151–160 of 218 posts
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And Einstein didn't write his breakthrough papers while employed at a university either
He had an easy job at the patent office so he had time and energy to work on other things.
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Except you can’t just go hide in your attic. Everyone is more risk averse than ever as the cost of housing, healthcare, and education relentlessly increase faster than wages.
Human productivity is at its highest point in human history, so one can't help but wonder why we must all work harder than our ancestors to exist.
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Because if we say that some of those alpha_i physically go to zero at any point (e.g., "after"), our predictions are wrong, in agreement with the paper. We have to account for the fact that those alpha_i|i> are still nonzero and "existing", and that our projection onto them is only zero for the time being . A different choice in EPR or a quantum eraser experiment may bring our projection onto those states back out of…
I am afraid that you have not understood the paper. a) You do the measurement first on the "screen" side (and project the quantum state of the pair of photons according to the measurement, the "extra universes" disappear). You do then the measurements on the "idler" side (and project again the quantum state according to standard QM). b) You modify slighly the setup to reverse the order of the measurements. You do the…
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I'm sorry, I don't know what General Relativity says, really. I'm not that kind of geek :0 What if I say there are frames of reference that are irrelevant to discovering the process that generates the observations? Edit: Um, guys? I genuinely don't know what general relativity says and I didn't get the comment above. It'd be nice if someone explained.
I think your "I'm not that kind of geek" comment came off as condescending. It also makes you sound like you're not really interested in understanding the other side's argument.
Also, "frame of reference" has a specific meaning in relativity but it also has a more general meaning regarding the framework within someone understands something. It's pretty clear from the context (imo) that this latter is what was meant in this comment.
While I don't like this ~guy's~ woman's disdainful, superior tone, I do think his complaint has merit. Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas. I just finished reading What is Real? by Adam Becker-- a history of modern physics-- and am astonished at how aggressively physicists resisted and suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like…
> suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like the many worlds interpretation) in favor of the obviously-wrong Copenhagen interpretation. They’re just interpretations and they all work equally well and produce the same predictions. It makes no sense to call any of them obviously wrong. It’s personal preference.
That's the impression I get as a non-physicist, that yes it's kind of an aesthetic preference, but on the other hand aesthetics are important and sometimes are pivotal in finding new insights.
Ugly may not be completely objective, but it isn't completely arbitrary either.
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It was wrong in the sense that epicycles are an entirely imaginary math artefact, and reality works on different principles. Revolutions happen when a new mental model - or frame of reference, or whatever you want to call it - can generate new kinds of math. The old model is certainly wrong in the sense that it's not a good picture of how reality actually works. If you really want to, you can still use epicycles for…
> It was wrong in the sense that epicycles are an entirely imaginary math artefact, and reality works on different principles. How do you distinguish "an entirely imaginary math artifact" from the "principles" that "reality works on"? (Hint: planetary orbits are not ellipses once you take GR effects into account.)
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True, but there are frames of reference that make understanding (and the math) vastly simpler. I can calculate the orbits of the Saturn's moons using my location on earth as the origin. It will take me a lot of work, but I can do it.
It's a fun exercise to reframe the laws of physics in terms of your "stationary" frame on Earth and I recommend it to everybody. Consider the speed of light in the Andromeda galaxy... except under these physics we can't speak of the "speed" of light, but the permissible velocities as a function of the location in question. Running through this exercise with some honesty can give one a greater understanding of why our…
Is there a deeper meaning to "Consider the speed of light in the Andromeda galaxy" that I missed? The speed of light is known to be constant in every reference frame.