Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.

To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0Pe1WoASQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.

May as well show me a picture of The Universe.

E. LeGuille wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.

May as well show me a picture of The Universe.

It looks like this:

Freakzilla wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think this is astounding. But it kind of scares me, the fact that it DOES look like what we drew in chemistry. What's next, a picture of an atom? That's what I'd really like to see.

May as well show me a picture of The Universe.

lotek wrote:doesn't the heisenberg principle apply when you try to observe that kind of small "event"?

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.

lotek wrote:i thought it was only "visible" on quantum levels or something?


from wiki

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Does that mean the HP applies to everything and that it just adapts to quantum physics?

In 1935 Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in QM [Note 1]. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox.

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a ``blurred model'' for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

We know that superposition of possible outcomes must exist simultaneously at a microscopic level because we can observe interference effects from these. We know (at least most of us know) that the cat in the box is dead, alive or dying and not in a smeared out state between the alternatives. When and how does the model of many microscopic possibilities resolve itself into a particular macroscopic state? When and how does the fog bank of microscopic possibilities transform itself to the blurred picture we have of a definite macroscopic state. That is the measurement problem and Schrödinger's cat is a simple and elegant explanations of that problem.

References:

[1] E. Schrödinger, ``Die gegenwartige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,'' Naturwissenschaftern. 23 : pp. 807-812; 823-823, 844-849. (1935). English translation: John D. Trimmer, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124, 323-38 (1980), Reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, p 152 (1983).

lotek wrote:i thought it was only "visible" on quantum levels or something?


from wiki

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Does that mean the HP applies to everything and that it just adapts to quantum physics?

SandRider wrote:hey, the bad-ass of the week happens to be Madame Curie

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/curie.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

lotek wrote:doesn't the heisenberg principle apply when you try to observe that kind of small "event"?