4 ms·
> I don't think taking it down to an atomic level is useful, > since it breaks the analogy It was simply a suggestion as to why things might start behaving we
by bArray 6y ago
> I don't think taking it down to an atomic level is useful,
> since it breaks the analogy
It was simply a suggestion as to why things might start behaving weirdly at the quantum level. My understanding is that very small things seem to act as if time doesn't really have any real favoured direction.
Of course the analogy is not perfect and does not measure correctly the scale of forces involved, or even how they behave at different extremes. It's just a rough and ready mental model to begin to see things in this framing.
- drran 6y agoYou should scale time proportionally to the scale of space. Let's call one complete orbital cycle of one thing around another thing a "year", and one spin a "day". For example, one orbital cycle of the Sun around the center of our galaxy is "galaxy year". If we measure a human body at the scale of seconds, then we can measure position of the human with precision to single digit meters. It will behave like a particle. If we measure it at the scale of days, then it will start to blur, like a quantum particle: 30% at home, 30% at work, 30% everywhere else, including the Moon. We can use probabilistic math at this scale, to describe this weird behavior. If we measure human at the scale of years, then the human body will demonstrate dynamics and predictable trajectory: home -> school -> work -> home. We can even invent a math formula, which will correctly predicts trajectory for a human at average. If we try to measure a human at the scale of galactic year, then our detector will fail completely, because humans are short living objects. When you measure your particles, you measure it at particle seconds, particle days, particle years, or at much higher scale?
- chrisweekly 6y agoThanks for this! Never thought about it this way, but it's a terrific perspective / way to frame and explain probabilistic measurements in an intuitive way.
- fsflover 6y agoThe difference though is that for a quantum particle, there is no "particle second" in the sense that you can't measure exactly where it is however fast you try.
- drran 6y ago"we can't measure it" doesn't imply "it doesn't exist". Maybe it exists, maybe not. Let's improve our tools and try again. For example, it's impossible to measure distances shorter than photon wave length using photon stream, but it's easy to do using beam splitter and interference.
- fsflover 6y agoI never suggested that it didn't exist. It's just not a simple ball-like or point-like object, more like a cloud changing its form perhaps.
- goldenkey 6y agoYour understanding of what is quantum and what is not, is dead wrong. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/giant-molecules-exist-in-two-places-at-once-in-unprecedented-quantum-experiment/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/giant-molecules-e...
- drran 6y agoIMHO, you should look at this video, where water droplet at macro scale «exists in two places at once» (demonstrates self interference when passing two slits). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsaUX48t0w8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsaUX48t0w8
- drran 6y agoOur solar system is just a few galaxy years old. Our circles (I hope they will be circles) around Big Attractor and Shapley Cluster are just started, so we are at year one. If we scale up infinitely, then we will see that our Universe is "forever young", frozen in time. If we scale down, we will see more and more exceptionally stable "dead" objects, completely missing short living ones, so our Universe will look "forever dead" for us again. Anything interesting will happen at our own scale only.