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echo64 , in What if the measurement device in the double slit experiment were a light year away?

When you say zoom in, what you are actually asking is what if the wall was a light year away, and you’re building the delayed choice version of the experiment, details here …m.wikipedia.org/…/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser

But basically, the universe knows, and you can’t worm your way around it.if you detect which slit the photons flow through, then you lose the interference pattern.

dreadedsemi , in Is it worth closing the lid on a toilet before flushing?

I close the lid as neutral of keepibg the seat up or down. Just close the lid and everyone has to lift seat/lid

Num10ck , in if something happened to the black hole at the center of our galaxy, could we know about that problem before it affected us?

i guess if you had some super crazy distant probe observing the black home and it’s memory bits were quantum entangled with a receiver device near us, we might know instantly-ish? but would need to wait millions of years for that probe to be placed to begin with and hope the systems don’t corrode or corrupt or fail in those millions of years. and what would you do with the info? tell everyone?

Kyle ,

I thought FTL communication is just a fun typical science fiction understanding of quantum entanglement.

I thought we would still have to know what is going on at the probe via another means to know or decode the message sent by the entangled particles to their counterparts on Earth.

Kind of like putting two letters in two envelopes but we don’t know what colour they are, just that they will always be opposite colours. Even the person arranging them doesn’t know which colour they are. We don’t know if a red letter is sent to London or a green one is sent to LA or what colour they’ll be at all. But when we open the letter in London and see that it’s the red one we know the other one in LA is green.

So no matter where or when the person with the red letter is, they’ll always know the other person has the green one once they open the letter. But no information has been mysteriously transported across space and time, just the correlation between the two has been discovered.

TauZero ,

This is correct. FTL communication using any form of quantum entanglement is provably mathematically impossible by the no-communication theorem. Most common sci-fi trope though.

dohpaz42 , in How does a signing a post with a pgp key prove that you are actually the person behind the post?
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

The short answer is no. A bit longer of an answer is that with the public key, anybody can encrypt data. Only the owner(s) of the private key can decrypt the data. That is a key point: encrypted data by itself is meaningless. If you were to attempt to decrypt random data (or change one single character of valid encrypted data), you’d get literal garbage output. But, valid encrypted data and the corresponding private key can always unencrypt back into the original format.

This is why emphasis is always made to never share or expose your private key. Couple the private key with the always-available public key and you’ve got a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. This is where an attacker could decrypt the data with the private key, change it, re-encrypt it with the public key, and send it along to the destination without anybody knowing it was altered.

I hope this helps.

Fizz OP ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

This and the other comments in the thread help a lot. It’s very cool technology

fiasco , in What was the historical science debate that seems silliest in hind sight?

The funny thing about heliocentrism is, that isn’t really the modern view either. The modern view is that there are no privileged reference frames, and heliocentrism and geocentrisms are just questions of reference frame. You can construct consistent physical models from either, and for example, you’ll probably use a geocentric model if you’re gonna launch a satellite.

But another fun one is the so-called discovery of oxygen, which is really about what’s going on with fire. Before Lavoisier, the dominant belief was that fire is the release of phlogiston. What discredited this was the discovery of materials that get heavier when burned.

Kraiden ,

Not any kind of expert, but this seems wrong to me. My understanding is that heliocentrism vs geocentrism is about the whole solar system, ie: the same frame of reference.

So if you were launching a satellite, yes, you would use earth as your reference point but that is NOT geocentrism. You would never use a geocentric model. Ever. Not these days anyway.

Again though, I'm not an expert so maybe don't take this as law

ChemicalRascal ,
@ChemicalRascal@kbin.social avatar

You're absolutely right. Heliocentrism and geocentrism aren't "questions of reference frame", they're cosmological models.

Nobody is using a geocentric model when they launch satellites, as any geocentric model that works with our existing observations of the universe ultimately does not have a functional understanding of gravity. And it will be remarkably difficult to keep a satellite in orbit if you disagree with the universe about how gravity works.

InfiniteFlow , in Is it possible to imagine a universe with a different set of laws of physics?
@InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world avatar

Let me recommend the books by Greg Egan. Essentially, he takes some basic premise of our universe’s physics, twists it around, and then writes novels exploring what living in such a world would be like. Superb. You can check his website for an idea, but don’t be scared by it. He drops all the physics and math in there, but the novels shy away from that and use metaphors where absolutely needed.

DarkNightoftheSoul , in Why can't Strings in String Theory be replaced with Springs?
@DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz avatar

I’m particularly fond of donuts, myself personally. Jelly-filled, with sprinkles ideally.

jeffw , in Does anyone know about fluid dynamics?
@jeffw@lemmy.world avatar

How accurate of an answer do you need? I have an engineering minor and didn’t do much with fluid dynamics, but I know some general basic info

Curious_Canid , in Is there any scientific study about where should the bed be facing?
@Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca avatar

I find beds to be most comfortable in the “legs downward” orientation.

kometes ,
@kometes@lemmy.world avatar

This doesn’t work in Australia.

Curious_Canid ,
@Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca avatar

Fair point. Strapping yourself into the bed is less comfortable.

Senshi , in Volcanic Pyroclastic flows: What are some good analogies to understand the full spectrum of causes?

I’m keeping your soda bottle analogy:

In this case, a very strong eruption ejects kids of super hot gas and rock upwards, like when you open a shaken bottle. After some time, pressure will decrease, and gravity will start dragging things down again.

Unlike a regular soda bottle, heat is significant. Hot gas rises in the atmosphere against gravity. During this rise, it loses energy ( so it cools down). When it reaches a high enough temperature where the lifting momentum is overcome by gravity, it starts falling again.

As the top starts to fall while there still is more material below in the column, the column gets compressed. As the center of the column is the hottest part, it still pushes material upwards. So the colder material falling from the top is pushed outwards, widening the column a bit. It also encounters the cold air outside and starts cooling even more itself, falling ever faster in the outside “ring” of the column. It still is only “cool” compared to the rising inner column, still thousands of degrees. Also, all the light glasses will have moved further up the atmosphere and either fall slower or not at all. This is where the long term effects such as your mentioned ash fall/ rain comes from. So most of the rapidly falling material that then form pyroclastic flows are actually fairly heavy liquids/solids and heavier-than-air gasses. They only seem so light and fast inside a pyroclastic flow because if their immense temperature and contained energy.

However, sooner or later the falling material encounters the ground, a solid obstacle. As the inner column is densely filled with super hot, probably still rising fresh material, the only possible way is outwards. And with continuous pressure from above from all the falling material, the material needs to move out of the way very rapidly. This is not dissimilar from how water behaves that flows from a bottle or faucet and hits solid ground. But a pyroclastic flow is a bit more viscous, and still very hot. While moving outwards, it quickly has to push away the cool, resting atmosphere. The only way for the air is to step aside upwards. Now, as the cold air likes to stay close to the ground and was compressed, it forms a seemingly paradoxical barrier layer of cold, dense air above the pyroclastic flow, pressing down on it, even squeezing it further outwards. This together with it’s own viscosity means there’s surprisingly little turbulence between the two layers, with the hot flow continuing to rush along below the cold barrier layer instead of mixing and rising through it upwards. If this interests you, look up inversion layers: they are a normal phenomenon in regular weather as well, especially winter time, and can sometimes even last many days.

Consider that ash columns reach many km in altitude, filled with many tons of material. It doesn’t all fall slowly at the same time. It’s literally rock falling from high atmosphere to the ground, carried by heavier-than-air gasses that also want to sit below the atmosphere.

missing_forklift , (edited ) in Has a vaccuum chamber ever been used for desalination?

yes you can do this, however notice: this is wasteful as you have to run pump and heat from steam condensing is not recovered. You can heat up incoming water with condensing steam - this is called vapour recompression distillation. alternatively you can use heat pump to move heat around

Brokkr , in Why are we so concerned with oxygen production yet we never hear about nitrogen production, though we actually need 78% nitrogen vs 21% oxygen to survive?

New comment based on your edits.

When we breath, we use the oxygen, but we do not use the nitrogen. The nitrogen can actually be replaced with another inert gas and the “air” is breathable. Thinking about diving specifically, nitrox is actually an oxygen rich (nitrogen poor) mixture. More extreme mixtures use helium in place of some nitrogen (and sometime oxygen depending on the depth).

In your body, the amount of oxygen in our blood is critical for survival. Having a lot of nitrogen is actually not good. Too much is what causes the “bends”, again related to diving.

When looking at exoplanet atmospheres, we look for oxygen rich because it likely indicates water. We believe that planets with a high amount of water are more likely to support life similar to ours. It is possible that another form of life exists that doesn’t need oxygen or water, but we know for certain that oxygen and water can support life.

nandeEbisu , in [Mycology] Are yeasts analogous to each other, to the point they can be used in food interchangeably?

I think its like peppers, they’re all the same specie but we’ve bred strains for different purposes, so you’ve got the whole range from bell peppers, to habaneroa, to shishitos.

It might work, I know there’s types of beer based on wild yeasts, but it probably takes special care and is going to take more effort to get the flavor your want from it.

tetrachromacy ,

I just learned about this whole God forsaken idea from this post, and it’s disgusting. However, one thing I know for certain is that the type of people who would buy vaginal yeast brewed beer(typing that almost made me gag) ain’t buying it for how it tastes.

Telorand OP ,

This is a completely reasonable hypothesis.

Also, sorry I spoiled the illusion that “Gamer Girl Bathwater” was the most egregious thing the parasocial relationship industry has come up with.

shinysquirrel , in Does everyone learn the same gravity in school or is it different everywhere?

I’ve learned it as 9.81 but we usually round up to 10 for calculations. (this is for highschool. I haven’t gotten to college yet)

257m ,

We just use 9.8 at my high school for calculations. Also its cool to see another young person on the fediverse (Assuming you are still in highschool).

shinysquirrel ,

Close enough I graduated last year 2023. I couldn’t get in to the college I wanted so I decided to try it a second time. There’s a countrywide exam that gives you a score. It’s called yks. I’m currently studying for that exam.

jol ,

You round it to 10? Do you also round PI to 3 for simplicity? Kids these days.

Treczoks ,

Rounding of constants always depends on what you are calculating. Getting a rocket into orbit is a case to use the actual local value of g with a bunch of digits (and the change with height, too). If you build a precision tool, some more digits of PI are no bad idea.

But to calculate the lenght of fence to buy to surround a round pond, I actually used 10/3 for “PI plus safety margin” once.

jol ,

I was just kidding but good example with the fence.

shinysquirrel ,

yeah :/ in physics class we do round pi to 3

Dubidu1212 , in Can sufficiently energetic EM waves of a specific frequency affect weaker EM waves of a different frequency?

It depends on whether the light is within a medium or just in vacuum. Afaik light in vacuum behaves entirely linear (so waves of different frequencies don’t interact). But there are materials where light does indeed interact with light of different frequencies. One effect like this is so-called four-wave mixing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-wave_mixing?wprov=sfla1

In general you can take a look at non linear optics

Telorand OP ,

I will! Thank you! Also, it’s super fun that there’s exceptions based on the medium; I had no idea. I was picturing air or vacuum when I conceived of the original question, so now I have other things to look into!

count_of_monte_carlo ,

I second the other poster’s suggestion to look into nonlinear optics. A really common application is frequency doubling, also known as second harmonic generation, which doubles the energy of the photons. So an 800 nm laser (red) can be converted to 400 nm (green) with this method.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) actually uses frequency tripling of the laser pulses right before they enter the target chamber. That’s pretty wild, I had intended to look up NIF to give a high profile example of second harmonic generation, I hadn’t realized they were actually doing third harmonics.

Another optics-based phenomenon that I think maybe strays too far from the intent of your initial question, but is too cool not to share, is laser Wakefield acceleration. A very high power laser pulse will push electrons out of its path in plasma or materials via the ponderomotive force. This charge separation creates electric field gradients on the order of billions of volts per centimeter, which can accelerate electrons or other charged particles to relativistic energies. So you can start with a green laser pulse and wind up producing gamma-ray beams, either by slamming the electrons into a stopping material or by Compton scattering other low energy photons off the relativistic electrons.

Telorand OP ,

I really appreciate the extra info! It’s fascinating.

I’m recently an ex-fundie, so learning about all the cool stuff happening in science is like finding out your childhood house has a million secret rooms you never knew about.

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