Giant 'Blob' Found in Outer Space

[Bearsan]

Obviously, "God spilled some Jelly while making Jesus his lunch for Heaven school"

^ what my neighbor told his daughters. >_>;

Cute. Sounds like something Ned Flanders would say.

[Xfaustx]

However I'll take a stab at what I think the answer would be if you were driving a colossal headlight through space... It's image would appear on earth as becoming increasingly blue as it approached. The wavelengths of the light become continually compressed to the stationary earth viewer (assuming we are stationary which we aren't). We percieve the shortened wavelengths as a shift in color. Incidentally our Sun would also appear bluer to the riders of the ship. This is actually no different that the perceived change of pitch of a train's horn as it approaches and recedes from you at a crossing. You probably know it as the Doppler effect.

What you're talking about is the blue shift, and only happens when an item is approaching the speed the light, but he specifically said the spaceship was going much slower than the speed of light, so the blue shift wouldn't be happening then. There was a long show on light and its effect on the science channel a while back, basically what it said is that light moves at a static speed, meaning that if you were driving a car at 45 MPH, light would NOT travel at the speed of light +45 MPH, but it would statically move at the speed of light. The light that you would see would be constantly "updated" from the point that it is currently at. I'm pretty sure you would see the ship move towards you slowly when farther away and as it approached it would slowly start to look like it was coming closer faster and faster until finally you would see it in its actual speed.

[Max™]

The doppler effect as it relates to light and sound are different in key ways.

With light it is caused solely by YOUR motion through space, which affects your motion through time, causing the time you measure between crests/peaks/waves to be distorted if compared to the measurements of a hypothetical stationary observer.

Relativity isn't about the speed of light being constant, and in fact if the speed DID vary from point to point, two observers in differing states of motion would still agree on the speed of any given beam of light.

It is about the way moving through space affects the way you move through time, Einstein merely invoked the (MEASURED) constancy of the speed of light because it was an obvious example, to him, to explain these effects.


I like to use my hypothetical treadmill example.

You're on a treadmill that is carrying you in a set direction, let's say it's moving to your left.

Now you decide you want to walk towards the edge of the treadmill ahead of you, you continue moving to the left, but you're also moving forwards slowly.

As you increase your speed forwards, you get closer and closer to tracing a 45 degree angle across the treadmill, bit by bit reducing your motion to the left.

Still with me?

Now replace "left" with "future", and "forwards" with "any direction you choose, because the axes rotate the same as there is no preferred direction in space".

Now as you try to move in any direction you choose, your progress towards the future is hindered, until it reaches that 45 degree path which is known as a Lightlike Path.

Light always traces those paths, if a beam of light was here at this time, it will always be 186,000 miles further along it's path for every additional second you observe it.

Not 185,999 miles in a second, not 190,000 miles in half a second.

In empty space, it always traces those diagonal paths across the treadmill.

You are fat, you're dragging your ass as you run across the treadmill, because you are embedded in spacetime. The closer you get to that lightlike path, the more you have to work to get any closer to it.

Why?

Because you're so fat, you distort the very shape of the treadmill, which influences how fat you feel, and moving across it also distorts it.

So as you attempt to run across it, it's almost like it begins to tilt upwards so you're not just running sideways across a treadmill trying to carry you in a different direction, you're also running uphill.


I forgot where I was going with that, and just started rambling about Relativity and Spacetime and shit, kudos if you understood any of it.

[Xfaustx]

Because you're so fat, you distort the very shape of the treadmill, which influences how fat you feel, and moving across it also distorts it.

You're talking about the distortion of the "fabric" of spacetime right? How the larger a planet is the greater effects its gravity and distortion on spacetime? The effects that can be seen during an eclipse. The way you made it seem was that the path of light cannot be changed though. If you look at the sun during an eclipse you can actually see the stars that are physically behind it, because the light bends around the sun, almost like if you were to a drop a large ball onto a sheet of fabric to create a depression, and then drop another ball onto the same sheet, the smaller ball would curve around the larger. Objects have the same effect on spacetime, and light can bend around the objects, so even though you usually cannot see an object because it is behind it, the light curves around it and allows you too. Gravity is just the physical effects of space and time being distorted by the mass of an object. Also can't light be at more than one place in time, all at the same time? There was a study on light where if they poked 2 holes in a piece of paper and shot a beam of light through, there would be TWO dots of light on the opposing side, meaning light chose BOTH paths even though when shooting atomic particles through the same holes, those particles were only allowed to choose ONE of the holes. Basically it meant light could be in two places at once within spacetime or something along those lines.

[Max™]

Well, it doesn't bend it downwards.

Thats the problem with the sheet metaphor.

It's more like crumpling part of the sheet up in your fist, the distortion on the rest of the sheet, particularly on another part which was crumpled up, more closely represents gravity, than a simple depression ever could.

It's trickier to translate it into 3 dimensions though.


It isn't that the light is curving around the object to specifically reach you, as it seems from some of the depictions.

It's that light which would normally have carried off past the object away from you, and thus out of your sight, is curved into an arc past the object to reach you.


Light interacts with time much differently than we do, and that study is incorrect, if you poked two dots and shot a beam of light through one, there would be an interference pattern or a single dot, depending on if you disturbed the path of the beam or not.

Basically Feynman found the best way to describe it.

When a beam of light reaches a destination, it sends advanced waves (anti-photons, if you will) upstream in time, to tell itself where it went.

I think that is actually an artifact of our limited viewing angle of time, where we are looking through a keyhole at a tiny portion of a much larger room.

The entire room exists, but we are only able to observe the little slice visible through the keyhole at any time.

[Xfaustx]

Thats the problem with the sheet metaphor.

When a beam of light reaches a destination, it sends advanced waves (anti-photons, if you will) upstream in time, to tell itself where it went.

I agree the sheet metaphor is bad, but its just a simple way of trying to explain a more complex issue, like mass and its effects on spacetime.

When you say advanced waves of particles, how does that explain the light choosing 2 pathways? Whether or not the path was disturbed, multiple tests showed repeated results of light choosing both pathways. Kinda confused on that one, because even if the pathway was disturbed it still should only be allowed to choose one destination, unless you're saying the advanced waves of anti-photons are saying that it COULD take both pathways, and therefore does?

[Max™]

The advanced waves jostle it as it passes one or the other, so it passes through both like a wave, forming an interference pattern.

Unless you interfere and determine which slit it went through somehow.

[Woozie]

You're talking about the distortion of the "fabric" of spacetime right? How the larger a planet is the greater effects its gravity and distortion on spacetime? The effects that can be seen during an eclipse. The way you made it seem was that the path of light cannot be changed though. If you look at the sun during an eclipse you can actually see the stars that are physically behind it, because the light bends around the sun, almost like if you were to a drop a large ball onto a sheet of fabric to create a depression, and then drop another ball onto the same sheet, the smaller ball would curve around the larger. Objects have the same effect on spacetime, and light can bend around the objects, so even though you usually cannot see an object because it is behind it, the light curves around it and allows you too. Gravity is just the physical effects of space and time being distorted by the mass of an object. Also can't light be at more than one place in time, all at the same time? There was a study on light where if they poked 2 holes in a piece of paper and shot a beam of light through, there would be TWO dots of light on the opposing side, meaning light chose BOTH paths even though when shooting atomic particles through the same holes, those particles were only allowed to choose ONE of the holes. Basically it meant light could be in two places at once within spacetime or something along those lines.

Can you post a link to this study? I don't know if you're talking about the double slit experiment or something different, though it does sound like you're talking about the double slit experiment.

There are different ways to interpret this, hence why there are three different formulations of quantum theory (Feynman's, Heisenberg's, and Schrodinger's. If anyone even thinks about saying Bohmian is also an equivalent formulation I will kill you cat-in-a-box style [maybe]).

The easiest way to understand this is using Feynman's formulation (also known as the "Path Intergram Formulation" of quantum mechanics). In his formulation, we focus on finding something called the "propagator". Basically, if you know the state of a particle at any given time, the propagator is a mathematical operation that will tell you the particle's state at any given time afterwards. We refer to this as the "time evolution of the state vector (which basically means "this is how the particle's state changes over time). It turns out that a particle's propagator (and thus how it changes in time) is determined by considering the "action" of every single path from "point" a to "point" b.

"Action" is something we use in classical mechanics to find a particles equations of motion. The action depends on the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy. All objects in nature seeks to minimize the value of action. So for example, if you let go of a book and let it hit the ground, then the reason it follows the path it does to the ground is because this paths minimizes the "action" under the conditions in which the book was subjected to. This same is true for any object that follows any path.

The path integral formulation is also known as the "sum over histories approach". As I mentioned earlier, it works by taking into consideration every single path from point A to point B. Basically, we add up every single possible path to get from point A to point B. This gives us the propagator (and thus the state of the particle at any given time) based on the assumption that the particle took every possible path that connects point A to point B. Imagine throwing a baseball. We normally imagine it getting from the pitchers hand to the catchers glove by taking some specific path. According to Feynman, the baseball follows every single imaginable path that leads from the pitchers hands to the catchers glove. Every ridiculous path you can think of is taken into account....more on this later.

Now, the mathematics assume that every single path is taken, and the mathematics do in fact give us the correct answers. But does this mean that the particle actually takes every single path, or is this some mathematical trick that just happens to work?

Well, if we were to send a beam of photons through two slits as in the double slit experiment, we get an interference pattern due to the beam going through slit1 interfering with the beam through slit2. The photons are interfering with each other here. Now let's suppose we make the beam go through just one slit (but the second slit is still there, just without any photons aimed at it). Again, we get an interference pattern as if the particle is still traveling through both slits even though the source was aimed only at one slit. So let's cover up the 'unused' slit. Now we just get a beam going through one slit, and a dot on the wall (instead of an interference pattern on the wall.

Now let's compare these two situations. In both cases, there were no photons aimed at slit2. Yet, in the first experiment, slit2 was unobstructed. So even though nothing was aimed at this slit, one could still draw a path leading from the starting point, through slit2, to the wall. Since this was a possible path, this path was taken. When this slit was covered, there was no longer any paths leading through the slit and to the wall, so therefore, no photons went through and there was no interference. Does this prove that the photons individually took different paths? Actually, no. It could mean that some photons went through slit1, and for some odd reason some went through slit2. These photons could have then interfered with each other. No photon would have had to have been in more than one place at a time for this to work.

So let's lower the intesity of our light source so that only one photon is traveling through our experiment at any given point in time. That way photons can't interfere with each other. Now let's shine the photon through just one slit but leave the other open so that there are still possible paths through it. Again, we get an interference pattern that is exactly the same as the one where the photons could have interfered with each other. But there's only one photon traveling at a time in this experiment. The only way to explain this is to assume that each individual photon interfered with itself! A photon will only exhibit destructive interference (and create a pattern) if it interferes with other photons that are out of phase. This means that the photon must have traveled in a different path than itself so that it could be out of phase with itself and interfere with itself. So the indivudual photon must have traveled more than one path to reach the screen. Then it's not a trick. Photons really are taking every path to get from point A to point B (note that one photon doesn't create an interference pattern. We'd have to shoot the photons through one at a time, but we wont see the pattern until a bunch of photons have made this path one after another).

So now we devise a plot to observe the particle in two places at once. Since an individual photon is apparently taking paths through slit1 AND slit2, we will put a photodetector at slit1 and slit2. If the photon really is taking paths through both, then we should be able to send one photon through, but get both detectors to go off, indicating that the photon was in two places at once. This has to work. Afterall, the interference pattern indicates that the photon truly is traveling through both slits.

However, when we do the experiment this way, we see that we only activate one photodetector at a time. This would indicate that the photon isn't really traveling through both detectors. This contradicts the fact that we have an interference pattern...but wait! We don't! Now, instead of having an interference pattern, we have a dot (or two dots) on the screen, which indicates that each photon went through only one slit instead of each photon going through both. It seems that our whole experiment changes when we added an observation at the slits (before, our only observation was at the screen). It would seem that the photon changes its entire course just so that we can't detect it in two places at the same time. Basically, instead of taking every path from the light source to the screen, it will take every path from the light source to the detectors, but then move on normally as if nothing ever happened. If we were to put a measurement device even earlier in the experiment, it would take every path until it reaches that first measurement. It probably does that suspicious whistle people do when they're up to something but want to act like everything is normal. Light (and other matter) will go through extreme measures to make sure we don't try to fool them into revealing their trickery. In the case of the delayed choice quantum eraser, the photons even go as far as "predicting the future" (or "sending messages to the past") just to ensure that we can't fool them. Photons are very sensitive beings and they don't appreciate our trickery . They're willing to do whatever it takes to keep their hacks from being exposed (probably out of fear that God will LM-17 them if we catch them using tricks and exploits in the universe He worked so hard to build).

So if particles take every path, why don't we see baseballs going crazy and splitting apart and going a bunch of different directions when the pitcher throws it? Well, as mentioned earlier, under observation, a particle will not take multiple paths. But why does the baseball follow one specific path every time (if thrown the exact same way)? Afterall, there's an infinite amount of paths it can take. Why can't I throw a baseball, have it go to jupiter and back and land in the catchers glove sometimes, and have it travel in a straight line the next time? Well, that's because you suck at pitching. Ican do that.

Earlier I mentioned that in classical physics, we observe particles going through a path that minimizes the "action". This seems to contradict quantum theory. If quantum theory is correct, then the baseball should take any given path when thrown, not just the one we expected.

The mathematics for adding paths adds them as if they're waves*. As such, there is constructive interference (Waves adding up to bigger waves) and destructive (waves canceling each other out). It turns out that the paths constructively interfere most in the very near vicinity of the path of least action (which happens to be the same path that a classical trajectory MUST follow). The further you move from this path, the more quickly paths start to cancel each other out. So what we get is a narrow band around the least action (classical) path where the majority of the paths are still in existince, and a large area of paths where the waves are nearly 0 amplitude. The more energetic the object, the faster these paths cancel out. So with larger objects, the narrow band of likely possibilities becomes even more narrow, making us even less likely to observe a path that deviates noticably from the least action path. With a baseball, any path that's even a tiny fraction different from the classical path will have canceled out to nearly 0 amplitude (and thus nearly 0 probability) and the least action path (as well as the paths that are extremely close to it) will have nearly 100% probability.

Youtube has some good tutorials about the delayed choice quantum eraser (and the double slit experiment).

I found some actual pictures of photons during an actual experiment.

Spoiler: show

Photon before reaching the screen: -insert sneaky face troll pic-

Photon after we observe interference pattern and calls him out on it

Photon after reaching photodetector, while on its way to the screen http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/image...sa_whistle.gif "move along folks, nothing to see here"

Photon after it foils our attempts to measure it in two places at once:

*The path integral uses the term exp(iS[x]), where i is the imaginary unit and S[x] is the classical action term. From trigonometry, you may remember that exp(ix)=cos(x)+isin(x), thus making an exponent to an imaginary power into the sum of a "real wave" and an "imaginary wave".

[Mizango]

Nice word play on Schrödinger's cat lol. Being only half dead doesn't sound terribly bad.

[Crouchingllama]

I'm glad my post brought up such good tangents, I love stuff like this even if I'm too liberal arts to get it entirely.

[Mizango]

It's easy to understand if you get the basics down. Knowing where you come from and where you're going is a liberating feeling.

I'd be happy to give your clips and links of shows and lectures that are easy to grasp.

[Crouchingllama]

I read Hawking's A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell last year, doesn't mean I have a full understanding of it, links would be appreciated.

[Woozie]

Someone (I think it was Miz?) posted a link to a website with theoretical physics lectures a few months ago. I'll post it when I get home if someone else doesn't get to it first. Also, "The Elegant Universe" and a bunch of Hawking's lectures are on Youtube. From there, you'll have other links to other interesting videos. Any time you have any question or want a discussion about this stuff, make topics on BG. Miz, Kaylia, Max(tm), me, and a few others love talking about this kind of stuff and there aren't enough of these discussions on BG in my opinion.

A breif history of time and the universe in a nutshelll are excellent ways to start for a non-technical understanding. Your best bet would be going the technical route and reading math and physics textbooks, but most people don't want to do that (though I don't see why. It's by far the best way to understand this stuff. There's only so much that non-technical books can explain to you...). For other non-technical books like Stephen Hawking's, go to your local library and look for "The God Particle" (Leon Lederman or something like that), "The Elegant Universe" (Brian Greene), "The Fabric of the Cosmos" (Briane Greene), "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity" (Lee Smolin. This book, like all things written by Smolin, is very interesting and very boring at the same time), and my personal favorite, "The End of Physics" (David Lindley).

Edit:

Scientific American

Subscribe to their magazine too.

[Mizango]

Yeah Woozie and I had many Lee Smolin conversations lol. The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos are excellent reads, you cant go wrong with anything by Brian Greene to tell you the truth. João Magueijo's Big Bang is an excellent starter show as well. Ill post links to that when I get home.

Physics of the impossible by Michio Kaku and Origins by Neil Degrasse Tyson are excellent reads also and are easy to understand. Carl Sagan's Cosmos is awesome so is anything on Nova! This thread is giving me a serious boner.

Edit: Go with Woozies idea. Scientific America, Discover Magazine and Science Illustrated are all excellent magazines. I subscribe to these 3 as well as a few others.

[Crouchingllama]

Ever had one of those moments where you realize you're a total idiot and have been one your entire life? My dad tried to get me to learn BASIC in 2nd grade because it was a the wave of the future (and I was totally enamored with our tape-driven pc and commodore 64 and out Sperry IBM-XT knock off), but in my infinite wisdom the next year I decided that computers would never go anywhere because despite the fact that they were used to make the Shuttle work (<3 it), since I could do my spelling homework faster than the Sperry could boot up that it wasn't something I wanted to do. Then the Challenger blew up and my dreams of being an astronaut died along with my faith in NASA. And then I never changed. Don't stop learning, it makes you old. (old news is old)

[Mizango]

Computers and my fascination with NASA paid for and build my Miz-pire. We are like a before and after of each other.


Edit: lol thats fucked up.

[Max™]

*Brings up a semi-Bohmian interpretation which is implied by Einstein's Relativity itself, in which the pilot wave hidden variable is replaced by the very past and future states of the body in question relative to the time it is observed, and mentions that the mass of the observed body determines the extent of it's temporal spread, naturally renormalizing the interactions!*

Hah, nothing you can do about it!

Feynman is less wrong than Heisenberg and Schrodinger, but he still implies non-local effects on some level, in most interpretations of his work.

They had the right general effect, the math obviously works, but the assumption of non-local interactions between spatially extended wave functions and such is where Einstein (and I) realized something was wrong with their approach.

[Woozie]

Feynman is less wrong than Heisenberg and Schrodinger, but he still implies non-local effects on some level, in most interpretations of his work.

They had the right general effect, the math obviously works, but the assumption of non-local interactions between spatially extended wave functions and such is where Einstein (and I) realized something was wrong with their approach.

Feynman can't be less wrong than Heisenberg and Schrodinger because it's a mathematical fact that all three formulations are exactly equivalent. The difference between Heisenberg's and Schrodingers is the math equivalent of arguing semantics (do the operators rotate under a unitary transformation while the state vectors remain invariant over time or do the state vectors rotate the other way under the inverse unitary transformation while the operators remain invariant? That's like asking if a particle is moving to the left or is the reference frame moving to the right. They are exactly equivalent to each other. It can be shown that a state particle in the Feynman formulation has the exact same time evolution as that in Schrodinger's formulation [in fact, the whole point and purpose of Feynman's formulation is to find the propagators of Schrodinger's or Heisenberg's formulation [since these two formulations being different only in how we interpret the unitary transformations]. Feynman:Schrodinger :: Lagrange: Issac Newton. Same results, just useful in different ways).

Einstein's main concern with Quantum Theory was that Non-locality could violate causality and allow messages to be sent back in time. He created hidden variables to solve this matter. However, it was shown that his hidden variables are incompatible with quantum mechanics. In fact, ANY local hidden variables are incompatible with Quantum Theory, so if we want hidden variables, they have to be non-local, which completely defeats their purpose in making a hidden variable theory of Quantum Mechanics (FYI Bohm's hidden variables are also non-local). It was also shown that Quantum Entanglement cannot violate causality, making his concern about paradoxes unfounded, as entanglement cannot cause them anyways. There is no longer any reason at all whatsoever to propose a hidden variable theory except to keep the universe nice and deterministic. Save yourself the trouble and admit that the universe isn't deterministic. And no, Bell experiments are not inherently flawed. Every theorist that tries to nitpick at every single Bell Experiment even when the CHSH inequality is violated by over 30 standard deviations need to find something better to do with their free time.

[Max™]

Feynman can't be less wrong than Heisenberg and Schrodinger because it's a mathematical fact that all three formulations are exactly equivalent. The difference between Heisenberg's and Schrodingers is the math equivalent of arguing semantics (do the operators rotate under a unitary transformation while the state vectors remain invariant over time or do the state vectors rotate the other way under the inverse unitary transformation while the operators remain invariant? That's like asking if a particle is moving to the left or is the reference frame moving to the right. They are exactly equivalent to each other. It can be shown that a state particle in the Feynman formulation has the exact same time evolution as that in Schrodinger's formulation [in fact, the whole point and purpose of Feynman's formulation is to find the propagators of Schrodinger's or Heisenberg's formulation [since these two formulations being different only in how we interpret the unitary transformations]. Feynman:Schrodinger :: Lagrange: Issac Newton. Same results, just useful in different ways).

Feynmans description can be taken as showing that it is the influences of past/future states on the observed Now, and not the influences of non-local states in the same Now, which causes the effects observed in QM.

Einstein's main concern with Quantum Theory was that Non-locality could violate causality and allow messages to be sent back in time.

His main concern was that any non-local theory cannot coexist with Special and General Relativity, and more worrying was the background dependent nature of all current forms of quantum theories.

He created hidden variables to solve this matter. However, it was shown that his hidden variables are incompatible with quantum mechanics. In fact, ANY local hidden variables are incompatible with Quantum Theory, so if we want hidden variables, they have to be non-local, which completely defeats their purpose in making a hidden variable theory of Quantum Mechanics (FYI Bohm's hidden variables are also non-local).

Bohmian interpretations can be described as local if one discards an absolute sense of causal realism. In other words, the past which was observed, is not necessarily the state it remains in.

It was also shown that Quantum Entanglement cannot violate causality, making his concern about paradoxes unfounded, as entanglement cannot cause them anyways.

Non-local effects can be described as exactly equivalent to causal violations. There are two options here, the EPR paradox showed that one of the following assumptions MUST be false: The Universe is local. The Universal is causally realistic.

There is no longer any reason at all whatsoever to propose a hidden variable theory except to keep the universe nice and deterministic. Save yourself the trouble and admit that the universe isn't deterministic.

I never said it was deterministic, I said it was further from being deterministic than any modern theory suggests, actually. That is why I said the hidden variable is one which is only hidden due to our interaction with time, it is not necessarily a truly hidden one. There could be ways to distinguish and even observe these variables.

And no, Bell experiments are not inherently flawed. Every theorist that tries to nitpick at every single Bell Experiment even when the CHSH inequality is violated by over 30 standard deviations need to find something better to do with their free time.

I'm not nitpicking the Bell Experiments at all, they are perfectly consistent with my description.

Non-local models say the observed state of Alice's detector instantaneously alters the state at Bob's detector.

My extended temporal interaction model says observing the state at Alice's detector changes the state of the particles upstream in time, before they were even entangled, which would obviously alter the observed state at Bob's detector.

A simple way to determine this to be false would be performing an entanglement experiment with sufficiently massive bodies traveling for a long enough period of time that the alteration of the state at one detector no longer overlaps with the furthest period upstream that the bodies were interacting with one another.

Let's say an electron interacts across an entire minute of time, 30 seconds ahead of and behind our observed Now.

(note that it isn't exact numbers there, though I've proposed ways to determine the actual temporal interaction period of various particles)

If you entangled two electrons and let them travel for less than 30 seconds before observing one of them, the observation would change the state of the partner at their origin, and you'd observe the changed state at the other detector accordingly.

If you then entangled a second pair of electrons and let them travel for over 30 seconds before observing one of them, the furthest point upstream when they could interact would no longer overlap, and you would not observe the expected entangled state at the opposite detector.

If there is no limit to the amount of time which massive bodies can travel before their entangled states undergo decoherence, then I am wrong.