POPULAR SCIENCE ARTICLE #4

[~Maiax~]

My dear fellow Fleet members!

With usual proofread aid from Mr. Skackelford, I released another article. Please find the link below, and enjoy the read:

Your Everyday Quantum Mechanics

[VADM Wulfric Richter CoS]

 

A well written and instructive piece, thank you! My exposure to quantum mechanics comes largely from the realm of quantum computing. Another real world example of the quantum impacting our daily lives is that of molecular electronics. As circuits grow ever smaller, the tunneling phenomenon that you describe becomes a real threat to the integrity of the circuit. But when nature tosses you a lemon, make lemonade or a tunneling microscope :-)

 

What are your thoughts on the multiverse? Do you believe that alternate realities, like the mirror universe in Star Trek, exists? Or are we like the infamous Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, forever searching for that which is only a phantasm?

[VADM JT Kerry]

Marcie,

Very good.  Nice and concise.

JT

[~Maiax~]

Thank you! A good writer is nobody without a good reader!

Interesting - this miniaturization of electronics thing. And as for your question, Knightnblu. I see no reason why there wouldn't be other Universers out there... So far, we just had no chance of detecting any, but as far as I know, no physics nor philosophy forbids their existence.

They could make contact with each other, however, and collide, just as galaxies happen to do. There could be different laws of physics in another Universe, and, where they meet - their laws of physics and ours would start a war for domination, or forcing an equilibrium between the two.

It's only nice that it would happen far, far away from our Solar System, because two realities cannot occupy the same space and coexist...

[VADM Wulfric Richter CoS]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. There appears to be some doubt as to the possibility of a multiverse, but the mathematics behind our reality suggest it, I am told. Without the multiverse, there would be no possibility of quantum computing because you would not have the massive parallelism necessary to make the computations. Without that computing power, you would not be able to create holographic realities, develop quantum encryption and decryption, or build the next generation gaming platform!

The reason that I asked was that I was in a philosophy class some years ago and the topic came up. Another student who was a physics major shot it down as an impossibility right away. But that answer never sat well with me. It always felt as if there were something more. Perhaps we could use quantum entanglement to snare a piece of matter in another universe to initiate a signal, but the how of something like that is likely to be exquisitely formidable and it assumes that our laws of physics works over there as well. But if matter is sewn into the fabric of reality by strings of energy, who is to say that the universe is not sewn into a common super reality through which something like that would be possible using that shared energy?

[~Maiax~]

You know, there's one problem with parallel universes. There's literally nothing between them. Outside the universe (*a* universe, I should say) there's nothingness. Not even the vacuum. There's no *outside* at all.

Therefore, no distances may be measured, and the time is meaningless. So there is NO distance between the two universes, either. And as there are no distances, no velocity (the time derivative of a distance) may be defined outside the universe (obviously - no common frame of reference!). Not calculated - it can't be even defined! The relative motion (eg., approaching) of two universes is impossible to measure, predict, or even describe.

Not because we lack data, but because we lack appropriate concepts - no definition conceived inside the universe may describe the outside.

[VADM Wulfric Richter CoS]

It sounds like that space would be a place of probabilities rather than hard fact. Could one liken it to the world we describe as the quantum?

[~Maiax~]

The quantum mechanics is powerful, but very limited. It will never be as precise as classical mechanics (regardless how much we scientists would like it to!), but this is not due to physicists' lacking concepts, but rather because of the nature of the universe itself. It may not be studied in more detail, because we reached the limits of measurement.

When we use a photon to observe electron, the reflected photon and the elctron will disperse in most random directions, which forbids its direct observation. Not because our microscopes are not good enough, but because the photon itself is too heavy (energy = momentum = mass in relativistic mechanics) not to destroy the very subject of observation!