Ye old science thread

[WarxePB]

This thread serves three purposes:

1) According to the statistics page, I need to post more.

2) Everyone else was making a "discussion" thread and I didn't want to feel left out.

3) We haven't had a good discussion about science in ages.


So, to start the thread off, how many people here have a basic understanding of quantum mechanics? I'm not talking about the equations or any of that stuff, but just a grasp of the theories.

If you don't, and you have some free time, I highly suggest going to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. It's a hugely accessible book, and as long as you're interested in the topic, it should be quite enlightening.

After reading that, or reading the Wikipedia page, then come back here so we can begin discussing the implications of it.

[SaiKar]

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html  - best QM explination I've ever read. Created by a non-physicist generally pretty good at explaining stuff. Some of the concepts may make your head spin a bit, but that's only because QM is so freaking weird. I've been reading this lately and got up to the Feynman Paths article before my headache became unbearable.

So yeah, I know a little. What exactly are we discussing here? How QM manages to work without keeping track of indvidiual electrons and stuff? Cuz that's just weird.

[Drace]

Keep this thread alive, I'll be joining in later when there are more posts to discuss with. (And after I read some sites)

[zuhane]

I'm more of a biologist, myself!

[Dragonium]

Taking Physics at A-level, and going to do so at university. Also doing Chemistry at the moment but that's irrelevant.

Unfortunately we had our extra option chosen for us and ended up doing Medical Physics instead of anything interesting or useful.

Equivalent radiation of 20 Sieverts or above results in death within hours.

[WarxePB]

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html  - best QM explination I've ever read. Created by a non-physicist generally pretty good at explaining stuff. Some of the concepts may make your head spin a bit, but that's only because QM is so freaking weird. I've been reading this lately and got up to the Feynman Paths article before my headache became unbearable.

So yeah, I know a little. What exactly are we discussing here? How QM manages to work without keeping track of indvidiual electrons and stuff? Cuz that's just weird.

Awesome. That link should help people out.

The thing that interests me about QM is that, according to the theory of Quantum Superposition, all particles and waves exist in all states at once, and interaction with the world (or viewing by an observer) collapses the waveform into the most likely possibility.

From a science-fiction standpoint, the implications for this are nearly endless. Alternate universes exist as different possibilities - if you had enough energy, you could warp the quantum state into showing a different possibility. You're still in the universe, but just a different interpretation of it.
This could also be used for time travel - just warp some particles into assuming different positions, and bam. The greatest thing about this is that it escapes the problem of paradoxes - no matter what you do in the "past", it won't create a paradox because the resulting quantum state already exists. Same thing for time loops.

Naturally, whatever mechanism that would allow us to do that is far beyond our current level of technology, but that's what sci-fi is for.