Re: How the comet flies

In article <1173724764.607612.196350@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"nando_ronteltap@xxxxxxxxx" <nando_ronteltap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 12 mrt, 17:47, "Kleuskes & Moos" <kleu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In short,
anything in the macroscopic universe (and comets surely fall in tht
category) is not hindered by Heissenberg,

Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle.

Yeah that is like saying quantum mechanics only applies in the land of
lilliput, it doesn't apply in the land of giants.

Yes, it's very much like saying that. It is so much like saying that
that it is in fact indistinguishable from saying that.

Quantum mechanics applies throughout the entire universe. A centimeter
is made up of just as small bits of distance as a kilometer is, and is
those small bits of distance that matter everywhere.

Yes, but. If you understood anything at all about the Uncertainty
principle, such as the equations that describe it, you'd know that first
of all, you can measure the speed and position of a subatomic particle.
The Uncertainty Principle states that the more precise your measurement
of one quantity, the less your measurement of the other will be. Their
product will always be more than Plank's constant over two.

But on any macro scale, you can indeed measure the position and velocity
of an object to whatever precision your instruments will allow you. Yes,
the uncertainty in these measurements, multiplied together, is many
orders of magnitude greater than Planck's constant ... but who cares?
The numbers you get are as accurate as you need them to be.

Or otherwise, perhaps you are saying that you just don't care to know
the position and velocity of a meteor on such a small scale and how it
arrives at it. Well I do care to know, and that's the difference

To what precision do you need to know? We're talking about things whose
position is measured in 10^10 meters and whose speed is measured in 10^4
meters per second, and with a reasonable telescope you could measure
those speeds to accuracies of, oh, 10^8 meters and 10^2 meters per
second, if you were careful. Those numbers blow precision needed for
Planck-scale measurements right out of the water.

Perhaps in a strict pedantic sense, Heisenberg's principle still applies
at the macro scale, but its real-world effects are not measurable. Just
as in the same strict pedantic sense, General Relativity applies to cars
speeding down the highway ... but the real-world effects are not
measurable.

You should go away and read some physics textbooks for a while. You've
lost an awful lot of credibility here.

--
Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com> http://www.timberwoof.com
Level 1 Linux technical support: Read The Fscking Manual!
Level 2 Linux technical support: Write The Fscking Code Yourself!

.

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