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Sometimes the mind makes amazing jumps, and I have to write this one down before it slips away...

Quantum physics, if you have to wrap it into one sentence, is about probabilities collapsing into one reality when perceived. Some physicists actually believe that this "perceiving" has to be done by a consciousness. (Let's just let this stand as-is for the moment.)

Some theists then argue that the "metastability" of the multiverse is thus the unlimited creativity of God, who "gives" us this universe.

That's what I have read on the internet, following the recent discussion on a statement of Lawrence M. Krauss that has been circulated, among others, on userfriendly.org (the 2007-12-03 strip and discussion) and Slashdot.

Then, my mind jumped. What if it is the other way around? What if the atheists actually got it right, and those who believe that we had contact with or are descendants of a spacefaring race? Let me elaborate...

What if, back in the dawn of time, there was a people who really understood quantum physics in-deep, but their knowledge was lost in darkness, and all that remained was a vague idea of something larger, something bigger, of our future not being "written" but... well... metastable until perceived?

I'm probably not making much sense here, but I wanted to write this thought down before it slips away.

No, I haven't taken any drugs.

I dont know much about quantum physics, but as i understand it, it can be discribed like this: When droppen a bowlingball from the top of impire state building, it is very likely that it hits the ground, however when considering quantum physics it is theoreticly possible that it stops an inch above the ground, grow some wings and takes of toward hawai.

Anyway, i canse why some people bring god in to the discussion. I dont believe in god, but considering quantum physics, i supose it is possible that god, in one form or another, exists.

Zacariaz wrote:I dont know much about quantum physics, but as i understand it, it can be discribed like this: When droppen a bowlingball from the top of impire state building, it is very likely that it hits the ground, however when considering quantum physics it is theoreticly possible that it stops an inch above the ground, grow some wings and takes of toward hawai.

Anyway, i canse why some people bring god in to the discussion. I dont believe in god, but considering quantum physics, i supose it is possible that god, in one form or another, exists.

AIUI that example wouldn't work, as quantum physics works on an atomic and subatomic level (think of electron shells being, instead of collections of 'particle' electrons, a probability wave depicting the likelihood of finding an electron in a certain place when observing). The entire point is that observation via the eye requires light to reflect off the object being observed, thus changing the state of the object. (Light = energy, energy gets added to system, new_system != old_system).

The problem is that these probabilities don't scale up very well, resulting in Schroedinger's famous "is the cat alive" experiment.

I don't think they've got the equations to scale up as yet so best stick with things on an atomic level

Solar: Another alien theory wrapped in a quantum bubble, nice

Seriously though, this other 'race' you talk about would only disprove Christians and other monotheists if there happened to be more than one of them. Else it would turn out that Christians (and other monotheists) and Atheists were coming at the same solution from massively differing angles!

My twopenniworth

I can help asking myself if quantum physics is responsible for me asking this question...

Quantum physics doesn't allow just anything to occur. What it does is say there are many distributed paths that a particle can take with different probabilities and there is no way to know which it will take before hand (i.e. there is no determinism, you cannot take a snap shot of the universe and know all that will happen in the future, only the most likely result).

In some odd circumstances a particle will take every path at once distributed in proportion to the probability distribution. This is the famous wave/particle duality which is the one core concept behind it, the other is the uncertainty principle.

As the joke goes. A police officer pulls over Heisenberg and asks him if he knows how fast he was going, he relies 'No but I know exactly where I am'.

No, I haven't taken any drugs.

Ya sure?
Alcohol? Maybe?

Your idea made my brain explode. I can see it on that wall over there <points to left wall>...

-JL
Smilies.....

piranha wrote:

No, I haven't taken any drugs.

Ya sure?
Alcohol? Maybe?

What about oxygen?

Lack of, probably, given the lack of air-condition here.