>....more precisely the idea of non locality..... Ok here's a try at this piece... explaining non-locality and why it fascinates....
Imagine a light source of one frequency that is emitted toward a screen in which there are two slits and behind this screen at some distance a second screen. The light goes through the slits in the first screen and strikes the second. When we look in detail at the screen we find that instead of seeing the image of the two slits there is a pattern of light and dark bands. This pattern can be predicted by assuming that there is a wave coming out of the light source and then into the two slits. From there there is something called difraction and it basically means the light spreads out (does not go straight through) each slit and then the resulting waves "interfere" with each other. By interfere we mean that when one wave is at its height and one at its lowest they add and cancel and there is no wave. When they are both at their height or both at their minimum they add together and the sum is greater than either alone. This method predicts the pattern on the second screen exactly. If we block off one slit the other forms a regular difraction pattern. If we reopen, the interference pattern reappears. Now if we dim the light enough, at the second screen will be instead of a steady pattern, a series of discreet flashes. These flashes are interpreted as being a particle of light striking the screen. If we accumulate a record of these flashes over time we get the interference pattern if both slits are open and the diffraction pattern if only one slit is open. It is possible to make the light very dim so that there is plenty of time between flashes. If we assume that light is a particle then it travels through one of slits and then on to strike the second screen. We can make the light so dim that there is at most only one photon in flight at a time since we know how long it takes for light to travel that distance and we can make the flashes infrequent enough to allow for it. Now the question is how, by covering the slit in one place, does the photon, at a distant "non-local" place "know" that the other slit is closed and so change statistically where it will go? That is my understanding of "non-locality". It turns out all matter behaves like this not just light. If I have a particle bouncing back and forth in a box then what I do is imagine a wave bouncing back and forth. If it does it will cancel itself like the interference does unless it has certain discreet frequencies. Then it forms what is called a standing wave. If you play with a telephone cord you can create standing waves. At first you get the cord moving up and down its whole length but if you increase the rate at which you wiggle one end of it you will suddenly jumble the pattern and then if you increase it even more it will form another standing wave this time with the mid point still and two halves of the string vibrating. The still mid point is called a "node". By increasing the rate even more you can find another standing wave that has two nodes and upward. These are called "harmonics". It turns out that if you try to see the particle bouncing back and forth in a box you will never find it at a node and you will find it more and more farther and farther from the nodes with the maximum exactly between. The probability of finding the particle is determined by how much wave amplitude there is. Just as the wave has only certain discreet frequencies at which a standing wave forms so the particle can only be found at certain discreet energies (amount of motion, think of it as its speed for now) How does the particle get from one side without going through the middle? How does the particle go from one speed to another without ever being at an intermediate speed. They are able to predict many of the properties of atoms by using this kind of system with complicated multi-dimensional waves and there is no experimental evidence that contradicts this theory. A summary of the theory is that the probability of the appearing is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the imagined wave. This is one of the places where physics has abandoned a single object model. There is no "thing" which behaves basically like a "little marble". They do not posit that a photon traveling from the light to the screen actually exists. There theory only predicts that it will be detected at certain points on the screen at certain frequencies. So there is no "underlying reality" that has the form of "some thing". The idea that there must be some reality there, like a little thing or a wave, and if we imagine it, and have the appropriate "laws of physics" we will be able to predict what it will do, was thus abandoned in order to describe the actual results of physical experiment. This left physics with an inability to predict many things. Where a particular photon will strike cannot be predicted - only the probability at each point. This was determined quantitatively in the famous uncertainty principle which is just the fact that a wave cannot be considered as being at some point and having a given frequency. If it has a frequency exactly it will extend in both directions forever and if it has a location its frequency will be completely undetermined and you can go part way - somewhat localized. So the conceptual basis on which physics is built ceased to be objective. There was no single "object" that could be imagined. Around the same time physicists also adopted a theory that says basically that there is no such thing as "the present" in an absolute sense. In order to constitute a view of what is happening signals need to be assembled into an image and it turned out that they abandoned trying to make these images the same for all observers. So, once again, the idea that right now there "are" a series of objects in some state and that is the basis of physics fell and we are left with a theory that is able to predict observation without positing a single set of existing objects, the existence of which, is used to predict the result of experiment. Instead several object models are used together in a precisely prescribed way. Now why this is so striking is that that objective way of thinking has remarkable success at our speed and at our size. If you posit that you have a house and a car and a set of keys that theory is amazingly predictive. You put your keys in your pocket and you then, based on object modeling, can predict that if you reach down into your pocket you will find them. But it turns out that it fails at high speeds and small scales, that way of thinking becomes useless - or more precisely, several object models are used jointly and there is not one of them that constitutes an image of "what is". So in a sense "what is" ceased to be "something". Why this is so fascinating has to do with what fascination itself is. You can see it in any form of magic. When the normal object model is disrupted it causes fascination. You can play peekaboo with an infant and by hiding your face and changing it and then having it reappear different than it was before you can reliably make a baby smile. They can even determine when in an infants life it begins to do object modeling by watching the fascination they have (measured by the amount of time they pay attention) during experiments in which objects are made to behave "magically". Indeed the term "magical" itself is frequently used for description of romantic love or extreme beauty. If you look at the regularity in pattern design you will often see that the pattern is designed to allow multiple objective interpretations. So we also see the phenomena in aesthetics and all over the place. What is happening is that the process of object formation can be stopped in one's consciousness. It takes some doing but it is possible to experience the world as not objective. When one does the meaning of objective being is replaces with another idea or meaning, which is usually designated, Being, with a capital B. This experience is the experience of religious ecstasy. It is as if the survival instinct manifests itself in a urge or desire to be, and the subjective nature of our being, combined with an objective experience of being, frustrates our urge, but when the object model collapses and the Tao, or Being, or God .... just follow the capital letters... is experienced then there is no longer a separation between ourselves and Being and so the instinct is completely fulfilled. This fullfillment is related to sexuality and there is a long analysis available in phenomonological descriptive history. So this idea of religious ecstasy has been around for a long while. Now it turns out that even if the science had turned out to be completely objective and quantum mechanics and relativity were not in fact true, then the possibility of religious experience would still be there because it is not a natural experience but an existential one. However, the fact that science and in particular physics, was so successful with the object model and the fact that prior to science all of the religious descriptions were confused with religious objective models being inserted into their cosmology, (in fact religion and science were not distinct until the existence of science came around) led to a narrative where "science" was disproving the "superstition" of religion. Although this has been reversed culturally that myth continues to hold the imagination of a lot of people to this day. The collapse of simple object modeling has led to, therefore, a kind of latching on to that fact by certain people who have had religious experiences which they have not understood, as a way to explain what it was they experienced. So the narrative emerges that the birth of modern physics, quantum mechanics in particular, to a lesser extent relativity, was used to basically say: "See, science is not contradicting religion, it has finally discovered the basis for it" That view is in my opinion incorrect on several levels. The experience and meaning of God is not an appreciation of quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics is not a description of God. It is a purely natural science about the motion and behavior of aspects of our experience. The words "energy" and "vibration" are particularly sensitive to this kind of equivocation. > and its supposed relationship with consciousness..... You can see the relationship in the fact that "what is" is a wave that predicts the probability of "appearing" of a particle. Science now explicitly includes "appearing" in the description of "reality" and the famed distiction between being and appearance is, superficially I think, threatened. This seems to interject consciousness into physical reality (in fact it was always there re Kant) and forms a metaphor of the collapse of the subject object dualism that is at the basis of religion and aesthetics. > I thought that the core issue associated with consciousness is the nature of > meaning. I believe that this is a much, very much, better way of expressing it. > To me - the really challenging issue is to come to terms with whether the so > called collective unconscious is really real meaning that there is a realm of > absolute meaning above and beyond individual interpretation or there is not. > If there is not, which I am inclined to be the truth of the matter, then the > issues associated with understanding the nature of consciousness (including > states of consciousness, the sub conscious, the personal unconscious, and the > likes shifts to the much overlooked realm of the personal not the collective > unconsicous. I rather think it is meaning itself. Whether or not there is universal meaning. > > So far I am inclined to believe that the world of sub atomic physics while > exceedingly interesting has as yet little relationship to the macro world of > human beings continuing to order their individual chaos to be able to solve > their day to day problems so to be able to live the good life. Well, it makes my ipod work! I think that the subatomic world, the theories of physics that describe it are very useful at the macroscopic level. In fact the stability of the atom is a quantum effect. Without it our atoms would collapse. Its just that natural science is not metaphysics and when we make it so we repeat the "entanglement" that occurred for ages where literal cosmology was not distinguished from religious experience. On Sep 16, 4:40 pm, [email protected] wrote: > Would someone please explain to me why the enthrallment with quantum physics > more precisely the idea of non locality and its supposed relationship with > consciousness. I thought that the core issue associated with consciousness is > the nature of meaning. In the PEAR experiments I don't see what they have to > do with this core issue of generating personal and collective meanings. > > To me - the really challenging issue is to come to terms with whether the so > called collective unconscious is really real meaning that there is a realm of > absolute meaning above and beyond individual interpretation or there is not. > If there is not, which I am inclined to be the truth of the matter, then the > issues associated with understanding the nature of consciousness (including > states of consciousness, the sub conscious, the personal unconscious, and the > likes shifts to the much overlooked realm of the personal not the collective > unconsicous. > > So far I am inclined to believe that the world of sub atomic physics while > exceedingly interesting has as yet little relationship to the macro world of > human beings continuing to order their individual chaos to be able to solve > their day to day problems so to be able to live the good life. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Justintruth <[email protected]> > To: "Minds Eye" <[email protected]> > Sent: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 4:23 pm > Subject: [Mind's Eye] Re: Schrodingers Cat on verge of becoming real > > I guess I am confused. I thought that the cat experiment was trivial > to set up and only needed a quantum trigger mechanism. I thought it > wasn't actually set up out of concern for the cat - not that it took a > sophisticated technical setup was needed. > > I also thought that the whole issue was decided. If I flip a coin and > I look at the result and ask you the probability that it is a head you > will say 50/50 but if I show you the coin your "wave function" will > "collapse" and you will say its 100 or 0. Your "observation" affected > the probability. The only difference is that I posited that I looked > at the coin or at least that the coin exists. In quantum mechanics no > one can look at it and in some cases it can be shown that there is no > way that a coin could have gotten there by usual mechanism. But if one > tries to decide whether to posit an object that can't be experienced > then the answer is no by Ocham's razor. > > I don't get why there is a need for this experiment nor why its so > hard to set up? > > On Sep 15, 7:32?pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > > Towards Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms > > > Oriol Romero-Isart, Mathieu L. Juan, Romain Quidant, J. Ignacio Cirac > > (Submitted on 8 Sep 2009) > > The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of > > superposition states, where an object appears to be in different > > situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states > > has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and > > photons, and even with molecules. Recently, it has been even possible > > to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper > > pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon allow us to > > create superpositions of even larger objects, like micro-sized mirrors > > or cantilevers, and thus to test quantum mechanical phenomena at > > larger scales. Here we propose a method to cool down and create > > quantum superpositions of the motion of sub-wavelength, arbitrarily > > shaped dielectric objects trapped inside a high--fines > se cavity at a > > very low pressure. Our method is ideally suited for the smallest > > living organisms, such as viruses, which survive under low vacuum > > pressures, and optically behave as dielectric objects. This opens up > > the possibility of testing the quantum nature of living organisms by > > creating quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as > > the original Schr\"odinger's cat "gedanken" paradigm. We anticipate > > our essay to be a starting point to experimentally address fundamental > > questions, such as the role of life in quantum mechanics, and > > differences between many-world and Copenhagen interpretations. > > Comments: ? ? ? 8 pages, 4 figures > > Subjects: ? ? ? Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics > > (cond-mat.mes-hall) > > Cite as: ? ? ? ?arXiv:0909.1469v1 [quant-ph] > > > Apparently, this is about actually putting a flue virus or possibly a > > water-bear (tiny - less than 1 mm) in the Schrodinger's Cat super- > > position using lasers. ?Water-bears can actually survive vacuum for a > > few days. ?The old thought experiments get ever closer to being made > > into real experiments. ?This one might answer the question of whether > > large objects aren't quantum because of interference from the general > > world or whether there is a size or mass for quantum behaviour as > > Penrose (Danger Mouse's best pal) suggests. ?I can't wait for the day > > I can approach some old mate blathering on about Schrodinger's Cat and > > accuse him of being a mindless philosopher before setting up my lasers > > and water-bears on the bar! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. 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