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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 05/06/2005 : 16:37:11
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I was watching the end of a new police-series episode that just started to air in Sweden, called "Numbers".
An FBI-agent gets help by some mathematician to help solve crimes. Some kind of numerology pseudo-science or something. I didn't see more than the last few minutes so, I can't tell about the series as a whole.
At a certain point in the episode, just as I had turned on the TV, the FBI-agent was preparing to counteract a planned robbery: The robbers made the FBI think an armoured transport was going to get robbed. The FBI would of course use the armoured car as a decoy, and send the valuables with an anonymous van instead. The robbers counted on that and made the hit not on the armoured car, but the van.
As both vehiecles prepared to departure, the mathematician noted that one should observe the "(Heisenberg) Uncertainty Principle", that observing an experiment will change the outcome of the same.
This is where my skeptic alarm went into Red Alert. I thought The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was about the impossibility of determining the position and momentum of a particle at the same time.
So what is the name of the principle that applies to the observation of quantum experiments, that observation affects parameters that changes the outcome? I know there were references to it in a Star Trek TNG episode where the holodeck simulation of Dr. Moriarty wants to use the transporter to become physically real, but I forgot what the principle was called.
And please do continue this thread by naming other principles that people ought to know about.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2005 : 17:34:55 [Permalink]
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There isn't any such "principle." The observation of a particle collapses its wave function. This is what's demonstrated by the good ol' Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, in which you put a cat in a box with a radioactive source which will, through decay, eventually trigger the release of a vial of poison, to kill the cat. You wait until there's a 50-50 chance the poison will have been released. At this point, the "wave function of the cat" says that it is equally alive and dead. Opening the box and looking (making an observation) will collapse the wave function into one of the two possible states.
Obviously, no cat is both living and dead (or half each) at the same time. Obviously, in the real world, the cat is either alive or dead just prior to you opening the box. It is the math involved in the quantum modeling which says the cat can be in such an absurd "superposition of states," and the math alone.
(Amusing anecdote: I had an inkling of the above ideas long before I ever heard the word "quantum." Back when I was 10 or so, I remember playing cards with my mother, and after she'd turned over a three of diamonds off the top of the deck, I starting asking questions about whether or not it would have been the three of diamonds if she hadn't turned it over. I was getting the gist of the "wave function of the cards," but I couldn't express it well at that age, and my mom just kept insisting that of course it would have always turned up the three of diamonds.)
The Uncertainty Principle, on the other hand, does state that it is impossible to determine a particle's position and momentum to the same degree of accuracy simultaneously. This is due to how such measurements can be made. To know a particle's position accurately, you have to sacrifice knowledge of its momentum, and vice versa. There is no detector which can measure both at the same time.
And given that, for example, an easy way to know a particle's position at thus-and-such a time is to bounce it off a detector, then quite obviously, you'll have little idea of where the particle goes (or how fast) afterwards. But, since the observations (measurements) are the experimental results, observing doesn't "change" the outcome in any way, no.quote:
And please do continue this thread by naming other principles that people ought to know about.
I don't know if it's got a name, but Richard Feynman wisely said that if you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you don't understand Quantum Mechanics. (For the benefit of the wishful thinkers out there, the inverse is not true.  )
And my own principle states that anyone who applies the term "quantum" to health, psychology, stereo equipment, crystals, automobiles, etc. is just out to grab your hard-earned dough.
And while not a "principle" in any way, it's important to remember that quantum leaps are very, very, very small. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2005 : 18:56:17 [Permalink]
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I just finished watching the first episode of the series "Numb3rs".
It wasn't as bad as I originally feared. Though pseudo-scientiffic, is was cool science-fiction.
Spoiler: The search for a serial rapist/murderer with 10+ victims on his consciense involves locating the guy's working point of origin: the idea taken from a garden sprinkler: by examining the water-drops, and their distribution pattern, with mathematics one can extrapolate the water's point of origin. The same principle is applied on the victims, narrowing down the search-area for the perpetrator. Obstacles like lying wittnesses throws calculations off, but in the end, the mathematics, and the good FBI-agent wins the day.
Second impression is not as bad as the first, and though this series will probably not get as good as "CSI- Crime Scene Investigations", it does have potential.
Edited to add: Though the problem mentioned earlier about observing quantum-mechanical events changing the state being observed is mostly confined to quantum level events, there exist analogies in the macro world, especially in psychology: The subjects studied knows they are studied, and thus behaves differently. This should be apparent in series like "Big Brother" and "Survivor".
In the Star Trek episode (that I now have identified as "Ship in a Bottle") communications between Geordi LaForge and Captain Picard refer to a scientist that supposedly stipulated this "principle".
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
| Edited by - Dr. Mabuse on 05/06/2005 19:15:14 |
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