The laws of quantum mechanics are confusing, predicting that particles are also waves and that cats are simultaneously alive and dead.
Okay, so, like, that's punchier writing than the actual truth, but how am I supposed to buy anything else about physics in the article after that? The level of oversimplification of relatively commonly known concepts does not give me confidence that the rest won't be pop sci drivel.
Luckily you can check out the author’s bio right from the article:
Dr. Don Lincoln is a Senior Scientist at Fermilab, America’s leading particle physics laboratory, who has coauthored over 1,500 scientific papers. He was a member of the teams that discovered the top quark in 1995 and the Higgs boson in 2012.
I mean, they're both at least illustrative I guess. In the case of particles and waves I may be quibbling a bit over the distinction that something is a particle or a wave versus exhibiting the properties of one or the other.
In the case of Schrodinger's cat, the thought experiment suggests that if the life or death of the cat is tied to the collapse of the state vector, an eigenstate of the two implies simultaneous life and death. But the varying interpretations of this problem aren't so straightforward as 'both dead and alive', and it's kind of misleading to just leave it at that.
Personally, I find it odd that they'd discount the cat's own awareness of the state vector's collapse. Obviously when the atom decays and kills it, it's going to know before you are regardless of the presence of cardboard.
It just seems like a lot of kind of imprecise throw-away mentions of more complex ideas for one sentence. But again, maybe I'm being cynical.
I don't think he was planning to explain these concepts, just hint at them to the layman reading thr article who probably barely know what Schodinger's cat is.
And the cat observes it but that doesn't mean that the cat is now in a discrete state that is either alive or dead. It is both and will stay both and you'll only see which version of the cat is in your world. At least according to the many worlds theory which makes sense to me
Shrodinger’s cat wasn’t some simplified lesson for the layman. It wasn’t even an explanation. It was a commentary about the quantum model itself and how the current state of the model is laughably incomplete and unable to adequately answer or predict anything of value (yet). It wasn’t until more recently that some Newtonian physics might be explainable as emergent properties of quantum mechanics, but we are still a long ways away from a unified or blurred model.
Actually, cats really are alive and dead at the same time according to the many worlds interpretation. Under classical quantum mechanics, we say that superpositions collapse when observed, and since the cat is an observer of the quantum event (since the cat would die if the atom decayed), then the cat's presence resolves the superposition. Thus, the cat is never in superposition.
However, according to the many worlds interpretation, observation does not collapse superposition. Rather, it simply expands the superposition to include the observer. So the cat, as an observer of the quantum event, really is both alive and dead. And at the moment that you open the box to see whether the cat died, you will also observe the quantum event and become part of the superposition as well. You will both see a dead cat, and see a living cat. But your consciousness only experiences one of these possibilities. Presumably, you have another consciousness in the other possibility observing the cat in the other state. Two separate timelines have been created, which will each progress on their own according to causality. We may also call these timelines worlds or universes, seeing as they're mostly self contained.
If we want to get conservatives on board with environmental protections, we should just start a conspiracy that the perceived rise in trans people, gays, and autistics is due to plastic ester groups in the environment. Then tell them that these groups are represented in the media so much now because the petrolium companies don't want us to see it as a problem when the science breaks.
Brb, gotta go convince some trumpers single use plastic is making their kids gay.
I remember conservative conspiracy types were all over the idea that covid was going to be uncontainably catastrophic right up until the pandemic really happened and the party line was suddenly that actually the virus isn't real after all, at which point they did an about face rather than delivering actually well deserved "told you so"s.
Point being, as soon as they see
the petrolium companies don’t want us to see it as a problem
They will suspect this sentiment is disloyal to their political tribe and definitely automatically discard it on that basis.
So, underneath all the dramatic and flowery language, the argument being made seems to be “if the purpose of our biology is to make its own DNA persist, it wouldn’t make sense for biological chimeras to exist; based on the ability of cells to coordinate even with different DNA, the main goal seems to be human cells cooperating to make a general human form.”
This anthropomorphizing of biological building blocks is ridiculous. Cells and DNA are not in competition over who runs the show because they aren’t sapient. And I fully understand that the scientist making this claim understands that on an intellectual level but I mention it because the backbone of this argument is to conflate the literal and the figurative. The only inconsistency in cells being compatible despite having different “bosses” would be an ideological one and, because there isn’t any actual ideology at play, it doesn’t matter whether it’s consistent when attempting to describe it. You’ve proven a metaphor wasn’t literally true, congratulations.
But setting all that aside, this still doesn’t actually function as a counter argument. If we are to accept the premise of DNA’s authority as literal truth, is this function of unrelated cells to be compatible with each other not a logical extension of the DNA’s will? It more benefits the DNA for the organism to be viable even if that means other DNA also persists. It has a greater chance of reproducing itself if it’s not in a corpse.
Not only does the argument hinge on anthropomorphism, it also hinges on this metaphorical entity being self-destructively spiteful.
Lastly, it is downright comical to mention things like “cells know on their own that the heart goes on the left” when making an argument that a different characterization of biology is wrong based on the existence of rare biological edge cases. Some people’s hearts aren’t where hearts normally go. I’d let this kind of thing slide as a simplification of the truth were this not part of calling out exactly the same degree of simplification from someone else as being invalid.
The premise that “if the purpose of our biology is to make its own DNA persist, it wouldn’t make sense for biological chimeras to exist" seems flawed to begin with. Biological chimeras existing still helps perpetuate soneones DNA through offspring doesn't it?
She underlines that although there is some artistic interpretation in the face reconstruction, actual scientific data derived from the skull parts forms the basis.
Isn't facial reconstruction from a skull almost entirely speculative?
You can get some information of the musculature from the bone structure, attachments are often fairly visible. But fatty tissue and skin, plus the uncertainty of the musculature still, all combine to be fairly high uncertainty ya.
Worth noting: this is 90% effective for HSV-1, but not tested on HSV-2. That's on their radar for research. It's nonetheless a breakthrough, and the Hutch has pulled off some interesting things in the past, so I'd imagine they'll get there.
Upon seeing this model Johan Medici, who had spent the past decade attempting to develop computer simulations that replicate the way a human mind works, yelled,"FUUUUUUUCK!" before throwing himself out a window.
Outside of the many publications, conferences, symposia, and discussions in the lay media on this topic over multiple decades, they've been completely ignoring it. Shameful.
I think this is this insufferable clickbaiting bullshitter that goes on endless rants without actually saying anything. Pretty sure I've seen another of her videos posted somewhere on Lemmy a while ago that was of equal quality.
I’m not a scientist but work alongside some stuff that was amplified in politics recently and adjacent to scientists and for my wife and my safety, I never tell anyone where I work or what I do. If anyone asks, I work in IT and most people are okay with that.
We risk vandalism, violence, and harassment otherwise. People are angry and ignorant and desperately want blood.
My wife stopped wearing a pentagram and we took down our love your neighbor sign, you know the one that has that same phrase and several different languages...
Turns out the Christians are too unlike their Christ.
I’m really sorry to hear that. Love your neighbour shouldn’t have any sort of political slant to it but I guess we don’t live in that world. We couldn’t put our menorah in the window during chanukkah this year for the same reason. Some people can’t differentiate Jews between Israel’s government and I’m not taking any more chances getting my living room window shot up by BB guns again.
No. It's because of countries like Russia and China pushing conspiracy theories and hateful behavior through things like social media. People don't act like this normally. It's because they are taught to.
While true, it's not like there's a monopoly on the market like in many other fields, I don't like Musk but he's a pioneer in many fields, besides SpaceX and Tesla he founded PayPal
Well, to get humans to space today you have either the crew dragon on a SpaceX falcon 9, or a Soyouz.
And relations with Russia are a bit tense nowadays, so if you are not Russian, there are currently no other options than SpaceX.
Kinda looks like a monopoly, with another actor starting to compete (and SpaceX is historically very competitive on prices, so without huge government subsidies, I doubt Boeing would consider maintaining their crewed vehicle)
Looks like a monopoly because SpaceX invented that niche and others lag behind RnD-wise, companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other companies behind the American space program are more in monopoly position and were more subsidized by the government than SpaceX ever was
He didnt found paypal, his company was merged with another one that became paypal. He was the CEO of PayPal early on, but was so universally disliked he was booted after 6 months.
He then took his Paypal money and did invest it in a fledgling startup named Tesla that had a working prototype of an electric sports car based on a Lotus frame. He later sued the actual founders so that he could claim he was a founder.
SpaceX is there because he had money to fund it and to entice Gwynne Shotwell, a renowed name in aeronautics, to his new space startup. Shes run it the entire time.
Musk is a "money guy" who lies a lot and has had some lucky hires. Hes a pitch man who has lived his entire life with a silver spoon in his mouth, which makes it easy to gamble on high risk projects.
Yep, he’s not anywhere near the visionary, the inventor, or the genius that he has made sure surrounds his persona in media.
He got handed money, invested it, and got lucky twice. A monkey could do that with a couple of levers.
I believed the hype as well, for quite some time. Then I listened to the bullshit he was saying and realized he’s just a copy of Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch — people who happen to have money and are able to fool millions of other people that they’re intelligent because they happen to have money.
Or it could just have likely evolved multiple times in different primate branches.
As we have absolutely no way to document how early it first happened in our own branch. To assume it is linked is just more attempts to try and indicate the human branch is special. Use of tools has been seen in many many branches. We don't assume that came from a joint ancestor that crawled out of the water. Or before.
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