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from the will-this-help-me-win-the-lottery? dept.
A team in Australia turned thought experiment into lab reality by using lasers. Their subject matter was not a photon but a helium atom. The lasers they used served as a pair of grates, one before the other, with the second grate randomly dropped in.
What they found is weirder than anything seen to date: Every time the two grates were in place, the helium atom passed through, on many paths in many forms, just like a wave. But whenever the second grate was not present, the atom invariably passed through the first grate like a particle. The fascinating part was, the second grate's very existence in the path was random. And what's more, it hadn't happened yet.
In other words, it was as if the helium particle "knew" whether there would be a second grate at the time it passed through the first.
Also covered at: phys.org. An abstract is available; full report is pay-walled. The original news article is at Australian National University
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 11 2015, @04:49PM
Spirituality has little to do with the physical world. Like quantum mechanics, it seems like paradox when viewed logically. But logic fails to convey the universal truths in the unseen. Your brain cannot even understand your brain - only a scaled down model of it. Likewise the ephemeral interconnections of all matter and energy. So - it is taught in paradoxes to the uninitiated, paradoxes that your mind cannot reconcile, like an Escher painting, until you give up on recording and analyzing your observations, and instead let the experience flow through you.
It is the pinnacle of difficulty to impart a personal viewpoint of something that cannot be explained to another person through our crude symbolic language. But there are techniques that can lead others to enlightenment. Most of them use paradoxical lessons.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:24PM
Your signature never was so appropriate than right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @04:29AM
>But logic fails to convey the universal truths in the unseen.
*Some* of them.
>Your brain cannot even understand your brain - only a scaled down model of it.
Oh I think we're making great strides [newscientist.com] in that direction.
>it is taught in paradoxes to the uninitiated, paradoxes that your mind cannot reconcile
To tread the sharp edge of a sword,
To run on smooth-frozen ice,
One needs no footsteps to follow.
Walk over the cliffs with hands free.
I see no paradox here. Nor anything to reconcile. Seems rather clear cut.
>It is the pinnacle of difficulty to impart a personal viewpoint of something
>that cannot be explained to another person through our crude symbolic language.
Difficult? yes. I take issue with "crude" though. The Blue Cliffs are most beautiful no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:12AM
Who the fuck modded this up? Mod this motherfucker down! And you lot laugh at Kansas City School Board? It's you fucktards that keep pseudoscience quacks in business..