Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Topic

quantum mechanics

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 21, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
, , , , ,

Physicist and philosopher Bruce Gordon asks, IS the moon there if no one looks?

Denyse O'Leary
April 21, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Gordon on one experiment: What did the experiment do? Well, it sent the position of neutrons along one path and their spins along a separate path. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 20, 2021
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics
Tagged
, , , , , ,

Bruce Gordon: In quantum physics, “reality” really IS what we choose to observe

Denyse O'Leary
April 20, 2021
Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics
Gordon: The very fact that we can make a causally disconnected choice of whether wave or particle phenomena are manifested in a quantum system essentially shows that there is no measurement-independent and causally connected, substantial material reality at the micro physical level. It is created by the measurement itself. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 18, 2021
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Naturalism
Tagged
, , , , , ,

Robert J. Marks: How materialism proves unbounded scientific ignorance

Denyse O'Leary
April 18, 2021
Intelligent Design, Naturalism
Mathematician Kurt Gödel showed that there is an infinite number of truths that are provably unprovable. That's bad news for scientism, though not for science. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 13, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
, , , ,

Sabine Hossenfelder reassures us that Schrodinger’s cat is still not dead

Denyse O'Leary
March 13, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Hossenfelder: It’s no secret that I myself am signed up to superdeterminism, which means that the measurement outcome is partly determined by the measurement settings. In this case, the cat may start out in a superposition, but by the time you measure it, it has reached the state which you actually observe. So, there is no sudden collapse in superdeterminism, it’s a smooth, deterministic, and local process. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 6, 2021
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mathematics
Tagged
, , , ,

Sabine Hossenfelder asks, Do complex numbers exist?

Denyse O'Leary
March 6, 2021
Intelligent Design, Mathematics
The people who don’t think complex numbers really exist would probably not be happy with quantum mechanics being even more non-local without them. But of course, if complex numbers really do exist, then immaterial things really exist. Not a good time to be a hard core materialist. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
November 16, 2020
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism
Tagged
, , , ,

Is Jerry Coyne undercutting his own argument against free will?

Denyse O'Leary
November 16, 2020
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism
Michael Egnor: “Except for action of any quantum events”? I challenge Coyne: What in nature isn’t the action of quantum events? Certainly, every event in the brain is quantum in nature—every brain state, every action potential, every secretion of a neurotransmitter, every bit of protein synthesis or ion flow—is the consequence of quantum events. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 2, 2020
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Tagged
, , , ,

Does the answer to the origin of life lie in quantum mechanics?

Denyse O'Leary
September 2, 2020
Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Sheldon: As a way out of this [origin of life] dilemma, many physicists reach into the religion bag and pull out spooky QM-at-a-distance. But it isn't a solution, it is an admission of failure. For if they had reached a trifle deeper into the bag they would have pulled out Genesis 1. Instead, they have loosed this uncontrollable "dark matter", "dark energy", "dark QM" chaos god on the ordered universe of laws and purpose. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 21, 2020
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
, , , ,

Rob Sheldon on the latest claim that quantum mechanics imperils objectivity

Denyse O'Leary
August 21, 2020
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Sheldon: Actually the debate over "the meaning of QM" has been going on since 1935 when Einstein published his EPR paper. It is just that the wiggle-room is getting reduced as our straight-jacket is being cinched tighter. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
June 28, 2020
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
, ,

At Forbes: What we are getting wrong about Schrodinger’s cat

Denyse O'Leary
June 28, 2020
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Siegel: In other words, pretty much everything you've ever heard about Schrödinger's cat is probably a myth, with the sole exception of the fact that quantum systems actually are well-described by a probabilistically weighted superposition of all possible, allowable states, and that an observation or measurement will always reveal one and only one definitive state. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 26, 2020
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Physics
Tagged
,

Mysterious link between physics and math?

Denyse O'Leary
February 26, 2020
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Physics

Involving quantum mechanics: In an enormously complicated 165-page paper, computer scientist Zhengfeng Ji and colleagues present a result that penetrates to the heart of deep questions about math, computing and their connection to reality. It’s about a procedure for verifying the solutions to very complex mathematical propositions, even some that are believed to be impossible to solve. In essence, the new finding boils down to demonstrating a vast gulf between infinite and almost infinite, with huge implications for certain high-profile math problems. Seeing into that gulf, it turns out, requires the mysterious power of quantum physics. Tom Siegfried, “How a quantum technique highlights math’s mysterious link to physics” at ScienceNews It’s not entirely clear why a link between physics and Read More ›

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 1, 2020
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Tagged
, , ,

Rob Sheldon unpacks the new “backwards causation”quantum mechanics research

Denyse O'Leary
February 1, 2020
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
QM is all about microstates and their measurement, but not about macroscopic properties that you and I normally associate with everyday objects--smoothness, ripeness, tools like "hammer and nail" or biology like "chicken and egg". So indeed we can entangle QM microstates, but can't entangle chickens and eggs, and therefore using those terms creates a semantic muddle. Read More ›