Kygron

Would it be possible to "rig" the formulas in a way that the wave function does not collapse, but that our observation is of only one state? I guesss I'm asking how important the phenomenon is for our current understanding.

Well, at least it looks like you're trying to help now, and that site is definatly interesting. But it still has very little to do with what I was trying to ask people for help with. This is the relativity forum, it deals with gravity and math and lightspeed and all the special effects that Einstien opened our eyes to. That map is more cosmology and astrophysics, dealing with stars and galaxys and telescopes and measuring reality. The site is probably worth its own thread in that forum. What I'm trying to do is a thought experiment. It's all pictures in your head nd calculations on paper. My problem is that while I have the thoughts in my head, I don't know any calculations for my paper, so I'm asking for help with that.

Sorry to post on an old topic, but I just read a paper that remended me of alot of what was said. This paper is written for a non-expert audience, which means I understood about a third of it Parts of it describe how a black hole evaporates. It loses mass at an excellerating rate, so it may seem to explode. Then when it gets smaller it slows down and eventually stops evaporating. Reguarding what I had said earier about all collisions creating a black hole, the paper sais that the uncertainty principal usually prevents the particles from getting that close. However there is a quick reference to someone who said that all particles may be black holes, something I was considering when I originally posted. Honestly I came up with the idea myself, but the reference is for a paper 20 years ago!

"extremely relavent"??? That link sent me to images of extrasolar planets. As you see I stated that I didn't want that type of thing, I also stated what I did want to hear: Maybe you're misinterpreting my title. I tryed to edit it, but to no avail.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but the way I heard it the child is essentially a parasite that the womb is designed not to rid itself of. The blood of the two is even filtered so that it doesn't intermingle! Yes the womb is a perfect enviorment, but it's like a jungle is the perfect enviorment for a (er... jungle creature), it can't live in the desert, but no one considers the jungle to have created it. Well, yeah, but most members of this discussion have agreed NOT to consider anything before conception to be human. Your metaphore was about a possible human, I suggested you look at it from the point of view that it was human, now you've just extended it out of the realm of discussion. You're free to do that, but the way I see it you're just repeating the metaphore!

Tycho is correct on this, I suppose I could have chosen a better word. I'm changing it in the original post.

mustang, this is extremely rude. If you'd like to share something you've found start a NEW thread like I did.

I was tempted to put this in the Cosmology forum, but I would prefer theoretical critisism to empirical I believe. I'm going to "draw" a simple model of the universe. It's a circle. So, if you will, imagine a circle and call it the universe. This is a universe in ONE dimention, the outer curve of the circle. The actual universe has more dimentions, you may picture them as you like, but they are all tangential to the plane that the circle exists in. This circle is a moment in (space)time. If you were to freeze-frame the universe this is what it would look like. More importantly, I would like to add that the big bang happened a the center of the circle. As the universe expanded, the radius of the circle increased and all matter moved away from all other matter. Up for discussion is: what does general relativity say about this picture? Also, I realize this is not a "flat" universe (or is it???). Can anyone give me a picture of the big bang exploding into a flat one?

lol I thought this was relativity. Well, for one, clocks can have different timing methods. They may have been designed to "tick" at differnent rates intentionally. They would still keep accurate time. For another, how do you know they're keeping accurate time? In my experience most clocks have to be reset often. Well, maybe once a week, check them after an hour or so and you wouldn't notice that they're off.

This is an interesting metaphor, I'll give two different answers. 1 This doesn't apply. A woman doesn't make a child, a child makes itself inside a woman. Therefor whether or not she likes it, it WILL be finished (barring catastrophy). 2 Of course! Extend your thinking a bit and imagine that you're talking about a two-year-old. Then shudder at the alternative.

I think being in this "entanglement" thread is not helping me any. Anyway I found some applets here that show some simple waveforms, etc. It starts with duality showing waveforms. A later chapter is about superposition, and they use the SAME waveforms as examples. They just use a different interpretation of the formulas to represent a probability distribution. This is kinda what I was trying to say before. I particularly like the Young slit experiment applet (first one after the intro I believe), where they show individule photons randomly striking a target and ending up producing an interference patern. Too bad the explainations of the physics starts out simple but gets simpler as they go.

K, 24, present on 3 fingers, missing on index

Might I add some phrases that may help out? undeveloped human - completely recognized as human, but in early stages unborn human - undeveloped human contained within the mother's body potential human - group of cells that have the potential to become human without "unnatural" aid failed potential human - group of cells that no longer have the potential to become human without "unnatural" aid complete potential human - as opposed to: partial potential human - a sperm or egg potentially complete potential human - sperm and egg exist inside the same body and then you can continue to add similar qualifiers all you like using this terminology, I'll say that people seem to be trying to find a dividing line between potential human and undeveloped human. While I lack specific medical knowledge, this seems to be a VERY difficult task. But is it even worth it? Since we seem to value human life with a passion uncomparable to that of any other form of life, why are we looking for a dividing line AFTER a potential human exists? I say if humans are so important then any potential human should be considered "human" and not just a "group of cells". There's a nice dividing line at the point of complete potential human (conception), let's use that!

Ok, it looks like you misunderstood me. What I meant was the opposite: that the duality exists because superposition/entanglement is a fact. This is why I COULD segregate the conditions, s/e could give rise to the duality and also could give rise to spin entanglement. Again, only if I've got things right.

I think the simplest form of immortality is if the aging process was ended at adulthood. That might take considerable resources, or it might only take a simple "anti-ageing-pill" twice a day. To me this sounds like a line of kings. "Immortality" being that the king teaches his son everything, and the son eventually becomes the next king and repeats the process. I'm sure your senario has in this case happened in the past. But think about now. There are far fewer powerfull kings in the world. Empires crumble, no matter how many defences are in place. And what happens next? Do you think that people will continue using that pipe? No, they'll get a plumber to fix it! Or, perhaps pressure will build up behind the grime and eventually force it out. A clogged pipe is useless and will be discarded or replaced. And once you're dead the next person will come along and re-make it. You end up proloonging the inevitable and the knowledge of why you did it dies with you. Except that the stability you talk about I call growth and change, and the decline you talk about I call stability. An immortal leader opressing immortal followers for all eternity is STABLE! Mortal leaders being overthrown year in and year out by citizens who want better is not stable, it's CHANGE. Can you now tell me that you want stability? You want to live out your boring life doing the same job because you're being opressed? I don't. I'll welcome change. Change can come from mortality, but it can also come from personal growth. An immortal will have plenty of time to change as time passes, correct their faults, become the person they've always wanted to be, and then repeat that process many times. Change can also come from knowledge and technology. Both of these would bennefit from immortal beings, as long as there are people willing to accept new ideas. I'll agree that sudden immortality would have a major impact on human society, but not that negative effects are bound to continue forever. Eventually ways will be discovered to deal with it and peacefull growth can take over. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but since people will be immortal, eventually they'll remember the good times and the past troubles will be an old fading memory.

Well, I agree that it looks pretty. Easier to remember too. But are you leaving out info? Is the fact that the constant is based on c important? Why have a "physics" type formula that doesn't use "physics" type values? If all constants are left out and all you're left with is a number, why not just set that number to 1 as well and call it a natural unit?

If you've just gotten started then it may not be a good idea to jump into personal info My question was a direct answer to my sig, as you may have guessed. I personally had no clue as to what all that math was that you posted, I just tryed to look through it and assume it was usefull to someone who knows those topics.

Why would I want to use these units when "my" units work just as well?

The photons would observe you (if that's even possible) as being completely dialated in space and time. You would be 2-D and not feel the effects of time. In fact, this is how photons observe ALL matter. Since photons observe everything to be identical and unchanging, it's not really a reference frame with any use!

As a "non-expert-physicist" I'll consider myself qualified to answer What you've missed is right in front of you. The name of the theory, "relativity". You ask how you determine if the spaceship is moving, well, you only do that "relative" to something else. If you watch a spaceship moving past your planet, than the clock you can see through one of the windows will be "observed" to tick slower. As long as you use the words "relative" and "observed" than you can reverse it just fine. An "observed" clock on the surface of the planet passing by your spaceship will also tick slower. But if there's no planet to measure your speed relative to, then there's no speed to worry about anyway! If you shine a light from that rocket, it will move ahead at 1.0c, "relative" to you. Someone on the planet watching you will "observe" you moving at 0.5c, will "observe" your light moving at 1.0c. They'll also "observe" your ship shortened and your clocks run slow, so they'll excuse you if your math is messed up when you think the light is moving too fast. There are formulas for adding speeds of different observers together, so that 0.6c + 0.6c < 1.0c, but keep in mind that these really are speeds of DIFFERENT observers and so they won't add up in the traditional sense.

Thanks, good info, however, I'm still interested in how I may be right or wrong. So, if you ignore spin (and any other property that would have produced the same response), how does my statement hold up?

I've been considering the resent posts. Is this related to the wave/particle duality of light (or any particle). I mean, is superposition a way of explaining the wave properties while maintaining a particle viewpoint? Just as a "wave-packet" is the explaination of the particle properties while maintaining a wave viewpoint? I realize that if I'm correct the mathimatics of both would be identical, just easier to perform depending of the circumstances.

This is the first time I've heard of these units in my (non-) experience. I had questioned myself why people didn't just set c=1 to ease calculations! Please elaborate a bit for me if you don't mind, if there's anything to say that is, lol.

Before I go on I thought I'd mention a book I read recently. "On Intellegenge", http://www.OnIntelligence.org. It formed the basis of my current thinking about our brain. Since reading it i've expanded my model quite a bit. For the most part I agree, this should have been said (and it was many times ), but then we should have moved on. That's why I posted several questions. But since you've brought it up again, I'll explain why I think it's not as important for the topic. Consider digital video. 2-4 hour on a DVD, but that's highly compressed data and the screen barely takes up the same field of view as your eyes have. How many hours in a human lifetime? how much video data is this? I would NEVER believe you if you said our brain can store it all. But you don't remember it all! That's why it's useless outside of CompSci. Look closely at something right now. You'll see a detail that you've never noticed before. Are you telling me that if you imagined that thing and concentrated on it that you would have noticed the detail in the image in your mind.... thirty years later? Our brain doesn't work like a video camera. It compresses all the data it gets. You remember, "that's a door", and "my door is green", and "it's got such-and-such a design", but you don't remember the image of the door. Later when you recall the image, your mind creates a new one as a composite of all these values. Some memories ARE nearly "pixel-perfect" but those are usually the ones that you've seen many times before and each time saw a new detail. When you aren't paying attention to details, you don't remember them. People can get lost in a city because "all the streets look the same!" when in reality there're big differences. Excuse me for rambling, what I'm trying to say is that the brain has a very limited image memory, BUT it's quite efficient and is able to make excellent use of it for common situations. We've determined that the brain has a limited amount of neurons. We've determined that the brain can remember a surprizing amount of information. Instead of trying to force those two determinations together, let's focus on HOW it happens. The brain has a very efficient data-compression mechinism. Is it enough? Do you remember archived memories with the same clarity as yesterday's memories? Does the mechinism ever fail? Can it be improved? How complex is it? Is it the same for every person? see? More new questions!!!