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That quantum mechanics is a successful theory is not in dispute. It makes astonishingly accurate predictions about the nature of the world at microscopic scales. What has been in dispute for nearly a century is just what it’s telling us about what exists, what is real. There are myriad interpretations that offer their own take on the question, each requiring us to buy into certain as-yet-unverified claims — hence assumptions — about the nature of reality.

Now, a new thought experiment is confronting these assumptions head-on and shaking the foundations of quantum physics. The experiment is decidedly strange. For example, it requires making measurements that can erase any memory of an event that was just observed. While this isn’t possible with humans, quantum computers could be used to carry out this weird experiment and potentially discriminate between the different interpretations of quantum physics.

“Every now and then you get a paper which gets everybody thinking and discussing, and this is one of those cases,” said Matthew Leifer, a quantum physicist at Chapman University in Orange, California. “[This] is a thought experiment which is going to be added to the canon of weird things we think about in quantum foundations.”

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Space, Oceans, Literature, Entertainment, Sports, Medicine, Fashion, Longevity — Honored to be among this group of thinkers, coming up with the innovative ideas that shape the future — http://radioideaxme.com

On September 14, 2015, signals from one of the Universe’s most mind-boggling, powerful events produced the tiniest signal in a pair of detectors, one in Louisiana and one in Washington state. They’d detected two already-wild objects, black holes, slamming into one another.

You’re probably familiar with black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners, but they’re a little bit more complex than that. One core takeaway of Einstien’s theory of gravity is that heavy enough things actually change the shape of the space around them, and gravity is how we experience this warping. Black holes are regions of space so small and massive that they carry a point-of-no-return, an “event horizon” beyond which space is so warped that every path that anything could travel leads to the black hole’s middle. Nothing, not even light, can escape.

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“Welcome to space, David, Anne and Oleg!” Docking is set for 17:36 GMT (18:36 CET).


“Welcome to space, David, Anne and Oleg!”

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