Is it the Moon?

[Toddy]

Interesting.
Personally I find the difference between the mindset that accepts faith as a belief system and that which thinks of rational confidence in a progression of understanding as a more believable basis for existance, quite fascinating.


With my Mod hat on.............

Please do not think that this thread may be taken as setting a precedence.
Only the character of the people involved in the discussion has kept it open.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Tadpole]

Aaah so faith that an unknown, untested future will be better?

That m'lud concludes the case for the prosecution



Red

I didn't say that,
I didn't say it would "be better", I just said that I thought in the future we will be able to measure atoms with them being affected.

 

[British Red]

I know, I was I suspect infering what you didn't seek to imply. I suppose my inference was any confidence of belief in an (as yet) unknown future, is arguably at least an act of faith.

No?

Red

 

[gregorach]

so this quantum stuff.........

Remember the age old question, "If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Is the quantum answer.... No, because the tree isn't there unless someone looks at it, or, is within hearing distance.

No. The tree undergoes quantum decoherence within the Planck time whether anybody's looking at it or not.

Not really, this is again perception versus reality, in the reality of the real world they were a split second apart. The person who is stationary only perceived them as simultaneous.

General relativity says that you can only talk about time within a given frame of reference. The ordering of events in time is also specific to a frame of reference. Movement through space changes time, and all frames are equally valid. There is no "master frame" in which you can say events really happened in a specific order.

I agree that the current method of measuring the positions of protons to determine the position of atoms does have an affect on the position of the atom. [...] I’m sure, in the future atoms, will be able to be measured without their measurement affecting their properties, mathematically it is possible already to measure all the pre-existing properties of an atom/proton.

Sorry, but as far as we can currently tell, quantum indeterminacy is part of the fundamental nature of reality. It's not that our measurement techniques are flawed, it's that position and momentum are fundamentally inseparable in the quantum world. It's not so much that measuring one changes the other, it's that the total uncertainty in both measurements is unalterable, so the more closely one is fixed, the more indeterminate the other must be. Don't try and make sense of it - it simply doesn't make sense in any normal way. But the math works.

Physics is deeply, deeply weird.

 

[LazySod]

No. The tree undergoes quantum decoherence within the Planck time whether anybody's looking at it or not.

And now im back to "Whooooooosh (over my head)"

 

[Tadpole]

I know, I was I suspect infering what you didn't seek to imply. I suppose my inference was any confidence of belief in an (as yet) unknown future, is arguably at least an act of faith.

No?

Red

I know, I was I suspect infering what you didn't seek to imply. I suppose my inference was any confidence of belief in an (as yet) unknown future, is arguably at least an act of faith.

No?

Red

Yes,

I have faith that science will advance, I am not reliant on that faith, or even relying on that 'faith' for some aspect of my behaviour or morals. My faith is not 'a belief', some ‘supernatural expectation’, more a confidence in the continued forward progress that some aspects of science are making. (hopefully in a direction that proves I am right )

I try and add to my knowledge rather than subtract, something that I feel a belief in magic, jinn’s gods, goddesses, astrology, politicians, does.

 

[gregorach]

And now im back to "Whooooooosh (over my head)"

Sorry. Basically, all this quantum weirdness only matters when you're dealing with very small numbers of sub-atomic particles. Once you get a whole lot of them together, the quantum effects kind of "cancel each other out", and things start behaving like real-world objects again. It doesn't have anything to do with observers.

 

[Tadpole]

No. The tree undergoes quantum decoherence within the Planck time whether anybody's looking at it or not.

Physics is deeply, deeply weird.

Planck time (the second smallest measure of time, the first being the space between the traffic lights changing and the guy behind you, honking his horn

 

[Spikey DaPikey]

Are we there yet ??

 

[Tadpole]

Are we there yet ??

It's just over the next rise

 

[maddave]

Full moon last night in the UK. Tonight is waning gibbous (96% of full)

 

[Tadpole]

Full moon last night in the UK. Tonight is waning gibbous (96% of full)

Is that like my posts waxing gibberishly (96% fill of it)

 

[Spikey DaPikey]

I thought it said the moon was full of warring Gibbons :theyareon

 

[sapper1]

It's true the more you analyse something ,the more chance it will be proven not to exist.
The moon is getting smaller,at this rate it should disappear in about a week,All this discussion has frightened it off.
Man was never meant to meddle with the cosmos.
I'm going back outside now.

 

[maddave]

The gibbons have it... However don't forget the Macaques...But then you wouldn't want to annoy the Colobus monkeys...evil little buggers they are

 

[Tadpole]

the Colobus monkeys...evil little buggers they are

that's the one with the bobble hat and played the drums?

 

[British Red]

I think Micky Dolenz played drums Mike Nesmith wore that hat - and his mother invernted Liquid Paper............true

 

[John Fenna]

Its Davy Jones you have to watch...
"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief....."
Peter however was a real charmer

 

[firecrest]

Tadpole wrote:

Not really, this is again perception versus reality, in the reality of the real world they were a split second apart. The person who is stationary only perceived them as simultaneous.

I don't think this is correct. The person on the train sees it as different timed events because the light takes slightly longer to reach him from the pole further away than the one he is travelling towards. if anything, it is the stationary person who sees the correct order of events. However, even this is wrong, there is no `reality of the real world` and that is the point, there is only perception. When you say "the star in the sky is long gone, but we only percieve to be there because the light took so long to reach us" I think this may be incorrect (possibly correct if time works differently) The star both exists and doesnt exist, I dont mean via process of quantum mechanics, but that space IS time, thus there is no Now. Past is a location in space, as is the future. Like I said, what is the equation in physics to describe the present moment as an actuality? I dont think there is one, because a moment in time is a definition made by our consciousness that percieves itself in time. If you can find the point in space where you can be seen on earth as a child and and alien in the right here and now is observing that, then you are simultainiously both here and there at the same time. I think your previous analogy of the film real is closer to how time works. Perhaps we percieve ourselves to be a single point of reference in time and space when in actuality our lives are more like a film real that has unravelled over time and space. In a film real all the shots exist all at the same time, but we only see the story when it is played in a linear sequence from beginning to end observing one frame at a time.

 

[firecrest]

If I could clarify that , Id say we are rushing outwards from the big bang at a speed we cannot quantify , therefor when you imagine a point in time in your past, say 1973 on a paticular day , it has a point in space as well as time. Also, if there is absolutely nothing between two planets, nothing but vacuum then why are they not stuck together? I think its because they are seperated by Time, which is an almost tangible thing, not a concept.