- This one went to a strange place, not at all where I thought it was going when I started it. Originally it was supposed to be about Schroedinger's Cat, but then it kind of took on a life of its own.
(I expect I'll get back to Kitty, Superposed, at some later time).
So Raven, he likes to mess with our heads.
It amuses Him no end that we take ourselves so seriously. Such foolish children. So when He's bored He likes to create chaos and sow confusion, just for the Halibut.
It helps pass the time.
As per usual, it's all about the definition. It's always about the definition. First, who does the defining, and second, how successful they are in conveying their particular definition into the mind of another.
Unless you're (I'm?) a solipsist, in which case there are no other minds, and you're (I'm?) just fucking with yourself (myself?). But if it helps me (you?) to pass the time, who am I (are you?) to question that. Or would it in that case be, "who am I (are you?) to question that?" (So just how many people you (I? We?) got dancing in there anyway?)
Anyway, I have been convinced for quite a long time that while it is true, as physicists have repeatedly demonstrated, that an electron (or proton, neutron, buckyball, etc.) has no definite position or momentum until a measurement is taken, physicists have not, in my humble opinion, been satisfactorily determinate as regards what, exactly, constitutes a measurement.
(This indeterminacy has led some physicists into deeply strange, i.e. "Where does the moon go when no one is looking?", and heavy waters. Waters that had been, up to the discovery of quantum mechanics, the more or less exclusive fishing ground of - The Philosophers).
Now, to be totally honest, I will here freely admit that the mathematics of quantum physics are far beyond me. Hell, I never even made it through college "pre" algebra. (I HATE math, with a passion). But as a complete absence of knowledge about subject matter never seems to stop anyone else from joining esoteric discussions in cyberspace, or from just blathering nonsensically, I shall now babble inanely on a subject I Know Nothing* about!
*[The Know Nothings were an American political party in the 1840s and 50s. They were Anti-Papist, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Immigration, in other words, they were Anti Irish. (Today they're called the Tea Party....)
You know... If The Know Nothings had simply added an Anti-Gravity Planck to their platform, we would Know Nothing about them today, because they would all have floated off into space!
Anyway, according to my sources when the party foundered, (primarily over differing opinions on the subject of Slavery), most Know Nothings became Republicans. I would love to gloat about this, except for the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. But since I know in my heart, that modern Republicans would be as averse to Abraham Lincoln's ideology as they are to Obama's, I can believe they share the name only.]
By the by, as regards algebra. (Which I really, REALLY hate.)
In defiance of all you mathophiles, teachers, evil geniuses, etc... Guess What!
Somehow, in spite of being told, repeatedly, that algebra was absolutely essential to my continued successful somedamnthing or other, (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness perhaps? they were never specific about what). I have survived to age fifty, and quite nicely thank you, having never made it through even a pre-algebra class. (Algebra always seemed to me - in fact it STILL seems to me - one of the most pointless exercises I was ever forced to undertake), and I have NEVER yet received, from anyone, an explanation of algebras virtue, or value, in and of itself. Or perhaps I should say, that there is any point to it beyond keeping algebra teachers gainfully employed, and thus off the streets and out of the whorehouses).
Be that as it may, it was an unfortunate, and, to me, unpleasant fact, that in order to graduate from college, I was required to take, and pass, with a grade of D or better, either college algebra, or statistics. (And yes, I actually did graduate. Made Deans and Chancellors lists in fact. Except for my algebra semesters.) Algebra! I spit on you!!! Die and burn in hell!
Anyway, after flunking pre-algebra, twice! (and coming to the realization that I would die of old age before I'd ever make it thru stupid pre-algebra with a D, let alone college algebra), I bit the bullet and took stats.
After all, at that point I had absolutely nothing to lose.
And you want to know something really strange?
I LIKED statistics. I actually had FUN in Stats. I got a solid B in stats. (I think I could have made an A, but I was brain dead for the final).
How is that possible? After all Stats consists of huge, ugly equations, full of variables, brackets, parentheses, sigmas and I don't know what all, in other words - all things algebra. But I actually kind of liked it. ( wtf? yes indeed. WTF!)
I guess, for me, it was possible because all those things had a POINT. They had a PURPOSE. They were in service of an end, and not the end in themselves. I understood what I was doing, and WHY I was doing it. (And yes I STILL hate algebra.)
I thought computer programming was fun too. (In fact, I aced programming.)
I will admit I have since thought about taking the time and effort to bulldog my way through memorizing the rules of algebra, simply because it would add a good ten points to my IQ score. (And then I could join MENSA! Or one of the other, "High IQ Societies". How exciting is that!)
Which I find quite funny.
How is it that mastering a more or less purely mechanical process, could make me "smarter"?
I cannot attribute the quote, but I remember once reading the following statement, (made by some well known, (French, I believe), thinker, member of the nobility, whatever), to the effect that "Mathematics is the least (lowest?) of all human functions (faculties?), as it is the only one that can be done by a machine."
With a certain air of unholy glee I say - "Give that man a prize!"
And, after having taken a number of "Intelligence" tests over the years, both online, and off, I began to notice a certain bias, in that they all seem to test for mental abilities that would be, unnecessary, at best, and useless, at worst, for someone living as a hunter gatherer, or early agriculturalist.
It seems to be part of the western mindset that if you can put a NUMBER to something, that somehow makes it more "real".
As an aside - I worked for a University for fourteen years. When asked what it was like I say, "It was a perfect example of a Dysdilbertopia." (Or would Dysdilbertopia be the wonderful place, and Dilbertopia the awful one? Or should it be, Dilbertdystopia, and Dilbertopia? Scott! Help!) I therefore possess a rather low opinion of Academia as an institution, while still maintaining a great admiration for the academic and teaching faculty, for their dedication and effort in continuing to teach, often quite successfully, within such a fucked up system.
But I can tell you one thing for sure. By God, those administrators LOVED their numbers. They hired consultants, they took surveys, (and spent exorbitant amounts of University money for the privilege) and if the first consultant or survey gave them the "wrong" answer, they promptly hired someone else, and they kept doing that until they found a consultant who told them what it was they wanted to hear. (All the while telling the Academic Depts "No you can't! Don't you know that you have NO Money!") In fact, they loved numbers so much they regularly made them up.
(Upper level college administration must be a wonderful place, being, as it is, totally disconnected from any earthly reality.)
But back to Raven messing with our heads.
As regards physics and definitions, as far as I can determine, from all of the reading I have done over the years, it seems to boil down to one word, and that word is -
Information.
Everything is information.
And all measurement is simply a transfer, or exchange, of information.
Which brings me immediately to the double slit experiment. (What? It didn't take your mind immediately to the double slit experiment? Damn. Oh well, hang in there, I'm sure it will all make sense - eventually.)
(The following plays fast and loose with the chronology, and grossly simplifies a fairly complex and subtle subject. I do this for purposes of my personal amusement and no others. It was either this, or internet porn....)
I love the double slit experiment for a number of reasons.
[If you is ignorant about the double slit experiment, (I heard that snicker! How adolescent! How jejune! Grow up and get your mind out of the gutter!)]
google or wikipedia: "double slit experiment". (Ignore any hits that include the following words - pussy, hot, slut, wet, wet slit, college girls, Catholic High School Girls, (What IS it about a Tartan Skirt, a white blouse, and knee socks, that is just SO DAMN HOT?), or barnyard, (eeewwwww! totally not hot). Unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case just bookmark it, and check it out later.)
- Hey! If you're really into that, why the hell are you reading this? -
Jeez! Anyway, what you should be looking for are things like - quantum interference, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, complementarity, particle wave duality, etc.
But back to the joys of the double slit experiment.
Why is it so cool?
Firstly: Anyone can do it. I could go home right now, and in fairly short order throw together a sloppy, but workable, set up, and do the experiment. (Got a laser pointer? No? Well, get one!)
Secondly: It is such an elegant and simple demonstration of how the solution to a problem is often dependent on the form of the question. Or what specific question you are asking.
Question: Is light a wave? or a particle?
Answer: It depends....
I can prove it's one, or the other, or even a little bit of both.
It's entirely dependent on which experiment I conduct. (In the early days it appeared to be an either/or situation. Particle only, or wave only. The results of more recent, and more elegant and complicated experiments, (delayed "choice", quantum "eraser" etc.) indicate more of a sliding scale between 100% pure particle to 100% pure wave, or any combination in between. 60/40, 20/80, whatever).
But the original experiment was carried out using light.
Originally (circa 1801) it was considered absolute proof that light was a wave propagating through the luminiferous ether, as opposed to the competing theory that light was corpuscular i.e. little tiny BB's flying through space. ("You'll shoot your eye out!")
(Really quick and dirty - If light consists of waves propagating through space, when it passes through a very narrow gap, it will diffract and get smeared out, if that light then passes through two more gaps, an appropriate distance apart and downstream, the light passing through each slit will diffract again, and, through a process of frequency cancellation and reinforcement, produce an interference fringe, with bands of light where the frequencies sum, and no light, where the frequencies cancel. If you then close one of the two slits downstream no more interference, therefore no fringe, two slits, interference, fringe! It's simple, see?)
And that was great, except for one little problem...
Well actually, there were a LOT of problems, the black body radiation problem, various and sundry equations giving the result x = infinity!, aka The Ultraviolet Catastrophe, the apparently invariant speed of light, and therefore absence of The Luminiferous Ether, (See : Michaelson Morley experiment. 1887), etc etc...
But the minor little problem I'm concerned with here is the photoelectric effect. That is, the observed fact that light can knock electrons loose from metals, and thereby induce an electric current. Which meant something was transferring enough energy to electrons to knock them out of orbit, (as it were). The sticky issue being that it was not the amount of light falling on the metal which increased output, (brighter) = more juice, it was that color (shorter wavelength) = more juice.
These difficulties seemed to indicate that light really ought to be little BB's flying through space, except there were still those interference fringes, and those mean WAVES.
It was Maxwell! It was Faraday! It was Hertz! It was Mach! It was Young! It was Einstein!
(Einstein's Noble Prize was for his elucidation of the Photo Electric Effect, not for Relativity.)
It was "What in the Hell is going on Here!?"
It was confusion!
It was conundrum!
It was battle royal in the Octagon!
Tonight on Ultimate Fighting Championship!
In this corner - Weighing in at zero rest mass, and moving at c, we have "The Corpuscular Theory!" (Little Red Ryder BB's flying through space! "You'll shoot your eye out!")
And in this corner weighing in at ? looking kinda sloshy, and moving at c, we have, "The Wave Theory!" (waves moving through some medium aka, the luminiferous ether.)
It HAS to be ONE or the OTHER. It can't be BOTH!! (can it?)
Well, yes, apparently it can, and things are about to get, really, really, bizarre.
If light is a wave, and we place something photosensitive, like a piece of photo paper or film downrange, (problem: how, exactly, can a wave in the luminiferous ether interact with the silver nitrate to make the chemical (quantum) change which will result in an image?) as less and less light passes through the apparatus the pattern SHOULD just get fainter and fainter and eventually disappear.
But, If light is a particle, and we put something photosensitive downrange, each photon should leave a "dot" at its point of impact, which would confirm that light is particulate, and, since a physical object cannot be two places at the same time, and therefore each photon can ONLY pass through ONE of the slits, there cannot be an interference fringe.
Right?
Right!
So -
They start ramping down the amount of light passing through the test apparatus until they get down to one photon at a time. One photon! And since, as per above, it was now possible to record photographically where each individual photon landed, it was now possible to do a time exposure. So they let the experiment run for a while, pulled out the paper, developed it, and there they were -
Interference fringes!
But that can only happen if the single photons were passing through both slits at the same time and therefore interfering with themselves!
Ouch!
OK. Hmmm. What happens if we put a detector of some sort in both slits, surely if the photon is somehow passing through BOTH slits we should detect that, and that would explain something? Right?
Result? Photon is never detected going through both slits, only one, AND, interference pattern disappears!
"So, what's your superhero power?"
"I can turn invisible. But only if no one is looking."
Turn detectors off, pattern reappears!
Still, it wasn't absolutely necessary to rewrite the entirety of Physics right then, since it was accepted that light is really rather strange and mysterious anyway, and surely "real matter" will behave itself, right?
Right!
Still, certain equations seemed to indicate that electrons would act in the same manner.
No way!
Way!
No Way!
Way!
Still, since at that time (before 1961) no technology existed to conduct that experiment, (phew! that was a close one!), they didn't have to rewrite the textbooks.
Yet...
But the damn technology kept improving (as technology do) to the point that in 1961 (Would I lie to you?) the experiment was conducted using electrons, (which have one advantage over photons in that they have actual mass, which, I suppose it could be argued, somehow makes them more real than photons, which have mass only so long as they are moving at c). At least I haven't read anything to date (5/13/09), that would suggest that photons have acquired rest mass.
And there they were. Fringes!
Wave/particle duality? Check?
Well, for now it doesn't really count, since it was a huge bunch of electrons at a time, you know, an aggregate, and electromagnetism is just strange anyway, so it could be some sort of fluke statistical thingy.
Then in 1974 the experiment was conducted firing electrons, one at a time, through the apparatus.
Fringes....
But you know? Electrons are really, really, small, and known to move in mysterious ways, i.e. emitting and absorbing photons, moving freely in metals, etc. so maybe electrons are like photons, special.
So... they tried the experiment with neutrons. (Neutron Big! Loads Mass!)
Fringes!
Wave/particle duality? Check!
Damn! How is THAT possible?
OK then. Just how big does something have to be before it starts to behave classically?
Well, the experimental results to date indicate quantum indeterminacy appears to still obtain with objects up to the size of a buckyball. That's 60 carbon atoms folks !! That's one damn hefty molecule to be taking two paths at the same time, and therefore being able to get jiggy with itself. (Some very recent experimental results seem to indicate diffraction in molecules of over 100 atoms. 100 atoms!)
And Lo, as I sat upon my Ass, typing that day on the road to Damascus, it came to pass that The Lord smote me with the smoting of his arm, and his voice spake the speech of speaking unto me! And in a Blinding Flash of Quantum Saulian (Paulian?) insight, God! YES! God Himself!! revealed unto me the Great Truth!
That is how The Saints bilocate!
"Quickly!!" I shouted, causing those traveling with me to cry out,
"What is it NOW?"
"It is this!" I shouted, "I must call the Vatican!! I must get the Pope on the line!! I have been given a revelation from GOD which will revolutionize Catholic Christianity!!"
"They'll never believe it coming from you!" They scoffed. "You're an Atheist!"
Those scoffing scoffers, those very minions of Satan! For is it not ever thus among the unbelieving unbelievers!
"Ha! You unbelieving unbelievers" I replied, "Of course they will! After all, they believe in the trinity and transubstantiation! Given the mental gymnastics required for that, believing in the Quantum Nonlocality of the Saints will be a breeze!"
Yea, verily I say unto thee, I believeth The Vatican must needs to get to work on this right away!! At the very least it could mean more funding for the LHC!!
I can see it now!
Can you see it?
I can see it!
This month, in - The Journal of Quantum Physics:
Bilocation of the Saints: New evidence for the macrosarcastic quantum indeterminacy interpretation of spiritual self interference resulting in the manifestation of optically detectable birefringent spiritual diffraction patternality (Bilocation): A new hermeneutics of quantum mechanics, epistemology, and the ontological quantification of the dialectic of the postmodern phenomenological Biblical world view, comprehensively elucidating quantum non-locality in the post Johanine eschatological mind.
(Hmm... Wait a minute... I think I see a potential fly in the ointment. Let me think about this.)
Oh Damn! It won't work.
The Saints can't "interfere" with themselves! That would be a SIN! [See: Onan, sin of (Gen. 38:8)] Hell! That's no good at all. If they don't interfere with themselves, then bilocation isn't a quantum phenomenon, and Sainthood cannot be scientifically demonstrated. But if they DO interfere with themselves, then they can't be Saints, because interfering with yourself is a sin, and sinners can't be Saints. (Or is it "Saints can't be sinners?")
Or could they...?
You know, I think we should do the experiment anyway. Just for the Heaven of it.
If the Saints don't interfere with themselves, thereby NOT giving rise to an interference fringe pattern, then bilocation is not a quantum phenomenon, and the Saints are therefore not quantum mechanical. Case closed.
But, say...
Just say, we choose a properly canonized Saint, (not one of the many popular "Saints by acclamation").
No sir!
We need a Saint with everything in perfect order. Not "one jot" nor "one tittle" out of place. A Saint whom The Pope himself, having spoken Ex Cathedra while wearing the Silly Hat, has infallibly canonized, thereby declaring to the world that he or she is a Saint of the Church, and thereby worthy of veneration. (He or she will therefore be, unquestionably, and irrefutably, a Saint! (To even think about questioning that fact would be to undermine the very Foundation of the Catholic Faith! It would be to spread the poison of doubt at the roots of the One True Faith! Yes! It would be to doubt! Yes I say, To Doubt! that The Pope, speaking Ex Cathedra, is infallible regarding issues of the Catholic Faith and of Catholic Doctrine, etc, etc...) Which simply doesn't bear thinking about! Which is why the Catholic Church bans not only doubt, but also books, certain questions, thoughts, ideas, etc).
Still, supposing then, that a properly documented and Canonized Saint DOES interfere with him or her self, creating the expected fringe pattern and thereby producing hard evidence for the truth of bilocation, and the Quantum Nature of the Saints. Would it not then follow, as Kittens follow their Mama Cat, that "interfering" with "yourself" cannot be a sin!
After all, it will have been Scientifically proven that The Saints do it!
Ah yes. I think it's time for some internet porn.
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