Starship Asterisk*

Someone put for the proposition that a photon is neither a particle nor a wave, but a cloud of probability amplitudes. The cloud gets as wide as the two slits, then parts of it goes through both slits. The wavelike pattern at the receiver end of the box depends on the time interval to a spot from each slit, with enough photons creating the pattern. If there is a detector on both sides of each slit, the pattern appears ballistic as long as the detectors impart some information to the observer. That is, if the detectors are connected to the heads of tape recorders, as long as there is a tape in the machine recording the results, the pattern will remain ballistic. However, if you remove the tapes, and touch nothing else, the detectors still send a signal to the tape heads, but nothing is recorded, then the wave-like interference pattern returns. The leap to the conclusion that the observer's consciousness affects whether the pattern will be wave-interference or ballistic is a bit much for me to grasp, but is does give pause, something to consider. There is no way currently known to test such an hypothesis, just something fun to think about.

In one of Dr. Kaku's lectures on yootoob, he shows the calculation for applying Einstein's General Relativity theory (do two tensors equal a third?) to black holes. Out drops a term 1/r where r is the distance from the center of gravity. Things go wacky when r approaches zero, yielding an infinite force. He then combined that formula with one from Quantum Mechanics and ended up with a result that is an infinite series, with each term of the series equal to infinity. Does the center of a black hole instantly expand into another galaxy in another space-time continuum? Like Dr. Feynmen warns us, don't ask how this can be, just accept that it is the way it is. With experimental accuracy matching theoretical calculations with a plus-or-minus error bar on the order of the distance between the Earth and Moon plus or minus the distance from his chin to his forehead, I agree that no other field of science comes close to that degree of experimental vs calculated results. But, how can this be? Searching for answers, we cross into the realm of philosophy, perhaps even religion?

Psnarf wrote:Someone put for the proposition that a photon is neither a particle nor a wave, but a cloud of probability amplitudes. The cloud gets as wide as the two slits, then parts of it goes through both slits. The wavelike pattern at the receiver end of the box depends on the time interval to a spot from each slit, with enough photons creating the pattern. If there is a detector on both sides of each slit, the pattern appears ballistic as long as the detectors impart some information to the observer. That is, if the detectors are connected to the heads of tape recorders, as long as there is a tape in the machine recording the results, the pattern will remain ballistic. However, if you remove the tapes, and touch nothing else, the detectors still send a signal to the tape heads, but nothing is recorded, then the wave-like interference pattern returns. The leap to the conclusion that the observer's consciousness affects whether the pattern will be wave-interference or ballistic is a bit much for me to grasp, but is does give pause, something to consider. There is no way currently known to test such an hypothesis, just something fun to think about.

In one of Dr. Kaku's lectures on yootoob, he shows the calculation for applying Einstein's General Relativity theory (do two tensors equal a third?) to black holes. Out drops a term 1/r where r is the distance from the center of gravity. Things go wacky when r approaches zero, yielding an infinite force. He then combined that formula with one from Quantum Mechanics and ended up with a result that is an infinite series, with each term of the series equal to infinity. Does the center of a black hole instantly expand into another galaxy in another space-time continuum? Like Dr. Feynmen warns us, don't ask how this can be, just accept that it is the way it is. With experimental accuracy matching theoretical calculations with a plus-or-minus error bar on the order of the distance between the Earth and Moon plus or minus the distance from his chin to his forehead, I agree that no other field of science comes close to that degree of experimental vs calculated results. But, how can this be? Searching for answers, we cross into the realm of philosophy, perhaps even religion?

Or beyond

TRVTH

The Teaching Company recently put out a course titled "Exploring Metaphysics" authored by Professor David K. Johnson of King's College. I was surprised when much of the content was geared to relativity and quantum mechanics. One of the sections I found most interesting had to do with "what light may be" and the author outlined some of David's Bohms theory's. A while back there was some discussion in a thread about what light may be and I had a hard time putting into conceptualization what I was thinking. It was nice to hear that Dr. Johnson leant credibility to Bohm's theories as they much more precisely described a similar thought to my uneducated posts on light's nature vs. dark matter (Neutron Stars: Total Compaction in Jan 2014 – Asterisk Cafe) . Ignorance is difficult to overcome at 60 but it's fun trying and what else can you do?