for over a century is that what we call physical reality is an emergent property of consciousness".

So let's see if I understand, am I really posting?

39 posted on 07/24/2010 8:33:24 PM PDT by MontanaBeth (Born Conservative)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Here's a different explanation of the double-slit experiment:

Explanation of the Classical Electron Diffraction.
40 posted on 07/24/2010 8:33:48 PM PDT by aruanan
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