h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Indeed. The same experiment can be carried out today using some modern equipment.
A motorist sees a cat streak out from the edge of the pavement, appearing to head straight under the motorists vehicle. There is a moment where the motorist neither knows whether the cat is alive or dead. especially more so if the motorist hears a large clunk from underneath the car. Until the cat reappears in the rear view mirror,
the motorist cannot know whether the cat has survived or is dead.
Even then the cat may be lying unmoving in the middle of the road, and until the motorist stops and gets out of the car to inspect the motionless cat, he still does not know whether the cat is alive or dead. The cat effectively is in a limbo state.
Alternatively if there is no clunk from beneath the car, the motorist will always be in a state of unknowing, if a) he does not observe the cat lying in the road behind him, or b) the cat has gone from his field of view altogether. Therefore effectively until the motorist fins out either way, the cat cannot truly exist.

interesting, researcher 14977, but illogical.
whether the cat is dead or alive does not depend upon what the motorist knows. if i was feeling sarcastic, i would suggest that it had more to do with the car than the driver, but that is a red herring. and im feeling didactic.
let me ask you: if the motorist is 20 when he hits the cat, does not stop, and lives to be 100, does that mean that there may be an 80 year old cat limping down the road?
cats do not exist in states of limbo - have you seen any?
the truth of whether or not the cat exists is also independant of the motorists knowledge, and outside the field of quantum mechanics.

fair enough.
I would love to chat more about this at the Aroma cafe or at the Forum & Firkin, but I have to shoot through. Time to go home for
some of us who have been on Backshift this evening.
maybe catch you tomorrow.
Cheers.
Jools

the same type of argument can be used to annoy people who insist that time-travel is feasable. it may be, but one would expect certain laws of nature still to hold: eg matter does not spontaneously appear or disappear.
see you for a pint in the forum & firkin
unch

i know youre not listening, 14977, but i havent finished yet: if one uses the above argument with the time travelling fraternity, they occaisionally come back with some vague waffle about parallel universes. i cant bear to go into it at the moment, its too dreadful. but unfortunately, there is some tenuous evidence that such places are not impossible, and it involves mirrors.

Actually, I am listening, and am finding this
fascinating. Unfortunately while I have had many thoughts
on parallel universes etc, and have read many s-f novels
dealing with the subject, until someone can prove to me
that they exist, I cannot seem to get to grips with it all.
Due to my huge lazy streak, I have not been keeping my brain
active enough over the last few years. (That's what I get for
keeping by brain in a bottle on the shelf). This is why forums like these here at h2g2 are good for me.
gets me thinking again!
What I cannot comprehend is what was here before the Big Bang?
Even if I did, how far do you go back? Surely you cannot have
something out of nothing. Obviously we do not have the technology or the thinking enough to fully comprehend it all.
This probably sounds like the rantings of an imbecile to one who
certainly knows more than I, but trust me, once the old gears are oiled, I hope to hold my own again.
rant finished, please tell me more.

good, 14977, you are beginning to learn. but abase yourself more. try including some religious epithets, eg prophet of reason, divine son of logic etc. also, entreaties of the form may it please, we humbly beg forgiveness for disturbing the sublime ponderings - you get the drift.
before the big bang it was quiet. then there was a big bang. thats my understanding, anyway.
but this is the mind f*** i was building up to in my last rant (i hope no-one mega quallified reads any of this and tears the piss out of me).
what is a 4 (or 5, if we include time) dimensional space like?
ans: no-one knows. but we can say this - 2 dimensional space (a plane) is a sub-space of 3D space (for instance a plane could be a boundary in 3D space) so 3D space such as we inhabit would be a sub-space of 4D space ie we could think of this universe as a boundary between 2 regions of a 4D universe. indeed it is if we consider any particular moment in time, because the universe at particular time is a boundary between between that universe at all previous times and all future times, and likewise wrt particular vectors in space. (i include the word vector here to confuse you and prevent you becoming arrogant).
i indeed have numerous brains, and keep most of them in bottles, except the ones in the smoke house and those that wear dresses and play with dolls.
unch has spoken

and now the bit with mirrors:
some molecules exist in mirror image forms, ie one type is a mirror image of the other. occaisionally they change from one type to the other. there are various theories which attempt to account for this, but they are all dreadful nonsense.
using sub-spaces we can account for the effect with some elegant nonsense: the molecules are rotating in a 4D (5D including time) space.
observed from our perspective (theoretically, of course) they flatten and unflatten, as their extension in one of the fisrt 3 spatial dimensions enters the next spatial dimension, and as they unflatten, what was left becomes right and vice versa. assuming, of course, they only rotate once.

I think I am beginning to understand 'Oh most Noble and Prophetic
Opener of Eyes and and Keeper of the Keys to Seldom Traipsed Corridors of the Mind' (is that the sort of abasement you were looking for?)
What you are saying is that if we were to take a picture in 3D of the molecule while it is rotating in 4D(or 5) we would see one image of it. If we were to take a further picture a moment later as it continues to revolve in 4(or5)D we would see a different view of it. In relation to our 3D view. To us it would appear to be a mirror image. (I am trying to picture an image of a coke bottle spinning in 4D, and all we see is one face of the bottle at any given moment. But as space moves on, we in our 3D world now see a mirror image of the bottle.)? Does that make sense?

no

Ah reprimand!
Rethink needed.
Back to The AC for a coffee and a ponder.
I see you are in the VPB just now.

yes

but you seem to be learning humility, B-17.
*stern glare*
imagine a cup, that might be used to contain coffee.
imagine it being squashed flat (no symmetry effects yet). immage that it is flat (still no symmetry effects). now it unsquashes and is upside down (symmetry effect).
unch has repeated himself

I think I see. At least i imagine I see.
Using the coffee cup analogy, The cup gets squashed flat, is flat then unsquashes, but is upside down. (reversal of image, hence mirror)
Like the inside has been pulled up through the cup. (however this is not a mirror image, but something turning inside out.) I know this, but it helps me to understand/imagine.
I have also started to have a look at all the stuff related to quantum physics in h2g2. There is a lot, some of which I see from your postings you are not too happy with.
Let me know of some that are actually worth reading.

*unch hits B-17 on the head with coffee mug*
*mug breaks*

I ain't telling that you broke Irving's coffee mug.
Though technically I broke it because it came off my head.
Anyway, speak to you tomorrow (if you are still talking to me that is)
End of another shift.