Let's give out examples of cases in which modern science has come to conclusions that seemed crazy at the time, or even still do.

I'll go first.

An apparatus can be made to fire a single photon ("light particle") and a detector can detect a single photon. So photons were thought to be particles by a lot of folks.

But then there's the Double Slit Experiment, where light was shone through one slit which was followed by a barrier with two slits, and photons ended up in places that were totally crazy, not in straight lines through the slits like reason would tell you they would have to be. Like this:



So that pretty much proved that light particles were only particles sometimes, but other times they were not particles at all but were rather waves that could interfere with each other like how sound waves can cancel out due to phase relationships.

It doesn't really make any sense, that you can shoot one photon through a slit and then two other slits, and it might end up in any number of places, including places that it couldn't actually get to if it was travelling along a path, but hey, there ya go!

Somebody please explain this better if I got it wrong.

I would love to hear other examples of modern, cutting-edge science coming to conclusions that sound totally absurd. Please.

scott wrote:Somebody please explain this better if I got it wrong.

I believe it has been proven that the photon was controlled by an intelligent designer we cannot see. But who's real intelligent.

My friend and I were just discussing Schrodinger's cat yesterday...

The idea being that quantum particles are analogous to a cat in a box that is in an indeterminate state of both (or neither) life and/nor death.

When you open the box, you either find the cat to be alive, or you find it to be dead. At that point, you have made an observation, and the objective reality is concrete.

But until you make the observation, the objective reality is indeterminate.

Furthermore... (and i'm not entirely sure about this) the act of looking has something to do with the definition of the objective reality.

That's a noodle-twister.

Don't get me started on string theory...

edit: apparently it has something to do with "quantum superposition" -- i.e. the theoretical existence of a particle in 2 states at once... and the official story from schordinger was more like: you have an atomic partical that has equal probability of decomposing or not decomposing (probability of .5)... if it decomposes, it triggers poison gas that kills the cat. if it doesn't decompose, the cat lives. But you don't know until you open the box to look at the cat.

scott wrote:

Dude, that's like, totally an image of the apocalypse.

My favorite modern scientist is Rupert Sheldrake.

Sheldrake posits a theory of morphic resonance, whereby we learn via others learning around us (simple explanation).

He states, for example, it's easier to do a crossword puzzle later in the day because more people around you have done it already.

Nutty, perhaps.

His best example was of birds in the UK who took to tearing off the lids of milk bottles. The birds' lifespans were short, and when milk delivery was halted in the WWII years, all thought the bird generation that had passed would mean an end to the milk pilfering.

Oddly, when milk delivery resumed, the new birds started right at the bottles.

http://www.sheldrake.org/

dabrasha wrote:My favorite modern scientist is Rupert Sheldrake.

http://www.sheldrake.org/

His suggestions are interesting... in the way that ghost stories are interesting.

But I'm afraid he is seen as pretty much a hack in the eyes of the scientific community. His "experiments" don't really hold up to scrutiny.

Graffiti: "Heisenberg may have been here."

Cop pulls Heisenberg over and asks "Do you know how fast you were going, sir?", to which he responds, "No, but I know exactly where I am".

Scott-

The funny thing about "science" (as if science were a person) is that it can admit when "it" makes mistakes. So "science" gets some pretty complex stuff wrong sometimes. Religion has been wrong for thousands and thousands of years. When is "religion" going to have a mia culpa? I for one demand an apology.

Looking forward to beating you in cards very soon,

Bob

gio wrote:My friend and I were just discussing Schrodinger's cat yesterday...

The idea being that quantum particles are analogous to a cat in a box that is in an indeterminate state of both (or neither) life and/nor death.

When you open the box, you either find the cat to be alive, or you find it to be dead. At that point, you have made an observation, and the objective reality is concrete.

But until you make the observation, the objective reality is indeterminate.

Furthermore... (and i'm not entirely sure about this) the act of looking has something to do with the definition of the objective reality.

That's a noodle-twister.

Don't get me started on string theory...

edit: apparently it has something to do with "quantum superposition" -- i.e. the theoretical existence of a particle in 2 states at once... and the official story from schordinger was more like: you have an atomic partical that has equal probability of decomposing or not decomposing (probability of .5)... if it decomposes, it triggers poison gas that kills the cat. if it doesn't decompose, the cat lives. But you don't know until you open the box to look at the cat.

My cat's breath smells like cat food.

So, it takes a physics post to actually get me to say something. That is really sad seeing as I have been reading this forum for about three years now. I'm shy, but here goes anyway.

Electrons can have a spin state of up, down or a linear superposition of both of the states. The act of measuring the spin state (coupling the observer to the object to be measured) forces the electron into a definitive up or down state as the observer himself cannot be in a linear superposition of two states. His measuement has altered the state of the electron so that its prior state is not know. When the cat is in the box, it has equal probability of being alive or dead. upon measuring you force into one of two states, thus elmininating the third state of alive and dead simultaneously.

I am a dork. I work in a lab.

I personally think string thoery is a 6 dimensional mound of feces. Mutlidimensional manifolds at each point in space just so the numbers work out doesn't really bode well with us experimentalists. And the fact that they are trying to quantize everything so that the thoery holds water--chronons, massons, metrons--really annoys me.

The light thing still gets me too. Feynman does a really good job of explaining it in his book <i>QED</i>.

the craziest thing about physics is that there is still debate about how ice skaters can actually skate on ice. There are journal papers still being written about the many possible states of frozen water and its possible frictional coefficients. And I can't understand them. I can't understand a paper about ice. It's sad really.

Jon