Schrödinger s Cat: One of the consequences of quantum mechanics is that a particle s state will not

Filed under: general science , logical budget rental cars atlanta georgia fallacy , quantum mechanics , terminology Stuart Robbins @ 11:03 pm Tags: Andrew Basiago , andrew d. basiago , andy basiago , appeal to quantum mechanics , art bell , basiago , c2c , coast-to-coast am , dan burisch , george norry , heisenberg uncertainty , heisenberg uncertainty principle , logical fallacy , project camelot , project pegasus , quantum , quantum displacement , quantum mechanics , quantum tunnel , shcrodinger's cat , time travel , wormhole
There is no formal logical fallacy that I know of called Appeal to Quantum Mechanics, but I think it should be on the books. It is a frequently budget rental cars atlanta georgia utilized term by purveyors of New Age beliefs and other ideas to try to make their ideas seem more sciencey when, in fact, to anyone who actually knows quantum mechanics and slaved away for tens of hours a week on QM homework, it just makes them sound stupid.
This post is another about Andrew D. Basiago, in particular his interview on the Coast to Coast AM radio show from November 11, 2010. In it, he discussed his supposed involvement in Project Pegasus, alleged the early time travel budget rental cars atlanta georgia work done by the U.S. government. For those of you who have a very good memory, you may recall I have discussed Andrew Basiago before in the context of his pareidolia-fueled claims of discovering alien life on Mars and demanding that National Geographic publish what he found after blowing up images 5000%, stretching them, and then wildly extrapolating .
Actually, what happens is when you go back and visit yourself in the past, you re somebody from the future visiting your alpha-timeline, then if you interfere with your past at that moment, um, basically Schrödinger s cat takes over and a new timeline branches off that s affected by your visit, but then you return to the future that you left.
Basiago : Certainly the notion that propagating holographs of past and future events somehow destabilizes the quantum hologram, that was suggested budget rental cars atlanta georgia by the Dan Burisch testimony, provided to Project Camelot, is not true.
Without going through budget rental cars atlanta georgia math and a lot of explanation that is not the focus of this blog post, quantum mechanics is basically the physics of the very small. We re talking about what happens budget rental cars atlanta georgia on atomic scales, what happens with electrons (sub-atomic particles), and light. We are not talking budget rental cars atlanta georgia about time, space-time, budget rental cars atlanta georgia nor any object on the macro-scopic scale, where macroscopic means in this context objects that are about the size of a cell or larger (collections of millions of atoms).
Quantum mechanics is weird. In fact, it almost budget rental cars atlanta georgia fits the very definition of weird since many of the observations at atomic scales defies our concept of how objects should act. I think this is why a lot of purveyors of modern pseudoscience rely on an appeal to quantum mechanics to describe how their ideas work: Since most people don t understand quantum mechanics beyond the things get weird part, people are more willing to accept a quantum mechanics says this can happen claim and just trust it.
But quantum mechanics is not magic. You cannot use quantum mechanics to argue that psychic budget rental cars atlanta georgia powers work. Or that time travel is possible. Or even that information (which also has a very specific definition) can be transmitted instantaneously.
Quantum mechanics budget rental cars atlanta georgia has a very specific set of rules and governing equations that have been verified to be correct to within measurement capabilities. (Hence it is also a theory in the scientific sense.)
Because quantum mechanics does not make sense to many people in our every-day budget rental cars atlanta georgia world, physicists have come up with some analogies that are used to describe some of the consequences of the field. For example
Schrödinger s Cat: One of the consequences of quantum mechanics is that a particle s state will not be known until it is observed. I remind you that in this field, particle and observed have very specific definitions and cannot be extrapolated to, for example, person budget rental cars atlanta georgia calling the telephone and picking up the phone (yes, people do make that extrapolation). In fact, the consequences of this had three different interpretations in the early days of the field, where the Copenhägen interpretation was that the particle actually exists in all states until it is observed. This turns out to be the actual way it works (experimentally determined a few decades ago), but in the early days there were two competing ideas, one being that it exists in a particular state, we just don t know what it is until it is measured. This is where the famous Einstein budget rental cars atlanta georgia quote comes from: God doesn t play dice with the universe.
In order to think of this from a more familiar scenario rather than an electron s energy level, the idea of Schrödinger s cat is used, where Schrödinger is effectively the founder of quantum budget rental cars atlanta georgia mechanics: A cat is placed in a sealed box from which no information can escape. A piece of radioactive material is placed in there before it s sealed, where the release of the poison is a purely random process (governed by quantum mechanics). After the box is sealed, an outsider cannot know whether the cat is alive or dead because they do not know if the poison has killed the cat. Therefore, for mathematical purposes, the cat is described as both alive and dead. It is only after the box is opened and you make the observation that you know which is the case.
Definition of Quantum: In physics, quantum does not mean magic nor [fill in the blank with something]. It has a very specific budget rental cars atlanta georgia definition: A discrete budget rental cars atlanta georgia quantity, usually of energy. In fact, the whole field of quantum mechanics is based around the idea that energy cannot come in a pure spectrum of intervals, but it can only happen budget rental cars atlanta georgia in discrete albeit very small packets. This was a very novel idea 100 years ago and it still surprises many people. But, that s what quantum means, no more, and no less. Putting it in front of another word does not make that other word suddenly mean something different. In fact, as it is normally applied, it makes the other word meaningless.
Heisenberg Uncertainty budget rental cars atlanta georgia Principle: Again, this has a very specific definition and a mathematical one at that: x · p ≥ ħ /2. What this means in words is that the change budget rental cars atlanta georgia in position times the change in momentum must be greater than or equal to half of h-bar, budget rental cars atlanta georgia where h-bar is h /(2· ), where h is Planck s constant (a very small number). Unless you re a physicist or have really studied the field, you are probably thinking some combination of, huh? and/or budget rental cars atlanta georgia what the heck does that mean? In plainer budget rental cars atlanta georgia English, the consequence of this is that when we measure a particle s position budget rental cars atlanta georgia or momentum, budget rental cars atlanta georgia the more precise we measure that value, the less precisely we can know the other. This is not because of our measuring equipment, rather it seems to be a general rule of the universe, budget rental cars atlanta georgia that the particle s other quantity really, literally, becomes less defined and knowable.
Analysis: Again, sticking quantum this time in front of tunnel budget rental cars atlanta georgia still makes this a meaningless phrase. Quantum does not have anything to do with, effectively, the fabric of the universe, and wormholes are more of an application of General Relativity, something very different from quantum mechanics.
Analysis: Now that you know what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is you cannot know both the position and momentum of a particle to arbitrarily high precision you can see that the idea of time travel paradoxes has nothing to do with it. This is an appeal to a scientific budget rental cars atlanta georgia term and equation that has zero bearing on the claim, showing (a) his lack of understanding of quantum budget rental cars atlanta georgia mechanics, and (b) fairly good evidence (if you didn t have it already) that his claims are made up.
Basiago: Actually, what happens is when you go back and visit yourself in the past, you re somebody from the future visiting your alpha-timeline, then if you interfere with your past at that moment, um, basically Schrödinger s cat takes over and a new timeline budget rental cars atlanta georgia branches off that s affected by your visit, but then you return to the future that you left.
Analysis: This is very much like the above example where Basiago made a conjecture from his story and then inserted a thought exercise from quantum mechanics to try to make it sound more believable, when in actuality the insertion shows again he has no idea what he s talking about.
Basiago : Certainly the notion that propagating holographs of past and future events somehow destabilizes the quantum hologram, that was suggested by the Dan Burisch testimony, provided to Project Camelot, budget rental cars atlanta georgia is not true.
Analysis: This is another example of the first two where Basiago has inserted the word quantum budget rental cars atlanta georgia into his sentence in the apparent hope to make it sound more sciencey and hence believable when, again, it makes the phrase even more meaningless than it would be without it.
Please, whenever anyone uses any form of appeal to quantum mechanics to explain their fringe claim, do a little bit of research to figure out what the term actually means and whether budget rental cars atlanta georgia it applies to that situation. I have tried in this post to point out the three most commonly used quantum mechanics terms that have been borrowed by today s pseudoscience budget rental cars atlanta georgia in the hope that you are now armed with some of the information necessary to critically analyze budget rental cars atlanta georgia various claims.
Calleman s version of quantum mechanics is more reasonable (it does not relate to time travel, etc). He basically argues that there are macroscopic versions of quantum mechanics that explains the evolution of consciousness. When it comes to biological evolution he claims that each species is separated from other species through quantum leaps and that they can be assigned budget rental cars atlanta georgia a numerical value following his version of the Maya calendar. He is arguing for a non-Christian creationist evolution. In any case, the way he describes quantum mechanics is fairly brief. I have to return to you and ask what is accurate and what is wrong.
Johan Without having actually read his work nor heard him interviewed, I cannot comment for certain on his ideas. But, fro