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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Does the moon exist?
Message-ID: <1483@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Mar-86 10:22:25 EST
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.1483
Posted: Wed Mar 26 10:22:25 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Mar-86 07:47:05 EST
References: <12628@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 39

> Observation is what collapses wave-functions.  What machinery is behind
> this?  None: "Every attempt, theoretical or observational, to [find] such
> a [mechanism] has been struck down."  As J A Wheeler wonders in his magnif-
> icent essay "Law without Law":
> 	Why not simply say of the route it actually takes, Allah willed
> 	it?  And willed the outcome of every other individual quantum
> 	process?

     Could someone who thinks they understand this stuff translate for us
laymen?  In particular: this wave-function which collapses is merely a 
measure of our ignorance of the true state of the system, right? 
Schroedinger's cat will continue to live or continue to rot in the box, even
if we delay our observation for a day or two, right?
> 
> Wait, you say, the moon is way out there, and runs independently of us.  The
> earth rotates, and the moon sets, only in allusion.  It hasn't disappeared.
> Maybe some ancient and ignorant myths thought so, but we know better, right?
> 
> Wrong.  The moon is as subject to quantum law as photons.  And the reach
> of quantum law is the entire universe: one can observe a quasar billions
> of light-years away split in two by gravitational lensing and then run a
> delayed choice experiment on the double images.  Quantum mechanics has a
> very long reach indeed.

     Sure you can run the experiment.  Do you think it will have any effect
on the quasar?  If so, will the effect propogate at the speed of light, or
what?  

> The problem now is what happens when you don't look at it.  If you refuse
> to look at the moon, does quantum mechanics force you to conclude it does
> not exist?

     If the answer to this question is yes, could someone describe the 
experiments and the chain of reasoning which forces this conclusion?
> 
> ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j