Ask Michio Kaku. Is Quantum Real or Imaginary

Michio Kaku: Theoretical Physicist, Bestselling Author, Popularizer of Science: "Ask Michio Kaku"

Just in the process of finishing Michio's amazing book Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos but I have a few problems with it. Not with what he is saying or how he is saying it but more the community in general. Like giving absolutes like nothing travels faster than the speed of light.. now in general relativity that is correct, but when we go to the infantesimally small in the quantum world or for that matter to dark matter and dark energy which make up about 22% and 74% respectively and we know almost nearly nothing of either of these states can we truly say with absolute certainty that NOTHING TRAVELS FASTER THAN LIGHT.

When we know (kind of) that during the inflationary period of the creation of the universe that something must have travelled faster than light to create the size of the current universe.. if not we remodel a theory to fit the hypothesise that nothing travels faster than light.

Now I know that maybe I am being a simpleton here and I would imagine I am missing something key here but....

Another thing that I always wondered when it came to the Quantum world was the theory of observation that made things real or pop into existence (ok another gross simplification here). In essence again electrons defy our traditional world view (of the very large) in how they orbit around each other and their friends. Its like a frantic drunken drug induced dance, rather than the majestic almost preordained ballet of how the moons orbit the planets, planets orbit the star, solar systems orbit each other within the galaxy etc and etc.

Here again I see the electron (again I could and more than likely are wrong because of my gross misunderstanding of the field) as been something else (when mathematically positioned it is within an area of probabilities that it is by the window just beside the bit of dust I meant to clean away) so it is in now a nice static fixed location. But in the Quantum world they say it isn't because before I observed it, it could have been elsewhere. It was only because I saw this (figuratively speaking of course) that it was and is really there.

I think our view of the world with things in static position and when we assume that they are mathematically is wrong (again I add my lack of knowledge here could make this whole post a waste of my and your time and I am missing something because of it). I will hopefully over the next few days create an animation to show the following:
My little electron is sitting my the mote of dust happily static and in its fixed position (relativity speaking).
I take a step back and now the mote of dust and the electron are sitting in position on the window sill.
I take another step back and the window sill is sitting statically in my wall of my house fixed solidly in the ground.
Take another step back (and have to go above my house here but go with me on this) my house is sitting statically on the ground (no earth quake zone here thank whatever) immovable, fixed not moving... but hold on it is cause I am hovering fixed above my house and the house is moving with the rotation of the earth, infact so am I but now at a slightly different speed, I move further up and out and I see now that my house and the earth are moving at quite a speed within its non fixed position within time and space, the further out I move the more the electron that was sitting happily dancing in its location beside the mote of dust was always moving, but infact that bit more because when it is taken within its own position within time and space and the position of the observer is taken within their own everything is moving and nothing is fixed >:¬}.

So when Heisenberg came up with the uncertainty principle, that when trying to locate the position of a particle in a small region of space the momentum of the particle makes it almost impossible to precisely locate its position. Should not we also take into consideration the position of the observer and the actual position of the space we are trying to observe at the time, in order to attempt to precisely locate its position. But because we do not know the exact position of the universe and extrapolating that our own position within it how can we ever work out when taking all the other forces into account that can influence a particle its exact position. Can we not be happy with an approximation.. god my head hurts! >:¬}

Either way back to Michio Kaku's book Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, read it, its brilliant and written in such away that even I can grasp the sniff of what he is saying, but it gives you a real true understanding on how small we really are and how wonderful the universe really is. It has everything a great book needs to have, excitement, knowledge, passion, romance, thrills (ok maybe not traditional romance but.... >:¬} buy it, borrow it steal it.. but what you must do is read it!

If Michio actually reads this post I only really said buy it!


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CLIMATE CHANGE – RESEARCH SUGGESTS IT IS NOT A SWINDLE

Skeptics claiming that Man Made Climate change is nothing but a puff of smoke (all be it carbon ridden smoke >:¬} ) have been delt a blow this week with research published ealier this month from the Institute of Physics.

The research published on Thursday 3rd April states (in was to refute the Channel 4 - UK) piece called "The Great Global Warming Swindle", broadcast in 2007, suggested that global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years.

The new research shows that change in cloud cover over the Earth does not correlate to changes in cosmic ray intensity. Neither does it show increases and decreases during the sporadic bursts and decreases in the cosmic ray intensity which occur regularly.

Now I am infact a proponent of Global Warming is happening but it is also caused by a huge range of events, from Man Made, Cylical, Decrease in Magnetosphere etc. But I do think that while most politicians are now claiming that there is a problem, they are still doing nothing or atleast very little about it. There are many things we can do to atleast reduce the affect of the Man Made elements, and at the same time lead mankind to a better healther future. But most politicians are looking for the 8 second sound bite and no real concrete planning (environmentally friendly concrete ofcourse).

The one thing I am worried about it is that there could be so much fear mongering that stupid things will be implemented, billions of Euros wasted and nothing much done. But I heard an interesting interview a few weeks back on George Hook with a man who was not disputing Global Warming (will get the refence to it later in a talk back) but was saying that we could do so much more for people now in the very short time with a fraction of the investment and see instant results, whilst at the same time put inplace proper medium planning to help reduce the effects of the possible future clamity which is very hard to stop now.

But what it did do was raise a excellent point in that with politics and media clamouring end of the world and oh woe claims this puts things into context and atleast opens the debate in a planned way and what we can actually do. In otherwords everything should be run through a "Cost Benifits Analysis". Spend 50 billion on neculear power plants and they take 10 - 15 years to build and only start to reduce Carbon productions in 25-50 years (after you take the actual build into consideration) or reduce direct taxation on wages and increase the tax on heavey carbon producing products, yes you are giving to take away, but atleast the general mass's will not suffer in the process too much and there is direct correlation to the increase in tax take to planning and development of proper public transport.
Subsidise fully or almost fully energy saving products for the home, either by grants or through tax breaks. Here again there is direct benifits and instant. House's will cost and use less to heat thus there will be less requirement for power production.

There are a whole host of simple things that can be introduced but are not Sexy so they don't get the chance or airing but they should.




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Vista - Very Instable System To Avoid! And Why I hate Sony And Microsoft

vista - Very Instable System To Avoid! & DESTROY MY SONY VGN-TZ21MN with Genuine Windows Vista® Business - LIVE ON THE INTERNET!

I was excited, very excited, I was getting my new beautiful laptop with

"Genuine Windows Vista® Business"

after Sony took three months to try and fix the last Blue Screen of death one I thought that this would be heaven. Now I know I work in the IT environment and I should have known better and looking back at myself I am wondering why I did not rip out Vista put in dual boot FreeBSd, and XP pro but I was excited I got my new baby (sorry love I do love you but it is a beautiful laptop).

I am ready, I turn it on, knowing full well that it will take a while to get everything installed running but what the hell its worth it. After one week I am frustrated, the camera stops working, I have taken off Office 2007 demo and installed my registered copy of 2003 (Still use OpenOffice.org but hell), it refuses now to run Office 2003. But during one of the boots Windows runs off grabs some more software for office and vista and hides it some where. (still can't find it all - more later). So I had to uninstall Office 2007 and almost all of its components (not too sure on some apps if they are office related or not) then reinstall Office 2003. Yeah it works now, except every time I start any ap in the family it asks me to accept license..... Its a real pain.

Ok if you are anything like me you are a blogger and social networker and have loads of friends all over the world on ICQ, SKYPE, MSN etc Now when I have these listed in my start up Windows Vista takes 19 minutes 34 seconds to complete its boot before I can start using it! Let me say that again 19 minutes!!!!!!. My Sinclar Spectrum ZX 80 was a dream compared to this. Oh the camera still didn't work at this stage. So I remove all of these from start up and it now boots up like a cheetah....ok I lie like a hobbled cheetah with its legs tied to a post, it now takes 9 minutes 48 seconds to boot. oohh Camera still doesn't work.

Then I thought I will wait till SP1 comes out and pass judgement maybe just maybe it will fix my problems, it did the Camera works and they gave me back an additional 32 seconds of my life. Yeaahhhhh.

Ok now why blame Sony for this after all they built a beautiful machine the hardware I have to say is excellent battery is amazing, screen faultless look beautiful. They shipped it with Vista for gods sake, then to make matters worse they only ship this with 1 gig of ram (for vista its the minimum requirement). Now we all know when Microsoft gives guidelines on their systems or delivery dates we double it and then triple it just for safety sake, so why did not Sony do the same, why not at the very least put a minimum of 2 gigs, at least it would start faster and close faster and not throw up the circular little icon on the screen when you type a word in notepad. Oh I ment to tell you the shut down procedure is over 10 minutes. Back to Sony Rant, the ship it with a peice of crap operating system then to really rub it in they only give ! gig of ram. But I blame myself I should have checked this, I should have read more docs, I think my brain bypassed the bit where it said that the maximum memory the Sony can take is a massive 2 gigs!!! So by SP2 this will be on its knees begging me to put it out of its misery.


But what next I hear the lonely voice reading this cry, well if I do not notice a major improvement by the end of June 2008 after a full 6 months of usage I am going to (bank balance depending) DESTROY MY SONY VGN-TZ21MN with Genuine Windows Vista® Business - Live onthe Internet here!

I would also recommend that no one buys a new laptop with Vista Business if it only comes with 1 gig of ram, it is a complete waste of time and money.

So if I am going to destroy my laptop I am going to be looking for creative ways, so does any oe have some cool suggestions?

Vaio : VGN-TZ21MN/N : Ireland


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