This is one of the finest videos I've ever seen here.

The action! The dialogue! The music! The defensive techniques, like the "frisbee toss" and the "rope-knife entangler", simply amazing.

Whoever doesn't upvote this is unpatriotic, and should be violently instabanned and made to surf Youtube lip-synching videos for a duration of not less than 24 hours. Court adjourned!

>> ^coupland:
Stephen Hawking must be rolling over in his grave...


I doubt it, if for no other reason than he's still alive.

The vid didn't bother me any but I don't have to take every point as proved, it's more the possibilities and questions that I love. Years ago when I first discussed nanotech with people most thought it some combination between sci-fi and a scam, these days most take it for granted that it's not only real but coming up on us fast. I still have my doubts about some of the particulars such as them ever letting us have anything like a desktop manufacturer, but in a broad brush sense it was worth the time even for the parts that were wrong. It made us think about the possibilities and get used to the idea.

I'd agree that the vid seemed disjointed and skipped from topic to topic without much explanation, didn't cover any in the depth needed to understand much, but if for no other reason it deserves a home in the science channel for the debate it sparked. Anyone interested now has the Copenhagen interpretation, many-worlds interpretation, quantum entanglement, wave-particle duality suggested by sineral and other suggestions for research from others. We aren't going to solve the worlds problems from here anyway. But if it makes us think and even ask some questions we're doing more than most are with their spare time.

1. They interview some respectable scientists, but the narrator goes far beyond what they say and exaggerates/oversimplifies/misstates some things for sheer shock effect.

2. They conflate the simple idea of extending R^3 to R^n with the idea that an infinite sufficiently random universe would tend to have infinite copies of everything.

3. They say electron entanglement can lead to FTL communication, but it has been proven that electron entanglement cannot be used for FTL communication (google no-communication theorem).

4. They present a fringe-interpretation of quantum mechanics (many worlds) as if it were consensus and fact.

5. The final line of the video is transparently daft.

Ok, folks. Here's my take.

Initial impressions: Each interview is very shortened and not always as thorough as should be expected, but nothing is outright incorrect. I'm getting the distinct impression that this video is cutting out hours and hours of interviews to get a few little blips of speech that are being slapped together by layman TV people to get the nice easy piece they want. For example, I'm not particularly sure why Professor Lloyd is brought in, he seems to be speaking to an entirely different set of questions than the video is supposed to be asking.

Eric, the roulette table is in reference to the Schrodinger wave equation and its implication in wave function collapse. In theoretical terms, the video is putting forward an interpretation of such an event, specifically Everett's many worlds hypothesis. If you want an explanation, I can put one together for you, but altogether it's a reasonable (albeit not the most widely-held) hypothesis, insofar as quantum mechanical hypotheses are.

Overall, the video just seems to be very disjointed and sloppy. Each speaker is cohesive individually, but the leaps the video is making are not connected and occasionally simply off-topic.

I'm tempted to leave this video in the Science Channel because it's at least making people ask questions. The question "Are there parallel universes?" is one that is still in the hypothesis stage without substantial data in support of or against an answer either way, so it falls within the softer side of science, the part not yet locked down by solid evidence. In this sense, the video is still in keeping with scientific principles.

I am, however, concerned that this video does seem to be misleading in that it is presenting a number of phenomena and theories that are not quite topical or sufficiently linked as to be topical to the specific question of whether parallel universes exist, and doesn't place them appropriately. Why are they getting into entanglement theory? Why are they talking about quantum computers? ....I don't really know. Hell, they don't even distinguish a change in topics when they move from the "Dang there could be multiple versions of you within the same universe because the universe could be infinitely big" theory to the "Holy crap there could be multiple universes because there could be branching due to quantum decoherence" theory. Bad bad bad. Naughty TV show.

In short, I think I see both sides of the argument here. KP, you're right, I think the scientists are cool and damn smart (and Seth Lloyd is fucking BALLER) and their research and theories are great. Irishman and Jonny, you're right, the overall video is being screwed up by crappy TV program producers/editors and their regrettable fill-in voice-overs. I'm at a loss for what to do. I think I'll come back, see how a few more people weigh in, and then decide whether this video stays or goes.

P.S. If you happen to think a video in the Science Channel is questionable, please let me know via profile comment or email. I happen to be SWAMPED in my own research, and I don't have near enough time to clean out all the swill from the channel as throughly, as often or as quickly as I would like.

This IS BULLSHIT.

Ok we KNOW that there is a mystery about spatial entanglement of quantum photons, but how in gods green earth every freak show walking on earth ends up quoting this as proof of their newest grand theory, I have no idea.

Here are two quote taken right from this video. Look at these leaps of logic:

"but as quantum mechanics tells us that one atom can go into two places at once, which means ultimately that there is going to be two me’s doing the opposite things." -BULLSHIT

"with every decision we make, we spit in two. The idea that our experience is like a tree that branch’s again and branch's again, that's the theory that modern physics teaches us." -BULLSHIT

For heavens sakes Sift people seem pretty enlightened to me .... so lets DOWNVOTE this pseudo science crap.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
Can I come out and visit your quantum physics lab so I can see what your research in this area reveals?

Defensive much? The reason I don't think it belongs in the science channel isn't because I think the scientists in it are BS, but that the presentation of the subject matter is close to quackery. Describing quantum entanglement as a mechanism for FTL communication? I'm pretty sure that's BS. And much of the rest of this unscientific presentation isn't any better. It reminds me of pop psychology in its treatment of the material.

Sigh, I had typed up a half a page worth of comment and realized I needed another half page more so decided to just give up. Now I see SDGundamX's comment and wish I had posted mine.

So here's the short version. This video is misleading; in at least one spot it is misleading to the point of spouting hogwash. It mixes together separate phenomena from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and plain probability without clearly labeling them or distinguishing between them. Their "parallel universe theory" is not a theory, but an interpretation, of which there are multiple, of quantum mechanics; it's not even the most widely accepted interpretation. If you're interested in the phenomena they fumble over in this video then google, or just wikipeida, these terms: Copenhagen interpretation, many-worlds intepretation, quantum entanglement, wave-particle duality.

One other point I wanted to make here is that I'm uncomfortable with entangling the problems of organized religion with commentary on personal beliefs. Organized religions are social constructs like most other social constructs, i.e., mechanisms for a small group of people to have power over a large group of people. Confusing that with the philosophical questions raised here is a Bad Idea, imo.

HA!

and who else would show up, the moment i hit 'submit', on my comment here!!
bitchez don't know 'bout mah quantum entanglement telepathy.

"because smallpox was eradicated by a vaccine."

If you think smallpox has been completely eradicated, think again...

"In Joe Esposito's lab, at the Centers for Disease Control, there was a test going of a biosensor device for detecting smallpox. It was a machine in a black suitcase. It could detect a bioweapon using; the process called the polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R. -- the same kind of molecular fingerprinting that police use to identify the DNA of a crime suspect. The suitcase thing was called a Cepheid Briefcase Smart Cycler, and it had been co-invented by M. Allen Northrup, a biomedical engineer who founded a company to make and sell biosensors. He was there, along with a cluster of other scientists.

Esposito, the official guardian of one half of the world's official supply of smallpox, handed a box of tubes to a scientist in the room. Two of the tubes contained the whole DNA of smallpox virus but not live smallpox. The DNA drifted in a drop of water; it was the Rahima strain. Two other tubes contained anthrax. The samples were snapped into slots in the machine.

Northrup turned his attention to a laptop computer that nestled in the machine. Northrup is a chunky man with a mustache and reddish-brown hair. He tapped on the keys.

We waited around, chatting. Meanwhile, the Cepheid was working silently. It showed colored lines on its screen. In fifteen minutes, the anthrax lines started going straight up, and someone said, "The anthrax is screaming." Finally, one of the smallpox lines crept upward, slowly. "That's a positive for smallpox, not so bad," a scientist said. Emergency-response teams could carry a Cepheid suitcase to the scene of a bioterror event and begin testing people immediately for anthrax or smallpox. The machine is priced at sixty thousand dollars.

Afterward, Joe Esposito went around collecting the used tubes. The smallpox-sample holder -- a plastic thing the size of a thumbnail-had been left on a counter. I picked it up.

Esposito wasn't about to let anyone walk off with smallpox. "Leave me that tube," he said. "You are not allowed to have more than twenty per cent of the DNA."

Before I handed it to him, I glanced at a little window in the tube. When I held it up to the light, the liquid looked like clear water. The water contained the whole molecules of life from variola, a parasite that had colonized us thousands of years ago. We had almost freed ourselves of it, but we found we had developed a strong affinity for smallpox. Some of us had made it into a weapon, and now we couldn't get rid of it. I wondered if we ever would, for the story of our entanglement with smallpox is not yet ended."

It might return sooner than you think thanks to bio-weaponized technology... also a few cases have popped up since 1977.

Read this full article at: http://cryptome.org/smallpox-wmd.htm

I found this from a link on the CDC.gov website while searching smallpox.

Source: Hardcopy The New Yorker, July 12, 1999, pp. 44-61. Thanks to Richard Preston

So, the big silver thing is a dewar. It most likely contains liquid helium.

I am not sure how much NMR has to do with it, but there are NMR based qubits...The decoherence term, which came from NMR, is the same effect, but not actually the same phenomenon that is going on here, I don't think.

Most quantum qubits that I have heard of are made out of low temperature(Type I) superconductors, like niobium. The qubit itself is a Josephson Junction, which is a entirely too long discussion to go into too much detail.

But the basic idea is that if you get two superconductors close together, but separated by an insulator, they will quantum mechanically link. So the state of one describes the state of the other(e.g. entanglement).

*Warning, a more technical explanation is below.

You can exploit this entanglement and by systematically rocking the potential that describes the coupling between the two states with a microwave signal. Eventually you can get the system into the ground state. Now the flux quanta which couples the two systems, exist as discreet energy levels. By injecting that flux into the system, you excite the system into it's first energy eigenstate. At this point the system is effectively described by the Bloch equation. This two state system is your quantum qubit. Which you can use to make calculations, the easiest of which and first test is to factor numbers or seek prime numbers. The problem, as I alluded to earlier, is that as the system evolves in time some of the energy escapes into other energy eigenstates, it is no longer |Q>=a|1>+b|0> but now it is |Q>=a|1>+b|0>+c|2>... and so on. The time the state can be described by |1> and |0> is referred to as the coherence time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_junction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

How was that rbar?

One Nation “Under God”
Questions & Answers

In 2002, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled 2-1 that public schools may not sponsor recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, due to its religious content through the inclusion of the phrase "under God." This ruling sparked much comment in the media and was denounced by many political leaders. The U.S. Supreme Court later announced that it will hear
an appeal of the decision. The high court’s ruling is expected by late June or early July 2004.

Q. Why did the 9th Circuit Court rule the way it did?
A. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of church and state. Under this time-tested arrangement, government is given no authority to meddle with religion or religious matters. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that public school sponsorship of the Pledge furthers religion. Thus, the court declared the action unconstitutional. The court noted , "A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical…to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect of religion. The coercive effect of this policy is particularly pronounced in the school setting given the age and impressionability of schoolchildren, and their understanding that they are required to adhere to the norms set by their school, their teacher and their fellow students."

Q. Isn't this a radical ruling?
A. Not at all. The court simply applied the constitutional principle that government has no business promoting religion. Courts have been particularly vigilant when it comes to public schools. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that religious instruction is up to parents, not government officials or public school personnel. Public schools serve children of many
different religious perspectives (and some who practice no religion at all). Thanks to the protections of the Constitution, students cannot be pressured to participate in prayer or other forms of worship at public schools. The appellate court's ruling on the Pledge is simply a logical continuation of that wise judicial precedent. Furthermore, the 9th Circuit judge who wrote the
opinion, Alfred Goodwin, could hardly be called a radical. He is a Presbyterian elder, a World War II combat veteran and was appointed to his position by President Richard M. Nixon.

Q. Did the court declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional?
A. No. The court ruled that public schools may not sponsor daily recitation of the current Pledge of Allegiance because of its religious content. If the Supreme Court upholds the 9th Circuit ruling, public schools could continue to recite the pre-1954 version. Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Q. What did the Pledge say before 1954?
A. Students used to end the Pledge, "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Despite the controversy surround the 9th Circuit's ruling, many Americans thought the Pledge was just fine as a patriotic ritual without religious references. After all, America survived the
Great Depression and won two world wars with a secular Pledge, and neither religious devotion nor patriotism suffered.

Q. How did "under God" get into the Pledge of Allegiance?
A. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister. Bellamy crafted the Pledge for a magazine called The Youth's Companion as part of a patriotic exercise to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World. Bellamy, who was an advocate of church-state separation, did not include religious references in his Pledge. In
1954, Congress inserted the phrase "under God" into the Pledge after a lobbying campaign led by the Knights of Columbus. This was during the McCarthy era, and the change was seen as a blow against "godless communism" in the Soviet Union.

Q. Does the ruling mean that public schools can no longer open the day by reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance?
A. The ruling currently affects only those states in the 9th Circuit -- California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Alaska and Hawaii and is currently on hold while the Supreme Court considers the matter. If the high court upholds the lower court ruling, it will apply that decision nationwide. Public schools would have to stop sponsoring recitation of the
Pledge or use the pre-1954 version.

Q. What's wrong with a generic reference to God in the Pledge? Who does it hurt?
A. The Pledge was a purely patriotic exercise until Congress in 1954 made it a patriotic and religious exercise. Millions of Americans who have no religious beliefs or who object to religious-political entanglement were alienated by that change. When it altered the Pledge, Congress sent the signal that in order to be a patriotic American, one must also be religious.
Many Americans disagree with this assertion. Not all religious people agree with so-called “generic” references to God. These references tend
to reflect Judeo-Christians understandings of God that may not be shared by Buddhists, Hindus and others. Other believers oppose phrases like “under God” because it is a form of watereddown spirituality. They note that religion has thrived in America due to the separation of church and state and do not want to violate that principle.

Q. Haven't some courts said that references to God in the Pledge are permissible because
they are ceremonial and don't really promote religion?
A. Some courts have said this and have even asserted that such usages are acceptable because they are merely "ceremonial deism" -- the practice of government co-opting generic religious Americans United for Separation of Church and State language for ceremonial purposes. Religious believers ought to be appalled by such statements. The phrase "under God" has obvious religious meanings. It is not drained of its religious
meaning merely because of frequent repetition. In addition, religion is not some prop designed to give heft to government functions. For believers, faith is to be taken seriously. It demeans religion to claim that phrases like "under God" are no longer religious because they have been so
frequently used by government.

Q. How have politicians reacted to this controversy?
A. Many overreacted. There were immediate calls to amend the Constitution, even through the Supreme Court has not issued its decision yet. Both houses of Congress have also passed resolutions condemning the 9th Circuit's ruling and expressing support for "under God" in the Pledge. Some political strategists have also recommended using the decision for partisan
purposes. President George W. Bush and his allies in the Senate said they would use the ruling to press for confirmation of Bush's judicial nominees.
Bush himself said that the decision shows that "we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. And those are the kinds of judges I intend to put on the bench." Bush's statement implies that he has a type of "religious test" in mind for judges, a violation of Article VI of the Constitution, which forbids religious tests for public office.

Q. What about Religious Right groups -- how did they react?
A. Several Religious Right groups used the controversy to raise money, foment hysteria and attack the separation of church and state. Many groups also hoped the ruling furthers their farright political agenda and urged President Bush to use the decision to argue for more judges who oppose church-state separation. TV preacher Jerry Falwell, for example, sent a message to his supporters telling them that he believes it is "time to go to war" over this issue. TV preacher Pat Robertson said the Pledge ruling may cause more terrorist attacks, concluding, "[I]f something much more terrible than
September 11th befalls our beloved nation, the answer to the question 'Where was God in all of this?' may well be 'He was excluded by the 9th Circuit.'" Ultra-conservative newspaper columnist Cal Thomas suggested that the Pledge ruling may have been even worse than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Thomas wrote, "On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the
aftermath of Sept. 11...the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists."

Q. What happens now?
A. The Supreme Court will issue its decision most likely by the end of June or early July. The high court could uphold the 9th Circuit’s decision or overturn it. The court could also dismiss the case and rule that the man who brought it, Michael Newdow, lacks “standing” (the right to sue)
because he does not have full custody of his daughter, a public school student who is exposed to Pledge in school.

Q. Could this case result in a tie ruling? What would happen then?
A. It is possible that the Supreme Court’s decision could be a 4-4 tie. Justice Antonin Scalia made public comments about the case in January of 2003. Justices are not supposed to pre-judge cases, and Scalia was asked to remove himself from the deliberations. He later recused himself from the case. If the court splits 4-4, the decision will still apply to the states in the 9th Circuit but will not be extended nationwide.

if you would like to learn more about religious liberty, please contact:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
518 C Street N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002
Phone: (202)466-3234 Fax: (202)466-2587
e-mail: americansunited@au.org
website: www.au.org

They're soldiers for f**k sake didnt they know what they were getting into when they took the job?

Why should they have known that they were getting into this? Name another American military excursion similar to what we're doing in Iraq. Vietnam? No, there was a draft for that. Korea? Draft. WWI, WWII, draft draft. The military entanglements we've entered without the draft have been either smaller in scale or far more brief than the present quagmire.

Given that this is a volunteer army, many (most?) of the soldiers in Iraq right now are people who either A) needed the money (due to a lack of other jobs, or for future schooling) or B) truly believe in the value of service to country (nothing wrong with that IMHO). Members of the military disproportionately come from lower-income areas / families and rarely from the richest or most politically powerful. The people who encouraged, and continue to support, this useless war have little at stake personally, little or no "flesh in the game."

Our soldiers had no reason to expect a protracted occupation in an unstable country without adequate resources. Those in the Reserves and National Guard certainly had no reason to anticipate extended, recurring deployments outside of the US. The financial, emotional, and health strains placed on our most loyal citizens are immense in any war. When the war is of dubious merit and may end up being a near-complete waste of resources (money and lives) the stress frequently comes coupled with anger and/or indignation for those most closely affected.

I for one agree with the caller in this clip. If our continued occupation of Iraq is so terribly important that stressing our military and our economy in this way is justified, then service shouldn't be entirely voluntary. If our country truly needs to do this, then we should all be expected to do our fair share to assist. Either re-institute the draft or end the mission. I'd prefer to see the latter given that I'm of selective service age and in relatively good health. Really though, I can't imagine the war would last much longer once those in power actually had to risk seeing a loved one endanger their life fighting it.

"If voting really changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

nice one hence you have a pseudo monarchy in the USA.

rightwinger, thanks for that, seriously. When looking at the motives for invading Iraq, i find it hard not to think of the word "empire", that's all. It seems so obvious, the pieces on the chessboard, the enormous oil under the ground (why not invade Rwanda or Zimbabwe?)

Also, you say that past darkside CIA/British oil theft is not proof of present oil theft. You are right. But what proof have you got that it was all about human rights and WMD? I mean, if it's not about the oil and the empire, what is it? If you can't provide a more logical alternative i am going to have to go with my hunch about the oil.

There is this theory that the USA should not have any "foreign entanglements" or something... can't remember who said that...

The Black hole information paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could "disappear" in a black hole. It was a contentious subject for science since it violated a commonly assumed tenet of science—that information cannot be destroyed.

In 1975, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein showed that black holes should slowly radiate away energy, which poses a problem. From the no hair theorem one would expect the Hawking radiation to be completely independent of the material entering the black hole. However, if the material entering the black hole were a pure quantum state, the transformation of that state into the mixed state of Hawking radiation would destroy information about the original quantum state. This violates Liouville's theorem and presents a physical paradox.

More precisely, if we have an entangled pure state and we throw in one part of the entangled system into the black hole while keeping the other part outside, we get a mixed state after we take the partial trace over the interior of the black hole. But since everything within the interior of the black hole will hit the singularity within a fixed finite time, the part which is traced over partially might "disappear", never to appear again. Of course, we don't really know what goes on at singularities once quantum effects are taken into account, which is why this is conjectural and controversial.

Hawking was convinced, however, because of the simple elegance of the resulting equation which 'unified' Thermodynamics, Relativity, Gravity and Hawking's own work on the Big Bang. This annoyed many physicists, notably John Preskill, who in 1997 bet Hawking and Kip Thorne that information was not lost in black holes. In 2004 Hawking had to pay out to Preskill when Hawking conceded that Preskill was in fact correct.

There are various ideas about how the paradox is solved. Since the 1998 proposal of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the predominant belief among physicists is that information is preserved and that Hawking radiation is not precisely thermal but receives quantum corrections. Other possibilities include the information being contained in a Planckian remnant left over at the end of Hawking radiation or a modification of the laws of quantum mechanics to allow for non-unitary time evolution.

In July 2004 Stephen Hawking announced a theory that quantum perturbations of the event horizon could allow information to escape from a black hole, which would resolve the information paradox. Basically, his argument assumes the AdS/CFT correspondence which states that an AdS black hole is dual to a thermal conformal field theory, which is unitary. However, as of 2004 the full details of the theory have yet to be published, so most peers are reserving judgment before accepting the result. When announcing his result, Hawking also conceded the 1997 bet, paying Preskill with a baseball encyclopedia (ISBN 1-894963-27-X) 'from which information can be retrieved at will'. Thorne, however, remains unconvinced of Hawking's proof and declined to contribute to the award.

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