A-Z Blogging Challenge: Q Stands For: Quantum Mechanics

Ready for another science post, everyone? :)

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Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics dealing with wave-particle duality. Wave-particle duality is when matter acts like both a wave (think liquid) and a particle (think atoms). Quantum mechanics describes a physical system through a wavefunction, which predicts the chances of a particle being in a certain state at a certain time. This sort of probability is called probability amplitude.

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The thing about the wavefunction is that the more you try to calculate one part of the system, the less accurate your measurements will be with regards to another part of the system. This is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

(Good ol' Heisenberg. SOURCE)

The uncertainty principle brings into question the role of the observer. The Copenhagen Interpretation is the standard interpretation of measurement, the "statistical nature of reality", and the philosophical debate over what effect an observer has over a system. It says that observation causes the wavefunction to collapse; also referred to as consciousness causes collapse. One of the more famous thought-experiments to demonstrate this sort of thing is the Schroedinger's Cat experiment. (In which no live cats were harmed, by the way. Just thought-experiment ones.)

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But there are other ideas on how quantum mechanics works. There's the Many Worlds Theory, Consistent Histories, Ensemble Interpretation, de Broglie-Bohm Theory, Relational Quantum Mechanics, Transactional Interpretation, Stochastic Mechanics, Objective Collapse Theories, von Neumann/Wigner Interpretation, Many Minds, Quantum Logic, Modal Interpretations, Time-Symmetric Theories, the list goes on and on.

Obviously, there's a lot of figuring out to do.

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Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/physics/uncertainty/uncertainty2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind%E2%80%93body_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Interpretation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics

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No question this time. You have the floor on quantum mechanics!


(Also, I won't be around to your blogs today. I'll do my best to catch up with posts tomorrow, and I'll be sure to swing by anyone who comments here.)

-----The Golden Eagle

A-Z Blogging Challenge: O Stands For: Oceans

(An example of the five major oceans and the World Ocean. SOURCE)

71% of Earth is covered by ocean. The area of the World Ocean--which is the Atlantic, Arctic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans combined as a single body of salt water--is 361 million square kilometers (139 million square miles), and is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometers (310 million cubic miles) in volume. The average depth is 3,790 meters (12,430 feet), and the deepest point is 10,924 meters (6.787 miles), at the Mariana Trench.

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99% of Earth's living space is provided by the oceans--it is estimated they provide 300 times the habitable volume of land habitats. 90% of of that living space exists in the deep sea, the area below 200 meters (660 feet). Around 230,00 marine species are currently known, but that number could be up to ten times higher.

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Humans have explored less than 10% of the ocean. The Challenger II reached the Mariana Trench in 1951 and named its deepest point Challenger Deep, and the Trieste also reached the Trench in 1960 with a two-man crew, but much of the ocean floor is still unmapped and unknown.

News and information on ongoing and past projects, such as the Indonesia-USA Deep-Sea Exploration and the exploration of the deep reefs of the Indo-Pacific, can be found HERE.

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Sources:
http://www.savethesea.org/STS%20ocean_facts.htm
http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_biology

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Have you ever seen the ocean?


-----The Golden Eagle