Weird time-jumbling quantum device defies "before" and "after"

Imagine two boxes, a horizontal one containing a cat that was alive and is now dead, and a vertical one containing a cat that was dead and is now alive.

Then…uh…

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I already read about this tomorrow.

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This reminds me very much of one of the key points in Arcadia, by Iain Pears. A good book IMNSHO

This is where the old saying, ‘standing at the urinal pissing while drinking beer’ comes in.

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Stop being so linear.

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I am curious… if you were to make it so that down one route, A happens 1 second before B, and on the other route B happens 2 seconds before A (or some similar appropriately scaled difference)… what consequence would there be, if any, on the output?

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The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline, by Isaac Asimov.

https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/81861/16/Azimov_-_The_Early_Asimov._Volume_3.html

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Jesus didn’t come for cats
I went and looked. Most of it’s still there.

Terry Pratchett

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I think the key factor here is that it is a constrained system so you can mess with relativity locally without really violating any rules. As to the question of how far you can mess with it, well, that remains to be seen (or not).

The touring companies alone provide a massive revenue stream. Oh wait . . . nevermind.

Quantum Philosophy by French physicist Roland Omnès is a great introduction to the basics of quantum mechanics. I highly recommend this sadly somewhat obscure book.

wow, you must know a lot about quantum physics to entirely dismiss the work of a university physicist. Do you mind sharing some of the quantum physics papers you’ve coauthored?

My PhD work was in quantum fields in curved space. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4689 if you feel your understanding would benefit from my particularly lucid prose, but you’re probably better off reading https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06299, by the next person to graduate from our group, which has a thrilling conclusion along this line of research. tl;dr: You can’t have time machines and wormholes because physics won’t let you, not just because they seem weird.

But my intention is not to dismiss their work at all, it’s quite good! (Here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04302, it’s much nicer than the PRL paywall.) It’s a result that is entirely predicted by quantum mechanics, it’s “normal,” but it’s an experimental verification of a really weird thing. As someone who was deep, deep over in the mathematical physics side of the pool, I appreciate folks getting things done with actual wires and lasers to keep life honest.

It doesn’t add to our understanding of “before” and “after” in ways that were not already part of the promise of quantum mechanics a hundred years ago and demonstrated in the double slit experiment, but it is demonstrating very cool new things you can do with it. But the announcement / post seemed to hype that the former was happening.

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lol owned

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If your gut instinct is to defend the integrity of honest working physicists, I fully support! : )

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defies “before” and “after”

The bbs has that covered. Here’s a screenshot from a different thread to prove it:

47%20AM

Go on, make a mixed labor space within a light field of elemental particle determinants. Build a giant soft accelerator pillow under Asia with Pacific Japan that detects neutrino-correcting proprietrons for all I care, I’ll be over here with a time crystal mask on at the bottom of a cut mean ellipse of SolarCool panels, covering The Water Margin a capella, trying to be the hottest and coldest thing at the same time so…well, the mask surface can get on 8 Minutes to Late Night and whatever media turn out to be capable of covering the spectacle.*

  • Hoping for a 24kg acrylic object called a Laser Hypersphere or something at least as unwieldy which has to be kept out in a garden.
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