Suppose you could watch something — or someone — by observing its doppelganger. Not the thing in itself, but its shadow. Ridiculous? Maybe not. According to the Guardian Lockheed Martin filed a patent application for a quantum radar system which operates on precisely that principle. The Guardian writes:
In theory entangled particles could be used to reveal details of objects they have never interacted with. If one particle bumped into an aircraft its twin would react in the same way, even if it never left the laboratory. Work out a way to read that behaviour, and an image could be built up, even with no information being directly transmitted from the target.
The patent application itself suggests that by entangling waves of different characteristics the radar can decipher one by observing the other. In this way the frequency which cannot travel far can pass on the information to the frequency which can. It is a kind of information relay race in which the baton started by things which can look through walls, see IEDs emplaced underground and past stealthy coatings can be passed to something which can reach the radar receiver. The saying that you can run but can’t hide may be truer than ever.
The Lockheed Martin patent envisages a different use for entanglement. Current radar systems become less useful as range increases, because the frequencies needed to transmit over long distances are less sensitive. According to the patent this problem can be removed by entangling light at different frequencies and then sending them out together as a bundle.
It says: “Entangled radar waves can combine one or more particles with a relatively high frequency for resolution, with one or more particles at a lower frequency for more effective propagation.” The radar beam could then “propagate through different types of mediums and resolve different types of target”.
Research into quantum entanglement is at the heart of a revolution in understanding just how things happen and while knowledge of that process remains incomplete, developments this area are already changing cryptography, communication and computation. Recently DARPA has solicited research which can show “beyond any doubt that manifestly quantum effects occur in biology, and demonstrate through simulation proof-of concept experiments that devices that exploit these effects could be developed into biomimetic sensors.” Biomimetic sensors are “devices, or systems that imitate nature … of special interest to researchers in nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), the medical industry, and the military.” What Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” is rapidly becoming part of the technology because it seems to work though don’t quite understand it.
The impact of these new ideas will eventually spread past the hard sciences and technology into our zeitgeist. Popular culture is still largely based on 19th century physical concepts, on the ‘common sense’ of the 1920s. It is bound to be modified by our new knowledge. Sir Arthur Eddington once said that “not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine”. That is probably because we only see part of it and are perplexed and surprised when the balance comes into view. And now that 21st century science is bringing more of the strangeness to the surface I think we will find a remarkable willingness in the public to embrace it.
One of my favorite works of fantastic literature is an early 20th century story called The Charwoman’s Shadow, which is all about a young man’s attempts to restore an old woman’s shadow to herself because as it turns out, the least obviously valuable part of us is what is most important. The shadow was entangled with her; and a sorcerer by holding it in his keeping kept her in his thrall. You know, sort of like quantum radar. That today’s public might receive that comparison as more than poetic license stems from its exposure to the information revolution. This is the first generation that understands the value of the invisible, that knows the secret power pattern can impose on the inanimate; which grasps the relationship of software to hardware and who, perhaps for the first time since the electric light dispelled the shadows of night, can sense the ghost in the machine by the full light of day.
Arthur Clarke once wrote that “the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible,” and that moreover, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The magic is back. The hard part is being able to stay on our feet in its midst.
So the 21st century threatens to reverse the tremendous set piece on which the Charwoman’s Shadow ended, with the defeated sorcerer fleeing over the Pyrenees, summoning everything magical in the world after him to hide forever in the Land Beyond the Moon’s Rising. Perhaps for a while, but not for all time. A century which taught that the loss of magic was the price of enlightenment has given way to one in which marvels and perils we thought imaginary now rise before us into dark and wondrous heights and we must nerve ourselves to meet them.
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It will be a faster than light effect too? My understanding is that because it would involve FTL transmission of information, learning about a state change in one photon by observing a state change in a distant entangled photon is impossible. Others are also skeptical – http://kuipercliff.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/quantum-radar-lockheed-jumps-the-gun/
Of course it could be based on some revolutionary theory that overthrows the theory of relativity, but you’d think that that would have been big enough news that by the time patents were being issued, we would have heard about it.
So I’m a skeptic.
Manipulating quantum effects at a distance might as well be the Holy Grail of modern physics – if you can do that, you can probably come up with anti-gravity and who knows how many other magical applications. It hints at something like Greg Bear’s “no-channel communications” in “Anvil of Stars.”
But count me as skeptical that anyone today is anywhere close to being able to play those kinds of games, especially Lockheed. I think it would be pretty close to magical if they could just straighten out the problems in their F-35 project.
Without claiming to understand any of it, I’ve read that this same “spooky” phenomenon, if harnessed, will also lead to faster-than-light computers. And apparently entangled particles have already been shown to maintain this linkage successfully over many dozens of yards… What if the effect is unlimited? Instantaneous communications at infinite distances, and reality boggling computers are only the beginning. Combined with some system of electron storage, a cubic inch of ruby could contain ample storage for all the data ever assembled by mankind, and a similar sized computer “chip” assembled with spooky particles for storage and computation could rival or surpass all the computer power yet created.
I read about a futurist several years ago (forget the name) who said the first person to live 200 years is already in school, and the first person to live 1000 years will be born in our lifetime… It seemed preposterous to me five years ago, but reading about DNA, spooky particles and the singularity are forcing me to reconsider it all…
Does this radar have medical applications? If so, they will soon need to stop development. Because there is to be no more technological innovations in medicine. President Obama has so decreed. Innovation cost too much money and keeps too many people alive for too long (babies, even — who grow up and die old).
These same principles apply to newfangled contraptions like quantum radar, only more so. I’m thinking they won’t come cheap. Quantum cost over runs. Besides, they sound like a defensive system, and nothing is more offensive than the defensive (see anti-missile missile, and those who are anti anti-missile missiles).
The decision is made. All future innovation will be confined to new types of taxations, litigations, regulations, and bureaucratizations. These will keep the best and the brightest busy, and a lot of idiots as well.
Remember, everything that should be discovered has been discovered — along with much that shouldn’t! Have been! Discovered!
As for that cubic inch ruby computer, I’m thinking Windows 7,000 will crash it. And imagine the viruses! Will Norton keep up?
Only the SHADOW knows for sure…mwahahahahahahaha!
(Sorry, couldn’t resist).
Hmm. My browser wigs out and won’t give me the edit function until I try and post again and then my original post shows up for me to edit.
GAH!
glad to see some other BC’rs are properly skeptical of the entanglement nonsense.
sure, DARPA traditionally throws a few bucks at nutball theories, just in case. protects them from looking close-minded and all. and probably supplies many laughs back at the office.
quantum effects in biological systems? they’re ALL quantum effects, from a certain perspective, what else coud they be?
yes, Anvil of Stars is very kewl.
But maybe y’all know of Roger Penrose and his physicists’ commentary on AI in The Emperor’s New Mind, where he speculated (wildly) that perhaps human consciousness depends on some as yet undiscovered quantum effect in the micro-tubules of neurons, probably working by an as-yet undiscovered aspect of quantum physics possibly quantum gravity … except that that answers exactly NONE Of the issues of just how and why a quantum system should be able to do whatever the heck it is that needs to be done. Basically, it says, “We don’t know how the mind works, and we don’t know how quantum stuff works, so maybe they work the same way!” Such thinking requires the capability to tunnel through light years of lead.
LOL- I’m hoping by then Bill Gates will finally figure out what kind of crap he’s been foisting and toss out the whole Windows thing. That might be good, but then again he might just lose all interest and get wrapped up weaving malaria nets saving billions of third worlders so they can birth billions more third worlders …
We’re on some kind of razor’s edge here, and I’ll make a bold prediction: The future will either be very bright or very dim… Then again I suppose that’s how it’s always looked, but somehow I’m convinced that this time it’s true!
The picture of the 20th century atheist
was the detective in a trench coat and fedora
beneath a lit streetlight at night. The bright light from streetlight lights him as he peers into the city at dark. Even his shadow is man made.
The 19th century atheist was dracula. The creature of the night. He haunts the wild woods the cow barn village and the manor.He throws no shadow; he makes in the mirror no reflection.
And what of the 18th century? The novel form was born then in the imagination of the new world by the old.
Pity the man with no invisible means of support.
Therefor
Psalm 111:10 (King James Version)
10The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.
Therefor
Proverbs 1:7 (King James Version)
7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Mr. Schrodinger! Where’s my cat?
I want to know just where he’s at
I saw him just a while ago
And you have got him, this I know
I hear him sir, he’s in that box
Be kind enough to loose those locks
How can this be, it’s empty now
And yet I clearly hear him meow
Ah there he is, he’s in your yard
I can just see him, looking hard
I’m not quite sure that I should mention
My cat has only one dimension
And there he goes, again he’s gone
He’s now on Mrs. Cratchit’s lawn
I’m leaving, sir, where is my hat
Good lord above, sir, what is that?
Oh no, I’m going in the box
Please sir, I beg you, not the locks
I’ve paws and tail, dear lord, but how?
Please let me out, dear God……meow
Please don’t confuse physicists who do experiments with entangled particles for those who would say you can signal with them in a FTL way.
Yes, quantum entanglement is real, over real distances, even through the air.
No, “utilizing spooky action” doesn’t create computers that are faster than light. physicists don’t say entanglement says that. No one is suggesting FTL transmission of information. But it’s possible to build up, statistically, a set of correlations that allow you to get more information than you would classically.
Let’s separate out various phenomenon, and explain where the quantum is.
Imagine I have a penny. I cut it in half, so the heads side and tails sides are separate. I put each half in a separate envelope. I mail one to Wretchard. I keep one.
The two systems are correlated, yes? Everyone see that? Opening one envelope tells you what’s in the other envelope. This did not require FTL information travel.
To be specific: when Wretchard opened his envelope, he knew INSTANTANEOUSLY and WITHOUT violating the laws of physics, what was in my envelope (if he had heads, I had tails; if he tails, I heads.)
But Wretchard knowing this in NO WAY signalled to ME what was in my envelope. He doesn’t know if I already know or not–neither of us can tell if the other way opened the envelope yet.
Now you can change the experiment to where, say, Marie Claude cut the penny in half, sending Wretchard one half and me the other. And she used some procedure to determine the cut. Wretchard and I still know what the other has instantly, and if I get enough halves, I can ascertain MC’s procedure, and separately so can he–and we both get the right answer to learning that procedure.
But in the case of a penny, the correlation is perfect. There are other systems where the correlations aren’t perfect. The value of entanglement is that the correlations are *greater than* than any classical system (like the penny), and you can use the answers to infer that procedure that gave you your particular sequence of outcomes. (It’s still the case in quantum that you can’t tell if your partner opened the envelope before you did or not, btw.)
But the idea that you can use your outcomes to infer the procedure is not new. We can use projections (shadows) to determine the 3-d shape of an object. We can figure out bank account balances from a history of deposits and withdrawals. It’s just that in quantum land, we can do it with less bits than classically.
Griefer, yes, it’s the FTL and transport stuff that’s dubious. Also the utility, that is the realization, of “quantum computation”.
The Aspect experiments show what they show, but what it means is still uncertain.
btw,
millimeter wave technology can already see through walls, and we used it in Iraq. Seeing through walls may sound surprising, but Xrays see through your body’s skin..it’s the same idea. High energy photons penetrate things and scatter in predictable ways.
Lockheed thinks that it has belled Schrodinger’s cat?
This may work or,
This may be an artfully worded way to keep a lab open doing regular stuff or,
This may be genuine magic, as in “Watch the Magician’s left hand and your money will disappear like magic.”
If this radar really could detect the influence of the shadow of the penumbra of a ghost at a distance by untangling faster than light threads then it could find many things.
It would be nice to think that a longer lifespan would mean an improved quality of life. If instead we have 5 billion 200 year old Boomers hanging around then some Cosmic Pest Control Service may take an interest in us.
BTW, wrote this and then read Walt. Great Minds etc.
Quantum RADAR hmmmmm!
When the world’s best physicists and engineers can’t seem to make quantum communication systems work with entanglement.
Methinks the management at Lockheed realized what a bunch of rubes are running the country and want some of those billions being tossed to unscrupulous bankers and investers who can’t seem to make an honest dollar.
Well, if we’re going to bankrupt the republic to provide make work jobs for union thugs and government drones, why not employ scientist and engineers on some worthless pipedream.
It’s much more in line with Obamassiah’s goals than funding continued production of the F-22!
I propose a new slogan: Lockheed Martin, the real alchemists. We really can turn lead into gold!
In a reality where the U.S. is now in a recovery, perhaps they really can pull off the transmutation or someother seemingly impossible magic.
Armageddon Rex,
more in line with Obamassiah’s goals than funding … the F-22!
You are behind the times. Not funding the F-22 was last month. This month they are busy laying the ground for not funding the F-35. In May we will start the debate on “How many aircraft carriers do we really need?” Maybe instead they will start an argument that if the Army was really professional they wouldn’t “waste” their ammunition, so why buy expensive semi-automatics and excess expensive ammunition? Now I know it is hard to keep up but you don’t want to be the sad character at the cocktail party still babbling like Cindy Sheehan about last years cause?
/sarc for those who need to be told.
If an Nobel prize-winning physicist tells you something is possible, he is almost certainly right. If he tells you something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.
Other uses for doppelgangers:
Opera singer held on suspicion of murder
An opera singer is being held on suspicion of killing her husband and hiring a doppelganger in an attempt to prove her innocence.
we have comics whose hero is called “Lucky Luke that rides faster than his shadow”, uh, about shadow, depends where the sun position stands, so we might get strange replicas if the experience is at noon, at nine… it’s my Cyclopède minut !
Now it is said that our pr-celtic civilisation, the one that raised dolmen, cairns, menhirs, had the ability to use “thought transmission” to correspond with far away tribes, that they used granitic menhirs on specific places as a relay, where magnetic waves wre crossing.
We still don’t know how this civilisation disappeared, that nonentheless left quite a lot of huge remains
Dang!
Hoped to sneak in a Jack Palance tribute, but never got the edit function:
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
This time, the overgrown-lizard hero is confronted by a mechanical doppelganger, courtesy of an army of extraterrestrial apes.
Unable to best his metallic twin in combat, Godzilla seeks out the aid of Okinawan monster god King Seeser.
The film is peppered with moments of humor; so much happens in the final reel that one is disappointed not to see the kitchen sink.
Jack Palance – acquired his grizzled face from burns acquired when his WWII bomber crashed.
—
MC Said…
“We still don’t know how this civilisation disappeared”
Maybe they were precursors to the French, and simply raised the white flag?
Reading all this stuff about quantum effects gave me an idea as to how to assure world peace: Quantum Nuclear Weapons. We can replace the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with one that puts the Quantum Nuclear Weapons Trigger (QUA-NUTS) at the center. When you launch a Quantum Nuke at your enemy’s capital, it triggers its companion to blow up and destroy yours.
There’s a glaring defect in the MAD doctrine: you have to rely on an admitted enemy to do his part. What if your enemy falls down on the job, and then does not get up and do his part by destroying you? Quantum Nukes remove this doubt, by replacing Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with Self Assured Destruction (SAD). One technical question: how do we make sure both “envelopes” are opened at the same time? Or is that really important?
Admittedly, I am in the first flush of enthusiasm for this idea. But I would only suggest it to President Obama’s National Security Council if it will be given a fair hearing and judged on its merits.
If a spherical wave front approaches a plane surface, and if that plane surface can detect the passage of the wave front, then how fast does the circular line of intersection propagate across the plane?
Wouldn’t this be a tangent function, where the initial propagation rate, at right angles to the direction of the spherical wave propagation, is infinite, declining to the wave propagation rate at infinite time?
If the spherical wave propagates at the speed of light, then shouldn’t information about that wave be transferred faster than light, in restricted directions?
Doug, you’re completely wrong, the French existed long before you became a poor replica of them, though that managed to propagate legend and rumors of invincible and rightful warriors, depended if a shakespeare was at work or a short minded opinionist, vlan dans la tronche !
At one time I think that if you filed a patent application that meant you had something that you could demonstrate that worked, but I guess that is no longer the case. Way back early in the last century Henry Ford had legal problems with a lawyer who had secured a patent on an automobile similar to his without ever having built one that worked.
As far new developments in radar, almost 20 years ago it was revealed that the intelligence community had funded a radar design that used TV and FM radio transmissions to track aircraft, enabling a passive radar system by using bistatic principles. It looked like a great way to cut the costs of operating our space launch ranges until tests showed that TV and radio signals, horizontally polarized radio waves, do not do well for tracking objects that are moving vertically, like rockets.
I wonder about the philosophical – and political – effects of successful quantum applications. Back in the late 60’s my high school physics teacher said that certain things would remain unknowable, because Sen Proxmire had pushed through a bill that mandated a practical application for scientific research. Knowing for knowing’s sake was over or at least would no longer be Federally funded. But now I see the real effects of that law. Basic medical research was supporting by telling everyone that AIDS was rampant. Research into everything from atmospheric chemistry to the mating habits of squirrels was supported by ginning up AGW. So what will this really yield?
Quantum mechanics
Repair cars before they break
Toyota needs some
I recently hooked up a temp job building parts for a millimeter array to be used as a telescope. It’s quite fancy.
I’m glad for the work, and the project should be a very useful astronomical instrument.
If you’re interested in synthetic aperature imaging check out the ALMA project in Chile.
I heard about this at Cal Tech. Seems as the experiment has been replicated.
http://plus.maths.org/issue12/news/fasterThanLight/
Gives me a headache.
Greifer, what I wrote about was state *changes*, not states. Instantaneous knowledge of the state of a distant entangled particle upon detection of its near partner depends upon the assumption that nothing has happened to the distant particle to change its correlation with the near particle. If the distant particle undergoes a state *change* (becomes entangled with an enemy missile), nothing about that change, or even whether or not a change occurred can be learned by detecting the state of the near particle.
There is an entire session focused on quantum entanglement at the Defense, Security, and Sensing symposium next month in Orlando, FL. There are even scheduled presentations about radar and interferometer theories based on quantum entanglement.
http://spie.org/defense-security-sensing.xml
Glenmore @23, can you wait while I master calculus before answering your question? Hold on. You mention planes. That’s geometry! I was good at geometry — until we reached the part where we had to figure out the volume of a cone. Or was that trig? I forget.
OK, as of today, I know nothing about higher math. But I’ve read enough science fiction to know there’s a catch! Here is my guess (I think I read it in a book by Asimov): that plane don’t really exist. You got that whole “space is warped” thing going, in addition to, you know, whatever the other stuff you were talking about is. So the plane would have to be placed on the universe from outside of the universe for the transmitting of information at faster than the speed of light across that plane to occur. Is it possible to place such a plane in our universe? Yes, by god. I mean: Yes. By God.
By the way, I watched a Nova Special about quantum mechanics and string theory and all that neat stuff, and since it didn’t involve global warming I trusted the presentation. In any case, they were discussing gravity and why its effects are rather weak at close range but act at such huge distances — as compared to “electromagnetic forces.” If I remember correctly (a big if), they suggested that “electromagnetism” works on what might be called “the plane” of the universe, while gravity works in all directions — and across all ten dimension (or whatever the number is now — I haven’t been keeping up) and throughout the multiverse! The metaphor they used was a pool table where electromagnetic forces are the balls bouncing around the “plane” of the table while gravity works in all directions, both on and off the table. Could we use gravity waves to communicate with other universes? Interesting question! On second thought, it’s not an interesting question. Sorry I brought it up.
This is sort of a tangent to the discussion and may not be anything new to people here, but it blew my mind so I’m sharing.
I was watching some science channel last night about evolution and it seems there is some new theories regarding how animals change over time. From what I could gather, the scientist were saying that all vertebrates share about 1,000 common genes sequences (not sure if that was the term used) and that animals “evolve” by turning these genes on and off, not by creating new genes.
This makes alot of sense to me, but appears to blow classic evolution out of the water, no?
Marie Claude:
Here’s a trap question.
Does French history only go back the the Frankish invasion of Romanized Gaul, or does it go back to the Roman invasion of Gaul, or does it go back further than that?
Alexis, I live not far from a Cromagnon cavern with carved animals, and I was born in Brittany where we have a lot of megaliths, so, make your conclusion
Glenmore, the wave front’s intersection with the plane initially propagates at an infinite rate, as you suggest, but no information or energy is propagated at that rate. If you send a signal to the moon from your back yard, using a flashlight and Morse code two people on the moon separated by a large distance could receive the signal at the same time. This does not mean information about the signal is being transmitted from one to the other at FTL speeds. You could think A knows instantaneously what B’s detector is telling him, so wouldn’t that be FTL information transmission? But A doesn’t know what B’s detector is telling him. He doesn’t know whether or not the same signal was sent to B, or, if it was, whether or not B received it. His “knowledge” of what B receives is dependent upon assumptions which cannot be confirmed by his mere reception of the signal at his own detector.
What you are talking about is a correlation – i.e., the signal at detector A is correlated with the signal at detector B. Neither information nor energy can be sent this way from A to B because what happens at detector A does not *cause* what happens at detector B. We have correlation, not causation.
The same is true for your spherical wave front intersecting a plane. The particular points in the plane at which, at any time, the wave front is passing are correlated by the geometry of the wave front. But you’ve heard it before – correlation is not causation. The transmitter is the cause.
Hmm, a bit of quick google search shows that the
expression “the cat’s meow” was coined some +-10 years before Schrodinger’s cat. A coincidence? I think not. After all, why would the cat’s meow be more excellent than the cat.
Walt, your ‘Schroediger’s Cat” is now my favorite Walt verse.
Thank you!
34. Marie Claude:
Apologies to everyone for going totally off-topic, but I have heard that there are vast megalithic structure on the west coast of France south of Brittany. They are said to be right on the coast and have portions that stretch some hundreds of meters into the sea, seemingly indicating that the ocean level was much lower at the time of construction.
I have tried doing searches on this subject and all I get is Atlantis nonsense. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of these structures and could you suggest and web-sites regarding them that are fact-based?
Thank you in advance.
The history of the land now called France goes back to the beginning of the world. The history of France as a nation comes sometime between Charles the Bald and 1900, depending on your definition of “France.”
Same for any other modern nation, really.
I have to confess that this quantum computing and quantum teleporting stuff is completely over my head. I read Greifer@12′s very clear description (thanks for that) and thought to myself: “What point is there in my having half of a penny and Wretchard having the other half as a means for communication?” Obviously I’m missing an important point. When I first read about quantum computing, I was made to believe that this was the ultimate code cracking algorithm but as I got deeper into it, all it really seemed to be was a reinvention of the analog computer. Likewise, quantum teleporting initially appeared to provide some means for Faster Than Light (FTL) communication (which is supposed to be impossible) and then the people describing the process backed off and said it wasn’t so. Obviously I’m confused but as far as I can tell this stuff has no value at all.
What, the Merovingians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_dynasty), a Frankish dynasty that ruled Francia beginning nearly 4 centuries before Charles the Bald were not part of French history?
What surprises me is they can get a PATENT on something which not only cannot be shown to work, but may actually be impossible. What’s next, patenting the Star Trek transporter? How can the patent office be so brain-dead stupid?
Heathen@18 said:
“If an Nobel prize-winning physicist tells you something is possible, he is almost certainly right. If he tells you something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.”
Since I am displaying my ignorance, here’s another one:
Does anyone here understand “Abel’s Impossibility Theorem”, i.e. polynomial equations higher than fourth degree are incapable of algebraic solution.
I looked at this diagram describing the quintic equation at:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/QuinticEquation.html
My impression is this diagram is supposed to make it plainly obvious why it’s impossible to solve a quintic equation. Being the pathetic knuckle dragger that I am, my response after looking at this diagram is:
“Huh?? What does it mean?”
I really would like to understand this. Does anyone here have a clue about this stuff and can dumb it down to my level?
“If an Nobel prize-winning physicist tells you something is possible, he is almost certainly right. If he tells you something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.”
I was going to let this go, but since it got brought up again – this is a pretty nonsensical statement no matter who first said it. How is it different from saying “Everything is possible, nothing is impossible!” And put that way it’s pretty clear that this is a pseudo-religious/pop psychology statement, but it has nothing to do with reality.
If a noble-prize winning physicist tells me that no, it’s not possible for him to crap solid gold, I’m going to believe him. And when someone tells me – scientist or politician – that yes, it certainly is possible that his crap don’t stink I am *not* going to believe him. Not now, not ever.
Eggplant, for someone who claims that it is over your head, you have hit the nail right on the head very nicely. Wretchard and you cannot communicate information between yourselves, at all, by opening envelopes and discovering which half of a penny you have. You can know which half of the penny the other has *assuming* that Wretchard has been sent the other half of your penny, but if Wretchard’s half ‘detects’ a missile by bouncing off of it, looking at your penny won’t tell you that it happened or anything else about it.
The collapse of entangle quantum states is instantaneous. The transmission of information is limited by the speed of light. This means that changes in entangled states cannot communicate information between separated points, according to current theory.
Quantum cryptography, OTOH, does not imply FTL information transfer. It is merely a method of detecting detection – whether or not a message has been intercepted. The detection of the polarization of a photon in one orientation destroys the information about that photons polarization in a perpendicular direction. If the sender polarizes photons in a sequence of directions known only to him, an interceptor cannot send on the information they encode, because if he detects a photon in the wrong direction, he destroys the information encoded by the sender without getting the information it encoded. He has only a 50% chance of putting the photon back into the stream with the original information on it. When the intended receiver decodes the photons in whichever direction he wants, he can send, by conventional means, a list of the orientations he used for measurement and a sample (only) of his measurements back to the sender. The sender, looking at the sample, can check the ones that were measured with the correct orientation. If some of the measurements are incorrect, that is evidence that the original photons were intercepted. If they are good, the sender can look at the list of measurements and send, by conventional means, information back to the intended receiver telling him which of his measurements were made with the correct orientation. These measurements, known to the sender and the receiver, and statistically proven to be secure, can be used as a key. A message encoded with this key, then, is secure if the key was randomly encoded in the first place, and if it is used only once.
This is one method of quantum cryptography. I believe that it has been demonstrated over significant distances long ago. As polarized photons have been used for at least a century, and their polarization is stable over long distances, the difficulty, I expect, is that single, individually encoded photons must be used. If single bits were encoded by groups of photons, as in non quantum communication, detection of a few photons by an interceptor would not destroy the information redundantly encoded on the rest of the group. It is this destruction of information that allows the sender to determine that an interception has taken place.
Quantum cryptography violates no laws of physics that I know of. Neither does quantum computing.
“Tom Cohoe:
What, the Merovingians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_dynasty), a Frankish dynasty that ruled Francia beginning nearly 4 centuries before Charles the Bald were not part of French history?”
Ah, but, you see, they ruled part of what is now France, part of what is now Germany, and spoke German. Core of the Merovingian kingdom was Neutstria and Austrasia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frankish_Empire_481_to_814-en.svg
I picked Charles the Bald because that is the first time we have a kingdom centered on what is now France to which the modern state can be traced back to without interruption. As an added bonus, under Charlemagne, Anglo-Irish monks make a distinction between “correct” classical (actually, Vulgate, since they got stuff wrong) Latin and the degenerate form spoken by some of the common people on Southern Gaul and Italy, thereby establishing 1) Latin as a dead language 2) seperate identities for French and Italian. A lot of historians tend to think of Charles the Bald as the real break between Carolingian Franks and Medieval France, though given that Charles was himself a rather typical Carolingian ruler it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see that.
Certainly the Merovingians can be considered part of French history, just like Celtic Gaul and the Roman Empire which became a well-integrated part. But were they French in any meaningful way? Nationality can be a really ambiguous concept in situations like this.
The 1900 date, before someone asks, is because it MAY have been only during the period 1880-1900, after the invention of the railroad and greater communications, that people began thinking of themselves as French first and members of their local community second, along with a homogenization of regional cultures to one based on Parisian culture, etc. Maybe – the book (Peasants into Frenchmen) I read may have been overstating the isolation of rural France.
All I was doing was having fun with MC’s comment about menhirs.
@Rick, #42: Wretchard’s description says, “patent application”, rather than that a patent has been granted.
The strategy behind patenting things (or not) could fill a book.
Suffice it to say that LM has discovered some utility in “jumping the gun”.
Depends what you mean by quantum computing.
Any analog form of computing is some kind of quantum computing, and vice-versa.
If you want to compute how far Johnny can throw the ball analog computing is the way to go. As in, give Johnny the ball and let him throw it, then measure the results. Or give Billy the ball, and interpolate on the relative size of Johnny and Billy, and even the interpolation can be done by constructing a lever of the right length, or whatnot.
But what purportedly makes “quantum computing” different from such “classical” analog computing is some way of using entanglement or uncertainty to tunnel to an answer faster than classical, analog or digital, systems can do even in principle. Or, to answer questions they cannot compute at all, if you can find such a question.
If someone can show me a quantum adder, that simply adds two 32-bit numbers faster than a digital adder, I’ll concede they have something. Frankly, if they can show me one that works at all, even a million times slower, but it works by some novel tunneling or entanglement mechanism, I’ll concede there is at least a topic there for discussion. Right now, I’m not clear there is one.
I mean, I can add two thirty-two bit numbers by enumerating so many beans, pouring them into a big bin, and counting the sum. Great. But no new physical principles are involved, and the practicality is small, and I think there is little future in bean computing.
Grey Fox #46: “All I was doing was having fun with MC’s comment about menhirs”
Ah – me too – only having fun.
But speaking of menhirs raises an important question: Have we given Asterix and Obelix due consideration in this matter?
Anton
what Coppens tells about the megalyths:
http://www.philipcoppens.com/megaliths.html
about the Megalyths in Brittany, and especially in Morbihan,
click on Gravinis, probably what you wanted to look at, cuz it’s on a small island, and the site says that some more remains might still stand in immersed waters
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/arcnat/megalithes/index.html
Tom Cohe
Asterix was GALLIC and stong Obelix used to carry Menhirs, but just for fun and or to throw at the roman legions !
Now, I ‘m having fun at you !
stated: Suppose you could watch something — or someone — by observing its doppelganger. Not the thing in itself, but its shadow. Ridiculous? Maybe not. According to the Guardian Lockheed Martin filed a patent application for a quantum radar system which operates on precisely that principle.
Sounds like the Rambam’s idea of the Negative Attributes of Hashem in his famous “Guide to the Perplexed”
Walt, I want to animate and illustrate your poem.
Any of you worthies out there do voicework?
to hdgreene, regarding the one-inch ruby computer: The viruses and instabilities plaguing the products of Mr. Gates may fulfill the worst fears of the physicists in the Manhattan Project, and disrupt the fundamental glue of the universe and send all creation flying apart.
Wait, no… That’s already happening.
Never mind.
Grey Fox, I’m surprised that you forgot to talk of our Revolution ?
uh then not really french then according to what you narred , cuz Rbespierre was a Picard, the Jacobins were provincials too….
and some, when they want to make fun at us sometimes call us Gallics !
the thing is, the different populations of France are rooted in the very landscape of France, it’s so that no coherent gaelic, latin, frankish language were the proeminent spoken languages, they were colored by the locals, thus mine was the “gallo” language, (try wikipedia to learn what that means), but under Caesar, you had Gaule with somewhat of our actuals borders, then the Franks invasions (from which came our name) their inheritance were peculiar, it’s how our country was divided between brothers, and thus the kingdom became smaller and smalleer, until that some kings manage to reconquest provinces after provinces, be it with marriage alliances or by wars.
51. Marie claude:
Thank you very much….the megalithic period has always fascinated me, it appeared across a wide area in a very short period of time. The surplus population needed to construct some of them rivals the pyramids but they are far less noted (except for Stonehenge).
Again, Thanks
I found an article by Paul Comstock at California Literary Review on the subject of Quantum Entanglement. Mr. Comstock addresses the issue of information between entangled particles going faster than the speed of light.
“The first thing most people think of, including a report produced for the Department of Defense shortly after entanglement was proved real, is being able to use it to communicate faster than light. The link of entanglement works instantaneously at any distance. So it would be amazing if it could be used to send a signal. In fact this isn’t possible. Although there is a real connection between two entangled particles, we don’t know what the information is that it’s going to send. If I measure the spin of an entangled electron, yes it communicates the value somehow to its twin — but I can’t use it. I had no idea what the spin was going to be. This is just as well, as faster than light messages travel backwards in time. If I could send a message instantly it would be received in the past, and that really would disrupt cause and effect.”
http://calitreview.com/51
MC,
The French Revolution is one of the questions Weber’s “Peasants into Frenchmen” doesn’t really address. Implicit in his argument is the idea that either the French Revolution did not really bring the isolated communities into any sense of “Frenchness,” or after Napoleon they simply returned to their previous insularity. I believe he says that late as the Franco-Prussian War many French troops couldn’t speak French – orders had to be translated into Provencal, Breton, or whatnot. The Revolutionaries – or the leaders, anyway – were bourgeois, middle-class townsfolk, not rural peasants, and not really part of what I was talking about. The Sans Culottes were poor city folk, of course.
Transalpine Gaul, as the Romans called it, was only one of many Gauls, broken up into multiple kingdoms, some of which would probably be classified as German (Caesar’s statement that the Rhine marked a cultural boundary doesn’t seem to have been true and may have been politically motivated – his accounts of his time in Gaul were political campaign material for his supporters back in Rome), so I would hesitate to identify Pre-Roman Gaul with France too closely.
I am not sure what you mean by “the different populations of France are rooted in the very landscape of France” – I would agree that the previous populations were not entirely wiped out by repeated invasions, so that Frenchmen could theoretically trace part of their ancestory back to the stone age hunters who resided in modern-day France. I am not sure why that is significant, however. Why would it make then French instead of Aquitainian, for example?
I am going by two different definitions of “nation” here 1) a distinct political and social entity – France is a recognizable nation because it operates under the French government and this government can be traced back to Charles the Bald (despite the change in dynasties, the fact that much of its territory was only under its nominal control, etc. – I think) 2) Shared Identity – The French are French because because they see themselves as a single group. That is an extremely difficult thing to pin down, but the latest date I have seen argued for that is c.1900. I will accept earlier, however.
Incidentally, I am not trying to pick on France here: England, and later Britain, can be traced back earlier (Bede writes of the English as a distinct group in the 8th century and they were largely politically unified by 937 – Brunanburh – while Britishness seems to have become a meaningful concept to Britons during the Napoleonic Wars), but Germany and Italy became politically unified much later, in the 19th century. I don’t know when they started thinking of themselves as one people – probably in the late 19th century. Pretty much every European country has that kind of ambiguity in its history.
The US is an exceptional case, because we are largely a nation of colonists and started out with a common culture and a definite beginning to our government (July 4, 1776), which is why the common trope that “America is an idea,” while it works well in European history, doesn’t really fit the U.S. well.
are we going to be able to ‘turn time’ ?
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Time-Turner
The Time-Turner is a device capable of time travel. The Time-Turner resembled an hourglass on a necklace. The number of times one turns the hourglass corresponds to the number of hours one travels back in time. It is extremely important that the user of a Time-Turner not be seen by past or future versions of themselves unless, of course, said versions are aware of their usage of a Time-Turner. A possible scenario is a wizard/witch killing their past or future selves by mistake.
From today’s WSJ, front page article on Israel’s settlements, from continuation on p 17:
OMG what universe is this from, and does Petraeus have feet of clay?
Mad Fiddler/54
Walt, I want to animate and illustrate your poem.
I would be pleased and flattered. I have seen your work and it is marvelous.
Thanks
Walt
Walt,
could you please give the url’s to Fiddler’s work?
—
OT:
Obama promises 3000 percent reduction in insurance premiums!
I say he did not write the book.
Wretchard: “And now that 21st century science is bringing more of the strangeness to the surface I think we will find a remarkable willingness in the public to embrace it.”
Ah, but for the better or the worse, is the question. True, the enlightenment might have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, but it is inarguable that there was a lot of brackish unhealthy bathwater to throw out. So now that the strangeness rises again, will we meet it armed with the intellectual advances we have made since, or do we regress?
Menashe (c 650 BC) was an ancient king of Judah known for his promotion of idol worship. There is a story in the Talmud about a great rabbi (c 400) who after disparaging Menashe, was visited by him in a dream and quite thoroughly put in his place. At that point, the rabbi sincerely asks: “If you were so wise, why were you involved in such foolishness? Why did you worship idols?” To which Menashe answers: “You are not able to understand the great urges that we felt. If you had lived in my generation, you would have lifted up your robe and started running to be able to worship idols.”
Sure, our state-of-the-art knowledge has advanced. But too many of us are still those stereotypical savages, mollified by luxurious living conditions. Given the return of some of the old conditions, will we do any better, or will we lift our robes and run to our old superstitions?
People can be skeptical all they want. It just reveals their own ignorance and fear. This is real science in the real world.
The bad news is that in addition to the benefits, much of the new tech can also be used to keep the masses in thrall forever, with no hope of regaining their freedom.
You’ve got about five to ten years before the “PTB” will quite literally be able start taking over your minds. That is no exaggeration.
Warren,
Decades of TV viewing have already done a marvelous job of preparing the mental battlespace.
#44 wws
What I meant by the statement (which is a bastard paraphrase of something I dimly remember hearing before) is that our understanding of the physical universe is limited. That every generation throughout history seems to – wrongly – consider itself the pinnacle of scientific wisdom. Just as a 19th century physician could not have imagined that one day I could create a 3D representation of your brain simply by putting you inside a big magnet to align the protons in your body that we cannot reasonably predict future scientific advances beyond the next few years.
The statement is also meant to convey that arguments from authority should carry no weight.
Also, the qualifier ‘almost’ is what differentiates the statement from your restatement.
My apologies for sacrificing clarity upon the altar of brevity. I appreciate your reading my comment.
60 Josh
Here is another tidbit:
The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story
BTW,Dave thinks it should be filed under F for Fiction.
I’m willing to admit that FP is not the most reliable source.
Papa Ray
P.S. The PA and Hamas are making the most of the “Crisis”.
Heathen, I wasn’t meaning to pick on you. It seems that kind of thing pops up all the time and yours was a handy post to riff on. There is some truth to the idea, when it’s put as you just did.
Probably the quote on this topic that I like best is Arthur C. Clarke’s observation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
That’s the third of Clarke’s 3 laws – you were restating the first, but you left out the “probably.” It’s an important qualifier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
Reference “Real Science”. Yes there is rapid advancement in science and discovery of useful information, “facts” and advancements in both practical and theoretical research and development.
But don’t forget the most recent fiasco. The famous warming and eventual destruction of the planet earth by a trace gas found in our atmosphere.
All science is only as good as those who work on it and only as good as their motives and politics.
Or at least that is what I think.
The latest reminder I have had is watching factory trained auto techs try and determine what was wrong with my car. With their very expensive computers and analyzers they worked on it for two days only to find out that it was a loose connection on a terminal and a little rust.
In my day when my body still worked (at that type of work) I could have found the problem in about an hour with a ten dollar multimeter.
So much for relying on “science”.
Papa Ray
PR @ 67:
FTA: and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.
Well, that part is right on.
Thanks for the link.
This is outrageous, but I suppose what happens when you have a Zero for POTUS, much less a sekrit muslim, we end up with Saudi Arabia running our foreign policy and even our top generals bowing to them. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book –
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Zero when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Zero when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.
Doug @ 62
Have emailed Mad Fiddler for permission to post his URL.
Walt
hdgreene/31
In any case, they were discussing gravity and why its effects are rather weak at close range but act at such huge distances — as compared to “electromagnetic forces.” If I remember correctly (a big if), they suggested that “electromagnetism” works on what might be called “the plane” of the universe, while gravity works in all directions — and across all ten dimension (or whatever the number is now — I haven’t been keeping up)
Eleven. Has to be eleven. Ten would be incomplete. Or rather, they know that eleventh would equate to god, so they say ten so they don’t have to say god. Amongst themselves, they just say “the you know what of you know who” and nod.
Really, math says eleven.
and throughout the multiverse! The metaphor they used was a pool table where electromagnetic forces are the balls bouncing around the “plane” of the table while gravity works in all directions, both on and off the table. Could we use gravity waves to communicate with other universes?
No. Gravity is inseparable from energy (matter, though distinction does not matter) that is a function of space (a 4-d continuum segment of the verse). Whether it propagates through 11-d is contentable. Mebe so, but it may have properties that differ from 4-d segment. It only propagates where verse is. Can’t propagate through nothing. Has to propagate through something.
As for the gravity and EM, the first propagates on a square distance function, the second is linear. Thus I would suspect that many phenomena that are explained by gravitational epicycles are in fact EM phenomena. A galaxy does not fly apart not because there is enough darkwing duck tape (dark matter we can’t see nor detect or sumthin) in it, but because it is glued together by electric forces. It is more economical. If I were a god, I would design it that way. Thinking… Yes, I would.
Zim:
From what I could gather, the scientist were saying that all vertebrates share about 1,000 common genes sequences (not sure if that was the term used) and that animals “evolve” by turning these genes on and off, not by creating new genes. This makes alot of sense to me, but appears to blow classic evolution out of the water, no?
I am not sure what they talked about, but I suspect they did about RNA 18S. This is a stable sequence in all vertebrates (16S in lower biota). Based on what is turned on–that is what you are. In other words, if you find an organism that you are unsure about its classification and compare its sequence with what you have in your library, you can nail the sucker!
This is used in bio labs (16S) to determine the belonging of a bug (bacteria) to a specific biota to figure out how to deal with it/kill it. But if you point out (a friend of mine did, he was just a lowly lab assistant working for esteemed PhDs) that it is odd that all the biota seem to be predetermined and neatly organized in a short sequence and ponder quietly, you will be met by odd looks. “It evolved that way, it is a proof of evolution!”. Bloody did, bloody is!
Some 25 years ago or so, someone took a notice and figured out that there should be, based on 16S, a type of airborne biota with such and such general makeup. Later, it was found, with a sequence and properties to match. How odd is that?
Also… gravitational lensing. Does not make sense. If you visualize the curvature of space around a massive object (functions like an accelerator, but because the speed of light is finite, it manifests as an energy increase), it would tend to focus the light toward itself, not bend it around. That is incongruent and contradictory. The lensing effect would be explainable by a strong EMF.
No?
Do they, in cyclotrons, bend path of particles by gravity or a strong EMF? Which one do you think?
I did not say that quantum radar was impossible. I said that *according to current theory* transmitting information via collapse of entangled states is impossible. Note the qualifier, “according to current theory”.
Clark’s adage notwithstanding, science is not magic. Some things are forbidden by the laws of science. More accurate might be the statement, “science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic to people sufficiently primitive.”
Tom, Some things are forbidden by the laws of science.
Does not mean that they may be forbidden by laws governing universe. Science is our modeling device. By it we infer. But our inferences are limited and we may infer incorrectly. In fact, most of the time we do. Thus, the caveat is appreciated.
Also, sufficiently primitive is relative to the potency of magic. You meant it that way, I presume?
Do they, in cyclotrons, bend path of particles by gravity or a strong EMF? Which one do you think?
Cyclotrons bend only charged particles, and they do it in a few yards or hundreds of yards. Gravitational lensing bends even neutral particles like photons, and they have light years to do it in.
You may believe in some of these alternate cosmology theories based on EM, but gravitational lensing works there, too.
Grey Fox, you have some good points
here a map of “France” or Gaul from Caesar’s era, borders were natural, like Rhein, Alps, Pyreneas
and another one from Clovis’s :
http://www.cosmovisions.com/histGaule.htm
We commonly agree here the the kingdom of the Franks goes up to Clovis.
Also the kings were elected by their noble peers, explained here in french:
http://tinyurl.com/yzx5f9r
Also the Convention army was composed of different french provincials, how Napoleon as young officer managed to make them obbey ? got to investigate that
“Do they, in cyclotrons, bend path of particles by gravity or a strong EMF?”
They use eXtremely strong EMF, hence the acronym used in the scientific literature: XEMF.
About England, not sure that it was politically unified by 937, still invaders came from Danemark, then from Normandy, they were destabilisating the country
http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/historytimeline.htm
So by the era of Charles the Bald, England wasn’t in a better situation, in both countries the first writings in english and in french appeared at the same time
http://www.etudes-litteraires.com/langue-francaise/grandes-dates.php
Josh. Puzzled. The collider in Switzerland, what is it’s circumference? 27 kilometers, I believe. Sure, the particles are charged. But their paths have to be bent along the whole thing and then some in the part that gives the last kick.
When photon is encountering a strong EMF, it splits temporarily into electron and positron, and trajectory of these as charged particles can be bent by EMF. Therefore, light, in its alternate state, can be bent by strong EMF.
I don’t doubt that gravitational bending works. I am just saying that if you take into an account the geometry of space around massive objects, instead of lensing around you get focusing in.
Now, Gravitational lensing bends even neutral particles like photons, and they have light years to do it in.
Earth. Sun. Light years remote galaxy licks the corona, appearing a bit to the left from the position it should be.
How the bloody light (a photon stream) from the remote galaxy “knows” it is supposed to bend light-years ahead from the sun, given that the distance squared rule applies? Riddle me that.
Josh, sometimes picture… (G=galaxy; E=Earth; o=sun)
The theory gravitational bending:
G—<o>—-E
What I think how that works:
G1 G2
>o<
E
The G—<o>—-E is EMF lensing.
Better yet:
G
)o
E
That quantum radar will work in future because it violates merely “current” physical law is just wishful thinking. There is no more reason to believe that quantum radar, which one physicist has already called “hogwash”, will become good engineering in future iterations of physical law than there is to believe that a bullet fired at a shadow will harvest a moose which happens to run into its path.
Tom, I were speaking generally, in the case you are addressing this to me.
Quantum radar seems to me heavily on the wishful thinking side too. But there may be a way to skin the Schroedinger’s cat, just a bit different than what is the basis of the patent.
As moose goes, not a good analogy. Shadow is not important, moose is. If paths of the bullet and moose intersect, harvest is likely, regardless the aim was, incidentally, at the shadow first.
Thank you for your opinion.
Zim,
all vertebrates share about 1,000 common genes
That leaves out Congresscritters.
LotM, they do have that common base. It’s just that the congrecritts’ gene for spine is not expressed. It has a side effect for a majority–a mental disorder.
Megaliths are discussed
On the same thread as quanta
What a tangled web
88. programmer:
I’ve mentioned this on other threads in the past five years or so–so I’ll mention it here again.
imho all over the world about 5000 years ago some celestial event like a comet/asteroid/meteor strike caused everyone all over the world to look up.
Doug@65,
Decades of TV viewing have already done a marvelous job of preparing the mental battlespace.
Gullible. Some proof being that a large majority in the US still can’t understand the gov’t-sponsored lynching of Toyota.
Same modality failure claimed (sudden, unintended acceleration) across all Toyota model years, even though each has vastly different electronic and mechanical linkages from the others; ie, most parts are not interchangeable between – Prius – Camry- Lexus – Land Cruiser et al, and the software/firmware versions are totally incompatible.
It would be a difficult engineering challenge to design an undetectable failure mode that randomly kills only a tiny few of one’s customers in each model. That’s the stuff of “Fringe.”
After forensic exploration shows no-trouble-found and therefore driver error is the logical explanation, the plaintiff’s case as asserted by the lawyer, is that there’s a ghost in the machine. Dopplegangers infect Toyota vehicles. He neglects to point out that this maliciousness must also be contageous (but only to Toyota vehicles) for any of the claims to be possible.
Calling Ghost Busters or the Exorcist?
Programmer, you must be a geek but not an archeologue, though your specialisation should not be restrained in your own perceiptions as far as measuring a more than 7000 years old system of values, the basic referrences ain’t the one you’re using in your computer, and you’re a vivid demonstration of Gödel theorem
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2982130
Kendall took thousands of measurements on Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments, and determined with a high degree of probability–and in the process put the venerable megaltihic yard controversy to rest–that there was indeed a megalithic yard in Britain, and that it was about 166 centimeters long. This just happens to be about 5 feet 5 inches, and thus leads us to wonder whether the megalithic yard was pegged to the height of an adult male in prehistoric Britain, but we cannot be distracted by that particular observation here. The first scholar to apply this function to Aegean material was Dr. John Cherry of the University of Michigan in the journal Antiquity(vol. 57, 1983, pp. 52-56). He carried out a superb analogous study of Minoan palatial architecture with a view to determining the span on which the Bronze Age palaces might have been laid out (the so-called “Minoan foot”)
http://www.uta.edu/anthropology/petruso/metrology.2.html
Schrödinger’s cat REALLY EXISTS. 1rst quantum effects seen in a visible object
http://bit.ly/buSSL7
last time I heard of it, it was from someone that had hallucinations, wonder if Mohamed had eaten some Qat, or he was just impressed by mirages.
When Raoul, my cat, died, for a week I heard him coming around, and whatever forms would look like him.
same with my dog Lili, after she died
so, me thinks that these hollows, or shadows, are mind images, they can be strong, and don’t depend on yourself alone, also on a external event, caused by a human, or a animal… they most likely are your moment stress, or a brain deregulation, not counting if you’re a drugs addict
the rest is science fiction !
Marie Claude (#93): Schrödinger’s qat.
Bravo Bob :l:l
two speculations:
1) quantum mechanics is as much of a hoax as “global warming”
2) there are 27 dimensions