This Will Mindfuck You: The Double-Slit Experiment. The video below shows scientific proof that there is something NOT quite logical or scientific about this universe. The mere act of observation can completely change the outcome of an event! Before I get too ahead of myself, you need to watch the video below to understand: (Forgive the corny cartoon character explaining the concept — at least he knows his stuff) Recap: When a camera observed the electrons, they acted as particles. So what’s the reason for this? Want even further proof? Then in 2002, a group of researchers set up the experiment in a way that the electron could not possibly receive information about the existence of an observing instrument.
Here’s the kicker: The insertion of the interferometer took only 40 nanoseconds (ns) while it would take 160 ns for the information about the configuration to travel from the interferometer to reach the photon before it entered the slits. The Results: The photons acted like particles 93% of the time that they were observed. 1. 2. 3. Why do we believe in electrons, but not in fairies? By Benjamin Kuipers No one has directly observed either electrons or fairies. Both of them are theoretical constructs, useful to explain observations that might be difficult to explain otherwise.
The "theory of fairies" can actually explain more things than the "theory of electrons". So why do we believe in electrons, but not in fairies? Is the issue a political one, where the "electron" fans got the upper hand in the nineteenth century, so by the twentieth century the "fairy" fans were a scorned and persecuted minority? Or, have we proved for sure that fairies don't exist? No, to both. Fairies are much more free. It's always possible that there really are fairies.
The scientific method is an amazing procedure for incrementally improving certain kinds of theories: those that make testable predictions. The theory of evolution is a scientific theory, because it implies a large number of specific testable claims. The theory of intelligent design could be true. Atheism is a religion, too! CU researchers propose rewilding. Carl Buell for Cornell University/Nature Could this be the Great Plains in 100 years? Artist Carl Buell provided this fanciful depiction of a rewilding scene. If Cornell University researchers and their colleagues have their way, cheetahs, lions, elephants, camels and other large wild animals may soon roam parts of North America. "If we only have 10 minutes to present this idea, people think we're nuts," said Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell.
"But if people hear the one-hour version, they realize they haven't thought about this as much as we have. Right now, we are investing all of our megafauna hopes on one continent -- Africa. " The plan, which is called Pleistocene rewilding and is intended to be a proactive approach to conservation, would help revitalize ecosystems that have been compromised by the extinction of many of the continent's large mammals, many of them predators. Keiji Iwai Photography. Why some scientists think reality might be a hologram. Have you ever wished that your life was actually a hologram, like Keanu Reeves’s in the The Matrix?
Craig Hogan, a particle astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab (dedicated to the study of the science of matter, space and time), is testing an interesting theory: whether our world is really two-dimensional and only appears three-dimensional, like a hologram on a credit card. “There are a lot of mathematical ideas about how reality works, but we need experiments to guide us about what is really happening,” says Hogan in an interview with the Star. Hogan is heading a team of researchers trying to test what has become known as the holographic theory. Based on mathematical formulas and the study of black holes and string physics, some physicists have hypothesized that reality is a hologram. “It is as if we’re virtual human beings living on a two-dimensional world,” he said. “We just don’t understand the coding for it,” adds Hogan. Asked how he explains his work, he laughs. Robot adapts to injury.
Lindsay France/University Photography Graduate student Viktor Zykov, former student Josh Bongard, now a professor at the University of Vermont, and Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, watch as a starfish-like robot pulls itself forward, using a gait it developed for itself. the robot's ability to figure out how it is put together, and from that to learn to walk, enables it to adapt and find a new gait when it is damaged.
Nothing can possibly go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong ... The truth behind the old joke is that most robots are programmed with a fairly rigid "model" of what they and the world around them are like. If a robot is damaged or its environment changes unexpectedly, it can't adapt. So Cornell researchers have built a robot that works out its own model of itself and can revise the model to adapt to injury.
"Most robots have a fixed model laboriously designed by human engineers," Lipson explained.