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Author Topic:   Do we affect the" physical " indepentent of the laws of physics
John Ferguson
Inactive Junior Member


Message 7 of 148 (290591)
02-26-2006 11:34 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by 2ice_baked_taters
02-23-2006 2:21 AM


Well, actually they do recognize your body as a force. Every piece of matter has an effect on space-time. The sun for example shows this very clearly. Light from other stars further away is distracted, as space-time is being bent by the sun. If you move this effect is increased. Now, of course you are a lot smaller than the sun, so your effect on space-time will be a lot smaller. But it is there. For example, if you and a friend of yours wear extremely exact watches and set them both to an identical time. Your friend will then stay where he is and not move, while you run once around your house, when you come back to him, your watch will be a tiny bit faster than his. Through your movement you have warped the space-time around you and have actually traveled into the future. This happens the whole time. Of course, one single person does not have much of an effect, but all the humans in the world, and, even more so, the things they build and do most certainly do have an effect on space-time.
But there is more to it than just that. By looking at our world we change it. This has to do with quantum mechanics. Quants jump about the whole time from one place to another. Only if they are part of a reaction (i.e. someone looking at them), they stay in their place. Think of a box with a cat in it. Inside this box there is a mechanism that will kill the cat if a certain quantum state is reached. The moment you open the box and look inside decides wether the cat will live or die. Before you open the box the quant is in both places at the same time and in no place at all. So, practically this means that you change your surroundings only by looking at them. No one know what effect this might have. Your looking at a quant here and so forcing it to stay in one place may have an effect miles away somewhere in the universe.

"I refuse to give proof",said god. "Because proof evades faith and without faith I am nothing." - "But the babelfish is a dead giveaway!",says the scientist. "Something so mindbogglinly practical could never have evolved by itself.It is a perfect proof that you exist ans so you don't" - "I hadn't thought of that.",says god and vanishes in a puff of logic.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by 2ice_baked_taters, posted 02-23-2006 2:21 AM 2ice_baked_taters has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by ReverendDG, posted 02-26-2006 10:24 PM John Ferguson has not replied
 Message 9 by rgb, posted 02-27-2006 12:17 AM John Ferguson has not replied

  
John Ferguson
Inactive Junior Member


Message 13 of 148 (290800)
02-27-2006 6:41 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Wounded King
02-27-2006 4:52 AM


John was talking about the phenomenon of gravitational lensing whereby a massive object, in this case the sun, can change the path of light due to the deformation of space-time which its mass creates.
Yes, that is what I meant and I actually also meant that the person who is running will have the slower watch. Sorry, I got things mixed up there a bit.
I will have to read up on the quantum mechanics part of things again, though. I am not entirely sure watching one quant here can have an effect somewhere else, but it definately is the case that they only really definately take in one point in space if they are looked at. Before that they have a certain probabilty of being in several different points. At least that is what hawking states.

"I refuse to give proof",said god. "Because proof evades faith and without faith I am nothing." - "But the babelfish is a dead giveaway!",says the scientist. "Something so mindbogglinly practical could never have evolved by itself.It is a perfect proof that you exist ans so you don't" - "I hadn't thought of that.",says god and vanishes in a puff of logic.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Wounded King, posted 02-27-2006 4:52 AM Wounded King has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by 2ice_baked_taters, posted 02-27-2006 4:22 PM John Ferguson has replied
 Message 34 by FliesOnly, posted 03-07-2006 8:19 AM John Ferguson has not replied

  
John Ferguson
Inactive Junior Member


Message 16 of 148 (290937)
02-27-2006 6:01 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by 2ice_baked_taters
02-27-2006 4:22 PM


This topic was intended to be looked at from the standpoint of physics.
Which is what I did.
It's just that physics cannot put this in a neat little box and say ...there...that's a rule we can follow.
What exactly does "this" refer to? Do you mean yourself? Or humans in general? Then you are right, physics can not predict what a human (or humans) will do, as we have a free will and can do sudden unpredictable things. Some scientist once said "We can predict the movement of jupiter over the next millenia to come, but we can not predict the movements of a fly for the next ten seconds." This applies to all living creatures, especially animals (including humans).
Is this what you mean?

"I refuse to give proof",said god. "Because proof evades faith and without faith I am nothing." - "But the babelfish is a dead giveaway!",says the scientist. "Something so mindbogglinly practical could never have evolved by itself.It is a perfect proof that you exist ans so you don't" - "I hadn't thought of that.",says god and vanishes in a puff of logic.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by 2ice_baked_taters, posted 02-27-2006 4:22 PM 2ice_baked_taters has not replied

  
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