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Mart

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Everything posted by Mart

  1. Why do you use the word "appear"? To me "appears" is a somewhat weasily word in the context of the age of the universe. Are you hinting that the theory from which this result is derived is dodgy or that the theory is OK but the results are dodgy or both or something else? I hope this doesn't sound too picky and pedantic but I find certain words (perception, evolution, quality, appears) to be used so casually that they obscure meaning.
  2. The fact is, we don't know what happened when we go too far back in time.... How far is too far?
  3. I've frequently seen what appear to be rays of light passing through gaps in clouds. These always diverge fron the sun's position. But since the sun is so far away it's effectively a point source so what makes the rays not parallel?
  4. Isn't that like saying "I move using my legs therefore moving is made out of legs"?
  5. What if the "thing" moves by a wave-like motion. When it's not moving it's size is at a minimum. Think of a worm or an amoeba.
  6. You forget to mention that your trousers would be ripped and you'd probably have sore knees (and elbows).
  7. I put it badly. How come we can see into space but we can't see into time.
  8. How come we can see space but we can't see time?
  9. Thanks for the link 5614. So since particles like electrons are considered to have no volume (point particles) it's not easy to say how they can be spinning. Nevertheless QM uses the notion of spin as angular momentum to describe the behaviour of the electron. Sounds to me like a dodgy accounting device but if it delivers the goods who cares!
  10. Both states of what? Answer :spin. But if spin is not your everyday spin then what is it?
  11. My understanding is that QM is a tool for calculating outcomes of certain types of systems. QM has nothing scientific to say about what the systems are like apart from its mathematical constructs. In this way QM is close in spirit to the idea of a hypothesis as it was used by the church ar the time of Galileo. Roughly, hypotheses were useful calculating devices but said nothing about the true nature of systems.
  12. Do you mean that it's spinning permanently and when we measure the spin we get the answer 1/2?
  13. Consider it considered. It seems like you're saying that the particle has no spin while it is not being measured. If so, how does the wave function "give" the particle a spin?
  14. . . . . understands well that these exist? What do you mean?
  15. I've had a number of cats and they have all shown strange behaviour where they appear to be literally seeing images that we can't. Their whole body language takes on the condition of being alert to something in their environment. I think projection is a useful way to think about perception. Certain illusions - bent stick in water and misplacement of fast moving planes using the sound data show that there is a naive perceptual framework in us that is unaware of the way in which data is transferred to us.
  16. You mean the edges as we define them from our position in observational spacetime. But from the point of view of an equivalent observer "at the edge" of the universe it was this region which was expanding the most rapidly. But there is no local evidence HERE NOW of the expansion that they are detecting.
  17. Please take non-scientific discussions elsewhere.
  18. Quantum Mechanics is a computational strategy to predict the outcomes of certain types of event.
  19. Mart

    Athiest...

    If God made it possible for his/her existance to be provable then find a way of doing so.
  20. I take it that the you in your quote is your way of saying that there is no possibility of decidiing by experiment that there is a difference. What experiment/experiments was/were performed to reach this result? Can I replicate it/them. Details please . . .
  21. Read David Deutsch "The Fabric of Reality". He's much better at crazy ideas than Brian Greene.
  22. If you were living several centuries ago I bet there would be people around who would say that epicycles was the way to go. Challenge the Copenhagan convention. There are at least eight different interpretations of quantum theory as a physical theory (not as a computing device).
  23. Systems can be observed over periods of time and patterns can be established. Predictions can be made. Further observation can reveal the accuracy of the predictions. These "experiments" rely on repeatability. OK? I think you're confused about "observations over time". There are two times to talk about when we're observing. The first and obvious time is that spent by us observing aspects, features, happenings of the universe. So in a fifty year period we can say that we observed this, that or the other. This may be what you mean by "observation of a system over time" But there is a second time involved and that is the time of origin of the data that we access. It tells us only about past patterns. For example, there were (not are) as many ancient galaxies per unit volume of space as there were (not are) less ancient ones. (I have to keep emphasing the distinction between are and were because you just don't seem to get it.) But that tells us nothing about the density of galaxies now unless we assume that the pattern persists. We must rely on the fiirst type of time to decide this. The same goes for expansion. You may bleat that there is no reason to believe that such patterns won't persist but the universe is not constrained by your reasoning. Only time and observation will decide the issue.
  24. If they do "bud" off each other then they can't be totally seperate. What if you could choose to "navigate" into another parallel universe?
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