Recent content by debra

I am slightly rusty on Bells inequality but let's try it: Two entangled particles in superposition output correlated results that violate Bells inequality. So the polarizations of coupled photons at different locations do this and Bell's proves it cannot be due to hidden variables in the...

That reference above assumes that is are real physical objects in space-time. May not be the case! Now look at the simulation model: A red spot on a computer screen travels from left to right. Lets look closely at that. The red spot travels in discrete 'jumps' from one location to...

Can you remind me what 'the measurement problem' is referring to? I am a bit out of practice at present ...

I can comprehend an expanding block universe but think its unnecessary. If we consider the universe is related to a computer simulation (which many do) then time is similar to how it would appear in a such a simulation. All simulations require a ticking clock so that data / instructions...

A configuration space with a minimum value of about a Planck length may help here because below that range 'space' would be undefined - an absolute cutoff :)

Wouldn't a configuration space offer a better alternative to renormalisation? Then below a specified minimum coordinate range space is 'undefined' - that would help us with some of our cowboy infinities I believe...

Is Dirac's Sea entirely discounted now? He did predict positrons - that were later found. And mirrors have been shown to produce photons from a vacuum which is pretty weird. There seems to be a flurry of activity in this area of physics caused by computers hitting Casimir Effect problems...

Yes, it does not seem exotic enough for anti-particles. But reading around the Casamir Effect I came across http://www.mendeley.com/research/antimatter-production-at-a-potential-boundary/ Which states: "The use of the Casimir effect to suppress local vacuum fields is presented as a possible...

Thanks for that reference - it was indeed fun - and I come down on the Hiley's Monism side of things - "mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, the same ultimate substance or principle of being" And that ultimate "principle of being" would, for me, be information processing...

I have been reading round the Casamir Effect and Diracs vacuum field. On the one hand it appears to be a straightforward classical Van Der Waals forces concept related to capillary action and surface tension (duh), on the other hand I read that the Casamir effect is a possible method to...

Oh, so it looks like practical solution are difficult. Do you think there will be an ingenious easy answer or is it a matter of continuing overcoming hurdles?

It should be easy to create the necessary fusion temperature because there is no theoretical limit (AFIK) to how much laser energy can be put into a small space. So it is only a matter of concentrating enough laser beams onto one spot. Cannot understand our delay in this one. It should be...

I agree that saying it is a brute fact that the universe exists is a resignation of intelligence. I take the opposite view and believe that it is explainable and probably simple to understand using good old rationality and no spirituality needed.

Yes, the question of how it all started... It needs something changing state, quantum states look suspiciously close to what is required. And its probably self-booting and makes its own hardware too. How can it make its own hardware? Because there is intelligence contained in the instructions or...

Seth LLoyd at MIT, Nick Bostrom at Oxford Uni and Zeilinger (germany I think) are working in this area. Rather than writing 10 pages let's draw an analogy between a virtual 3D simulation as in Sims or any 3D computer game and say that the universe is operating in a similar sort of way - in...