The uncertainty principle basically says we can never know exactly where something is and how fast it’s going.
So, take two particles which are only roughly located and collide them. They’ll do something a bit different every time, much like if you played pool while looking through a translucent plastic such that you saw only coloured blobs.
Does this say anything about the interactions being random, or could they be assumed to be deterministic, but unpredictable because the startup conditions are not known.
If a god stepped outside of the uncertainty principle and setup multiple completely identical experiments, would they produce exactly the same result?
Present developments seem to prove that “hidden” determinancy does not exist. (That is, it’s not just that we can’t find it, there are experiments that actually prove that it is not, and can not, be there. It may someday be proven otherwise, because no scientific theory is perfect, but that’s how it stands today.)
As to the other half of your question, it depends on what you mean by “god.” If you mean, “really powerful being,” no. If you mean (as serious Christians, for example, do), “self-existant Being external to, and creating and sustaining all of time, space, matter, energy, and other observable phenomena,” then you’re really asking a theological question, and one of the knottier ones, involving issues of predestination and free will.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
John, any hints as to where I might find out about these experiments? It seems to be impossible to determine if A or B is happening when A and B are identical. How could something like this work?
And, as for the ‘if a god’ question… I didn’t mean a literal god, I was meaning, “accept a though experiment in which the uncertainty principle was violated ‘from outside’…” As in, yes, I know this would be impossible to do, but, if you could be perfectly sure of the location of speed of the initial particles, by being some hypothetical godlike being, or enlisting the aid of one, would you get identical results from the identical experiments, or would there be some randomness aside from the initial sensitive conditions?
It was just a restating of the question is a hypothetical manner, I wasn’t suggesting any specific godlike being, just a deus ex machina that would allow one physical limitation to be circumvented for an experiment.
My high school Physics and Chemsitry teacher had a neat bumper sticker affixed to a cabinet door. On it were the words “Heisenburg May Have Slept Here.”
I think I was the only one who got the joke. I can’t help you with your question though. Ask me a question about a rock, and I’ll see what I can do. Biology, maybe. But Physics, NO WAY. hehe.
“If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious or supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.” Blaise Pascal
Rocks, hmmm. To push the limits a bit, can you explain anything about Amber? Its durability fascinates me and I wonder how long it’d last compared to plastics. That’s sort of a cross between biology and geology.
Otherwise, can you explain why some minerals are found with others, gold with quartz rock, etc. It’s not like gold forms, and I don’t know why it would be involved in forming quartz, so I can’t see a connection. (Or is this just an UL?)
I don’t feel too bad hijacking the thread, I did start it after all.
AFAIK, Amber isn’t all that durable. The slight wave action of lake water can break it into many many small pieces, if they were in large chunks to begin with (The amber trade is big business in north western Russia…people walk along lake shores and pick it up to sell). So, I would imagine that modern plastics would be much much more durable than ancient tree sap.
And, as far as why certain minerals, like Quartz and Gold are found together, is, in all honesty, pretty simple. It can all be boiled down to something called Bowen’s Reaction series. In an overyly simplified way, it states that not all magmatic components cool/melt at the same temperatures. Those components that cool at about the same temperatures will be found together. Gold and Quartz must have similar temperatures to where they come out of solution to recrystalize.
This is also responsible for why you will not find certain things together… Like the Feldspar groups with the Olivine groups. One crystalizes at a higher temperature than the other.
