True facts you can't get yourself to believe

isometry

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JokerCrowe said:
I find it difficult to believe that the universe has no edge.
....
HOW??
Think of the surface of a sphere. Every point is equally regarded as the center, and there is no edge.

In the fact, the boundary of any shape has no edges. Boundaries have no boundaries.
 

Yggdraz0r

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Anthony Wells said:
Yggdraz0r said:
That... totally depends on which episode you are watching :p?

what anime is that from?


OT: i cant believe that America's politicians and by extension populace is so stupid... man i want out of this country..
Steins;Gate. One of the better animes of 2011.
 

thedoclc

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The Plunk said:
Schrödinger's Cat just seems impossible to me. Although I'm not sure if it's a fact or just a theory. (Although I have heard about those particles which behave differently when being observed, which just fucks my mind.)
It was a thought experiment designed to show how crazy a particular view of quantum mechanics is, so the answer is neither fact nor theory. (Incidentally, theory means "a large model of reality which explains a lot of features, is well supported by evidence, and allows us to make predictions.") Schrodinger disagreed with Einstein and Co regarding what the new models of physics meant. He designed the thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum - take the argument to its logical conclusion and show that it just doesn't make sense.

How particular physicists answer the question of "What happens to the cat?" basically tells you how their interpretation of the theory works. Some claim the cat is an observer, so the waveform collapses. Some say many worlds. Etc. Basically, how they handle this paradox explains how they interpret what the experimental results and equations of modern physics all mean.
 

ShadowsofHope

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Nov 1, 2009
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Yggdraz0r said:

I still can't believe this isn't a girl.
Lies. LIES!

That is totally a girl. It has to be. Or else in that universe, sex change operations appear almost literally perfect..

Also, snowfall in March. WTF!?
 

Hellcat 13

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Jun 15, 2011
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That there's a show targeted for 8 year old girls that's good. Well, I guess I accept it, but still. It's pretty shocking
 

dvd_72

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The Plunk said:
Schrödinger's Cat just seems impossible to me. Although I'm not sure if it's a fact or just a theory. (Although I have heard about those particles which behave differently when being observed, which just fucks my mind.)
Congratulations, that was actually the point of the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment when it was proposed, to prove how ridiculous the idea of the wavefunction is by taking a sub-atomic system and linking it to a larger one we can easily observe.

Sadly, that doesn't mean that particles existing as wavefunction is false. In fact, Alpha and Beta radiation is proof of it, as it is not the particle that tunnels through the potential barrier of the electron "shells", but the wavefunction which extends beyond the barrier.

The way I've had to imagine it is that when a particle begins to act as a wavefunction, it basically stops existing. Instead, it becomes an abstract mathematical concept which, when squared, tells you the probability of the particle existing in any one place at any one time..... Looking back I'm not sure how much help that will be :p

Seeing as I'm doing a physics degree the maths does help alleviate a lot of the "wtf?!" you get from quantum mechanics.

What I refuse to believe is that the official scientific name for the numbers of nucleons that make up stable nuclei is "Magic Numbers". I'm not kidding you, there is a part of nuclear physics that requires magic. wtf?!
 

Anthony Wells

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Yggdraz0r said:
Anthony Wells said:
Yggdraz0r said:
That... totally depends on which episode you are watching :p?

what anime is that from?


OT: i cant believe that America's politicians and by extension populace is so stupid... man i want out of this country..
Steins;Gate. One of the better animes of 2011.

thank you. im gonna have to check it out...you have intrigued me.
 

dvd_72

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isometry said:
JokerCrowe said:
I find it difficult to believe that the universe has no edge.
....
HOW??
Think of the surface of a sphere. Every point is equally regarded as the center, and there is no edge.

In the fact, the boundary of any shape has no edges. Boundaries have no boundaries.
So you mean the universe exists as an edge, so to speak? That's kind of... hard to wrap my head around.
 

Emperor Nat

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There is a planet somewhere in space made of Ice. This planet is also on fire.

I quite like to imagine God creating the universe and just going "Hey angels, lookit. This one will really screw with them."


...Now I want to photoshop a beard onto the trollface.
 

thedoclc

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dvd_72 said:
The Plunk said:
Schrödinger's Cat just seems impossible to me. Although I'm not sure if it's a fact or just a theory. (Although I have heard about those particles which behave differently when being observed, which just fucks my mind.)
*Snip*

Seeing as I'm doing a physics degree the maths does help alleviate a lot of the "wtf?!" you get from quantum mechanics.

What I refuse to believe is that the official scientific name for the numbers of nucleons that make up stable nuclei is "Magic Numbers". I'm not kidding you, there is a part of nuclear physics that requires magic. wtf?!
Can we shorten it to if lay public had any idea how freaking counter-intuitive and downright weird most advanced science was, they'd think it was all made up?
 

dvd_72

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thedoclc said:
Can we shorten it to if lay public had any idea how freaking counter-intuitive and downright weird most advanced science was, they'd think it was all made up?
You've got my support. The mental cartwheels I have to do are proof enough of that!
 

Agow95

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Jul 29, 2011
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I just can't get my head around the fact that some people, idiots you might say, take Yahtzee seriously.
 

CrystalShadow

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Apr 11, 2009
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Liquidacid23 said:
Scrustle said:
Super position. How can something be in more than one place at the same time? And how does observation change where it is? Are the particles camera shy or something? I just can't wrap my head around it.
quantum mechanics are not for the sane to understand :p

also superposition is one word
Yes... Pretty much... I like quantum mechanics, because it throws common sense out the window, stomps on it, then spits in it's face.

Still, it's useful for taking the wind out of people that think everything about the way the world works should be obvious and simple...

One of the best quotes about quantum mechanics has to be this one though:

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics... You... Don't understand quantum mechanics."

Still, the logic of it is... Well, let's put it this way:

Normal logic:

This statement is true.
This statement is false.

A statement is either true or false. We may not be entirely sure which it is, but it is one or the other.

Quantum logic:

This statement is both true and false.

When we measure it, it will be one or the other. But until that point it will be all possible things at once.

In other words, quantum mechanics, if applied to the world at large implies something quite bizarre.

We tend to think things are false until proven otherwise.
Some of us may be inclined to think things can be true until proven otherwise, but even those people don't usually think contradictory statements can both be true.

Quantum mechanics implies not only that things can be true until proven otherwise, but that ALL options are literally true at the same time, even if they contradict.
That would be bad enough, but it then goes on to imply that if we try and find and answer, there will only be one correct answer.
But which one, depends on what we do while measuring it.

If that isn't enough to melt your brain, I don't know what is... (I mean, every possible answer is true at once, even contradictions... Yet at the same time only one answer is true if you measure it... Also, impossible things happen all the time, as long as they have a probability of happening greater than 0...)

Yeah, good luck getting that to make sense... Just as well that so far as we know it only applies to things at very small scales.
If day-to-day life worked that way... Ouch...
 

BlackStar42

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Quantum mechanics. As in, all of it. How can an electron be in one place, then be in another without going through the space in between? How can an atom's electron theoretically be located at the other side of the Universe? Why, if it's so happy to be everywhere else, does t refuse to be located at certain points? And so on...
 

isometry

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Mar 17, 2010
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dvd_72 said:
isometry said:
JokerCrowe said:
I find it difficult to believe that the universe has no edge.
....
HOW??
Think of the surface of a sphere. Every point is equally regarded as the center, and there is no edge.

In the fact, the boundary of any shape has no edges. Boundaries have no boundaries.
So you mean the universe exists as an edge, so to speak? That's kind of... hard to wrap my head around.
Right, space is a 3D "edge" of 4D spacetime. A better term might be "slices", like the layers of an onion. Each point in time corresponds to on slice/layer of space.

***

People are talking about quantum superposition. But without interference of amplitudes like in the double slit experiment, there is nothing counter intuitive about quantum superposition. Flip a coin, and while it spins in the air it is neither heads or tails, then it becomes either heads or tails when you look at it.

The coin example shows that "existing in two states at the same time" is just bad language, we had a prejudiced way of describing the system (it's either heads or tails) and it breaks down because our description was too limited.

Now, coins flipping in mid-air do not exhibit quantum interference or entanglement (if they did we could use them to build a quantum computer!), so I'm not claiming that all the mysteries of quantum mechanics are this simple. But the Shrodinger's cat argument is really just about the superposition of possibilities, so unless we cause the alive/dead states to interfere with each other (classical probabilities can't interfere with each other, by interference I mean the technical notion of wave interference), then Shrodinger's cat is no more counter intuitive than a coin in midair that is neither heads or tails.

Stephen Hawking: "When I hear 'Shrodinger's cat' I reach for my gun. " :D
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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ShadowsofHope said:
Yggdraz0r said:

I still can't believe this isn't a girl.
Lies. LIES!

That is totally a girl. It has to be. Or else in that universe, sex change operations appear almost literally perfect..

Also, snowfall in March. WTF!?
Eh. To be honest that's a fairly ambiguous drawing considering what men look like in anime.

Besides, being a drawing, it's quite possible to draw anything at all, then claim it's something else.

You want a real mindscrew, you need an actual, real person.

So... That being said...