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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 19, 2014 0:52:01 GMT -5
That's very cool zd, and pretty-much very up to date physics in the mind of many physicists. I have been reading a new book, Trespassing On Einstein's Lawn, A Father a Daughter the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything, 2014, by writer and journalist on physics named Amanda Gefter. At the age of fifteen in a Chinese restaurant, Amanda's father asked her the question, "How would you define nothing"? They began to explore this question together and eventually Amanda became an editor and writer for the magazine New Scientist. When she was 21 the two of them crashed a physics conference and talked to physics pioneer John Wheeler. Wheeler was just about the most out there physicist ever (he coined the terms black hole and wormhole). He is famous for the phrase "It from bit". From this he means that the material world arises out of information. From their questions Wheeler made two statements about the nature of reality that kept them searching for the meaning for years, and is essentially the central aspect of the book, what are the basic constituents of reality, what's invariant. First, "The universe is a self-excited circuit". Second, "The boundary of a boundary is zero". I have about 60 pages left in the book. Up unto now and I don't expect it, there has been no mention of God. For many years toward the end of his life (Wheeler died just a few years ago, in his 90's) he kept exploring the idea that the universe came from the observer, observation is somehow what brought something out of nothing. Amanda and her father eventually talked to several of Wheeler's students trying to figure out what Wheeler meant by his statements, but they didn't know.....they went off in different directions. Eventually they learned that Wheeler kept very detailed notebooks, dated observations and conversations. They finally tracked down the notebooks, about forty, in the library of The Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Penn. and spent about a week going through them. He never reached any conclusions, his long-time secretary wrote down his observations in a notebook, up until the last year of his life, when he could no longer write. A doodle that appeared numerous times in his notebooks was a U (for universe) with a eye on one side looking at the other side. It's a very excellent and entertaining book, but parts way beyond my knowledge. I'll report back on it when I finish. (BTW, Joseph Chilton Pearce is one of my favorite writers. I have all of his books and have read all except not-finishing two, read Crack in the Cosmic Egg back in the '70's. About twenty years ago I heard him speak at a college in Hickory, NC)........ sdp That's precisely how I see it, and as far as I know, is the way non-duality sees it. What I don't understand is how we can all agree and still disagree so strongly. Yea.....well......it's late. I'll put my three-line position in a nutshell back in my signature, tomorrow. I have absolutely no problem with non-duality.......except.....later....too tired......tonight....... sdp
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Post by enigma on Mar 19, 2014 2:18:57 GMT -5
That's precisely how I see it, and as far as I know, is the way non-duality sees it. What I don't understand is how we can all agree and still disagree so strongly. Yea.....well......it's late. I'll put my three-line position in a nutshell back in my signature, tomorrow. I have absolutely no problem with non-duality.......except.....later....too tired......tonight....... sdp I'm not talking about nonduality, as such. I'm not some kind of a nonduality groupie, I'm a 'what in blazes is really going on' groupie. I'm talking about the idea that consciousness is creative, which is what it means to say that observation brings something out of nothing. After that statement, it's remarkable how little science is required. One can ask 'how' questions for a long time without noticing that the question and the answer are the same.
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Post by laughter on Mar 19, 2014 5:21:22 GMT -5
Yea.....well......it's late. I'll put my three-line position in a nutshell back in my signature, tomorrow. I have absolutely no problem with non-duality.......except.....later....too tired......tonight....... sdp I'm not talking about nonduality, as such. I'm not some kind of a nonduality groupie, I'm a 'what in blazes is really going on' groupie. I'm talking about the idea that consciousness is creative, which is what it means to say that observation brings something out of nothing. After that statement, it's remarkable how little science is required. One can ask 'how' questions for a long time without noticing that the question and the answer are the same. Asking "to be or not to be?" answers it. ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png)
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 19, 2014 7:50:13 GMT -5
Yea.....well......it's late. I'll put my three-line position in a nutshell back in my signature, tomorrow. I have absolutely no problem with non-duality.......except.....later....too tired......tonight....... sdp I'm not talking about nonduality, as such. I'm not some kind of a nonduality groupie, I'm a 'what in blazes is really going on' groupie. I'm talking about the idea that consciousness is creative, which is what it means to say that observation brings something out of nothing. After that statement, it's remarkable how little science is required. One can ask 'how' questions for a long time without noticing that the question and the answer are the same. This is just about the most central question in quantum physics, it's actually what I decided to write about next after reading zd's post last night. I'm going to describe the double-slit experiment. Richard Feynman said that you can bring all questions about quantum physics back to this experiment. He basically said that if you got stuck describing something in quantum physics all you had to do was say, "Ya know, it's like the double-slit experiment". BTW, Feynman was a student of John Wheeler who I wrote about yesterday. He's one of the greatest physicists of the century, and quite a curious character also. If you go back to the Challenger Space shuttle crash in the '80's, Feynman was asked to be on the committee to investigate why the crash occurred. He chased it down to some rubber O-rings which the low temperature of the morning of launch caused not to function properly. (He realized later that he was actually gently led to this fact by I think it was an Air Force General connected with the investigation committee. There was an excellent made for TV movie on this a few months ago on the Science channel with William Hurt as Feynman. Also BTW, Feynman wrote two very good autobiographies, What Do You Care What Other People Think (at the end of it he describes his experience in John Lilly's isolation tank, [not just a John Lilly isolation tank...but John Lilly's (personal) tank] he actually had an OOBE but his own psychology couldn't admit that that's what actually happened) and The Further Adventures of a Curious Character (or some such wording). In it he describes the Challenger investigation. .......Next post coming...... sdp
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 19, 2014 9:21:06 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality:
Going back to the time of Newton there has been discussion about whether light is a wave or a particle. Newton's opinion was that light consists of particles. I think it was the early 1800's that it was thought this question was settled by a guy named Young. He set up the first double slit experiment. This experiment was set up to show if the receiving mechanism showed a sharp edge or a fuzzy edge. A sharp edge would show light was a particle, fuzzy edge would show light consists of waves. After this for about a hundred years everybody knew that light consists of waves, until Einstein came along.
With the 1905 Photo-effect paper already mentioned, Einstein showed that light consists of particles which later came to be called photons. When you put energy on to a metal plate, energy came off of it, and Einstein showed that this energy was a photon, a particle. Again, this is the paper which later earned Einstein his Nobel Prize, so at least by 1918 this effect was more confirmed than Relativity (which was finally confirmed during a Solar eclipse in 1919 showing that the gravity of the sun actually curves space, physicists being able to confirm that stars beside the sun are displaced in space in relation to where that are when they are not adjacent to the sun, a total eclipse being necessary to do this, because you can't see stars adjacent to the sun, unless it dark as in solar eclipse dark).
OK, so sometimes light seems to be a wave, sometimes light seems to be a particle. Physicists decided to set up an experiment to prove once and for all whether light is a particle or a wave. They went back top a version of Young's experiment. The set-up. You have a mechanism that can fire one single photon. You have a steel plate with two holes in it set up so that you can open and close the holes. On the other side of the metal plate you have a receiving mechanism. If you close one hole and fire a series of single photons, you get a pattern on the measuring devise sort of like a firing range target with obvious holes in the target, buckshot-type pattern. This shows that light consists of particles. However, if you open both slits and fire a series of single photons, you get what's called an interference pattern on the receiving device, patterns of clear and dark. This shows light is a wave, the dark places where the crests of the waves overlap and the clear places where the waves cancel each other out, crests and troughs canceling each other. But you're firing single photons. With both slits open a single photon is somehow going through both slits.
So, open one slit, light is a particle, open two slits, light is a wave. Light seems it can be one or the other depending upon the experiment. Now, just as an aside, this still stumps physicists, but it gets more weird.
If you put a measuring device at the holes which do not interfere with the photons in any way, even if you have both slits open, you get the buckshot pattern at the receiving device showing light is a particle. This shows light went through only one of the slits. OK, both slits open, the experiment just as described above, the only difference is that you put a device in place at the slits trying to see which hole the photon goes through, you get the buckshot pattern. With the "observer" present with both slits open, light is a particle. With the "observer" absent still with both slits open, light is a wave. Physicists still don't understand what's going on here.
It gets more weird. Even if you don't observe both holes, you put your measuring device only at one of the slits, you still get light being a particle-buckshot pattern. It's like the photon knows somehow if you are trying to see it. If you look at it, it goes through only one of the holes leaving a buckshot pattern. If you don't look at it, it goes through both holes leaving an interference pattern. It doesn't matter if you move your measuring device from one slit to the other. This means that the photon might go through the single slit that you are not measuring, how does it know that you have a measuring device at the other hole?
And it even gets more weird. Wheeler had the idea of putting the measuring device on the other side of the slits, on the receiving side of the slits, the target side but before the photon reaches the target. This is called the delayed measurement experiment. You have both slits open, you send in the single photons, no measuring device, you get the interference pattern showing light is a wave, showing the photon went through both slits. Now you send in the single photons, let them pass through the two open slits, but then insert your measuring device. Guess what happens? Interference pattern or buckshot pattern? You get the buckshot pattern, yea, weird. Somehow the photon knows that you are going to look at it after it passes through the slits. If seems as if the photon is sending a message back in time to itself as it passes through the two open slits, hey, you have to go through only one slit because they are trying to trick us by measuring us (me, now) after you (me back in time) go through the slits.
All this is why Richard Feynman said that if anybody says that they understand quantum physics, they don't. Back in the '20's when they were developing quantum physics, I think it was Bohr and another guy walking along together one night and one says to the other, How can nature be this crazy? Here's a quote from Amanda Gefter, "Quantum theory was a little more complicated (than Relativity, note sdp). All the physics books I read told me not to feel discouraged if my brain blew a fuse while trying to comprehend it. If quantum theory seems bat-sh*t crazy, they'd say, don't worry. It is". pg 38
The double-slit experiment has been done with many different "bullets" besides photons. It has even been done with groupings of atoms. I think it was Louis deBrogle in the '20's that showed that everything has a wave form, all matter and energy.
And all this is why some physicists, some on the What the Bleep Do We Know? film, think that quantum weirdness is why consciousness can create reality.
sdp
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 9:54:38 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality: Going back to the time of Newton there has been discussion about whether light is a wave or a particle. Newton's opinion was that light consists of particles. I think it was the early 1800's that it was thought this question was settled by a guy named Young. He set up the first double slit experiment. This experiment was set up to show if the receiving mechanism showed a sharp edge or a fuzzy edge. A sharp edge would show light was a particle, fuzzy edge would show light consists of waves. After this for about a hundred years everybody knew that light consists of waves, until Einstein came along. With the 1905 Photo-effect paper already mentioned, Einstein showed that light consists of particles which later came to be called photons. When you put energy on to a metal plate, energy came off of it, and Einstein showed that this energy was a photon, a particle. Again, this is the paper which later earned Einstein his Nobel Prize, so at least by 1918 this effect was more confirmed than Relativity (which was finally confirmed during a Solar eclipse in 1919 showing that the gravity of the sun actually carves space, physicists being able to confirm that stars beside the sun are displaced in space in relation to where that are when they are not adjacent to the sun, a total eclipse being necessary to do this). OK, so sometimes light seems to be a wave, sometimes light seems to be a particle. Physicists decided to set up an experiment to prove once and for all whether light is a particle or a wave. They went back top a version of Young's experiment. The set-up. You have a mechanism that can fire one single photon. You have two a steel plate with two holes in it set up so that you can open and close the holes. On the other side of the metal plate you have a receiving mechanism. If you close one hole and fire a series of single photons, you get a pattern on the measuring devise sort of like a firing range target with obvious holes in the target, buckshot-type pattern. This shows that light consists of particles. However, if you open both slits and fire a series of single photons, you get what's called a diffraction pattern on the receiving device, patterns of clear and dark. This shows light is a wave, the dark places where the crests of the waves overlap and the clear spots where the waves cancel each other out, crests and troughs canceling each other. But you're firing single photons. With both slits open a single photon is somehow going through both slits. So, open one slit, light is a particle, open two slits, light is a wave. Light seems it can be one or the other depending upon the experiment. Now, just as an aside, this still stumps physicists, but it gets more weird. If you put a measuring device at the holes which do not interfere with the photons in any way, even if you have both slits open, you get the buckshot pattern at the receiving device showing light is a particle. This shows light went through only one of the slits. OK, both slits open, the experiment just as described above, the only difference is that you put a device in place at the slits trying to see which hole the photon goes through, you get the buckshot pattern. With the "observer" present with both slits open, light is a particle. With the "observer" absent still with both slits open, light is a wave. Physicists still don't understand what's going on here. It gets more weird. Even if you don't observe both holes, you put your measuring device only at one of the slits, you still get light being a particle buckshot pattern. It's like the photon knows somehow if you are trying to see it. If you look at it, it goes through only one of the holes leaving a buckshot pattern. If you don't look at it, it goes through both holes leaving a diffraction pattern. It doesn't matter if you move your measuring device from one slit to the other it doesn't matter. This means that the photon might go through the single slit that you are not measuring, how does it know that you have a measuring device at the other hole? And it even gets more weird. Wheeler had the idea of putting the measuring device on the other side of the slits, on the receiving side of the slits, the target side but before the photon reaches the target. This is called the delayed measurement experiment. You have both slits open, you send in the single photons no measuring device, you get the diffraction pattern showing light is a wave, showing the photon went through both slits. Now you send in the single photons, let them pass through the two open slits, but then insert your measuring device. Guess what happens? Diffraction pattern or buckshot pattern? You get the buckshot pattern, yea, weird. Somehow the photon knows that you are going to look at it after it passes through the slits. If seems as if the photon is sending a message back in time to itself as it passes through the two open slits, hey, you have to go through only one slit because they are trying to trick us by measuring us (me) after you (I back in time) go through the slits. All this is why Richard Feynman said that if anybody says that they understand quantum physics, they don't. Back in the '20's when they were developing quantum physics, I think it was Bohr and another guy walking along together one night and one says to the other, How can nature be this crazy? The double-slit experiment has been done with many different "bullets" besides photons. It has even been done with groupings of atoms. I think it was Louis deBrogle in the '20's that showed that everything has a wave form, all matter and energy. And all this is why some physicists, some on the What the Bleep Do We Know? film, think that quantum weirdness is why consciousness can create reality. sdp Cool post. In my younger days, I was enthused by the prospect of consciousness being able to manipulate matter, but I have grown skeptical. I dont see this interaction happening on the macro level at all, and I'm wary of stories about folks with these alleged abilities.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 10:56:30 GMT -5
Cool post. In my younger days, I was enthused by the prospect of consciousness being able to manipulate matter, but I have grown skeptical. I dont see this interaction happening on the macro level at all, and I'm wary of stories about folks with these alleged abilities. [/quote] Siddhis. tomkenyon.com/siddhisCheck out Jhana, too.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 19, 2014 11:23:27 GMT -5
My view of contemporary physics is somewhat different than what has been posted so far. I understand lots of the basic ideas accepted my physicists, but these days I don't remember much of the math other than basic equations like f=ma, e=mc2, etc. At one time I understood a lot more, but most of it has now faded from my memory banks. My basic interest in physical phenomena was in understanding things like, "What is a subatomic particle, really?", "What can explain the observer paradoxes?", "How can "spooky action at a distance be possible?" (a la Bell's Theorem), "What can explain spiritual 'miracles' such as passing one's hand through a solid object?" (reported in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in many other religious traditions), and so forth. ............/............... Chilton Pearce wrote a book titled, "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg," which dealt with particular issues of non-locality. One of his points, translated into physical terms, is that mind and matter are a unified whole, so there are no inviolable laws of physics. What we call the electromagnetic force fields that prevent our hand from passing through a tabletop are not what they seem. They are ourself, our true self, and mind is capable of altering them through non-local interactivity. It is probablistic, but the odds of passing one's hand through a "solid" piece of rock is not zero, and even quantum mechanics apparently allows for this. I could write a lot more about this, but this at least gives a slightly different perspective upon the usual way of considering these issues. In this sense, "the dime in the football stadium" is seen quite differently--as a field of beingness exhibiting probablistic tendencies that are only mathematically localized. To put it somewhat differently, reality is a superposition of infinite potentiality. An observation collapses the wave function, but only in an intellectual sense. The wave function, itself, is an idea about isness, and isness cannot be grasped by the intellect. IOW, its turtles all the way down. Concerning this post and a couple of recent posts......... About twenty years ago I heard this man speak in public about an experience he had. His name is Wade Taylor. It was at Morningstar Ministries, a highly respected Bible teacher and author of two books, originator of Pinecrest Bible Center in New York, I'm sure it's still open. Now these are not any weird new age people but pretty-much fundamentalist Christians, but they believe in prophecy and healing and such (just painting the background picture). He said that one night he was preaching on a stage and he just walked off the stage right into thin air, walked in an arc on nothing and then walked back on to the stage. I got a copy of the tape of that date of his speaking just so I would have a record of what he actually said. There is no reason he would lie about this, it's seems a pretty stupid tale, reputation-wise and all, if it wasn't true. sdp
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Post by enigma on Mar 19, 2014 12:47:49 GMT -5
I'm not talking about nonduality, as such. I'm not some kind of a nonduality groupie, I'm a 'what in blazes is really going on' groupie. I'm talking about the idea that consciousness is creative, which is what it means to say that observation brings something out of nothing. After that statement, it's remarkable how little science is required. One can ask 'how' questions for a long time without noticing that the question and the answer are the same. Asking "to be or not to be?" answers it. ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png) Well, that is the question, eh? ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png)
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Post by zendancer on Mar 19, 2014 13:44:30 GMT -5
My view of contemporary physics is somewhat different than what has been posted so far. I understand lots of the basic ideas accepted my physicists, but these days I don't remember much of the math other than basic equations like f=ma, e=mc2, etc. At one time I understood a lot more, but most of it has now faded from my memory banks. My basic interest in physical phenomena was in understanding things like, "What is a subatomic particle, really?", "What can explain the observer paradoxes?", "How can "spooky action at a distance be possible?" (a la Bell's Theorem), "What can explain spiritual 'miracles' such as passing one's hand through a solid object?" (reported in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in many other religious traditions), and so forth. ............/............... Chilton Pearce wrote a book titled, "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg," which dealt with particular issues of non-locality. One of his points, translated into physical terms, is that mind and matter are a unified whole, so there are no inviolable laws of physics. What we call the electromagnetic force fields that prevent our hand from passing through a tabletop are not what they seem. They are ourself, our true self, and mind is capable of altering them through non-local interactivity. It is probablistic, but the odds of passing one's hand through a "solid" piece of rock is not zero, and even quantum mechanics apparently allows for this. I could write a lot more about this, but this at least gives a slightly different perspective upon the usual way of considering these issues. In this sense, "the dime in the football stadium" is seen quite differently--as a field of beingness exhibiting probablistic tendencies that are only mathematically localized. To put it somewhat differently, reality is a superposition of infinite potentiality. An observation collapses the wave function, but only in an intellectual sense. The wave function, itself, is an idea about isness, and isness cannot be grasped by the intellect. IOW, its turtles all the way down. Concerning this post and a couple of recent posts......... About twenty years ago I heard this man speak in public about an experience he had. His name is Wade Taylor. It was at Morningstar Ministries, a highly respected Bible teacher and author of two books, originator of Pinecrest Bible Center in New York, I'm sure it's still open. Now these are not any weird new age people but pretty-much fundamentalist Christians, but they believe in prophecy and healing and such (just painting the background picture). He said that one night he was preaching on a stage and he just walked off the stage right into thin air, walked in an arc on nothing and then walked back on to the stage. I got a copy of the tape of that date of his speaking just so I would have a record of what he actually said. There is no reason he would lie about this, it's seems a pretty stupid tale, reputation-wise and all, if it wasn't true. sdp Yes, I like Chilton Pearce's phrase for how the mind covers up non-locality experiences, and hides them from itself--"stable sameness." Many people have non-locality experiences, but later they begin to doubt what happened, and many people who witness non-locality experiences later forget them even though they were rather mind-boggling when they took place. If the preacher walked in mid-air, and it was witnessed, I'd almost guarantee that no one present that day will remember it other than the preacher. Pearce gives some examples of this in his book. The one that I remember was when he was in college and realized that he was momentarily impervious to pain and put out lit cigarettes on his face and eyelids. It was witnessed by his dorm mates, but later no one remembered it. One of my favorite experiments is the thumb against a wall corner bit (the thumb disappears as it enters the eyeball's blind spot, but after a moment, you remove the thumb and watch the wall corners fill in the gap where the blind spot is located). We might want to start a thread in which people describe their own non-locality experiences.
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Post by enigma on Mar 19, 2014 13:45:13 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality: Going back to the time of Newton there has been discussion about whether light is a wave or a particle. Newton's opinion was that light consists of particles. I think it was the early 1800's that it was thought this question was settled by a guy named Young. He set up the first double slit experiment. This experiment was set up to show if the receiving mechanism showed a sharp edge or a fuzzy edge. A sharp edge would show light was a particle, fuzzy edge would show light consists of waves. After this for about a hundred years everybody knew that light consists of waves, until Einstein came along. With the 1905 Photo-effect paper already mentioned, Einstein showed that light consists of particles which later came to be called photons. When you put energy on to a metal plate, energy came off of it, and Einstein showed that this energy was a photon, a particle. Again, this is the paper which later earned Einstein his Nobel Prize, so at least by 1918 this effect was more confirmed than Relativity (which was finally confirmed during a Solar eclipse in 1919 showing that the gravity of the sun actually carves space, physicists being able to confirm that stars beside the sun are displaced in space in relation to where that are when they are not adjacent to the sun, a total eclipse being necessary to do this). OK, so sometimes light seems to be a wave, sometimes light seems to be a particle. Physicists decided to set up an experiment to prove once and for all whether light is a particle or a wave. They went back top a version of Young's experiment. The set-up. You have a mechanism that can fire one single photon. You have two a steel plate with two holes in it set up so that you can open and close the holes. On the other side of the metal plate you have a receiving mechanism. If you close one hole and fire a series of single photons, you get a pattern on the measuring devise sort of like a firing range target with obvious holes in the target, buckshot-type pattern. This shows that light consists of particles. However, if you open both slits and fire a series of single photons, you get what's called a diffraction pattern on the receiving device, patterns of clear and dark. This shows light is a wave, the dark places where the crests of the waves overlap and the clear spots where the waves cancel each other out, crests and troughs canceling each other. But you're firing single photons. With both slits open a single photon is somehow going through both slits. So, open one slit, light is a particle, open two slits, light is a wave. Light seems it can be one or the other depending upon the experiment. Now, just as an aside, this still stumps physicists, but it gets more weird. If you put a measuring device at the holes which do not interfere with the photons in any way, even if you have both slits open, you get the buckshot pattern at the receiving device showing light is a particle. This shows light went through only one of the slits. OK, both slits open, the experiment just as described above, the only difference is that you put a device in place at the slits trying to see which hole the photon goes through, you get the buckshot pattern. With the "observer" present with both slits open, light is a particle. With the "observer" absent still with both slits open, light is a wave. Physicists still don't understand what's going on here. It gets more weird. Even if you don't observe both holes, you put your measuring device only at one of the slits, you still get light being a particle buckshot pattern. It's like the photon knows somehow if you are trying to see it. If you look at it, it goes through only one of the holes leaving a buckshot pattern. If you don't look at it, it goes through both holes leaving a diffraction pattern. It doesn't matter if you move your measuring device from one slit to the other it doesn't matter. This means that the photon might go through the single slit that you are not measuring, how does it know that you have a measuring device at the other hole? And it even gets more weird. Wheeler had the idea of putting the measuring device on the other side of the slits, on the receiving side of the slits, the target side but before the photon reaches the target. This is called the delayed measurement experiment. You have both slits open, you send in the single photons no measuring device, you get the diffraction pattern showing light is a wave, showing the photon went through both slits. Now you send in the single photons, let them pass through the two open slits, but then insert your measuring device. Guess what happens? Diffraction pattern or buckshot pattern? You get the buckshot pattern, yea, weird. Somehow the photon knows that you are going to look at it after it passes through the slits. If seems as if the photon is sending a message back in time to itself as it passes through the two open slits, hey, you have to go through only one slit because they are trying to trick us by measuring us (me) after you (I back in time) go through the slits. All this is why Richard Feynman said that if anybody says that they understand quantum physics, they don't. Back in the '20's when they were developing quantum physics, I think it was Bohr and another guy walking along together one night and one says to the other, How can nature be this crazy? The double-slit experiment has been done with many different "bullets" besides photons. It has even been done with groupings of atoms. I think it was Louis deBrogle in the '20's that showed that everything has a wave form, all matter and energy. And all this is why some physicists, some on the What the Bleep Do We Know? film, think that quantum weirdness is why consciousness can create reality. sdp Cool post. In my younger days, I was enthused by the prospect of consciousness being able to manipulate matter, but I have grown skeptical. I dont see this interaction happening on the macro level at all, and I'm wary of stories about folks with these alleged abilities. Well, if all objects appeared by virtue of your observation of them, which might be interpreted as an implication of the double slit, and schroedengers kitty and the collapse of probability waves, then you would likely admit that consciousness is able to manipulate matter. The problem may be that you want to see it manipulated the way you personally want it to be manipulated, (like maybe levitating a rock) and the formation of matter from consciousness is not personal. That is, you aren't personally in charge of how matter appears because you aren't separate from consciousness as a whole. However, you do have some degree of influence over what happens in your personal domain. What is most personal is your own body, and your consciousness is continually affecting the physical structure of your body. You may have a story about how all that happens involving brains and nervous systems and such.
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Post by laughter on Mar 19, 2014 14:28:53 GMT -5
Asking "to be or not to be?" answers it. ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png) Well, that is the question, eh? ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png) yay verily!
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Post by laughter on Mar 19, 2014 14:37:17 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality: Young's experiment was done in 1895. The version that involved one photon at a time wasn't done until decades after the 1928 "Copenhagen Interpretation" and was first done with electrons some time in the 50's. Have you ever wondered why noone has won the Nobel Prize by answering the question of what, exactly, constitutes a conscious observer?
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Post by laughter on Mar 19, 2014 14:41:45 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality: Going back to the time of Newton there has been discussion about whether light is a wave or a particle. Newton's opinion was that light consists of particles. I think it was the early 1800's that it was thought this question was settled by a guy named Young. He set up the first double slit experiment. This experiment was set up to show if the receiving mechanism showed a sharp edge or a fuzzy edge. A sharp edge would show light was a particle, fuzzy edge would show light consists of waves. After this for about a hundred years everybody knew that light consists of waves, until Einstein came along. With the 1905 Photo-effect paper already mentioned, Einstein showed that light consists of particles which later came to be called photons. When you put energy on to a metal plate, energy came off of it, and Einstein showed that this energy was a photon, a particle. Again, this is the paper which later earned Einstein his Nobel Prize, so at least by 1918 this effect was more confirmed than Relativity (which was finally confirmed during a Solar eclipse in 1919 showing that the gravity of the sun actually carves space, physicists being able to confirm that stars beside the sun are displaced in space in relation to where that are when they are not adjacent to the sun, a total eclipse being necessary to do this). OK, so sometimes light seems to be a wave, sometimes light seems to be a particle. Physicists decided to set up an experiment to prove once and for all whether light is a particle or a wave. They went back top a version of Young's experiment. The set-up. You have a mechanism that can fire one single photon. You have two a steel plate with two holes in it set up so that you can open and close the holes. On the other side of the metal plate you have a receiving mechanism. If you close one hole and fire a series of single photons, you get a pattern on the measuring devise sort of like a firing range target with obvious holes in the target, buckshot-type pattern. This shows that light consists of particles. However, if you open both slits and fire a series of single photons, you get what's called a diffraction pattern on the receiving device, patterns of clear and dark. This shows light is a wave, the dark places where the crests of the waves overlap and the clear spots where the waves cancel each other out, crests and troughs canceling each other. But you're firing single photons. With both slits open a single photon is somehow going through both slits. So, open one slit, light is a particle, open two slits, light is a wave. Light seems it can be one or the other depending upon the experiment. Now, just as an aside, this still stumps physicists, but it gets more weird. If you put a measuring device at the holes which do not interfere with the photons in any way, even if you have both slits open, you get the buckshot pattern at the receiving device showing light is a particle. This shows light went through only one of the slits. OK, both slits open, the experiment just as described above, the only difference is that you put a device in place at the slits trying to see which hole the photon goes through, you get the buckshot pattern. With the "observer" present with both slits open, light is a particle. With the "observer" absent still with both slits open, light is a wave. Physicists still don't understand what's going on here. It gets more weird. Even if you don't observe both holes, you put your measuring device only at one of the slits, you still get light being a particle buckshot pattern. It's like the photon knows somehow if you are trying to see it. If you look at it, it goes through only one of the holes leaving a buckshot pattern. If you don't look at it, it goes through both holes leaving a diffraction pattern. It doesn't matter if you move your measuring device from one slit to the other it doesn't matter. This means that the photon might go through the single slit that you are not measuring, how does it know that you have a measuring device at the other hole? And it even gets more weird. Wheeler had the idea of putting the measuring device on the other side of the slits, on the receiving side of the slits, the target side but before the photon reaches the target. This is called the delayed measurement experiment. You have both slits open, you send in the single photons no measuring device, you get the diffraction pattern showing light is a wave, showing the photon went through both slits. Now you send in the single photons, let them pass through the two open slits, but then insert your measuring device. Guess what happens? Diffraction pattern or buckshot pattern? You get the buckshot pattern, yea, weird. Somehow the photon knows that you are going to look at it after it passes through the slits. If seems as if the photon is sending a message back in time to itself as it passes through the two open slits, hey, you have to go through only one slit because they are trying to trick us by measuring us (me) after you (I back in time) go through the slits. All this is why Richard Feynman said that if anybody says that they understand quantum physics, they don't. Back in the '20's when they were developing quantum physics, I think it was Bohr and another guy walking along together one night and one says to the other, How can nature be this crazy? The double-slit experiment has been done with many different "bullets" besides photons. It has even been done with groupings of atoms. I think it was Louis deBrogle in the '20's that showed that everything has a wave form, all matter and energy. And all this is why some physicists, some on the What the Bleep Do We Know? film, think that quantum weirdness is why consciousness can create reality. sdp Cool post. In my younger days, I was enthused by the prospect of consciousness being able to manipulate matter, but I have grown skeptical. I dont see this interaction happening on the macro level at all, and I'm wary of stories about folks with these alleged abilities. Today's technology would like seem like sorcery to Isaac Newton and when an engineer designs a cell phone circuit we could say that consciousness is manipulating matter in a very real sense.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 20, 2014 8:37:59 GMT -5
On the double-slit experiment, getting to why (some) physicists think consciousness can alter reality: Young's experiment was done in 1895. The version that involved one photon at a time wasn't done until decades after the 1928 "Copenhagen Interpretation" and was first done with electrons some time in the 50's. Have you ever wondered why noone has won the Nobel Prize by answering the question of what, exactly, constitutes a conscious observer? Why no Noble Prize yet? Well....I think this question is still very much up in the air. I think that probably most physicists don't believe it takes a conscious observer to collapse a superposition (a range of probabilities of what might happen) to what actually occurs in "reality", here and now. I want to add one thing concerning the delayed measurement double-slit experiment mentioned above. I wrote that from memory so checked up on myself, and found the following extra little info. They can set up the experiment so that the photons pass through the slits before the decision is even made to peek or not peek at what happened. If they decide to look, the photons go through only one slit and we have the buckshot pattern, making the photon a particle. If they decided not to look, the photons go through both slits and we have the interference pattern making the photon a wave. That's pretty weird. Reading some more in the Amanda Gefter book, she seems to think she has resolved the observer problem and thus has an explanation for the double-slit experiment. It seems that all the problems of trying to understand what's happening is in trying to have a "God's eye view", a view from outside. Leonard Susskind showed in his book The Black Hole War that you can't have a God's eye view looking at a black hole. You can have a view from "someone" going into a black hole and some else looking at them going into a black hole well safe from the event horizon, two very different views of what's happening, but nobody can have both views simultaneously, there isn't such a thing as these two different views simultaneously. (Amanda had already met Susskind so he gave her an advanced copy of his book. It's a very excellent book in which Susskind gives an explanation as to how our world is actually a hologram). Gefter essentially says that all the paradoxes in quantum physics arise because of trying to have this God's eye view. I have six more pages left to read in the book, will give a wrap-up later. One more thing, I was going from memory concerning the dating of the Thomas Young double slit experiment to see whether light consists of particles or waves. So I googled it this morning to check on myself (not that I didn't believe your 1895 date l). I came up with two dates of 1801 and one date of 1803 (and his dates, 1773-1829). sdp
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