The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap

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Join Brian Greene on a wild ride into the weird realm of quantum physics, which governs the universe on the tiniest of scales. Greene brings quantum mechanics to life in a nightclub like no other, where objects pop in and out of existence, and things over here can affect others over there, instantaneously and without anything crossing the space between them. A century ago, during the initial shots in the quantum revolution, the best minds of a generation—including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr—squared off in a battle for the soul of physics. How could the rules of the quantum world, which work so well to describe the behavior of individual atoms and their components, conflict so dramatically with the everyday rules that govern people, planets, and galaxies?

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Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• The Fabric of the Cosmos
• Quantum Leap
• Entanglement

[sbergman27]

1 thing that always strikes me about QM is that there are so many things about it which are familiar to anyone who's ever written any kind of software requiring management of scarce resources. If I were designing a universe & had only a certain amount of memory & processor capacity I might be tempted to use similar tricks to keep resource usage down. I stop short of positing that we're really part of a computer simulation. But our U seems designed to keep total required information minimized.

[4micaman]

@sbergman27 That's quite Matrix-esque! lol

One may ponder though, according to many intellectual sources, the universe has an overwhelming abundance. Therefore, would there be a need to restrict memory and cpu cycles?

[sbergman27]

@4micaman Who knows? How many universes do you want to run?

Things I've noticed:

1. Uncertainty principle limits the floating point accuracy required.

2. Interactions don't 'count' unless they affect some other piece of the system. (Called 'lazy evaluation' in programming.)

3. Holographic Principle does away with spatial locality, drastically reducing the number of possible states our Universe can have.

None of this makes sense unless the Universe is trying to minimize resource usage.

[4micaman]

@sbergman27 'Who knows?' I don't. You seemed to have a grasp on it though. Along this line of thinking, perhaps the U isn't 'trying' to minimize resources but keeps them cached (if you will) until they're called upon. Thinking in terms of database systems, they can store enormous amounts of info, limited only by their hardware capacity and network pipe. They only distribute it's content if 'properly' queried. ???

[sbergman27]

@4micaman Arthur Clarke & Gentry Lee topped off Arthur's excellent "Rendezvous with Rama" with a later trilogy. It finally turned out that "god" was as confounded by nonlinear dynamics ("Chaos Theory") as we are. So he set about creating a whole plethora of universes, each with different constants. & placed probes to observe. Through a brute force algorithm he hoped to discover which Universes became "harmonious", all parts acting harmoniously with the rest. Like 1 colossal life-form.

[4micaman]

@sbergman27 Well that explains my lack of understanding it then. Never been a fan of Sci-fi's *gasp*

;c)

[Torcaski]

Things like this never fail to blow my mind, I love this shit.

[sbergman27]

@UnknownXV The classical world that our brains evolved to intuit is what QM usually reduces to for systems that are "not simple". Once a wave equation involves "many" particles it's behavior is so constrained as to appear classical. It's still quantum. But a simplified approximation works well. The macro-behavior of the system is an emergent property of the micro-behavior. But consider that, as a practical matter, even a simple light switch would not work reliably if not for quantum "weirdness".

[sbergman27]

@UnknownXV The laws of QM do not allow for both copies to exist simultaneously. If the copy is really exact, to within the limits of the Uncertainty Principle, then the new copy is just as much you as you are now. If the copy has errors, then... well... say hi to Commander Sonak for me, if you see him.

[sbergman27]

@tammas789 (cont'd) Let's go back to your claim:

"can't ever understand..just throwing money into dump"

Read the Asimov essay I recommended. It isn't necessary to understand every detail of our U to make great strides in understanding. In 400 yrs we've worked out Mechanics, EM, Chem, SR, GR, QM & more. All within a framework of testable quantitative models with quantifiable confidence levels. To claim that it's all a waste is stupid. Far from 'wise' it's making excuses for your own ignorance.

[sbergman27]

@tammas789 What's to explain about fractals? Fractals are graphs of nonlinear dynamical systems. Using them, we can reduce what might at first seem random into a simpler set of rules.Thus the seemingly infinite complexity of, say, the Mandelbrot Set can be expressed completely as:

"All 'c' for which 'Zₙ+₁ = Zₙ + c' remains bounded."

For 'infinities', I'll refer you to the illuminating work of Georg Cantor. You claim you 'graduated in math'. Where? How could you not know these things?

(cont'd...)

[tammas789]

ok mate well done but explain fractals, we can observe around us? we have math but we haven't got yet the philosophy for comprehending, and more, we haven't got experiments for it, that's what I was pointing at, it's looking like we can go forever and never reach end. if you can explain infinity you win :D

[sbergman27]

@tammas789 Briefly, the Scientific Method is about cycles of Hypothesis->Experiment->Theory­->Hypothesis. It doesn't "prove" but is very good at rejecting false hypotheses. Theories which consistently survive experiment accrue confidence.

QM survives every experiment applied. The uncertainty between related measurements is inherent & not procedural. Position or velocity can be known precisely. Just not both. The relation is specified precisely by ΔpΔv≥ħ/2. This may be helpful:

tinyurlDOTcom/k9cze

[tammas789]

@sbergman27 I'm not a physicist but graduated math, and mate I was only general about it, but so far as i know bout phys. is we dont know all is just prediction but not fact.based on theoretical math, nothing else, we dont know where electron actually is. it is so small place so we havent got yet certain tools to measure it, so pls dont spend your valuable time on me but on developing this items to be certain.moron

[sbergman27]

@tammas789 My advice to you would be to study some physics. Then you'll have a better foundation regarding what we know, how we know it, & what sorts of questions it makes sense to ask. Until you learn some actual science you're just spouting drivel in mystical sounding terms. QM isn't just random strangeness. It's a system with definite rules which makes definite, testable predictions. What you're selling is just another silly religion. This as as much time as I'll waste on you. Get a life.

[tammas789]

@sbergman27 around 2.5 thousand yrs in tibet was born child and then happened all possible mysteries. those figures said a way before QM about uncertainty and how life works, but imagine this: we are really just a bubble and that bubble is part of a bigger bubble! which we can't ever understand whole design, ever never ! it is just throwing money in to dump. i'm sorry to say that but we are to small, in first place we have to consume galaxy energy and then we can do predictions over universe