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Post by Vypernight on May 14, 2010 17:55:01 GMT -5
I don't want to believe. I just want to know. If I can't know, then I'm not believing either. Careful with that. "We only know that we know nothing", as it says. At the very basic even the scientific method is based on one or two points of "belief" (since there is no knowing for a human mind). You 'believe' that the physical world is the way your senses tell you it is and that events are logically connected and don't just occur randomly and without reason. Practically this changes nothing, of course, but it's better to be aware what our perception is based on. I like to agree with what Chris Rock in Dogma says, "I prefer ideas. Ideas, you can change. Beliefs are a lot harder to do so." I'm all for the idea that things may exist beyond my comprehension; I just choose to not to believe blindly in them. And I like having ideas about things, but I have a lot harder time believing, if that makes sense.
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Post by Vene on May 14, 2010 18:12:30 GMT -5
Newton's laws of motion fall apart from relativity. What falls apart from quantum is everything that makes sense. I just took a quiz on quantum tunneling. Shit be crazy, yo. I'm not familiar with quantum tunneling, but quantum entanglement makes my head go splody. Edit: I just looked at the wiki article. Indeed, shit be crazy.
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Post by cagnazzo on May 14, 2010 18:41:15 GMT -5
Yes. Quantum tunneling is apparently responsible for alpha radiation. Despite the fact that the alpha particle does not have enough energy to escape the nucleus, there is a probability that it will anyway. Here is an artist's rendition of what alpha decay may look like. The atom, alpha particle, and quantum mechanical reaction have all been labeled.
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Post by Vene on May 14, 2010 19:20:59 GMT -5
That's seriously the symbol for a quantum reaction?
Okay, I'm convinced, science is magic.
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Post by cagnazzo on May 14, 2010 19:21:54 GMT -5
That's seriously the symbol for a quantum reaction? Okay, I'm convinced, science is magic. No, quantum reactions don't have symbols. But if they did, I would nominate that. It's basically what's happening anyway.
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Post by cagnazzo on May 14, 2010 19:27:19 GMT -5
Here, have more crazy. The reason the middle is fuzzy and darker is because the electrons have less of a probability of being there. I'm pretty sure that the fuzz is literally the chance of an electron being in that place, it's not an artifact.
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Post by MaybeNever on May 14, 2010 19:29:11 GMT -5
Pretty common sort of thing for quantum-level operations. Stupid probabilistic universe!
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Post by cagnazzo on May 14, 2010 19:30:37 GMT -5
Actually, I think it's also because electrons are waves, not particles.
Or well, they're particles. But also waves. Mostly waves.
But still particles.
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Post by Vene on May 14, 2010 19:42:16 GMT -5
That's seriously the symbol for a quantum reaction? Okay, I'm convinced, science is magic. No, quantum reactions don't have symbols. But if they did, I would nominate that. It's basically what's happening anyway. I am disappointed. Also, the pentacene photographs are fucking awesomeness. And I think you're right about the fuzz not being an artifact, what with the electron cloud model. Well, some of it might be artifacts, but I don't think the noise to signal ratio is very high.
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Post by MaybeNever on May 14, 2010 19:44:13 GMT -5
Wavey-particley things.
Richard Feynman once proposed a hypothesis that there was exactly one sub-atomic particle, racing backward and forward in time, and while it never, to my knowledge, came to anything, the fact that it was considered plausible points to just how completely bonkers quantum physics really are.
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Post by cagnazzo on May 14, 2010 19:51:40 GMT -5
You can treat positrons as electrons traveling back in time, actually. It's kind of weird stuff.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on May 14, 2010 22:38:57 GMT -5
You can treat positrons as electrons traveling back in time, actually. It's kind of weird stuff. *raises finger to comment on that* *head asplodes* *brain guts are now location throughout the entire room*
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Post by tolpuddlemartyr on May 14, 2010 23:50:25 GMT -5
You can treat positrons as electrons traveling back in time, actually. It's kind of weird stuff. Pressure, head feeling like it's about to asplode again...that sounds like tachyons to me, I thought they didn't exist.
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Post by Vene on May 14, 2010 23:59:03 GMT -5
You can treat positrons as electrons traveling back in time, actually. It's kind of weird stuff. Pressure, head feeling like it's about to asplode again...that sounds like tachyons to me, I thought they didn't exist. Tachyons are faster than light particles.
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Post by cagnazzo on May 15, 2010 0:48:14 GMT -5
Imagine a guy who gets into a time machine that reverses time. He steps in, and to him, when he steps out, he sees himself walking backwards out of the machine. In fact, everyone's moving backwards. Basically, time is going in reverse. To everyone else, of course, he looks like he's walking backwards. The man he sees walking backwards out of the machine, after five seconds, is him ten seconds ago. Does that make sense?
Now, to other observers, that aren't him, they see a man walk forwards into the machine the exact second another identical man walks backwards into the machine. That's when the man switches time flow. But as soon as they both step into the machine, they disappear forever - because the guy who was going forward flipped and is now going backwards.
I hope I'm getting the message across. Now imagine that instead of a man walking forwards into the machine while his future self walks backwards into the machine, there is an electron going forward that touches a positron. When they meet, they disappear - the electron is now going backwards in time, as the positron.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but that is one way to think about antimatter.
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