Let there be camera..

[Reeltarded]

Umm you really need to see this. It's light filmed at one trillion frames per second. It acts like water. No, really you see the waves as it splashes and scatters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoHeWgLvlXI

[Colossal]

You mean it can behave like a wave and a particle? My brain hurts! (it'll have to come out...)

Love TED talks!

"we can correct for the distortion". Wow!...

[skyboltone]

Colossal; you beat me to the punchline. Here's what I was thinking while you just blurted it out.

Fantastic! This might have implications for the oldest unsolved problem in physics.

According to Einstein, light is composed of particles. We can demonstrate this by observing that when light strikes a surface, electrons pop off. Like when an artillery shell strikes a brick wall. Simple, light is composed of particles. Viewed this way Einstein was able to predict how light would "bend" when exposed to gravitational forces. Amongst other things.

According to Bohr et al. (quantum physics) light is like a wave. This can be demonstrated by shining light through two juxtaposed slits onto a surface. We then observe that the light forms wave patterns of peaks and valleys that then interact with each other in ways that suggest something called "auto-interference". Though it is easy to see how particles can interfere with each other, it is far harder to imagine how they might interfere with themselves. So physicists infer from "auto interference" that concepts about "here" and "there" and "now" and "then" become strangely confused. Maybe here maybe there, maybe now, maybe then; it's hard to say. We can predict certain events (outcomes) in the physical world as mathematical wave forms but when we try to measure them that way, they revert to states predicted by Einstein's particle model. Observation departs from theory. They are either here OR there again, not here AND there. That's what Shrodinger's Cat is all about.

The quantum guys have resolved not to talk about this problem any more. They have decided that light is BOTH a wave and a particle. The rest of us are not comfortable with that sort of legerdemain. We prefer our parlor tricks where we can see them. We can't imagine Einstein's foundational particle being two places at once. Observational science is on our side here but the quantum guys keep bringing up the cat. Besides, they pushed gravity under the rug too. They reconcile the wave theory with quantum electodynamics just fine but not with gravity. It's coming up on 80 years now with no resolution to that issue. A phenomenally long time in physics.

Exciting stuff.

So this guy tantalizingly shows his audience a photon packet that scatters when it hits the cap of the coke bottle. Then it forms a wave pattern on the table. Now....speed it up some more doc! I want to see the individual photons. I want to see this without the bottle. I want to see individual photon particles in two places at once. Or not.

[Reeltarded]

Excellent! Thinking the same thing. I don't think the detector needs to be faster, I think it just needs to be more sensitive and, as you say, follow one photon to see what it is doing. I would love to see the interference experiment done with this beast.

[Structo]

Very Cool!

Femto camera.

This has huge implications for medical technology.

[Reeltarded]

Who cares. I want a laser and a tomato.

[xtian]

My favorite head twister is spooky action at a distance. The idea that you can synchronize the quantum states of two particles, send the particles to separate places, manipulate the state of one, and this is reflected in the other…instantaneously!

[Reeltarded]

Sounds like a Japanese ballet.

[Colossal]

My favorite head twister is spooky action at a distance. The idea that you can synchronize the quantum states of two particles, send the particles to separate places, manipulate the state of one, and this is reflected in the other…instantaneously!

I bet that would sound killer through a Marshall.

[skyboltone]

My favorite head twister is spooky action at a distance. The idea that you can synchronize the quantum states of two particles, send the particles to separate places, manipulate the state of one, and this is reflected in the other…instantaneously!

<<instantaneously>> Oh how this word propels skepticism. Recently at CERN there was much excitement about a long anticipated experiment that seemed to refute the absolute nature of the speed of light. Until it didn't. Computational overflow. Wrong premises. Oh well. So much of quantum theorizing resembles not so much rational science as some sort of a spiritual quest. Not that there is anything wrong with spiritual quests actually. After all, I'm on one of those of my own. But, what we have here is another mathematical parlor trick. It seems like such a done deal until the experimental physics community (dratted empirical materialists!) actually try to prove the damn thing. How in the heck do we measure instantaneous? Especially when we accept before hand that the particles themselves, in all the other measurables, are ineluctably bound to all the constraints of the speed of light. This would seemingly be fast enough in the near field but alas so painfully slow when viewed through the lens of history; which it invents. In other words it's measurable, This wacky idea described by Xtian here (not an indictment of you sir, you are after all only the carrier of this little bit of disease, not it's genesis) is a bit like string theory isn't it? An entire generation of brilliant minds wasted on wacked out nonsense! Huge dimensional overflow, multiplying universes, landscapes of worlds, time tunneling cosmology; all of it invisible and forever beyond experimental proof. String theory has been all but abandoned by the current crop of physical scientists thank God. That is, all but the quantum cosmologists of course; but they aren't really scientists are they? More like philosophers with a taste for the bizarre. See here's the deal. If once we accept this idea that, well, it may not be possible in our world, but given an infinite number of universes it's got to be not only possible but absolutely certain somewhere else, then we've lost our reason entirely. Now we don't need any experimental physics at all. It's gotta be true somewhere, right?. Reminds me of the old joke about never drinking before 5 o'clock. That's what it has come to! We don't need no stinking truth, we got ideas! Rather than finish what they started they have devolved physics into this phantasmagorical game of oneupsmanship. Group think. "Oh Yea? Well what about this then? Beat that you moron. Ha ha ha ha ha heh heh heh" I see Peter Lorrie and Vincent Price padding down the university halls rubbing their hands together. No! Keep them ALL after school and don't let them go home until they can get experimental results to agree, at least roughly, with high flown theory. And resolve the conflict between classical physics and the quantum universe with regards to gravity. No new problems boys. Go back to work and get this one right, then you can go on.

[Reeltarded]

If you think things are in some/several/all states until observed then you should probably drink more coffee and continue observing; Schrodinger's cat? Who cares? His dog is eating your bacon.

[skyboltone]

If you think things are in some/several/all states until observed then you should probably drink more coffee and continue observing; Schrodinger's cat? Who cares? His dog is eating your bacon.

Amen. As King Richard said: "I'll have NO MORE THINKING AROUND HERE!"

[NickC]

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