Paul Colby's latest activity
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Paul Colby replied to the thread High School Seemingly odd quantum tunneling.All of physics doesn’t reduce to tunneling. In fact, very little of it does. -
Paul Colby replied to the thread High School Seemingly odd quantum tunneling.Allowed and can happen aren’t the same, right? Just because 5 million in gold bullion could disappear from a vault and reappear in your...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread High School Seemingly odd quantum tunneling.So, could we all suddenly quantum tunnel into a black hole or into the center of Jupiter? Yes, but it’s very unlikely. Some things are...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread High School Seemingly odd quantum tunneling.There are attractive forces acting between bound particles, right? It takes work (a form of energy) to pull them apart. The act of...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread High School Seemingly odd quantum tunneling.Tunneling doesn’t (can’t) violate energy conservation. A stable molecule (bound group of atoms) has a lower net energy than the same...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread Graduate Quantum interpretations and indistinguishable elementary particles.Indistinguishable particles in two different states, here and there for example, are still indistinguishable.
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Paul Colby replied to the thread Graduate Quantum interpretations and indistinguishable elementary particles.IMO the use of real numbers to describe lengths and such in classical physics is any less miraculous than using hermitian operators...
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Paul Colby reacted to Demiurge's post in the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool? with
Like.
If 'real' means to be perceived, then - No. The wavefunction is not real -
Paul Colby replied to the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool?.The OP clearly confuses these. Elements of reality is a new topic IMO.
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Paul Colby replied to the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool?.An element of reality isn’t an object either, right? Physics is a human activity. Humans use tools to do physics. These tools include...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool?.Yeah, in multiple editing passes I added “object” to side step your double meaning style reply. In retrospect “is the number ##3+i1## a...
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Paul Colby reacted to gentzen's post in the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool? with Like.
Independent of whether the wave function is real, it is certainly not an object. Just like an electric field is not an object either...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread Is the quantum wave function a real object or a mathematical tool?.Hum, is the number 3 a real object? I would say no but that’s just me.
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My experience with WSL has been very positive. It is much better than a Linux virtual machine. And with Docker containers a lot of my...
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Paul Colby replied to the thread High School This One Moved Me.I view mathematics as a rather substantial collection of intellectual tools. Looking at a problem and selecting a 3d tool when a 4d one...