It's fragment of the movie "What the bleep do we know?".

Oh my god...I must watch this movie. Quantum physics is so fascinating, but this bit blew me away! Creepy and inspiring. Gave me chills. (I love Gomez...hee hee hee)

However, I have to wonder what they used to observe. Perhaps that device interfered with the wave pattern...static build-up or electricity or something. They'll find out soon enough, though.

Oh...love your avatar, ender.

Some time ago I've published "What the bleep do we know?" on videosift, but probably nobody watched it , because of it length. Now it's not available on google video:(.
I highly recommending this movie, it done huge impact on me.
Here's the short about this movie(specially for you daphne:)
http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=1671

hee hee...thanks. I just watched it.

I did some looking around about this movie, and it seems there are two camps...one side feels that it is a mind-blowing film while others feel it is propoganda for the filmmaker's New Age sect. This controversy only makes me want to see it more.

I'm still...*ahem*...trying to...*cough*..."find" it.

Oh! But I did find Nova's "The Elegant Universe" on their web site...you can watch the entire program. If you haven't, you should. It's one of the best Nova shows I've ever seen.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

Hehe I've found this page today already, and I'm going to watch all this movies . Thanks anyway if you've got some stuff like that please post it on videosift or give me a link.

Cool documentary, but dang that was confusing.

The movie makes numerous references to quantum mechanics in order to bolster all the religious/mystical/new age claptrap it advocates. Now, most of us haven't a clue about quantum anything, so the producers and directors -- who, along with several of the film's stars, belong to the Ramtha School of Enlightenment -- are simply bamboozling us with stories we don't understand in order to make us more likely to believe those which we did. Stories such as the ability to walk on water.

And if you believe that you'll swallow anything. To those of you who believe creationism, ghosts, and other assorted quackery and flimflam, this is a movie which will send a shiver down your spine. But to the rest of us it's abject nonsense.

Link to Skeptical Inquirer's review below:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/review.html

This was also mentioned in Timeline, by Michael Crichton (MUCH better than the movie.) Quantum foam...makes me roam....

I'm not going to step to any religious stuff.
I've watched this movie and I really liked it. It have very positive atmosphere and explains in interesting way some things. If you watched it and you don't like it, it is your problem.
I have a sentence for you:
"The mind is like a parachute, it works much better when it's open."
Think about it.

love the video, too bad it's a scientific front painted on some soft-serve stuff

Back to the Double Slit experiment, from "what the 5*&#$...":

Daphne - the double slit experiment is not a recent discovery, and it's not due to confounding variables such as the equipment. It's been duplicated many times over. It's difficult to fully accept its implications, but they are undeniable: the seemingly solid physical world we live in is nothing of the sort. This "stuff", matter, is not what it appears to be at all, and is, rather, condensed energy. The mind doesn't go there willingly.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I haven't seen the whole documentary, but this section doesn't seem to have any spiritual overtones at all.

I've never been able to accept the whole "spooky action at a distance" stuff. It doesn't make sense on al logical level that watching something can effect it's action. How the frigging hell is that in any way possible? I prefer to think that the physicists are somehow looking at it the wrong way - they are interpreting the results correctly, but missing some vital element that makes it all logical. I read a great book a few years ago that explains quantum physics to the layman, I think it was called Schrodenger's Cat.

dag- my own theory about it is that there IS a missing factor: mind. Mind exists in the universe, but what the f%*^ is it? Matter? Non-matter?
You may prefer to think scientists have it wrong, but it's waaay more likely that the way we perceive the world is through a very thick veil, or again, Plato's cave.... It's hard for our minds to think this way, but I buy it. The evidence is undeniable.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Hmmn, well the concept of "mind" works fine for me in philosophy, but not when it comes to effecting physical events from a distance. It just brings up all kind of ludicrous situations.

What if you trained a dog to watch the slits and press a button with it's paw depending on which one it noticed - would that work? How about a chicken?

I love stuff like this.

"mind" works fine for u in philosophy, dag? really? so are you a dualist, believing mind and body are two separate things? or are they the same thing?

the concept of "nonlocality" is a basic quantum idea -- where an action on a subatomic particle here will affect its pair, regardless of how distant it is. it happens simultaneously, NOT by transmitting information through space. i can send you some info on this if you want. shoot me ur email addy.

Ok...not that I mean to keep this discussion going, but I'm going to keep this discussion going.

I just watched the whole film and I was really surprised. I was mostly surprised by the fact that this clip is not in the movie at all. Where did it come from?

My next shock was that all of the reviews I read about this film while waiting for it to...erm...get here were grossly incorrect. Quantum Physics is a portion of this film, but it is only given as a basis for the theme. This film was merely melding Philosophy, Psychology and Science. Most of the things I saw in the film were not new to me (synapses in the brain, chemical production through thought process, questioning who is The Watcher...) but I liked the way the film makers were able to bring them all together. It was very interesting albeit a little over-emotive.

I am just gob smacked at the fact that people have written articles on this film and have cited grossly incorrect moments from the film. That tells me that they are either really stupid or didn't watch the film. If they didn't watch the film then they are just spouting what they have heard someone else say. The beautiful irony is that this kind of behavior is EXACTLY what the film makers are talking about.

This wasn't a film about Quantum Physics. This wasn't a film about Neurophysiology. This wasn't a film about Existentialism. All of these things are in the film, but it is about something else.

It is about Reality.

Keep learning. It's the only way to fly.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I suppose I am a dualist. I think the mind is more than just a summation of the electrical nerve firings in the brain flesh.

I don't have a problem with entanglement or nonlocality - not that I really understand it in any depth. I just have a problem with the idea that particles can be effected from a distance by a person looking at them.

(email is in my profile)

Thanks for the reveiw daphne. I think I will have to go find this now and watch it.

I'd be interested in your reaction to it. There is a definite lean into spirituality and New Age mumbo jumbo, but some of the more solid psychology bits are hard to argue with. However, I've been checking some of the speakers' bios and while a few are prominent Teachers and Scientists there are others who are one step beyond Quack.

It was like a New Age Nova show.

Whilst I agree that this animation is very good, "What the bleep" is very manipulative, dishonest and misleading.
The woman that runs the cult is channeling someone (Ramtha) that's been dead for 35,000 years, and lived in a mythical city (atlatis) FFS.
http://skeptico.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/ramthawebpic_2.jpg

Here is a great expose on this crap film.
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/index2.html

The only really impressive physicist in the movie had this to say after seeing what they'd done to his recording.

"I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed."

This movie is indeed an advert for a very kooky cult (Ramtha's cult as chanelled by Judy Knight of Texas). And many of the claims it makes about quantum physics are not scientifically based, despite the psuedo-scientific bullshit they surround it with.

Sorry if this is a little strongly worded, but this kind of mass manipulation makes me angry, and the world is so god damned credulous!

But here's the thing, Shanness...she was only a part of the film. She didn't produce the film. I could not find any (credible) evidence that Ramtha funded this film. People talk about it in blogs and comments, but so far I cannot see where their source is. Look at who actually prodced the film.

Again, it seems like people have taken one portion of the film and blown it up to encompass the entire theme. Or they read what one person says about it and repeats it without checking. (Like a certain Presidential race.) There were some very correct facts on neurophysiology (a large portion of the film) but no one has taken issue with that.

Yes, this is skewed...but so is any Michael Moore film. Still, he makes his point. The skewed view could not take place if there was not a basis for it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Watched it, I thought most of the speakers were pretty interesting, but I didn't really need the kind of storyline they attached to the documentary.

It was strange how they didn't tell you who any of the speakers were. That being said, you could spot the cult leader a mile away - I found her sections to be the most inane, and she was annoying kind of waggling her finger a lot. Still there was some good stuff in the movie, and I wouldn't dismiss it as claptrap out of hand.

Shanness, you have to give people more credit for being able to discern the wheat from the chaff. And if this movie was funded by some weird religion, so what? I watched Passion of the Christ - I'll take this over that. And you think the major studios don't have agendas?

This clip is from the extended version of the "What the bleep do we know?"
called "What the BLEEP!? - Down the Rabbit Hole". That's why you didn't saw this short in the movie
Sorry for misdirection.
Here is the link:
http://www.whatthebleep.com/

Ahhh!! I was wondering why I missed it. Thanks, ender.

Dag, I completely agree. I love Marlee, but her role was so over the top that I couldn't enjoy her parts at all. I've been spoiled by Nova.

And yes...artists usually have an agenda. The meaning behind a work of art helps make the piece more interesting.

If anyone is in doubt, do the research and decide for yourself. Ender's link is very interesting...it has a lot of information about the filmmakers and the scientists. Thanks, luv!

wow great stuff

Quantum Physics for Dummies presented by Gordan Freeman

I think what the video is trying to say about the 'observer' is:
Think of the observer as our eyes, well, from what we know there's 11 dimensions in the quantum theory (the strings), but we can only experience or see one of them.

It's not like the particals or waves know they are being watched it's just that because they have so many possibilities that our eyes can't comprehend to see how they turn out that way, bascially all we are able to the big picture, the speculations, but not how they end up like that.

In theory if we can see the small fine details then we can solve the string theory.

Think of it as a pc processing information at an exabite/sec, our current pc will not be able to keep up with the changes, but they will adjust to recieving infomation at their optimum standars.

I like the video.

Ah reality.

This has to be the simplest explanation I have ever watched on qm. Brilliant!

I don't see anywhere how the double-slit experiment is somehow liked to conciousness of some kind. It's not. Most universities with an advanced enough physics lab can do this experiment and the result is always the same. Observation is not an EFFECT, but a changing of possible variables and possibilities of somekind. It's amazing how worked up people get about something because they don't understand it exactly.

The experiment and it's results simple are what they are. Anyone trying to link it to God or mysticism of some kind is using it like they use any mystery to further these beliefs.

Ok, I'm not saying the video is wrong, or right. I'm not saying that it isn't linked to facts, religion, conciousness, or whatever. It's just that I'm not sure how this animation is science in any way, shape, or form. How does it prove anything? Someone show me research please, I don't understand how this is the top ranked video on videosift, when it has nothing backing it, it seems to merely be a strange theory someone made a cartoon about...? What the $*&@ do we know is right, and I'm asking what the *%$# do I know from the video, I learned nothing, nothing. I didn't catch a place where they put in something backing this amazing crap? Why? ?


"It's amazing how worked up people get about something because they don't understand it exactly."

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Just a point of order CIJd, this is only the top video for the past month. The all-time top videos can be found here: http://www.videosift.com/topstories.php

also, czechrite - you can say it's not an effect, but I still can't get my head around the idea that looking at something like a particle can somehow change it's state. This video may seem a bit light, but I've seen essentially the same explanation in other sources. What the video describes is a real phenomenon and not exaggerated.

Here's some research, explains it in a way that is not so mysterious. Check out the actual link for more details.

"The Copenhagen interpretation (of this experiement) posits the existence of probability waves which describe the likelihood of finding the particle at a given location. Until the particle is detected at any location along this probability wave, it effectively exists at every point. Thus, when the particle could be passing through either of the two slits, it will actually pass through both, and so an interference pattern results. But if the particle is detected at one of the two slits, then it can no longer be passing through both - it must exist at one or the other, and so no interference pattern appears."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

ie: you change probability by observing. read the whole entry in the encyclopedia (it's not easy, but if you persist, it is understandable)

This experiment has been around for centuries in it's basic form, both seeming to confirm and deny particle theory. There's TONS of info out there you can find with a simple engine search. It's not magic, just hard to understand. Waves and particles ARE connected, somehow, to probability or POTENTIAL. Since we don't actually observe in one instance, particles could POTENTIALLY go thru both slits...so we get results as if they did go through both and interfere with each other. But, if we observe it going through one slit and not the other, then it's no longer possible for the POTENTIAL to exist anymore...and the behaviour is different. Fascinating stuff...but not magic, conciousness or any of that the way we'd like to imagine.

At least that's my opinion.

This stuff is really incredible. Read this text quoted from http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Quantum%20mechanics.htm
Pay special attention to the second paragraph regarding the existence of our universe... Whoa. These implications are mind-shattering...

The 'collapse of the wave function' theory in the Copenhagen Interpretation states that "when we are not looking at the particle, the probability wave, of even a single particle, is spread out and will pass through both slits at the same time and arrive at the detector as a wave showing an interference pattern. When we observe the electron by placing detectors at the slits, it is forced into revealing its location which causes the probability wave to collapse into a particle. If the theory is correct, its implications are staggering. What it suggests is that nothing is real until it has been observed!

Nothing is real until it has been observed! This clearly needs thinking about. Are we really saying that in the 'real' world - outside of the laboratory - that until a thing has been observed it doesn't exist? This is precisely what the Copenhagen Interpretation is telling us about reality. This has caused some very well respected cosmologists (Stephen Hawking for one) to worry that this implies that there must actually be something 'outside' the universe to look at the universe as a whole and collapse its overall wave function. John Wheeler puts forward an argument that it is only the presence of conscious observers, in the form of ourselves, that has collapsed the wave function and made the universe exist. If we take this to be true, then the universe only exists because we are looking at it."

*promote

*nominate

This video cannot be nominated by firefly because firefly has already nominated 8 videos this year - sorry.

*nominate

This video cannot be nominated by mlx because mlx has already nominated 8 videos this year - sorry.

*dead

Gold Star invocations (dead) cannot be executed by jwray because jwray is not a Gold Star member - sorry.

fixed, thanks

(I split the following up into a few posts because it was too large.)

I don't claim to be an expert, or an authority on this stuff. I will say that I've been fascinated by it on a personal level for over ten years. It started back in the ZDtv days (before TechTV), when Michio Kaku was on an episode of Big Thinkers. I read anything I can get my hands on, and watch all material that comes my way.

Take the following for what it's worth, I'm not trying to proselytize an agenda, just share some of my private thoughts.

I've got a number of analogies I could use here for describing the entire (11 dimensional) universe. Two of my favorites are a VHS tape and hologram baseball card. They both kind of work the same way in so far as how they relate to the thought experiment. I'll explain both.

In the case of the VHS tape, it has your favorite movie on it. You know it word for word, line for line. You've seen it a hundred times. But no matter how many times you watch it, the story will always end the same way. But, from the point of view of the characters (I'm talking in a 4th wall sense; the characters themselves, not the actors playing them), have no idea what will happen next. In fact, the same was true for you the first time you saw the movie. There may have been some foreshadowing, but hell, there's some of that in real life too.

The point is, with the tape, you can fast forward, rewind, pause, browse the timeline however you choose. But the characters are oblivious to this. You aren't really manipulating their timeline, you're just browsing it for your own perspective. If you eject the tape though, you're holding the entire timeline. You've collapsed their universe into a 3 dimensional object. It only has a 4th dimension when you put it in the VCR. When you watch it. But even during the novel first experience of the initial viewing, the end of the story was there. It was always there, predetermined at the end of the tape.

On to the baseball card for a moment. Now, given various factors in the developing process, that hologram card has a lot more information than what you can see at one time, flat on. You have to tilt it one way or an other to get a different view -- to access more of the data. And yet, viewing the different angels don't create that data. Knowing they're there doesn't make them exist. It only makes you aware of them. Holding the card, you still hold all the potential that image has all at once, in that one object, even if you can't be privy to it all at once.

This is where things are going to start to get a little strange, and where I'm sure a lot of people are going to disagree. Hey, I welcome it. Every path to knowledge begins with a question. Now, let me continue.

The whole universe is like that VHS tape, or that baseball card. Only a lot more complex (this should go without saying).

And I do mean the WHOLE universe, not just how it is right now, in this second. Same with the VHS tape, it holds more than one second of the movie, and the baseball card holds more than one angle. The universe is more than one "frame" of time. It is every frame, from the beginning to the end.

My idea is that time does not move.

We do.

The universe -- or multiverse, if you like -- is a hologram baseball card with 11 dimensions of rotational freedom. Every state that the universe and all things in it CAN exist in, it already does. This moment in time that we are privy to existed before we got here, and all the past states are still there even though our perception has moved beyond them.

For some strange reason, it was evolutionarily advantageous to have stereo-optic vision. We have some slight visual angle differentiation. Not much, but enough to get by. Likewise, it was also evolutionarily advantageous to have linear 4th dimensional awareness. We know what came before, but not what comes next. Our ability to make assumptions on what might come next (and I stress might) is a relatively new thing. A "mental opposable thumb" so to speak, that gave us an edge. It gave us the ability to navigate the 4th dimension, instead of blindly addressing each second only when we arrive there.

One counterintuitive phenomenon it has made us aware of is the nature of the double slit experiment. The apparent assumption that observing has an effect on the outcome. I believe that the truth of the matter is that the single electrons exist everywhere, at every possible location in the universe.

Lets go back to that hologram card for a second. The only reason that the image seems to move, seems to be three dimensional, is that all of the intermediate images have commonalities to each other. You can just as easily make holograms that, when view from one angle, have an altogether different image than when viewed from a slightly different angle, with no intermediate transitional states. That being said, lets assume for a moment, that with the baseball card, the images are linearly sequential, and maintain a continuity. Holding the card at an extreme left angle, and turning it to the extreme right, you will see the batter swing at an inbound pitch and connect nicely, most likely sending it out of the park. But lets say there are more images locked into different angles in the card. What if, when turning the card to the right, you stop half way through, and tilt it up instead? These images then show a miss, and in fact, the ball hitting the batter squarely in the jaw. Tilting the card down instead may show his grip slipping on the bat.

Which is the real outcome?

According to the card, which has no bias, they're all real. All correct. You choose which outcome you wish to see by deciding which axis in three dimensional space you rotate the card on. In a holographic hyper dimensional universe, to say there are a *lot* more angles to rotate the card on... well. Is understating the obvious.

What did I say above? "I believe that the truth of the matter is that the single electrons exist everywhere, at every possible location in the universe." Right, right... back to that. Lets say on this eleven dimensional baseball card, there exist every outcome that ever could be, given the laws of physics. There's even one for the ball simply passing through the batter as all their composite matter happened to line up, just right.

Notice I said one. Just one.

There's a functional infinity of angles to turn this card on. Many, many of them simply show a hit, or a strike, or various other expected normal outcomes. Copies of the same exact event on different angles of the card. But only a hand full of these discrete angles show these fluke outcomes. Maybe only one. While this outcome is there, a part of the "universal wave function", it is almost impossible that you'd ever see it, that you'd ever find the right angle, even if you were intentionally looking for it.

This analogy relates to my previous statement regarding the electron. There exists a story model in the universe for that electron to be anywhere, in the most broad sense the word anywhere can imply. But there are so many more copies of other story models, that finding the rarer ones is like looking for a quantum needle in an eleven dimensional hay stack.

The reason why an interference pattern is present in an unobserved double slit experiment is because that is the manifestation of Possibility. Showing everywhere it has the potential of being.

Just like a hologram card, all states exist, but due to a fluke of evolution, you can not see every angle at once. But by turning it in your hand, you selectively view which angle you want to see at that time. As with the universe, you selectively rotate it with your mind to follow the probability thread of least resistance.

I rather like the hologram better than the VHS tape, because you can't change the latter.

Of course, the idea that you can selectively view which "angle" of the holographic universe you wish has many questionable repercussions, not the least of which can head down lots of psudoscientific ideologies of self determination bordering on mysticism. How far down that rabbit hole I'm willing to go I wont say.

*science *nature

Adding video to channels (Nature, Science) - requested by arvana.

still my favorite scientific experiment ever.

I like what it did cover, and how it did it, but was a little let-down that it didn't touch on the other side of wave-particle duality, the photoelectric effect.

*animation

Adding video to channels (Animation) - requested by Fjnbk.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Friday, April 21st, 2006 10:23am PDT - promote requested by kronosposeidon.

This video is a complete fraud.

>> ^DrPawn:
This video is a complete fraud.


You're absolutely right.

This film was a ruse. Nothing but a cheap tuxedo on their new-age junk-science.

^Indeed. That mumbo-jumbo new age crap film was one of the worst abuses of quantum theory I have ever seen.

But nonetheless, this little animation snippet holds water scientifically, and is actually quite informative. It is all the wacky unfounded conclusions they draw from it that are horrible.

*promote this needs a few more votes i think.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, February 7th, 2009 12:33pm PST - promote requested by MycroftHomlz.

>> ^lucky760:

Nothing is real until it has been observed! This clearly needs thinking about. Are we really saying that in the 'real' world - outside of the laboratory - that until a thing has been observed it doesn't exist? This is precisely what the Copenhagen Interpretation is telling us about reality."


meteorites crash through people's rooftops. so, nope...

it's not all that strange as long as you stop looking at things from a hominid perspective, seeing a 3D world, with linear real-time causations etc.
fundamentally the universe is maths, just mathematic probabilities, laws and limits at certain values - of a possibly infinite array (this is just one branch of possibilities where things like us could occur).
so, when understanding it like this - the smallest detectable limits of this place all just comes down to probabilities, it's all just made of maths. not building blocks, not stuff, but just potentials.

*length=5:12

The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 5:12 - length declared by radx.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by lucky760.

Where did this guy go? I like his thought process before he goes off on a multi-comment rant.>> ^Cronyx:

(I split the following up into a few posts because it was too large.)
I don't claim to be an expert, or an authority on this stuff. I will say that I've been fascinated by it on a personal level for over ten years. It started back in the ZDtv days (before TechTV), when Michio Kaku was on an episode of Big Thinkers. I read anything I can get my hands on, and watch all material that comes my way.
Take the following for what it's worth, I'm not trying to proselytize an agenda, just share some of my private thoughts.
I've got a number of analogies I could use here for describing the entire (11 dimensional) universe. Two of my favorites are a VHS tape and hologram baseball card. They both kind of work the same way in so far as how they relate to the thought experiment. I'll explain both.
In the case of the VHS tape, it has your favorite movie on it. You know it word for word, line for line. You've seen it a hundred times. But no matter how many times you watch it, the story will always end the same way. But, from the point of view of the characters (I'm talking in a 4th wall sense; the characters themselves, not the actors playing them), have no idea what will happen next. In fact, the same was true for you the first time you saw the movie. There may have been some foreshadowing, but hell, there's some of that in real life too.
The point is, with the tape, you can fast forward, rewind, pause, browse the timeline however you choose. But the characters are oblivious to this. You aren't really manipulating their timeline, you're just browsing it for your own perspective. If you eject the tape though, you're holding the entire timeline. You've collapsed their universe into a 3 dimensional object. It only has a 4th dimension when you put it in the VCR. When you watch it. But even during the novel first experience of the initial viewing, the end of the story was there. It was always there, predetermined at the end of the tape.
On to the baseball card for a moment. Now, given various factors in the developing process, that hologram card has a lot more information than what you can see at one time, flat on. You have to tilt it one way or an other to get a different view -- to access more of the data. And yet, viewing the different angels don't create that data. Knowing they're there doesn't make them exist. It only makes you aware of them. Holding the card, you still hold all the potential that image has all at once, in that one object, even if you can't be privy to it all at once.

4 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

*learn

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