Saturday, 1 December 2012

We are where we are


A few weeks back somebody responded to an email where I complained about a few things that the project should have done, with the classic, we are where we are.

This was my reply. Nothing like a bit of quantum mechanics (Copenhagen interpretation style) in the morning:

We ALWAYS are where we are, how could it possibly be otherwise?

At best we could be in all possible places (should really be states) at once, if we happen to be microscopic (probably nanoscopic or even picoscopic would be more accurate) and only as long as nobody tries to measure where we are (measure our state). But this (measuring of our state) would cause the wave function to collapse into where we actually are (the state the system is in), thus breaking the superposition of states (being in all possible places at once).

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