How can an electron have weight yet move at the Speed Of L.

[mikelawre]

What you are suggesting is called quantum superposition, where an electron seems to be partially in a numbaer of places at the same time. I've a paper awaiting publication which suggests that it is instead the particle is instantaneously jumping about/between orbitals and there is no superposition. The trick is to have no energy (other than rest mass) to do this. If you have energy, then the particle is subject to Lorentz invariance, relativity etc. Only when it has this special state of no energy due to motion and position, can it move instantaneously. Perverse eh? No energy and it can 'travel' faster than light. Some energy and it is subject being able to manage only just less than light speed (and for the earlier questioner, no the electron doesn't travel at light speed. It can only make it to a speed that means that it's mass has increased to the Planck mass). By the way, the electron, in its zero total energy state (ie a stable orbit) has a balance of positive motional energy and negative potential energy. Kinetic sums to zero over one orbit because energy is a vector (this is not yet accepted!!!). The orbital the electron inhabits is a no-time space, where it takes no time to move randomly from place to place within that allowable orbital. That's why it can jump from separated sub-orbital volumes and those volumes can appear to have fractional electrons inside them.<br />Mike

 

[yevaud]

Don't forget that Quantum Superposition only works over very small distances indeed. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[mikelawre]

Tell that to the guys at CERN who have managed it at around 11 kilometres. But I would still argue that it's not superposition. The two particles (depending what experiment you are doing, say e- and e+) are 'skipping' instantaneously between the two volumes that represent the particle. In our space and time thay are separate. In the particle's own space (no time) they are still touching. What you measure as being there, in the separated spaces that we observe, is what happens to be there when you disrupt the entanglement. Take it to the largest scale, when you measure a photon from a far away galaxy arriving at the telescope, the photon could have been anywhere in the expanding wavefront that represents its wavepacket, centred on that galaxy. The photon you measure could have been the same distance behind the galaxy immediately before you measured the wavefront. What you are disrupting is the wavefront. If there is no photon at that point when you measure, you will not observe a photon. For entanglement, and in orbitals and wave fronts, distance is no object!<br />Mike

 

[yevaud]

You're probably referring to the experiments with transmission of Quantum information via optical methods (the entanglement of Photons over a distance of 10km, performed at the University of Geneva). The difficulty there is transmitting quantum information over noisy and lossy quantum communication channels. As you say, I wouldn't precisely call that an example of Superposition over a long distance.<br /><br />The teleportation of atoms should also be possible following a recent experiment at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris that demonstrated that pairs of rubidium atoms could be entangled over distances of centimetres.<br /><br />Human-Engineered Quantum non-locality appears to be finite, at least until some fundamental problems are worked out. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[zamond]

QUOTED FROM ROBNISSEN "In fact, says Deutsch, a quantum computer could in theory perform a calculation requiring more steps than there are atoms in the entire universe. . . . If the resources exceed the amount available in our universe, then the computer would have to be drawing on the resources of other universes." <br />-------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />well, maybe this forms the basis for black holes <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> our space getting sucked up by quantum supercomputers from other dimensions... way too spooky for me

 

[dragon04]

<font color="yellow">So I move a few electrons in the wire at the generator, they move slowly down the wire, but the electrons several miles away 'feel' the 'push' right away.</font><br /><br />One of the best analogies I ever heard was imagining a hose full of water. Turn the water on at one end and you immediately get flow at the other end.<br /><br />Hydraulics and pneumatics were a great help to me in understanding such things. They all follow the same basic rules, and have similar formulas to calculate flow, pressure, resistance, etc...<br /><br />An example that I can provide is this :<br /><br />Take large conductors. I'll use 1000mcm stranded cable for example. Run 2 of them in lengths of say, 200 feet in a conduit and leave them gang out on the ends (for measuring convenience).<br /><br />You'll find that the conductors store a significant (I mean knock you down significant) potential charge (with respect to one another) due to capacitance without being energized on either end.<br /><br />While much larger, and obviously far less resistance than, say standard house wiring, this proves that the wire (hose) is "full of electricity" (water).<br /><br />This is an abbreviated an oversimplified explanation, but it works. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[siarad]

With an open ended cable the voltage will bounce back doubling the voltage. This is used in RADAR transmitters & the PCI bus in your PC for instances.