If no one is looking, is the Moon still there? - MyMoon
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Hangout tonight @ 8pm ET! Learn about LADEE, an upcoming mission to the Moon with Brian Day! #mymoonlpi https://t.co/EoKZPS40TW …IF NO ONE IS LOOKING, IS THE MOON STILL THERE?
In the 1980s a very famous physicist, David Mermin, came out with a paper entitled "Is the Moon still there when no body looks..." The paper appeared in the April 1985 issue of Physics Today and is an experiment and explanation of quantum mechanics and reality. Which for those of you who are not physics majors, I'm sure this paper would bore you and be very tough to understand. I am a physics major taking a class over this stuff right now, and I still don't fully understand it, but that's beside the point. Anyways, I thought it would be nice to get into a conversation with everyone regarding this. So again I ask you, if no one is looking, is the Moon still there?
Monday Nov-12-2012
COMMUNITY BLOGGERS:
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TOPIC OF THE WEEK: WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT THE MOON?
The Moon ain't what it used to be. People gush about asteroids, Mars, Jovian moons, exoplanets...but it feels like if you bring up the Moon, you mostly just get either a blank or a 'meh'. When ...
Read More Comments [2]
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ASTRONOMY DAY AND STARGAZING WITH THE MOON
Today is Astronomy Day, and one of the best ways to celebrate is by going out and doing some stargazing. And one of the best ways to get started with stargazing is to use the Moon as a guide and ...
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TOPIC OF THE WEEK: LIFE IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
The mission of the Kepler Project is to discover habitable planets orbiting other stars. However, many of these planets are light years away and unreachable by humans with our current technology. So ...
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TOPIC OF THE WEEK: MOON EXPLORATION
Sorry for the late post everyone, has been a very busy week. But as for the topic of the week, I plan on talking about the exploration of the Moon, mainly the history and the alll of the lunar ...
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TOPIC OF THE WEEK: ASTEROID DETECTION
The recent meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia helped bring to light a very real problem. We do not have adequate ways to detect many of the damage causing asteroids impacting the ...
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Nick A.
Tuesday Nov-13-2012
To me, it's there. I'm no physics genius but the mass is there, still interacting with everything around it and moving forward with its own existence, so that doesn't end in the universe scheme of things when there aren't eyes on it. Did the Earth not exist when people weren't on it and looking at it?
William K.
Tuesday Nov-13-2012
I agree with the both of you. It's just interesting to see the reasoning side as well as the Quantum side. Very interesting stuff indeed and very philosophical. But, in my opinion, it is obviously still there as it affects many things around us everyday, a big example being ocean tides.
Demarcus B.
Wednesday Nov-14-2012
I also agree the moon is there when were are not looking but Dennis brought up an interesting point about perception/observation. I wonder how bodies such as the moon or the sun appear to different species of animals that see differently than humans.
Pigeons can see many more gradients of light than humans, hummingbirds can see ultraviolet light, snakes have heat vision. Maybe the moon doesn't look like "the moon" when we aren't looking.
Dennis M J M.
Friday Nov-16-2012
good call demarcus. perspective is indeed key to our interpretation of 'real' things. Before we sent telescopes to space, beyond the sphere of electronic interference, we could not see the things we have now discovered with Hubble, much less Kepler :)
I've always wanted to make some glasses that can see 802.1 signals, see emails flying around and stuff... alas my lab is severely underfunded at present ;p
Demarcus B.
Saturday Nov-17-2012
haha that would be pretty cool to see 802.11 signals. I wounder how the glasses could color code 802.11 signals vs Bluetooth signals since 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth operate in the same frequency range.
Dennis M J M.
Monday Nov-19-2012
good call demarcus. I watched a docu called invisible worlds from the bbc I think it was, its all about phenomena around us that we can't see because of frequency or speed (both fast and slow). It would have to have something to do with a photocell tuned to register them on a flat surface, maybe a membrane over it. Alas I know too little about photo-luminescent chemical compounds and have not the time to research it any further, but the signals clearly exist going from your phone to the cell tower and from your computer to your wifi... or there are large bubble type fields around all these devices, surely they are detectible so that can always be converted to visible through adequate API data sets.
I imagine if we could see all the signals around us, tv, radio, wifi, phone, etc we probably wouldn't be able to see much else though !
Still, I've always thought that would be a cool app for google glass and other upcoming AR tech. One of my next two blogs is on augmented reality tech and its many applications in space, interested to hear what you all think of/for that :)
COMMUNITY COMMENTS:
Dennis M J M.
Monday Nov-12-2012
kinda like the 'tree in the woods' I suppose it /is/ there but it exists as random densities of electrons and all infinite potential and possibility of quantum wave forms and holographic matrices ... unless someone is there to experience/observe it ?? ;p
I wonder though; how many planets we have recently created with Kepler by looking at those little dark spots that we previously saw traversing stars... heh !