Did anyone watch the prog last night about physics? If so, can anyone explain to me why physicists think that unless an entity is observed or measured it doesn't exist? Surely they're really making a point about knowledge/perception, not existence?

(In words of one syllable, please......)

Right..just wait until you want some help.....

I don't even try and make sense of a lot of applied physics. It's a bit like maths; since leaving school who on here has been in the position of having to multiply X and Y?

Fact is that we're simply not intelligent enough to understand stuff like the universe. For example, try and get your head round the fact that it goes on forever. So you travel in a straight line forever until you reach the end of the universe.......... then what? the human brain doesn't recognise things that don't have a beginning and an end. So the universe goes on forever, ermm it can't can it? there has to be an end point. Also if it does have and end point, whats after that?

etc etc

simple answer, proof

If you can't measure something or see something you can't proove it exists (in the world of physics)

everything in the universe has a mass or force associated with it.

e.g.

But there is nothing to say the universe isn't folded or stretched and no proper definition of nothing. No one knows where the black holds lead either. I'm not gonna think about it anyway, who cares? As long as you eat have warmth and get laid from time to time there's not a lot else that you need is there?

Me!

They were talking about a thought experiment called Schrodinger's Cat. A cat is placed in a closed box with a device which might or not emit cyanide and kill the cat. There is a 50-50 chance of this happening. Because the box is closed, no-one outside of it is in a position to know whether the cat is alive or not. The physicists described this as a situation where the cat is both dead and alive at the same time and the reality of its status doesn't 'collapse' into one or other of the options until the box is opened and someone checks.
Surely (methinks) the cat either is or is not dead. Just because there are two possibilities (dead or alive) that doesn't mean the animal is dead AND alive. It seems mad to me, but they think it proves the theory of parallel universes.

If i was offered a choice of two puddings and I have't decided which to have yet, that doesn't mean I exist in one place eating strawberries and in another eating treacle tart. Does it?

I'll make one for you if you can answer my question

I would answer your question.

However you have used 'methinks' but not written the rest of it in Shakespearean English.

Which is reprehensible in my book....

If it's not a soundproof box then you'll be able to hear the little moggie shrieking to know whether it is alive or dead.

If it is soundproof then is it also airtight? If it's airtight then the cat will suffocate anyway even without any cyanide to help it on its way.



Scientists are bloody stoopid sometimes.

I didn't. It wasn't me. What you saw was just the possibility of my saying it

Well, no prizes for you, I'm afraid.
Shame...my treacle tarts are so light, so delicious. Including real lemons to offset the sweetness....

to prove if the cat is dead or alive you have to have a gander or a goosy depending on how you feel.

the experiment discounts all other factors such as noise made from the cat inside the box.

Its simple, without proof physicists edge their bets. If the cat made no noise you would "presume" it was dead but you couldn't prove it until you had the aforementioned gander.

Your treacle tart analogy makes no sense. A physicist would probably just run away from that question in his / her sandles and socks.

so the universe is never ending
a bit like being a goldfish in a bowl
never knowing whether it is coming or going as there is no end to it

Goldfish are supposed to have a memory span of about a second so it wouldn't remember if it was comming or going anyway

If a fat bloke falls over in the forest and there's no-one there to sell him a kebab, should he have a treacle tart instead??

Narl, the experiment wasn't about proof, it was about existence. The scientists were trying to say things don't exist unless observed. In the box case, according to them, because the cat was potentially dead and potentially alive, it was both at the same time.
Interestingly, Schrodinger himself eventually discounted the experiment, but by then his friends were hooked

Oh all right, I'll make you a treacle tart, for trying.

Don't know when you'll get it tho

Yes....where IS Snowy, by the way??

suppose the cat triggered the cyanide, then the scientist opened the box to check on the cat - wouldn't the poison kill him??!



I dont understand physics or certain religious bodies...

me neither....see you tomorrow, probably