interest

Wouldn't we all.

Quantum physics? Always makes my head ache if I think too hard about it but is thought-proviking in the extreme - schroedinger's cat, parallel universes, time travelling backwards (that experiment with the light and slits in pieces of cardboard - if the results are recorded, one thing happens, if they aren't then another thing does which means that the act of recording the response affects the eventual outcome) Great potential for creative writing about it too...

There's an interesting page-turner novel based on some of the implications suggested by quantum physics, called Timeline. I think it's by Creighton. It's one of those very big selling authors. You can probably find a copy at oxfam or some such place. It's actually quite good, I thought. It involves time travel, among other things. I've read quite a lot over the years about this stuff, even though of studying quantum physics at one point, but that was a very long time ago. My brain is much too soggy nowadays. The tech guy at my (now defunct little) company had a phd in photo quantum physics, but frankly he was a pin head and I had to fire him. He should have stuck with physics. There is also a very good book more or less on this subject entitled Genius. It is about Richard Feyman, but gets quite far into the physics from a more or less layman's perspective. If I weren't so lazy, I would go over to my bookcase and make sure I have the author's name right, but I believe it was Glick, the same guy who wrote Chaos and Faster. If my mind clears up a little, maybe I can actually think of a topic instead of babbling on about book titles.

There's also an excellent trilogy called Schroedinger's Cat which I have at home but it now appears to be out of print as it isn't on The Book Place. It's by two ex Playboy writers who took it in turns to write whilst the other one slept. The first person keeps changing for no particular good reason but is probably explicable by quantum leaps. If you can find copies they're well worth it!

Well I met this bloke recently and he used to be a particle physicist and he was involved in some experiments involving long tunnels under the moutains in Switzerland that cost Western governments grazillions to build and down which they fired matter at very high speed so it collided head-on with other matter and for a split second no matter existed then out came bananas. I don't know if I've got the science quite right but I thought that was interesting.

I assumed this thread was a joke and responded accordingly. *Slinks away, head hung low*

Well, you know, the method for recording the results of these particle collisions involves something called gaseous diffusion (I think). Back in maybe the 40s or 50s when some of this stuff started, the major problem was to record the results. Can't very well place interviewer in strategic locations near the collision site to question the little buggers flying in all directions. So this guy was in a pub (I think he was English but I'm not sure) with a pint in front of him watching the bubbles rise, and the thought, hmmmm, if I put a pint of beer (ok not litereatlly, but the equiavlent, ie a liquid with lots of gas trapped inside) where these particles will spray out after the collision, then I can simply photograph the tracks of the bubbles being dragged along by the particles, and that will show me what happened and I will have a physical record. It worked. I don't know if they are still using that technique today, but they probably are. OK, so now we have an example of beer influencing research into the nature of matter. Not exactly what yesterday's front page theme had in mind, but reasonably close. No doubt we will shortly hear more on the subject of gaseous diffusion. *stiffles burp*

Speaking of scientific research, the linear particle accelerator through the mountains got me to thinking. A number of years back there was a big debate in the U.S. about how to allocate government money for scientific research. Two of the large and expensive competing projects were the manned space station and a linear particle accelerator. In theory, the money was to fund basic research, ie new and exploratory areas. The manned space station got the money. However, it was generally acknowledged that there was far more technology already available in a $200 point-and-shoot autofocus camera than there was on any manned space station, or ever would be. More over, by definition, anything that involved people would use old proven technology to assure the safety of the people. Unfotunately, the particle accelerator, though huge, was underground. You could not see it. It did not move. No clever people came back from the office to stand in front of the TV cameras and talk about how wonderful it is in the 4 mile long tunnel, and most importantly, it did not move. So, the money went into manned space stations etc. In another instance of the mind of government at work, back when they were still trying to develop a laser gun capable of shooting a missile out of the sky, there was a big meeting in which one of the scientists said: Well, there is basically no way to develop that much power without destroying the device which creates the beam in the first place. Besides, we would need a beam with force of 10 to the 128th power and so far the best we have been able to do is a force of 10 to the 57th power, at which point the government wonk perked up and cried out cheerily: Hey that's great! We're almost half way there!!! Dooooh.

thought is a very interesting thing, but perhaps emotion is easier...

i was briefly interested by someone talking about numerology today ... (it was a dull day ... sorry)

The purpose of quantum physics, at least in the mind of Max Plank and other early pioneers, was to prove that motion could be predicted. In actuality, he sort of proved that it isn't and it remains one of the few scientific blockbuster controversies. You might want to read Jeffrey Satinover's book on The Bible Codes to get an interesting perspective on this whole issue. He is extremely knowledgeable and erudite and has a talent for explaining complex issues to laymen.

read an article about people being transported by the energy fields of solar flares. seemingly finding themselves miles away, days later, with no idea how they got there. i'm about to move house, would definitely save on removal expenses...

i am wondering...if these are similar magnetic fields that cause ghostly apparitions or move objects around? a case for smolder and scally? hmm...

Newcombe's Paradox - I like this one. An intelligent being (you can say it is a God, or an alien, or a supercomputer) has studied you and thinks it can predict what you will do. It can't read your mind or see into the future, it just makes a prediction. The test it sets is this, two boxes A and B. Both sealed and opaque. Box A always contains ten thousand pounds. Box B will contain either nothing or a million pounds. You have to choose whether to open box B only, or both boxes. Now here is the sting - if the being THINKS you will open both boxes, it will put nothing in Box B (thus you only get £10,000), but if it thinks you will only open Box B, it will put the million pounds in Box B. Now, what should you do ? The reason this is a paradox is that people fall into one school or another and are generally adamant that the other people are wrong. I've read a lot of arguments on both sides and neither completely convince me. (Justyn - it is James Gleick).

I am intrigued the by Peronal Banking paradox in which no matter how much money I deposit into my account, there is never enough there. And Gleick it is.

Montague said he wanted a discussion and then he didn't join in - is that because he was just interested in reading , watching, overseeing the discussion of others and had no intention of joining in - or was it becasue he did not find the discussion interesting or perhaps he really wanted to meet someone and have the discussion in person, or over the phone? Which? What? Montague?

Hi. Gabrielle, I always had the intention of joining in the discussion further and was just shocked at how quickly responses came back. I am interested in most things and especially those questions regarding time and space and their personality. This Schroedinger's (sorry, I know it's wrong) cat thing sounds good, what is it exactly? I love paradoxes that occur in nature and in within relationships between people and solving them, not by producing an answer, but by attempting to appreciate them as a whole dynamic unit and understanding them by acting in their nature. I have been reading two books at the moment, one is called the Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and the other, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, both of which had made a deep impression in me, and although it may not be to your taste, there exists in them, some excellent thoughts and comprehension of some topics many people would regard as difficult.

You can't beat Castenada. This is definitely the technological age, but I think the new age - not as in Gypsy hippies living in holes in the ground and listening to music that sounds like a dog pissing in a tin can, but rather the next phase of our development - will be the research and understanding of the subconscious mind. That is really going to blow us away. Sadly I won't be around in 100 years time (at least not in this incarnation), but the whole concept would fascinate me. I find this extremely interesting.

Yeah Karl, I like Canasta.

OK, Schroedinger's Cat (from what I can remember although Douglas Adam's explanation in Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy is waaaaay better but someone appears to have nabbed my copy) NB: This is an experiment that doesn't take place in reality, it's just a concept to explain something in Quantum Physics Cat put in box Box contains a nuclear particle that will degrade It is unknown whether it will degrade enough to kill the cat However, until you open the box, the cat is both living and dead at the same time It's to do with parallel universes and the act of observation affecting the outcome if memory serves Very happy if someone else can give a better description though {aside: Eddie Izzard's sketch on Pavlov's dog experiments being tried on cats instead and the ensuing results is a work of genius - it's on the Dress to Kill video and *rocks*} OK, another interesting theory (I think) from Scott Adams in 'The Dilbert Future') The next 100 years will be a search for better perception rather than better vision: basically, we've all messed up so much in the past (believed the world was flat, the sun revolves around the earth etc) based on *what we can see* and tok loads of research to find out we were wrong. The chances that we live in the one window of time when we've got everything right/our perception is spot on are pretty slim...

Feynman often spoke about how there are all these rays and energy waves and sounds etc careening past us all the time and we only see/hear/feel a small fraction of them because our eyes/ears/etc filter out most of it. Thank god, otherwise we would have sensory overload of an unimaginable extreme. So maybe the so-called parallel universe is right here, we are just filtering it out. I personally would like to find a way to filter out a whole lot more of it, but I'm just a grumpy soul.

(It was in Dirk Gently, Emily) Essentially the question of whether a single atom decays or not in a given space of time is entirely random. Schroedinger's theory was based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (you can either know where a particle is definitely, or know how fast it is travelling but not both - the observers actions will always contaminate the experiment at this atomic level). So if the atom decays, poison is released in the box, killing the cat. If it doesn't decay, the cat is alright. Now rather than saying, we simply don't know whether the particle has decayed until we open the box, Schroedinger goes further and says that the decision isn't actually made until we open the box, that the particle has basically done both things and neither (its wave-form has collapsed). So by extension, the cat is also simultaneously alive/dead and neither until the box is opened. As Feynman famously said, "If you think you understand Quantum Physics, you don't. "