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Recently I have been reading a book on “Quantum Entanglement”. I can’t say it's a very good book as the author rarely makes sense of the complex topics which to me is generally an indication that he doesn’t have much more than a rote understanding himself. One point I have noted in his frequent biographical sketches of various scientists is just how often they were wealthy or absurdly rich. I also noted this in reading up on the early English Royal society (Newton, Robert Boyle etc). Occasionally like Newton they were just very smart and forceful more often like Boyle they were rich enough to spend their time looking at how air behaves if pressurized or in a vacuum or like the astronomer Tycho Brahe staring at the stars (I also noticed many of them weren’t exceptional students). When they weren’t wealthy they generally fell into the orbit of someone who was wealthy like Kepler who became Brahe’s assistant. As a very silly aside, both Newton and Boyle believed in the punishable by death, at that time, crime of alchemy, Boyle’s family being one of the richest in Ireland at the time. Leibniz, Newton's German rival felt the only problem was that the value of gold would be debased.
It seems to me that over the past generation there has been a “tipping point” to use a cliche where science can now be done that is no longer entirely impractical or burdensomely expensive. Just to give an example, I am not (officially) a scientist, I have an infrared temperature meter, an rpm meter, all sorts of electrical components, (many salvaged), a variable DC voltage generator, a function generator, a gram level scale, an iphone and multiple multimeters all for less than the price of a big screen TV. The types of projects that John Bedini and others point us to are no longer court jester material they are “this is how you see at night, this is how you stay warm in winter” material. It does bring up the question if one has success in practical applications of science does one go for the 70 Quatlews in the bank or real physical wealth or feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc.
Alright to change directions, here is where I possibly (probably?) make a complete fool of myself, hence the title. This goes back to the not so good book I was reading on quantum entanglement. It described a “thought experiment” called Heisenberg’s microscope. In this experiment a “nano cannon” shoots a particle out. To determine the position of the particle a photon must be shot which hits the particle and subsequently bounces off into a sensor. In hitting the particle the momentum of the particle was changed. This can be partially offset by increasing the wavelength (thus decreasing the energy of the photon). However at some point the increased wavelength can no longer discriminate the particle. Hence, you can never know the position and momentum of a particle with perfect precision, only one or the other, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
I’ve noticed at least in medicine, when things are wrong they are sometimes not just a little off they are fabulously, stupendously, if not so tragic, laughably wrong. I have spent a little time looking at gyroscopes and think there may be some of this in physics as well. This is probably one of the few areas where I suspect Dr. Bedini has not done the experiments ten years before everyone else, the point being, John Bedini is one of our greatest experimental scientists and he is documenting this huge dichotomy between experiment and textbook in very many areas as well.
Now I also greatly respect Max Planck’s conclusion that as regards the great debate from Greek times and earlier, is reality continuous or discrete, it is coming down experimentally at this time on the side of discrete, i.e quantum. Alright all that out of the way, in the Heisenberg’s microscope thought experiment, which defines the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, why can’t you just shoot a second photon of equal energy from 180 degrees away? If the collisions are perfectly elastic there should be no net effect on the particle's momentum. Alternatively three photons from 0, 135 and 270 should also sum to zero, in perfect elastic collisions. This is not Rocket science (a three thousand year old science anyway). I mean I know these people can draw rings around me with ephemeral math, but is it so that you can simply offset the observational photon with a second photon (perhaps I am mistaken). If so it negates the uncertainty principle. I also understand you might not know a-priori which direction the particle is traveling in and so how to offset the observing photon. I wonder whether a triangle of incoming observational photons would mean it is irrelevant what direction the incoming particle is traveling in.
There, did it, made a fool of myself with some complete nonsense. I would love to hear what Tom Bearden thought of this. I suspect he would either take 15 seconds to write, (not come up with) the rebuttal or be able to do a great deal with it.
Paul
It seems to me that over the past generation there has been a “tipping point” to use a cliche where science can now be done that is no longer entirely impractical or burdensomely expensive. Just to give an example, I am not (officially) a scientist, I have an infrared temperature meter, an rpm meter, all sorts of electrical components, (many salvaged), a variable DC voltage generator, a function generator, a gram level scale, an iphone and multiple multimeters all for less than the price of a big screen TV. The types of projects that John Bedini and others point us to are no longer court jester material they are “this is how you see at night, this is how you stay warm in winter” material. It does bring up the question if one has success in practical applications of science does one go for the 70 Quatlews in the bank or real physical wealth or feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc.
Alright to change directions, here is where I possibly (probably?) make a complete fool of myself, hence the title. This goes back to the not so good book I was reading on quantum entanglement. It described a “thought experiment” called Heisenberg’s microscope. In this experiment a “nano cannon” shoots a particle out. To determine the position of the particle a photon must be shot which hits the particle and subsequently bounces off into a sensor. In hitting the particle the momentum of the particle was changed. This can be partially offset by increasing the wavelength (thus decreasing the energy of the photon). However at some point the increased wavelength can no longer discriminate the particle. Hence, you can never know the position and momentum of a particle with perfect precision, only one or the other, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
I’ve noticed at least in medicine, when things are wrong they are sometimes not just a little off they are fabulously, stupendously, if not so tragic, laughably wrong. I have spent a little time looking at gyroscopes and think there may be some of this in physics as well. This is probably one of the few areas where I suspect Dr. Bedini has not done the experiments ten years before everyone else, the point being, John Bedini is one of our greatest experimental scientists and he is documenting this huge dichotomy between experiment and textbook in very many areas as well.
Now I also greatly respect Max Planck’s conclusion that as regards the great debate from Greek times and earlier, is reality continuous or discrete, it is coming down experimentally at this time on the side of discrete, i.e quantum. Alright all that out of the way, in the Heisenberg’s microscope thought experiment, which defines the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, why can’t you just shoot a second photon of equal energy from 180 degrees away? If the collisions are perfectly elastic there should be no net effect on the particle's momentum. Alternatively three photons from 0, 135 and 270 should also sum to zero, in perfect elastic collisions. This is not Rocket science (a three thousand year old science anyway). I mean I know these people can draw rings around me with ephemeral math, but is it so that you can simply offset the observational photon with a second photon (perhaps I am mistaken). If so it negates the uncertainty principle. I also understand you might not know a-priori which direction the particle is traveling in and so how to offset the observing photon. I wonder whether a triangle of incoming observational photons would mean it is irrelevant what direction the incoming particle is traveling in.
There, did it, made a fool of myself with some complete nonsense. I would love to hear what Tom Bearden thought of this. I suspect he would either take 15 seconds to write, (not come up with) the rebuttal or be able to do a great deal with it.
Paul