Riverwind (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 3:16 am I get it, this is some cool stuff but how does it effect us, now or in the future? Why should we care?

How will it effect our lives if we understand how this works and can prove it?

Some science to me seems to be frivolous. How will knowing that there are multiple universes help us in any way? Should we build a probe to send over and say HI?

Personally I have already spent more time on this then its worth and wasted several minutes that are lost forever.

River

Without knowledge of quantum mechanics we wouldn't have computers. Without knowledge of relativity, we wouldn't have GPS systems., and these are only two examples. I'm know, when those theories were proposed, people were saying what you just did.

Knowledge is cumulative. Each new thing we learn adds to our understanding. While finding the Higgs Boson might not change your life, it might change your children's lives in ways we don't yet understand.

The many-world interpretation offers an explanation for how the world is on a quantum level. Although, if multiple universes, possible infinite universes exist, and we aren't likely to visit copies of ourselves existing in those, we may some day be able to build quantum computers that will access and use those universes in making their computations. Quantum computers already exist, but as yet are quite limited in what they can do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer. It is possible that on a quantum level all those universes are connected. Many physicists believe in this explanation for quantum mechanics.

No doubt when people were first fooling around with electricity someone like you was sitting in his cottage saying, "That's cool, but how will it affect me? Why should I care?"

If there's Aunti-matter, is there also Uncle-Matter?

Yes.

Dark Matter can be found in Riverwind's bathroom.

Uncle Matter can be found in Flo's.

I think the Higgs is in Talula's loo.

Strange things happen there. This is the only explanation.

A number of years back, I joked to an overweight girlfriend that the Higgs Field was strong in her (a joke on her obsession with Star Wars and a constant repetition of "the force is with you" for too many things) and nearly got slapped. I ducked. She yelled at me for rather a long time after that. I thought it was awfully funny. She didn't.

Slammr (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 10:48 am Without knowledge of quantum mechanics we wouldn't have computers.

Wouldn't computers made with vacuum tubes still be possible?

curious_guy (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 3:59 pm Wouldn't computers made with vacuum tubes still be possible?

I saw a computer made with vacuum tubes back in 1968 and it was a huge dumb box. It alone took up the entire side of a small, four story building on one floor. IT was antique then. by the time I got out of college, you purchase handheld calculators more powerful. Your computer would fill your house and you would have a tiny living space just big enough to open the electric box.

In those ancient days, an IBM 360/67, the most powerful of IBM's computers in 1968 and printed circuits was a gargantuan set of boxes with tape drives for memory and required punch cards and the computer was 12 feet long and three foot wide and four foot high. Like I said, it had printed circuits. The great success of the 1968 year's computer programmers was to make it run two programs at once in one memory. WOW. isn't that impressive?

No one dreamed of a personal computer in those years. They thought it was a ridiculous idea.

The biggest programming language was FORTRAN and only because A.J. Perlis was head of the computer department did we get privileged to learn ALGOL. Remember ALGOL? how about PASCAL or ADA?

Every computer program was unique and I mean unique. SO unique that most programmers would never touch another programmer's code because each programmed so illogically (That was the reason for inventing ALGOL which didn't solve the problem) Each programmer coded a Float Sort differently and each programmer wrote a linked list in different variables. There was nothing in teh world more spiteful than a horny computer programmer whose balls were achingly blue and glasses were smudged (wink, wink).

I taught myself FORTRAN and said to myself (often) why is FORTRAN a synonym for FUCKED UP?

Word processing? nonexistent in the computer world at that time.

Spreadsheets were thought of by dreamers in the English Department when they dared to write SciFi.

Computerized publishing (In Design, PHOTOSHOP, etc...) -- HAH! most printers had moveable typesetters that required that people retype all text to set it in newspaper and "hyphenation for justification" was done by hand. So was kerning. Spelling by editor. Grammar correction by a person with a huge book and a ruler to smack your fingers.

If you don't know what some of that is or don't recognize what I'm talking about, your word processor does all that for you. You spreadsheet dose mountains of mathematics in seconds where even the "big computer" the IBM 360 was fed cards and did it overnight because you were too insignificant a user to use the daylight computing time. Today, your computer sits on your lap and adores you like a puppy waiting for fingers to pet its willing keyboard.

added after posting: Do you know why the "discovery" of the Higgs Boson was so hard? That bump that the graphs show at roughly 120 GeV is less than a percent difference between two lines and to reach 5 or 6 sigma required billions of collisions and each collision had to be analyzed by a computer. CERN and the LHC ran two separate tests of collision decay particles and analyzed them separately. That was why it took many months to analyze the data and get a decision precise enough to call "discovery."

Book me a passage on the next ship to the next universe, I am ready to go.

River

curious_guy (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 3:59 pm Wouldn't computers made with vacuum tubes still be possible?

Yeah, but the computer on your desk would take up your whole house, generate enough heat for whole block, and cost you a fortune in electricity.

Perhaps, I should have said transistors wouldn't exist, but home computers certainly wouldn't exist without quantum mechanics. When I worked for IBM, they had a big meeting introducing their first integrated circuit board. It had the equivalent of two transistors, some resistors and capacitors, forming two flip-flops, which could store two bits of information. Today's microchips have the equivalent of as many as two billion transistors.

Back then, business computers took up whole rooms and had enormous tape drives for storage. Input was generally done with punch cards. Back then, most businesses stored their data on punch cards. It might take hours to print out a payroll.

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 4:54 pm Book me a passage on the next ship to the next universe, I am ready to go.

River

If the Multiverse exists, you're already there, infinite versions of you, all of them thinking they are you.

Oh Good God, now there's a scary thought.