Category: Uncategorized
-
How non-local are you?
Relativity and quantum mechanics could sit very easily together if it wasn’t for the issue of locality. What does this mean? Relativity is based on the realisation that time is elastic. This just means that the further you are from the earth’s core the faster time moves. So time travels more quickly at the top…
-
History vs geography
Which is right? Silly question. It’s easy to see that history and geography are compatible but different. Much the same can be said for quantum mechanics and relativity. Relativity depends on measurement of time, and famously shows that time runs faster at the top of a mountain than at the bottom. Accurate atomic clocks can…
-
The physics of fiction
The essay is published in my book ‘Quantism’, which is available at Amazon. The enquiries in these essays began with a way I had imagined of reading Dickens, and of approaching the reading of literature, and although I have touched on reading a number of times, I would like to conclude where I began, with…
-
The Amazon box: delivering an imaginary boundary between classical reality and quantum physics
Jim Al-Khalili was on Radio 4 a little while ago talking about quantum physics and his new Time project. He was being asked why, in quantum physics, time does not exist, and responded by describing the way we divide quantum physics from ‘normal’ thinking. The question was, “Is there some threshold at which matter starts…
-
Seven questions we should be asking about the probabilistic nature of quantum physics
Quantum physics has a terrible reputation for being difficult, if not impossible to understand. This reputation sometimes appears to be actively promoted by physicists. Feynman’s observation that “if you think you understand quantum physics you don’t understand quantum physics” has itself confused and deterred a whole generation of thinkers and critics who do not ‘do…
-
DALDRY’S CATS
I am a little bemused at some of the apparent nonsense I have read about entanglement, so in the hope of demystifying it I have devised a thought experiment not unlike the one Schroedinger proposed to demonstrate superposition. In this experiment there are two cats, and the box is divided into two compartments linked by…
-
Superposition in fiction (WIP)
Superposition is the simultaneous and concurrent existence of conflicting states in probability. Schrodinger’s Cat is the most famous example of an hypothetical superposition. Schrodinger’s Cat was the famous physicist’s thought experiment, in which a cat is placed in a box with a poison and an unpredictable trigger release. The cat may or may not be…
-
The laws of causality
All events have one cause, and a limitless number of possible causes. All events may be considered to cause one further event, but cause a limitless number of possible further events. No cause or event, past, present or future, is determined other than by probability. An event can only be considered to be caused, or…
-
Entangled
Quantum entanglement is not wierd or crazy. Particles can become entangled when they interact with each other or are emitted from a common source. When electrons or particles are paired they become part of a system of which the net energy is zero. Let’s say two photons (particles of light) are emitted from a particle…
-
Space-time or time space?
Einstein called reality under the fourth dimension of time ‘space-time’, by which term he defined the four dimensional parameters of reality, being the three physical dimensions plus time. He showed that while time is not a constant, it is variable (curved) in a predictable and determined way. Einstein talked about time as if it is…
The Swiveller 