Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site hao.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!wjh12!talcott!harvard!seismo!hao!hull From: hull@hao.UUCP Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: Is the universe predictable? Message-ID: <1307@hao.UUCP> Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 17:47:14 EST Article-I.D.: hao.1307 Posted: Wed Dec 19 17:47:14 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 22-Dec-84 01:47:35 EST References: <382@ukma.UUCP> <6641@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO Lines: 20 > > I think the question here is: Are there any truly random forces? > > The consensus of the physics community appears to be that quantum > laws are inherently random, and that this is NOT just a lack of > detailed understanding of a really deterministic situation. > > This bothers me.. Yes. Me too. I had been told that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was a *measurement effect* caused by the fact that we must necessarily investigate the state of things using the objects at hand (i.e. leptons, baryons, photons, gravitons, intermediate vector bosons (:-), etc.) and must do so within our own space-time reference. Yet I have seen numerous references on the net to Uncertainty being a property of the objects being investigated, rather than a combination of the properties of the objects and the energy of the test entity (probe thing). These references are especially centered on "virtual particles" (which I had assumed were [perhaps imaginary?] solutions to the exchange equations). What gives? Howard Hull {ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | harpo!seismo } !hao!hull