Wanted, Dead or Alive - SHRODINGER'S CAT!

Being a nuclear structure physicist has its advantages. One of them being a familiarity with something that is totally baffling to most people.

I am talking about quantum mechanics, that realm of physics spurned by Einstein and shunned by everyone but those in the know. I am honored to say I am in the final category.

So what is this cat thing anyway? Well, it is only a "gedanken" experiment, that is, a "thought" experiment, possible in principle only.

A cat is in a closed box. With it, is a device that releases a poison gas only when a certain atom of radium decays. The fate of the cat is entirely dependent upon the random nature of the quantum decay of the atom. The atom could decay at any time.

No-one knows when.

The question is this: "Is the cat dead or alive?".

The answer can only be found if the box is opened.

But if you do not open it, can you say if the cat is dead or alive?

Funnily enough, the question is actually meaningless.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is actually in a superposition of both states of being "dead" AND "alive" until you look at it. By disturbing the equilibrium, you force the quantum state into one the or the other by merely looking.

This is what is strange about quantum mechanics. The cat is merely an everyday representation of many of the effects we actually see on the subatomic level.

One of these recently solved a long-standing problem. The way the sun shines. Honest.

The tiniest particles detectable are called neutrinos. They were "invented" by Enrico Fermi to explain the anomalous electron momentum spectrum in Beta decay. Years later, they were actually detected. So small are they, that their mean free path in lead is about a parsec.

Mr Ray Davis, in 1967 went digging in Dakota. In fact he went deep down underground to create one of the most unusual telescopes ever. A huge swimming pool of cleaning fluid. Cleaning fluid (Carbon tetrachloride) sucks up neutrinos rather more than most stuff.

So, Mr Davis decided to detect them. From the sun. Trouble was, he only detected about 1/3 of the SNU's predicted (SNU = Solar Neutrino Units, pronounced "snoos"). Either there was a problem with our understanding of the way neutrinos interacted, or there was a problem with our understanding with the way the sun shone. Neither was acceptable.

Until recently.

Until recently, we thought neutrinos were massless, but sensitive experiments indicated that they DO have mass. The implication of this is that in their journey from the sun they can "oscillate" between different quantum states, which means we detect less of the expected ones on earth.

The same sort of effect the poor cat demonstrated.

A similar, but far more fascinating effect happens to K-0 mesons (strange particles they are!) when they decay. It is called "regeneration", and is something that happens that is quite beyond any common sense at all.

If THAT ain't strange enough, try doing a search on "alpha particle tunnelling", where particles pass through inpenetrable barriers.

Quantum mechanics challenges most people's common sense.

God not only plays dice, but he plays with a sense of humor bordering on cynicism.

Crazy Horses!

No, I am not a fan of the Osmonds, but the title of this post has more than a double meaning, as usual.

Congratulations to my adoptive Soccer team, Liverpool F. C.

They pulled off a remarkable feat on Wednesday to win the European Champions' League Title for England.

Winners of four , yes FOUR other European Cup titles in the 1970's and 1980's. ( It was known then as the "European Cup". Sorry, young dudes, that is how it was then).

Well, they came home with blessings from the Prime Minister, the King of Istanbul, and even the "Leader of the Oppostion" to a rousing Finale at St George's Hall, Liverpool, with the cry from Captain Steve (!) Gerrard "How can I leave Liverpool after this?" (sic).

Liverpool won. Liverpool won coming from behind. Liverpool won coming from behind in style.

Commentators have a saying about Liverpool, and Sir David Coleman coined it. "Liverpool are at their most dangerous when they are behind". Never more true than on Wednesday night in Istanbul.

It has been said in the press that all in the uk became "honorory" "Liverpudlians" When Dudek made the final save. So be it.

The late great "Emmy" (Emlyn Hughes) who died earlier this year, whose nickname throughout Merseyside was "Crazy Horse", a name they gave him for his reaction to scoring his limited number of goals), is perchance delighted at this , wherever he is.

But what is really Crazy is that Liverpool get to keep the trophy (for having won five times), yet the governing body, UEFA, have deemed it that Liverpool, as defending Champions, cannot BE the defending champions, as they finished FIFTH in the English league. The top four being automatic qualifiers for NEXT years' competition

Crazy? Yes. The Fourth qualifier was Everton, one place above Liverpool in the league, Everton live a few hundred meters from Liverpool in the same city, Liverpool.


UEFA say they cannot make an exception for the team that gets to keep the trophy.

Crazy?

Emmy, Just wait!

Trust the press!

There's good, damn good, and then there's....

....Starlight Express. Amongst my plethora of hobbies and interests, Starlight Express stands out like, well, a star! And I totally miss it.

You don't just go and SEE it, you experience it.

Totally different from anything you have ever seen before, for all the actors are on roller skates. The actors are trains, or the carriages of trains, and they have races around the whole theatre, even on the balcony!

I saw it 22 times before we left London, but that still wasn't enough.

Although closed now (since Jan 2001) the musical remains an everlasting memory. Hey! I have seen a lot of Lord Lloyd-Webber's musicals, and a lot more others, but this one stands out as UNIQUE. I can only describe it as a disco with speed (and I don't mean the amphetamine variety).

Just to have up to thirty roller-skating mad-persons passing by your seat so close as to give you a breeze and a whiff of the carbon dioxide is intoxicating enough, but there is actually a plot in there as well as the award-winning lighting, the action, the singing, innuendoes and the dancing! The staff are very helpful, too, because if you are old and cannot whip your head around to watch the trains as they go all around the theater, giant video screens unfold so you can watch the dirty dealings of the current champion in real time, as he (Greaseball, the Diesel) gets Zapped by the New Pretender, Electra (the Electric Train), all to a heart-thumping musical soundtrack (live music!), plus a commentator, who relates all the action for those who are too dumb to watch anything.

But it all is down to Rusty, the clapped-out steam train, to win the day. Rusty, Poppa (his Dad), and Dustin (the aggregate hopper) finally prove that it is not only abilities that make you a great train (or even person), but it is the belief in YOURSELF that contributes the greater part of it. Halfway through, Rusty calls on the "Starlight Express" to help him after being beaten up by the Greaseball Gang, only to realise that the Starlight Express is ~! ~! YOU, and ONLY YOU.

Cue for the song "I am the STARLIGHT", the turning point of the whole show.

Rusty realises that it is self-belief that powers a person, not some mystical "force" called "Starlight Express", and with that, and the gravel-carriage, Dustin, goes ahead to challenge both Greasball and Electra in the final race. Rusty is above both engines' tendency to bend the rules, and evades both to become the new champion, thus getting the girl (Pearl, the Observation Car, his heart-throb since Day One), and
"winning the day".

I owe this post to a new person I met recently, whose name is actually "Dustin". Just so you'd know, Dustin! You'll find me pretty quick -- -- Downhill !!

John Lennon would have loved this

I like numbers and algebra, even though they are not the same. One is the substitution of the other, after all.

Square roots fascinate me. What number, when multiplied by itself, produces the answer you require? (strikes me that what would they have called a number which when "added" to itself, produces said number - the "additive root"? What is the "additive root" of 12? Why 6 of course! What is the "additive root" of 13? Of 42? Of Pi?)

But I digress. Square roots produce irrational numbers like the plague. Then in my French class one early midsummer morning, I got to wondering this way ~

If +1 x +1 equals +1, and -1 x -1 equals +1, then the square root of +1 must be +1 or -1.

What is the square root of -1, then? There is no basis for it. No answer.

What number, when multiplied by itself, equals -1?

NONE!

But of course this did not stop the math guys, oh no. They invented a new number called "i" (for "imaginary") and called it "the square root of -1".

Fancy. "Imaginary" numbers indeed.

Bit of poetic licence there ~ but no! They had to go their own way, inventing stuff that wasn't there. Natural progression. "Imaginary" numbers my ass!

BUT, thereafter, this idea spawned two beautiful things.

One, it enabled scientists to solve a really complex problem in a really easy and efficient way, the solution of L-C-R circuits in electronics (L- inductor, C - capacitor, R - resistor, the basis of the radio circuit)

Two, it gave us the most beautiful formula in all of math ~

e**(i*pi) = -1

e being 2.718281828.., and pi being 3.1415926..., numbers trancendental both, "i" of course being the square root of "-1".

All stepped back in astonishment. Was De Moivre right?

"e" raised to the power of ("i" times Pi) is numerically equal to "-1"????

Fascinating, as Spock would say. The "imaginary" number somehow unites the two most "irrational" numbers to produce an integer.

What a coup for mathematics.

"Imaginary" numbers are no longer that. In fact, not only did it spawn "complex numbers", but stuff called "Quaternions" as well.

My limited expertise does not extend to the Quaternions, but the concept of "i" has helped me through many a depressing LCR circuit!

Those were the days!

Peace John!

Murphy's Law

Congratulations go to Shaun Murphy!

He has just earned the vertiable "155" of snooker by winning the World Snooker crown at Sheffield, England this year.

First Qualifier to win since Terry Griffiths in 1979.

More power to his elbow! ( or in his case, the stance!)

"I'm in the final now, you know!"

This sentence is false......?

I admit it, most of mathematics is meaningless to the outside world. Who of the average person knows or even understands things like "real solutions to inhomogeneous partial differential equations", "the Cauchy imaginary integral pole theorem", or "tensor algebra in 10 dimensions"?

It all seemed fine to those who knew of these things until in 1931, a man named Kurt Godel blew the entire mathematics world apart.

He published a paper, I won't bother you with the title (it was in German anyway), but basically what it said was "You cannot prove everything".

Many people believed this already anyway, but Mr Godel went out and PROVED it.

Take the title of this post. Do you believe it? "This sentence is false" is a statement made about a sentence: ""This" sentence". Is it true or false?

The answer is that if you believe it, it is true, and if you don't, it is false, and then true again. Try it! The statement is neither true nor false.

Mr Godel (bless 'im), constructed the same thing in a mathematical formula, which essentially said that "There are mathematical formulae that cannot be proved or disproved".

Many math guys were shocked at this, for they had always believed that a true statement in math was always provable. Mr Godel shoved that belief into the place where the sun don't shine.

Nowadays, stuff like the 'Goldbach Conjecture" ("Every even number is the sum of two odd primes") has been considered to be in this category. That is, no-one has ever found a proof for its validity, despite the overwhelming numerical evidence that it may be true. It has simply fallen into the "Godel-like" iggy-bin, which is to say that the men in Ivory Towers believe it now to be unprovable.

Mathematics is not perfect, after all.

Incidentally, the construction that Mr Godel used was along the lines of ....

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

YOU work it out!!

A New Meaning to Gymnastics

Being a scientist, I know a lot of good crap. For instance, why the sky is blue, and why liquid helium pours itself out of its own container, no assistance needed.

But all these are mere trivia compared to all the really weird nonsense we can find out there in the cosmos, courtesy of the by-products of pursuing a science degree anyway.

One of them concerns black holes.

Now we all know what they are. For those of you who don't, I will will just say that they are gravitational collapses of stars when the nuclear fuel is all used up.

One of the first things one learns about black holes is that if you fall into one of them, you die in a really interesting way (As Hugo Drax would put it). Apparently, according to the very accurate Newtonian equations, as refined by Einstein, the gravity force on your feet becomes much more than the gravity force on your head (if you fall in feet first). Thus, you get "stretched" to death. This is an extreme tidal effect.

However, according to recent delving into the equations (as provided by the latest computers), there is a time-dependence to this. To wit, an even more interesting death. As you get nearer to the black hole, the forces on you oscillate in time, enabling (lovely use of the word) you to die whilst being "pummelled" by the nature of spacetime.

In effect, you are "pummelled" to death.

A New Meaning to the "pummell horse" in gymnastics.