Faster Than Light and Time Travel

[spacecowboy342]

Everyone of us could die and the moon wouldn't care. It's been affecting the earth before the first life form arose.

Yeah, that's the way I see it too. It doesn't seem possible that conscious observers could possibly be necessary for wave collapse. So whatever was happening on another planet is happening whether we see it or not.

[SilentHunter]

Yeah, that's the way I see it too. It doesn't seem possible that conscious observers could possibly be necessary for wave collapse. So whatever was happening on another planet is happening whether we see it or not.

No conscious observer or measuring device can collapse the present quantum state of a distant planet or our moon. The reason for that is heat (information) from them doesnt instantly reach us. Its limited by the speed of light.

The moon is 6 seconds away at light speed so theres a 6 second lag in being able to collapse its quantum state.

[spacecowboy342]

No conscious observer or measuring device can collapse the present quantum state of a distant planet or our moon. The reason for that is heat (information) from them doesnt instantly reach us. Its limited by the speed of light.

The moon is 6 seconds away at light speed so theres a 6 second lag in being able to collapse its quantum state.

No conscious observer is needed to collapse the moons waveform. The moon is not behaving in a quantum manner. Too many atoms interacting with each other.

[Rlyeh]

Yeah, that's the way I see it too. It doesn't seem possible that conscious observers could possibly be necessary for wave collapse. So whatever was happening on another planet is happening whether we see it or not.

I don't believe consciousness can collapse the wave function anyway. Biologically we're limited to what our eyes have already detected. Edited December 5, 2013 by Rlyeh

[spacecowboy342]

I don't believe consciousness can collapse the wave function anyway. Biologically we're limited to what our eyes have already detected.

I'm not really clear on that. On the one hand you are right that we can't actually see the individual particles but I have been told that consciousness can collapse the wave function in certain conditions but in't required for wave function collapse.

[SHaYap]

*quarks*

[SilentHunter]

No conscious observer is needed to collapse the moons waveform. The moon is not behaving in a quantum manner. Too many atoms interacting with each other.

Its present state is isolated from us by, at the very minimum, the time it takes light from the moon to reach the Earth which is about 6 seconds. You seem to think that the number of atoms determines quantum behaviour. It doesnt. Its the amount of heat those atoms leak. Heat cant travel faster than light so the present quantum state of the moon remains isolated from us and intact for 6 seconds.

The Moon is a seperate system from the Earth. There is no present interaction between its atoms and ours. Any interaction lags behind by 6 seconds or more.

[spacecowboy342]

Its present state is isolated from us by, at the very minimum, the time it takes light from the moon to reach the Earth which is about 6 seconds. You seem to think that the number of atoms determines quantum behaviour. It doesnt. Its the amount of heat those atoms leak. Heat cant travel faster than light so the present quantum state of the moon remains isolated from us and intact for 6 seconds.

The Moon is a seperate system from the Earth. There is no present interaction between its atoms and ours. Any interaction lags behind by 6 seconds or more.

Doesn't matter a we are not required for wavefunction collapse

[Frank Merton]

Let me see if I have this right. The electron going through the slit can be seen in one of two possible ways.

One way to see it is that the electron goes through every possible path in reality, which would mean essentially an infinite number of parallel universes has to be created on the, all otherwise identical, so this one little electron going where it is going to go, and it goes to all of them, each in a universe.

The other way to see it is that the electron goes through every possible path in some sort of virtual or suspended way, which is not resolved until someone observes the results, and then the path of the electron "collapses" to one of the possibilities -- in short, everything is virtual until there is an observer to make it real.

You will excuse me, Horatio, but there does seem to be something very wrong in the state of Denmark.

[spacecowboy342]

Let me see if I have this right. The electron going through the slit can be seen in one of two possible ways.

One way to see it is that the electron goes through every possible path in reality, which would mean essentially an infinite number of parallel universes has to be created on the, all otherwise identical, so this one little electron going where it is going to go, and it goes to all of them, each in a universe.

The other way to see it is that the electron goes through every possible path in some sort of virtual or suspended way, which is not resolved until someone observes the results, and then the path of the electron "collapses" to one of the possibilities -- in short, everything is virtual until there is an observer to make it real.

You will excuse me, Horatio, but there does seem to be something very wrong in the state of Denmark.

I'm not sure but I am starting to look at electrons more as a bit of "solidified" energy where a certain intensity level of it travels all possible paths and when we look for position it shows up at whichever part of it's energy field happens to be strongest at that given time. I'm not sure if this has any validity or if it's just an effort of my mind to make sense of the senseless.

[Emma_Acid]

I'm not really clear on that. On the one hand you are right that we can't actually see the individual particles but I have been told that consciousness can collapse the wave function in certain conditions but in't required for wave function collapse.

No, measurement collapses the wave function. It has nothing to do with consciousness - this is utter BS made up by the likes of Chopra to sell fluffy pseudo mystical nonsense.

[sepulchrave]

I'm not sure but I am starting to look at electrons more as a bit of "solidified" energy where a certain intensity level of it travels all possible paths and when we look for position it shows up at whichever part of it's energy field happens to be strongest at that given time. I'm not sure if this has any validity or if it's just an effort of my mind to make sense of the senseless.

What your are saying sounds to me like the path integral formulation of Quantum Mechanics that was developed by Dirac and completed by Feynman.

It is derived from Fermat's principle used in geometric optics, and is based on the principle of least action.

So if that is, indeed, what you are saying it is very valid - but unfortunately for you someone else already won the Nobel prize for it!

[Rlyeh]

Its present state is isolated from us by, at the very minimum, the time it takes light from the moon to reach the Earth which is about 6 seconds. You seem to think that the number of atoms determines quantum behaviour. It doesnt. Its the amount of heat those atoms leak. Heat cant travel faster than light so the present quantum state of the moon remains isolated from us and intact for 6 seconds.

The Moon is a seperate system from the Earth. There is no present interaction between its atoms and ours. Any interaction lags behind by 6 seconds or more.

You seem to be making up your own definitions, an isolated system is one that exchanges no matter or energy. The moon cannot therefore be an isolated system.

[spacecowboy342]

No, measurement collapses the wave function. It has nothing to do with consciousness - this is utter BS made up by the likes of Chopra to sell fluffy pseudo mystical nonsense.

Yeah, I get that but can't interactions of particles between themselves act as "measurement"?

What your are saying sounds to me like the path integral formulation of Quantum Mechanics that was developed by Dirac and completed by Feynman.

It is derived from Fermat's principle used in geometric optics, and is based on the principle of least action.

So if that is, indeed, what you are saying it is very valid - but unfortunately for you someone else already won the Nobel prize for it!

Just my luck

[SHaYap]

7. New Perspectives

...

Rob Clifton and Hans Halvorson (1999, 2002) argue that Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics can be seen as the special case of Bohr's complementarity interpretation if it is assumed that all measurements ultimately reduce to positions measurement. Originally Jeffrey Bub and Clifton were able to demonstrate (given some idealized conditions) that Bohr's complementarity and Bohm's mechanics fall under their uniqueness theorem for no-collapse interpretations. Clifton and Halvorson improve this result by showing that Bohr's idea of position and momentum complementarity can be expressed in terms of inequivalent representations in the C*-algebraic formalism of quantum mechanics. It turns out that either position or momentum are dynamically significant, but it is not permissible to assume that position and momentum are both dynamically significant in any single context. From these assumptions they deduced Bohm' mechanics by adding the metaphysical postulate that position measurement is always dynamically significant, but this metaphysical restriction requires, as they emphasize, that positions have a dubious priviledged ontological status. Rather, Clifton and Halvorson (1999) and Halvorson (2004) believe that complementarity may give us a realist interpretation of quantum field theory.

....

• emphasis mine - Stanford Edu link
  

Quantum wave functions come alive! May the Bohr Model rest in peace

Ransom Stephens - July 26, 2013

Physicists from the Canadian Institute for Measurement Standards are the first to measure a quantum mechanical wave function. And it only took 88 years from the formulation of Schroedinger’s equation!

The difficulty of the measurement originates with the fundamental uncertainty between position and momentum, energy and time, and a host of other so-called conjugates: complementary pairs of quantities that cannot be measured to arbitrary accuracy at the same time. Yes, it’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle came straight from Fourier and the mathematics of waves. To form a localized wave packet, we have to add up many waves of different wavelengths; the tighter, more localized that wave packet, the larger its bandwidth. In the limit of perfect position accuracy, the packet is described by a Dirac delta function which has infinite bandwidth. The tradeoff between localization and bandwidth is the heart of the uncertainty principle.

• EDN Network link
  

~

[wuhugm]

Forgive me, but I still can't quite put my finger on it

How the speed of light is so important that it spawned all these wild theories?

Isn't a simple explanation that 10 light years away observable events literally means that it's information from 10 years ago?

Like a very bad delivery system that you only received your porn book 10 months from it's estimated arrival

Now you say that distant planets behave like quantum, why?

I think the problem with double slit is there are unknown factors in it, like hidden properties of electron in motion, or whatchamacallit and not some farfetched theories like parallel universes and string theory and baaarrrrrfffff

sorry for being a layman

[NocturnalWatcher]

I never understood how seeing a star through a telescope is looking back in time. I heard the farther out we look the further back in time we look is that right?

If that's the case and stars we see through a telescope is looking back in time wouldn't the further we look towards the object the more we go forward until we look close enough to see it in the present?

I just don't get it lol

[keithisco]

What make "causality violation" impossible?

[wuhugm]

I never understood how seeing a star through a telescope is looking back in time. I heard the farther out we look the further back in time we look is that right?

If that's the case and stars we see through a telescope is looking back in time wouldn't the further we look towards the object the more we go forward until we look close enough to see it in the present?

I just don't get it lol

What make "causality violation" impossible?

Because we comprehend something by comparing it to our current knowledge and common senses

Those theories might be true, but before placing belief in unproven theories, let's just keep open minded, kay

I know this is like that heliocentris and religion all over again, the people at that time just couldn't believe it

but now we don't automatically deem them crazy, let's let them prove their theories

I think unconditional belief in unproven theories is quite similar mistake

By comparing the theories with our current understanding :

1. It's safe to say causality violation was never both observed and publicized

- Is there any instance that this ever happen at all? we currently have no idea

- If everything is possible, is it possible for something to be impossible? causality violation is still in the realm of "I don't know", belief in theories that revolves around that realm is also a "I don't know"

2. Light as information medium is a proven fact, it's just currently the fastest observable thing for humanity

- Light from thunder reached us faster than the sound, everybody knows this. Convert it to astronomical distance and even light is incompetent courrier.

- And because this incompetent courrier somehow causality violation is possible? why?

[spacecowboy342]

I never understood how seeing a star through a telescope is looking back in time. I heard the farther out we look the further back in time we look is that right?

If that's the case and stars we see through a telescope is looking back in time wouldn't the further we look towards the object the more we go forward until we look close enough to see it in the present?

I just don't get it lol

If you look at something a million light years away it took the light you are seeing a million years to get to you so what you see is what it looked like a million years ago

[spacecowboy342]

What make "causality violation" impossible?

No one can say for sure it is impossible but logically it would seem so, If something happened in the past it happened. To go back in time to change it would seem impossible because if someone changed it it would have already been changed.

[spacecowboy342]

Forgive me, but I still can't quite put my finger on it

How the speed of light is so important that it spawned all these wild theories?

Isn't a simple explanation that 10 light years away observable events literally means that it's information from 10 years ago?

Like a very bad delivery system that you only received your porn book 10 months from it's estimated arrival

Now you say that distant planets behave like quantum, why?

I think the problem with double slit is there are unknown factors in it, like hidden properties of electron in motion, or whatchamacallit and not some farfetched theories like parallel universes and string theory and baaarrrrrfffff

sorry for being a layman

Those that say distant planets act in a quantum way just don't understand quantum mechanics.

[sepulchrave]

2. Light as information medium is a proven fact, it's just currently the fastest observable thing for humanity

- Light from thunder reached us faster than the sound, everybody knows this. Convert it to astronomical distance and even light is incompetent courrier.

- And because this incompetent courrier somehow causality violation is possible? why?

A better way of looking at it is to say that ``the speed of light'' isn't special.

There is a special speed, you might call it ``the maximum response speed of the Universe'' is special.

Light happens to travel at this speed, as do many other things.

If there are two events occurring at different places and different times, and the only way to ``connect'' these two events is to travel at speeds faster-than-the-maximum-response-speed-of-the-Universe (a mouthful, that is why ``faster-than-light'' is a popular phrase) then it is no longer clear which event ``happened'' first.

Or rather, different observers travelling at different relative speeds might have different opinions about which even happened first.

Therefore you can't unambiguously assign a cause-and-effect role to each of the two events.

IF you could travel a speeds faster-than-the-maximum-response-speed-of-the-Universe, than your travel path would assign a causal direction. You might do something in one spot (A), zip off, and do something else in another spot (, for example.

However as noted above different observers might see that B occurred before A; to them you would appear to be travelling back in time.

Since any one viewpoint is as good as any other, this leads to paradoxes.

[wuhugm]

A better way of looking at it is to say that ``the speed of light'' isn't special.

There is a special speed, you might call it ``the maximum response speed of the Universe'' is special.

Light happens to travel at this speed, as do many other things.

If there are two events occurring at different places and different times, and the only way to ``connect'' these two events is to travel at speeds faster-than-the-maximum-response-speed-of-the-Universe (a mouthful, that is why ``faster-than-light'' is a popular phrase) then it is no longer clear which event ``happened'' first.

Or rather, different observers travelling at different relative speeds might have different opinions about which even happened first.

Therefore you can't unambiguously assign a cause-and-effect role to each of the two events.

IF you could travel a speeds faster-than-the-maximum-response-speed-of-the-Universe, than your travel path would assign a causal direction. You might do something in one spot (A), zip off, and do something else in another spot ( , for example.

However as noted above different observers might see that B occurred before A; to them you would appear to be travelling back in time.

Since any one viewpoint is as good as any other, this leads to paradoxes.

That one still bugs me, just like Simultaneity of moving train stroke by lighting on both ends

Both are correct in their own frame of reference, but does that means both events did happen or only a single event?

what if we installed sensors on both ends and just measure which one is correct once and for all?

for this the maximum response speed of the Universe, t is still greater than 0 right

[ChrLzs]

To wuhugm (and anyone else troubled by the paradoxes and concepts of relativity, ftl, etc) may i suggest that until you are comfortable with the basics, you will be flailing your arms about meaninglessly.. To be frank, you cannot apply common sense or use your own experiences and understanding of everyday happenings, newtonian physics, etc when you start looking at what happens when you try to consider all the implications of relativistic speeds.

Ironically enough, given its age, I think Einstein's own words are a wonderful starting point. Download and read (study) the document here...

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5001

(The word doc version is good as it includes images)

That was written/revised in 1916/1924...! Yet it stands up very well today and gives a superb insight into the man himself. (It's about the length of a very thin novel, if that helps your decision to have a go...)

You will find that in order to progress through it, you really must understand and accept each new concept he introduces, and there will probably come a point (I won't say when as it may vary..) when everything just gets seriously weird and a bit difficult to accept. You just have to drop all the simple baggage/logic/expectations you've gathered over the years and move your thought processes to a slightly different level. Without help, you may find you just get stuck at that point or some other - if that happens early on, maybe this isn't the best topic to pick as a hobby!

I don't pretend to get it all fully yet, but from reading some posts here, it looks as if some folks have an insufficient grasp on how and why all this weird stuff came to be hypothesised and then accepted...

Anyway, other than offering that link, I'll keep out of it.. Sepulchrave - may I say I love reading your posts, even though you lose me every now and then - like I said, I don't claim to be an expert on these topics, but that doesn't stop me being absolutely fascinated..