Ow. Quantum Physics they hurts mah bwains. And someone invented teleporting flu viruses? Thats not good is it???

Virgil:

Lord_Ascendant:
And someone invented teleporting flu viruses? Thats not good is it???

We'll just build artificially intelligent robots to fix the problem if a careless scientist accidentally smashes their microscope slide and punctures their environmental suit while performing that research.

What could possibly go wrong?

Zombie Invasion? Better go consult the Red Queen and grab a Flamethrower.

Quantum Mechanics is the best thing ever, it's science's god

That raptorex find sounds suspiciously like a baby T-rex to me.

I don't get it. Does superposition actually occur or can something only be in a single state at a time? Do the particles actually exist in two states at once or do they only have the possibility of existing in both states when not being observed? I'm guessing there has obviously been no observed superimposed particle, but has there been any observations of particles turning into wave form? jeez, racking my brain.

So, if you put a cat in a box, and have poison trip-wired, and the wire is broken by a radioactive substance, the cat is theoretically both alive and dead?

I've rationalized the Schrodinger's Cat concept by deciding that the man knew next to nothing about biology.

I wonder what his definition of 'dead' was. Like, brain dead, not breathing, no pulse, or simply locked in an air-tight box with poison and radioactive chemicals? Whichever it was, when he opened the box, he'd either have a dead cat or a dead cat and a very angry cat lady.

That was a very interesting article on brain fundtion, who would've thunk that Rats don't need a Corpus Callosum?(that was the part which grew back, right?)

woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

that video about the double-slit experiment was pretty fun and mind-blowing at the same time.

thanks Bill Nye!

Go on to a quantum scale, and you'll realize that one quark can be in two different places.

I sometimes hate science.

I'm finding I love this column.
A question though. In order for the flu thing to work wouldn't you'd have to get it to have no energy, that is at absolute zero, so that its electrons can't move?

So, they are beefing up the flu eh?

I guess swine flu wasn't good enough for scie- oops, sorry, SCIENCE!

Quick! Let us kill kittens! For SCIENCE!

That last page is messed up beyond all recognition and it actually hurt my brain to read it. I love that bit about the t-rex though.

I love this column, as I'm pretty sure I have already stated. And I sort of understood the quantum physics part, thank you "The Big Bang Theory" for making me look it up in detail!

The Rogue Wolf:
I must compartmentalize my answers, for this article contains far too much weapons-grade awesome to address all at once.

- Does anyone else think that Raptorex sounds like a crappy line of PC peripherals?
- Personally, reading anything by Franz Kafka makes me desperately search for meaning and patterns in anything else, so I can see where I'd be more adept at puzzles like that.
- Science defeats music once again. Next up: In-depth examinations to find out exactly who put the "bop" in the "bop-shoo-wop".
- This is a public service announcement.

And this post was almost as awesome as the article itself. Kudos, kind sir.

Lauren Admire:
Science!: Raptorex, The Beatles and WTF

Beware all ye who enter here: Quantum physics lies within.

Read Full Article

I remember talking about that Beatles chord with my guitar teacher some weeks ago. I'm going to phone him now.

And the whole Schödringer/Quantum thing was mind blowing.

Also, you're playing Dreamfall? I love you. That's my favourite game.

Ahhh Quantum Theory. While our affair was brief it was ever so sweet... Tis' just a shame they closed the physics department at my university after my first year. ¬_¬

Also, has anyone thought that maybe this miniature T-rex was maybe just... I dunno... a young one? Some poor Teen-rex who bit off more than he could chew?

MajoraPersona:
So, if you put a cat in a box, and have poison trip-wired, and the wire is broken by a radioactive substance, the cat is theoretically both alive and dead?

I've rationalized the Schrodinger's Cat concept by deciding that the man knew next to nothing about biology.

I wonder what his definition of 'dead' was. Like, brain dead, not breathing, no pulse, or simply locked in an air-tight box with poison and radioactive chemicals? Whichever it was, when he opened the box, he'd either have a dead cat or a dead cat and a very angry cat lady.

The experiment wasn't meant to actually be tested since putting a cat in a sealed box will kill it even if there's no poison. The point of the cat was that you don't know if the substance has decayed, but the only way to know would be to open the box. Opening the box is analogous to disrupting the conditions for superposition. As long as the box is sealed, the cat is superpositioned, but checking disrupts the superpositioning.

Also, Sokar hates Schrodinger.

lweber:

Virgil:

Lord_Ascendant:
And someone invented teleporting flu viruses? Thats not good is it???

We'll just build artificially intelligent robots to fix the problem if a careless scientist accidentally smashes their microscope slide and punctures their environmental suit while performing that research.

What could possibly go wrong?

By fix the problem, do you mean destroy the pathetic human?

Isn't that the only problem to be fixed? muhahaha.

Quantum physics make my head hurt. Badly. But my mind was blown at the same time...

Best column ever.

randommaster:

MajoraPersona:
So, if you put a cat in a box, and have poison trip-wired, and the wire is broken by a radioactive substance, the cat is theoretically both alive and dead?

I've rationalized the Schrodinger's Cat concept by deciding that the man knew next to nothing about biology.

I wonder what his definition of 'dead' was. Like, brain dead, not breathing, no pulse, or simply locked in an air-tight box with poison and radioactive chemicals? Whichever it was, when he opened the box, he'd either have a dead cat or a dead cat and a very angry cat lady.

The experiment wasn't meant to actually be tested since putting a cat in a sealed box will kill it even if there's no poison. The point of the cat was that you don't know if the substance has decayed, but the only way to know would be to open the box. Opening the box is analogous to disrupting the conditions for superposition. As long as the box is sealed, the cat is superpositioned, but checking disrupts the superpositioning.

Also, Sokar hates Schrodinger.

Was Schrodinger alive before the time of the geiger counters and glass windows?

You know what? Forget it. Quantum phsysics makes no sense to me, I'll stick with using my imagination to create whole worlds that both exist and don't simultaneously. That way I can ignore this whole cat thing.

This is officially my new favorite column.

Yay for science!

I must now retire to the fainting couch as my electrons are EVERYWHERE!

This only gives me more evidence to the argument that physicists are trying to kill us all.

I already knew about the tiny T-Rex! Thanks, Dinosaur Comics!

MajoraPersona:
You know what? Forget it. Quantum phsysics makes no sense to me, I'll stick with using my imagination to create whole worlds that both exist and don't simultaneously. That way I can ignore this whole cat thing.

No, no, you don't get it. The fact that you can't know what's happening in the box is what makes the superimposed state happen. Using a geiger counter or a glass window is the same as opening it. It's not that you can't tell what's going on in the box and that's weird, it's that as long as you don't know what's going on in the box both outcomes are happening at the same time. What he does is take an event that is commonplace in quantum physics, but makes no sense in "regular" one, and create a scenario that makes it affect the regular one, i.e. the state of the cat.

Look, it's really simple, when you figure it out. When you don't, it's not.

Genius comic, there

The Random One:

MajoraPersona:
You know what? Forget it. Quantum phsysics makes no sense to me, I'll stick with using my imagination to create whole worlds that both exist and don't simultaneously. That way I can ignore this whole cat thing.

No, no, you don't get it. The fact that you can't know what's happening in the box is what makes the superimposed state happen. Using a geiger counter or a glass window is the same as opening it. It's not that you can't tell what's going on in the box and that's weird, it's that as long as you don't know what's going on in the box both outcomes are happening at the same time. What he does is take an event that is commonplace in quantum physics, but makes no sense in "regular" one, and create a scenario that makes it affect the regular one, i.e. the state of the cat.

Look, it's really simple, when you figure it out. When you don't, it's not.

I notice you removed the pertinent part of my post.

From the page Wikipedia cited:

5. Are the Variables Really Blurred?

-snip-

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

I don't understand where the confusion is (primarily since those who 'understand it' don't care to answer my primary question: Why the fuck did he choose, of all things, a cat in a box with poison?), but as near as I can tell, he was making fun of the Copenhagen interpretation thing. NOT suggesting it as a concept, but using it to point out a fallacy.

Schrodinger's Cat is second in annoyance, in my mind at least, to the use of Non-Euclidean Geometry as an unsettling agent in the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

It's like more of Daniel Jackson translating science so O'Neill can understand. Me Likey! (While I like to think I fall between the two, knowledge-wise.)
And while science can tear apart music and put it back together again, it does not make music, nor translate it completely. Beatles still hold the ball.

A great magazine once said this.
"Science is interesting, If you don't agree with us you can fuck-off."

I thought A Hard Days Night mystery was solved years ago. Like, right after the album came out.

There are two cases where almost everybody seems to misunderstand what Scientists intended.

1. Newton modestly saying that he achieved what he had only because he was a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants. Newton was a sarcastic man who had many faults but modesty wasn't one of them. He was making a cruel joke about the bad posture and lack of insight of the head of the royal society Robert Hooke.

2. Schrödinger's cat is an understandable thought experiment that offers an insight into how quantum physics works. Actually, it was devised as an example of the absurdity of contemporary quantum physics theories that were developed in such a way as to accommodate the fact that you cannot take measurements without affecting the experiment.