Is Cold Fusion possible?

Something has always bugged the heck out of me about the whole concept. Isn't it a bit presumptuous to assume that because we do knot know whether otr not the cat is alive while the box is closed, tht it is suspended between them? Everything is based on observation, right? Could the cat, a (once, at least) living organism, not percieve itself and therefore be alive?

Wouldn't that be like saying that if I'm having a conversation with someone and close my eyes, they cease to be there until I open them again?

The person who was standing there is most certainly still there, and they know it.

I think I'ts a bit arrogant for a scientist to assume that because they do not know what state something is in, that is does not HAVE a state.

-tainc

This one's a bit of a puzzler, you are right. The reason we say this is because we are looking at it Objectively.

Imagine I run a strange Casino, one of the Games you can play is the Shroedinger game.

The rules are as follows. I have a pack of cards, you make a bet and I turn the top card over.

you get to make one of 2 bets

Bet 1

you bet that the top card is red. I'm giving you odds of 3:2 (ie you give me £2 and if it's red I give you £3 and your original £2. If it's Black I keep your £2


Bet 2

You bet that the card is a 10, I'm giving you Evens, ie you give me £1 if it's a 10 I giive you £1 plus your original $1 back.

Clearly bet 1 is better, you have a higher chance of winning and are given better odds.


now before you make your bet I look at the top card but I don't show it to you. It's the 10 of Spades

How should you bet?

now If you've seen the card you should choose bet 2 because it means you win whereas bet 1 means you loose.

but you havn't seen the card. Can we say it would be irrational to choose bet 1?

No of course not. you can see how the card is in a state of not having a value when it's not been looked at, that state doesn't change when I look at the card, because that information is not available to you.


So how can the state of the card be different for 2 observers, well that's just how things work, the universe can be different for 2 different observers.

Imagine there is a star 100 light years away from earth, you measure the distance with your increadable distance measurer, it's exactly 100 light years (give or take the radius of the earths orbit) now I get in a spaceship and set off towards it at half the speed of light and I measure the distance from the earth to the sun, it's only 25 light years. nobody is wrong, it's just that the universe can be different to 2 different observers.

That was a really good explanation, Sam. Thanks.
Actually, since you understand that so well, could you explain something else for me?

Wave vs. Particle properties of light.
I've done three studies on this topic and I can't seem to grasp one thing: according to the slit experiments, light is in wave form when it is not being observed, but in particle form when it is. I know this has to sound like a stupid question, but, what determines whether or not it is being observed?

Ouch. We've just done wave/particle duality in A-level Physics. Light is assumed to be a wave, because of diffraction, refraction, and such. That was how it was for quite a long time. However, scientists love to confuse people who think they've got it made, so...they decided to give it particle activity as well. This is because of the photoelectric effect. If you shine UV light onto a negatively charged plate (ie more electrons), then it is possible to measure the number of quanta absorbed into each electron, and the Zinc leaf experiment is used for that. UV light is used because high frequencies have higher energy photons. The fact that electrons immediately begin to be liberated proves that it is particle effects. With UV light acting as a wave, there should be an approx 3 second delay before the effects were noticed, as a wave cannot carry that much energy.

This is probably incomprehensible but that's because I don't completely understand what is already a weird topic.

As for whether or not it's being observed...it is both at the same time!

nnnyeehh... unngghhh.....
*twitch twitch*

Both at the same time? ...how?

That's the problem with quantum mechanics. What things are depends on how you observe something. For example, there is the thing with quantum particles and either knowing its speed or its position, but never both at the same time (I think).

Some of you should have started new Threads instead of digressing from the subject of this Thread. Perhaps you respond without reading the Thread First? Bright idea.

There were a lot of remarks made that indicated almost zero pertinent knowledge. For example, "Cold Fusion" refers to some experiments done at room temperature. The subject has nothing to do with absolute zero. It would probably be considered "Cold Fusion" if it happened at 1000 degrees.

Sam Finch & and a few others seem to know what they are talking about, but the rest of you are clueless.

Interstellar space is considered cold, even though it is almost a vacuum & perhaps technically no temperature reading is possible. It is considered cold because a warm body would radiate its heat very fast and get cold in a hurry.

The Shroedinger's Cat experiment is more subtle than you might suppose. The problem is that certain Quantum properties can have only one of two possible states when actually measured. However, logical arguments based on assuming either value (without actually making a measurement) lead to erroneous conclusions (or results contrary to experiment). This leads to the conceptt that neither state exists until a measurement is actually made. Bohr (a genius) was serious when he said "If you are not bewildered by it, you do not understand it."

I thought this might come up.

the first thing to realise is that in fact a particle and a wave are the same thing, It's not that sometimes a wave is like a particle and sometimes it's like a wave, it's always both.

When the particle travles it always travles like a wave, ie it defracts and refracts (N.B. Reflection is slightly different) it has a wavelength like all waves, (It's amplitude is slightly different that a normal wake though, I believe it's a complex number)

but bsicly it's like a wave in that respect.

I said it's amplitude was a bit wierd, but essentially you can think of it as a probability wave, at the peaks (and the troughs) the probability is high, where it crosses the axis the probability is low (you have to imagine a Sine wave while reading that)

Probability of what you say?

it's the probability of a collision. The best way to explain this is to imagine a particle(that is completley a particle, not a wave at all, They don't exist but it helps if you imagine one) so if this very particle like particle (we'll call it a pure particle) crosses through the axis of the wave if it is crossing where there is a peak or a trough there is a high probability that it will collide with the particle, if it passes through at a root there is a probability of 0 that they will collide.

now in reality there is no such thing as the pure particle so we get 2 of the wave functions crossing and the probability of a collision is much harder to work out, but the same principal applies.


The collision can be worked out with the same rules as conventional particles colliding, this is where we get the particle like properties of the wave.


That's the basics of it, As for whether it's being observed or not in order to observe it you have to bounce something off it or bounce it off something, ie there must be a collision, this is why you can say the particle properties kick in when it is observed.


It's quite complicated and wierd, but it's the way it is, the reason it seems so wierd is that it's nothing like the world we see around us. because all this is probability, and there are so many particles rules of statistics start kicking in and we get very predictable results, ie the probabilities no longer apply and things are very particle like. but deep down at particle level it's completley different.


Right onto the Uncertainty Principal.

one thing I forgot to mention is that all these particles have a momentum (this is what we use to calculate how the collisions turn out) the wavelength and the momentum of the particle are very much connected, they are inversley proportional, ie the larger the momentum the smaller the wavelength and the larger the wavelength the smaller the momentum. Thsi is an Iron Clad rule, there's no probability involved here Momentum * Wavelength = h

where h is a constant (Plancs constant,
it's about 10 ^(-30))

Now comes the wierd bit


Imagine we have a single particle, which we know the Momentun Exactly, a momentum that gives it a wavelength of Exactly 1M

Imagine its probability wave, stretching on to infinity in both directions. Remember that the Probability of finding a particle at a position relates to the height of the wave there. so the probability of finding the particle is the same at all the peaks of the wave, so we have no way of knowing where it is, it has an equal probability of being at any of these peaks, ie it could be anywhere

now imagine we don't know it's momentum exactly it's wavelength could be exactly 1M or just a tiny tiny bit less, it could be either, we assume there is an equal probability of it being either. So how do we calculate the new probability? we average the 2 wave functions. Now on your Wave choose one of the peaks, and align it exactly with one of the peaks on the shorter wave (because the waves go in infinatly there has to be one of these peaks) so at that point the peaks align, look over to the next peak, they don't align exactly, they miss slightly, another peak along they miss a bit more, next peak even more. So when we add the 2 waves together the place where the peaks align is the highes part of the wave, the next peak along is slightly lower, and they keep getting lower as we go outwards.

Now if we say its wavelength could be anywhere between 1M and 99cm. we add up the waves for every wavelength between the 2 (basicly we integrate, If you really want some justification of why we can average an infinite number of things read a book on real analysis, but I don't recomend it) but basicly the peak in the middle is very mch the highest peak, the next one is much lower, the third is very low indeed. so we can be almost certain that we will not find the particle outside that first peak, ie we can be pretty certain that it is in that first peak.

the bigger the range of momentums we integrate over for our particle the more defined the middle peak is ie the more certain we can be of its position.

we can reverse this logic to show that the more certain we are of its position the less certain we can be of its momentum.


and that's the uncertainty principal. The more certain you are of a particles position the less certain you can be of its momentum and vice versa.


That is how it works in 1 dimension in 3 dimension the same Ideas apply but it's much more complicated.

That is the uncertainty principal. Yuo may have noticed that it takes a while to explain is fairly mathsy and difficult to follow.

there is another explanation of why you can't know both momentum and position at the same time. that is that in order to observe it we have to bounce something off it, which changes its momentum, the more accuratley we want to know its position the harder we have to hit it (this idea pops out when you do the maths of 2 probability waves colliding but you can just state that and people will believe you)

While this is partially true (it breaks down if you know the initial momentum of one of the particles because you can work the rest out) It is not the uncertainty principal, it is another Idea completley, but often confused with the uncertainty principal because it's much easier to explain and people use it when asked about the uncertainty principal. The second Idea doesn't take into account that the particle doesn't actually have a position, this is just something that gets assumed because everything we see in our macroscopic world does. but down at particle level particles dont have a position, just an area where the probability of colliding with it is high.

Guv

I don't think it's fair to try to exclude people from these conversations just because they know less about the subject than others, this is an open forum and in topics like this we are essentially just bouncing Ideas off each other, if someone doesn't know the ins and outs of the science involved then explaining it helps to clarify ideas, ecpecially with relitivity I feel that I understand the topic better after explaining it to a few people in other threads.

with regards to starting new threads remember there is no real objective to these discussions other than our own amusement, the threads evolve like conversations, it encorages the free flow of Ideas. Starting new threads doesn't really help this, plus we just get loads and loads of threads discussing pretty much the same thing. While in the VB forums it's a good thing to have lots of threads because it helps people find the answers to their questions in the chit chat the discussions are of a different nature and different rules apply.

Quote:

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try sticking two atoms together when first the electrons repel each other, then the nuclei. It takes a phenominal amount of energy, unless you can devise a catalyst that nullifies the strong nuclear force, in which case you redefine physics, win the nobel prize, and are assassinated by the entire physics community.

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Just to clear up a point, I think what Bob meant here was 'unless you can devise a catalyst that nullifies the electromagnetic force'. The strong nuclear force is the attractive force that only takes hold at very short distances, it is the EM force that is repelling.




When I did A-Level Physics we were encouraged to replace the term 'temperature' with 'internal kinetic energy'.

Sam, you seem to be so knowledgle in this area, I am suprised that you would say that particles & waves are the same thing. Both classical and quantum physics view waves and particles as different.

The Quantum anomaly is that you can set up an experiment which measures wave properties of a Quantum Object and another which measures particle properties. You are never able to set up an experiment which shows both types of properties. Quantum objects sometimes appear to be particles, sometimes waves, never both.

Did you ever see an optical illusion which seems to be either a black vase or two human profiles staring at each other? It is the nature of this illusion that the human mind can see either but not both of these objects. Neils Bohr once used this illusion as an analogy. He asked what was really there: The vase or the profiles? His answer was that what was really there was black ink on a piece of white paper. The profiles and vase were something in the human mind. He said that what is "really there" in the Quantum World is so weird that the human mind cannot visualize what is really there (unlike the illusion, which we can think of as black ink on white paper).

He claimed that we are too conditioned by our experience in the larger non-quantum world to be able to comprehend what is really there in Quantum Land. We only have imperfect interpretations based on quantities measured by our instruments. He really meant it when he said you do not understand if you are not baffled & confused (or words to that effect).

I'm confused now, I thought the whole point of quantum physics was that they were.

Obviously in clasical physics the 2 concepts are completly different but in the quantum world the distinction isn't made.

I'm a mathematician, not a physicist, so I probably see things a little differently. but If we take say an electron, you can model it as a wave or a particle depending on the situation. It's the same object, which always behaves in the same way but we need 2 models to describe its behaviour. there's nothing in the quantum world that is purley a particle and nothing which is purley a wave.

I'm pretty sure my description of the uncertainty principal is accurate, If it isn't tell me.

With regards to being bewildered by It I wasn't at all, although that's because

1 I havn't been that far into it
2 I see the whole thing as a big bunch of equations rather than a tangible object

I have never even tried to visualise one of these things, neither do I believe I would be able to. I don't see the point really. As I say, Mathematician not a physicist.

Sam - your description of the Uncertainty Principle is pretty damn good, and about as close as a standard person is likely to get.

PS: To all those others going on about quantum mechanics - they aren't both at the same time. They're both until you look at them, then they're one or the other, depending on what you want to look at.

Why does it have to be COLD fusion? why not luke-warm fussion or that-temperature-that-everybody-hates fusion?

Anyone ever read "Schrodiger's Cat" (a book)? If that's real, then we don't really know what's going on....

I have read a lot about Schroedinger's (?spelling) cat. I only claim to understand a little of what they said.

Last Post is correct. We really don't know what is going in the Quantum World. The Hotshots in this field have some equations that work. They can say "If you perform such and such experiment, your instruments will indicate Blah, Blah, Blah"

If you ask for an interpretation of what is "really happening," they either admit to not knowing or make unintelligble (to us) statements.

A pretty bright guy once said something like "If Quantum objects acted anything like classical objects, we could
make large scale models and see what is really happening."

Our mental concepts are conditioned by 100,00 or more years of evolution with classical world experiences. This has resulted in "hard-wired" concepts in our minds. The Quantum world is so weird that we cannot visualize what is happening there.

Consider that mathematicians can provide all sorts of theorems & formulae relating to objects in 4 or more dimensions. They can compute distances, areas, volumes, hypervolumes, and provide various theorems. For example, in 100 dimensions, a one inch hypercube has a diagonal 10 inches long. Can you or anybody you know visualize what the corner of a 4-dimensional hypercube looks like? If you think you can (I doubt it), then try for visualizing the corner of a 5-dimensional hypercube. Those corners are among the simplist, most fundamental objects in extra-dimension spaces.

Similarly, we just cannot visualize what Quantum World objects look like, how they interact, et cetera.

I think people are placing too much emphasis on being able to picture these objects, to me it would be enough to be able to predict what they would do in any given situation (which obviously I can't do) and have at least some Idea why, to me this is enough of a mental picture, even though it would have to be a big load of formulae and equations.

Well, I put emphasis on it!

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