Humodour

Unfortunately, all you're doing is showing that you don't really understand quantum mechanics. That's ok - not very many people do. Take some physics classes, then get back to me. I find it interesting that you're telling ME I don't understand QM when it is you who is discounting one of the main interpretations of QM (Bohm's) without any logical reason. It's not one of the "main interpretations" of quantum mechanics. In fact, it hardly qualifies as an "interpretation" at all, as it does nothing to change the fact that the laws which govern quantum mechanics are probabilistic in nature. Baseless speculation about the workings of nature's random number generator doesn't qualify as legitimate determinism. You're being a tool. The maths (and fit with experimental data) is as sound as that of the probabilistic interpretations, therefore it is as valid as them until new data allows us to rule one or more interpretations out. It's basic science.

This is why I love Australia. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-facebo...-australia.html

Unfortunately, all you're doing is showing that you don't really understand quantum mechanics. That's ok - not very many people do. Take some physics classes, then get back to me. I find it interesting that you're telling ME I don't understand QM when it is you who is discounting one of the main interpretations of QM (Bohm's) without any logical reason.

Oi you silly Brit, you're not a silly Yank, so use metric! For those interested, 44 miles per hour = about 71 km/h I do like how often I hear about solar power and solar powered machines. PV and related solar power techs are awesome pieces of engineering.

Yes, we do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem Non-local hidden variables are pretty meaningless, and local hidden variables don't work. You could believe that there's some supernatural entity governing the behavior of particles within the probabilistic laws set forth by quantum mechanics, but such a thought is untestable and therefore irrelevant - the fact remains that quantum mechanics is only describable with probabilistic laws, not deterministic ones. Quantum mechanics itself is a probabilistic description of the universe. Deterministic (Newtonian) mechanics simply do not describe the universe at a small scale. What a load of ****. I'm sorry, but we do NOT know whether QM is deterministic or probabilistic. What we know is that it APPEARS to us to be probabilistic much like chaotic systems appear to us to be random (but, as it turns out, they aren't). How it appears does not have anything much at all to do with what is actually the case. Saying "QM is deterministic" is untestable only insofar as saying "QM is probabilistic" is untestable. We can't, at this moment test either statement, and may never be able to. So, for now you can go around saying "QM appears to us to be probabilistic", but you can't go around saying "QM is probabilistic", because you don't know that any more than I know QM is deterministic. Global hidden variables do not equate to a 'supernatural hidden entity' (any more than the programming variables dictating the behaviour of your web browser equate to a tiny demon in your computer - in both cases the variables are elements of system's operations which require us to step outside the system to be able to see, whether in this case analysing the programme's binary code, or in the case of the universe... stepping outside it probably isn't possible). Certainly global hidden variables do not equate to a 'supernatural hidden entity' any more than asking the question "Where does the randomness come from?" equates to the existence of one one. It's quite disingenuous of you to imply it does.

Let me use an analogy: to the untrained eye, the digits of Pi look random. No two ways about it, you can't look at those digits and see any immediate pattern. But analyse it a bit and one pattern does pop-up: each number is used equally often (which is as odd as it is neat). And if you know enough about the maths behind it, you can calculate nth digits on the fly without calculating the digits that came before. Clearly the distribution of digits of Pi is unpredictable to the human eye, yet is also not random. Edit: Ah, here is something congruent with what I am talking about: hidden variables and the Bohm interpretation of QM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory So I think it is very safe to say that we do not yet know if the universe is deterministic. I personally feel it is deterministic, but anybody who claims that QM settles the matter is incorrect.

Except, reality isn't deterministic. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of quantum physics knows this. Regardless of the universe's actual inner workings, a person (in this case, the Tibetan monk) can have whatever beliefs he wants. I'm positing that the monk believes in a deterministic universe. In any case, it's perfectly possible to argue that there's a deterministic framework hidden behind quantum mechanics. It's pure speculation, of course, and it's not my own opinion, but it's a valid way of seeing things. No, it's not. The universe is quite clearly probabilistic. Um, no. There is nothing 'clear' about it, and you certainly don't know enough about the deep, unknown physics of the universe, nor are providing any proof, to say it is one way or the other. Do you actually believe quantum mechanics is the be-all end-all of physics (if so, that sucks for you, because there are fundamental questions it doesn't and can't answer)? If you're like most scientists out there and instead expect it to be simply a good, reasonably accurate (but quite incomplete) way to model the universe then you have to acknowledge that some even deeper mechanics and maths govern this place. One can easily expect that those mechanics themselves, while appearing to produce some random, probabilistic results on a larger scale (quantum scale), are actually deterministic and ordered. Yep, I'm tying this to chaotic dynamics. If you believe the universe is probabilistic, then you run into a bit of a nasty problem: what is actually causing that random variation? This question is very similar to "who codes the coders?" or "what created god?"

Except, reality isn't deterministic. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of quantum physics knows this. It actually might still be. It depends a bit on what's governing quantum physics, and it could go either way. It's one of those metaphysical questions which are currently untestable (and possibly will always remain so).

This. And I don't even smoke up under normal circumstances. This would be a special occasion. Oh, I do, so I would be happy to join you!

Your face posts too much.

This.

facepalm Hold the facepalm, bro. There are plenty of people way more educated than me who are thinking along the same lines, for instance I'm sorry but your original statement is still very silly. Um, in what way was his statement silly? Gravity is a very fluid concept at this point in scientific history. We do not know much about it at all. One idea for example is that gravity is such a weak force because it is leaking into the other dimensions besides 3D space. There is another theory that the number of dimensions has evolved (increased) as the universe has aged. Hard to see gravity remaining the same concept with the same strength in such a scenario. My point is that somebody shouldn't be laughed at simply because they take issue with one of the unresolved aspects of modern physics. To me it seems entirely reasonable to suggest gravity may not be constant. Especially when you consider what gravity might actually be or be caused by. Consider for example the ways it interacts: every single particle in the universe exerts gravity on every single other particle in the universe. And one of the recent theories flying around about dark energy is that antimatter and matter are gravitationally repulsive to each-other while being gravitationally attractive to their own kind of matter. It would be nice if the strength of the gravitational force were constant in every scenario, but need that be the case? And given what we do know about this universe (And how asymmetrical and chaotic, in the mathematical sense, it is)... can we really expect that of gravity?) EDIT: I suppose I can't call them theories since they haven't been proved or disproved yet (the LHC, LISA, and the SKA should resolve that in the next 10 or 20 years). My bad.

Uh, it's entirely possible that time doesn't 'exist', not as a dimension at least. And that it can instead be thought of as the result of spatial causality. Personally I prefer this interpretation of time as it prevents silly things like time travel into the past, and works better with modern physical theories (of gravity for instance). http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scient...-dimension.html The upside of all this is that you begin to see the universe as one immensely gigantic state machine. Which, to me, begs the obvious question: is the universe Turing complete? I'm going to guess a big fat yes.

Oh, okay.

Graphene makes me drool. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385134,00.asp

I like getting stoned when there is not much work to be done.

This thread is hilarious.

NO! LIES!

Holy ****. This.

Oh, yeah, Ivy Bridge. My bad. Hey, check this out: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/04/intel...ical-footprint/ Pretty neat feat of engineering.

Anyway, silicon is so yesterday.

If by 'geometries' you mean 'scale', then no, that hasn't been the case for like 5 or 10 years. It's called nanotechnology (a subfield of materials science). I'm majoring in it. It's very interesting and useful. Look at graphene: http://images.iop.org/dl/physicsweb/2010/phwv19i11a34.pdf I wasn't talking about nanotechnology, I was talking about conventional lithographic integrated circuits, which is what flash is so far as I know. So feature size is limited to the current process, something like .28 nm at the moment, but obviously they can still use the tunneling effect. That may have something to do with the thickness of vapor deposition, don't know. Um, these days chip design is ALL ABOUT nanotechnology, and has been for like a decade. I mean gosh isn't it pretty obvious that when your units are nm (NANOmeters) you're doing **** on the nanoscale, using the tools of nanotechnology? The scale at which quantum mechanical properties become dominant (although there are plenty of novel examples of quantum mechanical properties dictating macroscopic properties). By the way it is most certainly NOT 0.28 nm. Mind your decimals, dude. Chips from the 2008 era are 45 nm, but there has been a bunch of advances since, and etching distance has now fallen to 22 nm (Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture which will start shipping in early 2012). Below 22 nm is going to be pretty damn hard to do without relying even more heavily (indeed entirely) on novel quantum-mechanical properties. It will likely require the abandonment of conventional photolithography in favour of something like nanoimprint lithography or lithography using a scanning probe (a modern type of microscope invented in 1981 which operates on the principle of quantum tunnelling). But independent of all this, flash memories have been using quantum tunnelling for I don't even know how long - definitely a while (i.e. at least half a dacade). For the record, quantum tunelling itself had become a widely accepted scientific principle by 1957. And now, I shall leave you with a simple pressure-sensitive button thingy for turning on electronic devices which operates on the principle of quantum tunnelling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling_composite

If by 'geometries' you mean 'scale', then no, that hasn't been the case for like 5 or 10 years. It's called nanotechnology (a subfield of materials science). I'm majoring in it. It's very interesting and useful. Look at graphene: http://images.iop.org/dl/physicsweb/2010/phwv19i11a34.pdf

Oh, well, quantum mechanics is a core part of science these days. Nothing far-fetched about it.