Strange

I have searched the paper and the "paths of desire" news article about this and can't find any reference to a hydrogen atom. I'm not aware of any particular conundrum around that. It does not disregard the mass. The mass is crucial. For one thing, the mass defines the wavelenght. For another, the reason the electron is stable but the muon isn't is because of mass. No. It is a concrete example of a change of state of a qubit. It was pretty clear to me from reading the article and the abstract of the paper that they were not talking about physical paths. And I have no expertise in this subject. (Of course, the concept of abstract state spaces is something I am very familiar with from my work as an engineer.)

As he risks injuring them (eye damage) I wonder if using them like this is legal?

No. When you open the box the cat is dead. This has already been observed (by the camera). No.

Yes. Because she experiences less time (has aged less) than her twin on Earth. If she is travelling tangentially to the pulsar, then she is orbiting it (1), in which case she is accelerating continuously (2). Which accounts for the difference. 1) If she were travelling in a straight line then her velocity would only be tangential for an instant. Before that she would be getting closer and after that she would be getting further away 2) Strictly speaking, in GR she is not accelerating but the stationary twin on Earth is.

Do you mean in those "egg shaped" images? As the Milky Way runs roughly east-west across the sky, I think it it will be roughly towards the left or right of the image, or maybe into or out of the plane of the image...

The Planck distance is just a unit of measurement. It is based on universal constants rather than arbitrary human things like the length of the King's arm. As such, it doesn't change. So, yes, as the universe expands the number of parsecs, kilometres, furlongs and Planck units between distant object increases. I don't think that the Planck length is indivisible. I think that string theory and the various theories that describe space as "quantised" work at much smaller scales than the Planck length. But this touches on the big problem in unifying relativity (expanding space) and quantum level things. For general relativity to work mathematically, space must be smooth and continuous. To describe things at the quantum level, it is not smooth. This makes it impossible to combine the two theories. Either "space is expanding" or "more space is being created" are reasonable analogies. They are both misleading by suggesting that space is "stuff" which can be created or stretched. What is really changing is geometry: the distance between things (whatever you measure it in).

You seem to be confusing "theory" and "informal discussion". These are quite different things. (And Einstein never stated that gravitation is an illusion.) Er, no. It is the way we perceive the curvature of space time.

Maybe. If so, I would have expected there to be major headlines (remember what happened when it was thought that there were superluminal neutrinos?) As there haven't been (and based on your other posts) I assume this isn't true.

Whatever. It still works.

This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloch_sphere 1 It is not filled with anything, it is a mathematical abstraction. Because it is a convenient way of visualising the values. If you unable to read and understand the paper, then I can't help you because I don't understand it either. "Paths of desire" was a METAPHOR in a news report. It has nothing to do with this experiment. IT HAS NO MEANING. I assume a change in energy. But I don't really understand it. Of the system they are using: "The qubit consists of two aluminum paddles connected by a double-angle-evaporated aluminum SQUID deposited on double-side-polished silicon." It's all in the paper. "Paths of desire" was a METAPHOR in a news report. It has nothing to do with this experiment. IT HAS NO MEANING. They are trajectories in an abstract state space. Maybe you just need to accept that this is beyond you.

That just isn't true (this experiment has been discussed in another thread). The experimental results are as predicted by quantum theory. "When we looked at the data, we saw that the theorists were right." http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27133.aspx How can an interpretation be wrong? It is just an analogy to attempt to explain theory. Apparently not.

The faster and slower ticking rates would not be matched. The travelling twin has seen the same number of ticks in less time so, on average, more ticks per unit time.

I'm not sure what your point is. Both mass and energy contribute to gravitation. So, for example, a hot object will have more (a tiny amount more) gravitational mass than when it is cold, because of the kinetic energy of the atoms. I think we all agree on that. Don't we?

This mapping of the changing quantum state onto a sphere is what created the circular paths you are talking about. Sorry, I have no idea what that means. Gout? Acute inflammatory arthritis> It is a convenient way of representing the changing quantum state: http://comp.uark.edu/~jgeabana/blochapps/index.html Spherical because the values of the quantum state can be represented as a pair of angles, which are therefore equivalent to polar coordinates. They are NOT trajectories in space.

As far as I understand it, all interpretations are equally valid and "right". They are all just human-level attempts to describe what the math says. I do quite like the relational interpretation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Relational_quantum_mechanics

That's cheating: "Is there life on Mars?" "There is now!"

I don't there is anything to be embarrassed about, if you don't understand this. I certainly don't. More reading on this confirms what I initially thought. The (roughly spherical) trajectories shown are not positions in space. They are a mapping of the values of the quantum state to a spherical coordinate system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloch_sphere

Yes, I don't like them! Like all analogies, they are a necessary evil for communicating the basic ideas. And they appear to be useful to philosophers and even physicists. But, as far as I can tell, they don't represent any sort of "reality," they are just interpretations of the theory - attempts to explain it in terms that make sense to humanoid apes. But there is no real reason why it should make sense...

That would only be true if the particles had sufficient kinetic energy to leave Earth. In general, as you say, that is only true for neutrinos (which don't carry much energy). You might like this analysis: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16787636 One factor they take into account is the extra mass due to global warming.

Why would anyone take your cartoons seriously? Even if they weren't produced by someone who has a bias and little understanding of physics, they are still cartoons with no evidentiary value. You might as well ask why someone doesn't use the ability of Bugs Bunny to run off a cliff without falling to build a flying machine.

That's Lubos Motl. (From Pilsen) As these are both interpretations (analogies to explain) the same underlying theory, they can't really be incompatible. (Well, apart from the fact you can only choose one interpretation at a time.) They are arbitrary philosophical choices. I don't like either (any) of them.

There isn't much detail in either the abstract or the article but it is fairly clear that they are not measuring the paths of photons. I guess they are electrons, but I really don't know. Things move in a straight line if they are in free space and not acted upon by other forces. In this case, it sounds as if they are using electrons contained within a "quantum well" (which I guess is what the article means by "artificial atom"). Therefore they are not free to ravel in straight lines. Then they measured the paths as these particles moved from one energy state to another. All mass curves space time (that is why we stay on the surface of the Earth and the Earth orbits the Sun). But that has nothing to do with this experiment. It was not a simulation, it was a measurement (well, a large number of measurements). Just imagine, if you had posted this in the appropriate physics section, you might have someone who understands this stuff explaining it ... I imagine many of them avoid "Speculations".

Yes.

I am not disagreeing with that. Energy is clearly equivalent to mass. But linear velocity does not simply add gravitation in the same way.

I think you will need to be within a few inches of the source, at that frequency.