Recent content by CJames

I would say that different parts of our body experience the passage of time differently, rather than saying that one part is in the past and one part is in the future. However, you could say that different parts of our body experience a different present, since simultaneity is relative.

No. This is a common misconception. Since velocity is completely relative, it doesn't make sense to say that an object traveling at a high speed has a high gravitational field. Only an object's rest mass determines its gravitational field. Relativistic mass is really just kinetic energy.

So...who would want to live on these islands? Other than billionaire libertarians who expect willing corporate slaves to move in, I mean. I guess maybe people who want to buy hookers, gay people wanting to get married, and people who want to smoke pot in public. But there's places to do those...

We already know that we can model electromagnetism using warped spacetime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein_theory But since the theory still can't be quantized, something's missing.

That's the problem that all theoretical physicists are hoping to solve right now. It has to be unified, because if we can't model the quantum universe using general relativity then we have an incomplete theory.

No problem.

My understanding is that they aren't equivalent. It just means that the coherent state isn't changed when a particle is removed, which can happen whether it is detected or annihilated.

Take a look at this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=315719 Also have a look into fresnel lenses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens

There's no way to answer this question definitively right now since there's no working theory of quantum gravity, but it at least sounds plausible to me. Then again, I'm no expert. My understanding, however, is that it doesn't matter what the actual value of the zero-point energy field is...

If I am envisioning your thought experiment correctly, then yes. Just to make sure I'm visualizing the same thing, you're talking about letting the photon pass through a detection screen, then through a second double slit, then to a second detector, you should be able to get a second...

I am no expert in this subject, but the wikipedia article seems to cover it pretty well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

The problem is that all attempts to model quantum physics in curved space-time have resulted in infinities, meaning that quantum mechanics and general relativity are incompatible with one another. Obviously this needs to be reconciled. The other thing to keep in mind is that all energy in...

Hmm, I wonder if a ToE would explain things like that as well as the properties of the physical universe.

This is quite a post, -dove. I'm amazed how much you were able to summarize here. I have a question. Is this true of quantum Darwinism? I thought the whole idea was that pointer states contained the information that we measure, while the other states decay into unmeasurable noise.

What are non-physical phenomena?