At 03:27 PM 7/15/02 +0100, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
Optimizzin Al-gorithym wrote:
And while QM can't help you with a particular atom, it also doesn't say that its impossible that knowledge of internal states of the atom wouldn't help you predict its fragmentation.
Yes it does.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Ring a Bell?
The uncertainty principle says that there is a limit on the information about position and change in position that you can collect. It does not rule out internal states. For instance, you could generate particles with a certain property which you do not have to measure to know that they have that property. It is a logical mistake to think that because you can't see it in 2002, you can't ever measure it, or it doesn't exist. When something appears 'random', it is because of (wholly normal) ignorance on our part. Sometimes 'randomness' is used to shut off analytic machinery, much like 'God' (this latter idea is Minsky's).