Absentia
The film "Absentia" is based on the premise that matter itself can be traversed.
We stand on the ground, and do not fall through - because each atom of the molecules that make up our foot - are excluded in orbit from filling the outer shell and either
passing through or bonding with the atoms of the earth upon which we stand. We might be largely water, and organics. With just enough inorganics to guarantee things like blood salt and iron defeciencies that if cleared up make you look like superman on your mile split. Take away life giving water, and it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust. How is it that we simply don't fall through?
Wolfgang Pauli discovered that the substances follow very specific rules regarding how atoms fill out their electron shell. If you think of a Hydrogen atom, its outer shell fills fairly simply. One electron in the outer shell. The shape of the orbit is roughly spherical. It wants one more, but once it gets that, its geometry is complete and it will not take another. This is called the s-shell, and it will start to fill the P-shell next, which is split into lobes. Quantum theory tells us that the best way for the human mind to visualize and mathematically understand the electron, at least in the 21st century - is to think of the electron in an uncertainty principle probability cloud. Not a particle, not a wave. Existence questions only come in the presence of the observer. Everything else is left to uncertainty.
So, if cats haven't been tortured enough... we'll take one , and put it in a box.
Inside, is an electron gun , firing through a diffraction grating to a screen
on the side of the box. The screen is connected to a sensor that will trip a hammer
and crash through a vial of deadly chlorine gas, that will kill the cat - if it reads a certain value. The electron, as it hits the grating - will either scatter, as if it
were shot from a gun - or it will behave like a wave and there will be interference patterns. From before, we see the electron in a state of probability. It has the equal
characteristic of particle - being fired from a gun - and wave - like light, it will create an interference pattern. If you took a shotgun and fired it through a grate, you would get an imprint of the shotgun. You don't. It looks like waves overlapping each other.
So the probability is 50/50 that the particle electron will fly through and hit target. Or that the wave electron will hit, make a pattern, and trip the sensor.
Now. We seal the box so that nothing gets in or out.
Is the cat alive?
Some say yes. The experiment hinges on whether or not we can actually make the observation. Brian Josephson believed that we could, even though the wall was up.
Strangely, he discovered that certain measurements can be made that yield information even distanced through barriers. He called these barriers josephson junctions. Electrons that exist in a state called 'cooper pairs' will tunnel.
Although Cooper pairing is a quantum effect, the reason for the pairing can be seen from a simplified classical explanation.An electron in a metal normally behaves as a free particle. The electron is repelled from other electrons due to their negative charge, but it also attracts the positive ions that make up the rigid lattice of the metal. This attraction distorts the ion lattice, moving the ions slightly toward the electron, increasing the positive charge density of the lattice in the vicinity. This positive charge can attract other electrons. At long distances this attraction between electrons due to the displaced ions can overcome the electrons' repulsion due to their negative charge, and cause them to pair up.
Through walls.
'Absentia' is terrifying. Eerily beautiful. And although the science behind it is weak - the filmmakers throw out a few random buzzwords in a desperate attempt to create a mechanism by which matter itself transmutes and the Pauli exclusion principle is broken down.
Solid concrete is not something very fun to be pulled through. And in a classical sense, certainly - we can't. It would be fatal.
But don't we encounter walls.. of different kinds? Aren't there things that would like to keep us within those walls...? What if, instead of seeing the film in its classical sense.. where clearly there are disparities...we saw it in quantum context? The dialogue and flash scenarios make sense. Uncertainty can be either timelike or spacelike - at those regimes. Get into that range,and a flash scenario the detectives were talking about - could have actually happened.
Absentia is a good film. See it.
If you dare.
We stand on the ground, and do not fall through - because each atom of the molecules that make up our foot - are excluded in orbit from filling the outer shell and either
passing through or bonding with the atoms of the earth upon which we stand. We might be largely water, and organics. With just enough inorganics to guarantee things like blood salt and iron defeciencies that if cleared up make you look like superman on your mile split. Take away life giving water, and it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust. How is it that we simply don't fall through?
Wolfgang Pauli discovered that the substances follow very specific rules regarding how atoms fill out their electron shell. If you think of a Hydrogen atom, its outer shell fills fairly simply. One electron in the outer shell. The shape of the orbit is roughly spherical. It wants one more, but once it gets that, its geometry is complete and it will not take another. This is called the s-shell, and it will start to fill the P-shell next, which is split into lobes. Quantum theory tells us that the best way for the human mind to visualize and mathematically understand the electron, at least in the 21st century - is to think of the electron in an uncertainty principle probability cloud. Not a particle, not a wave. Existence questions only come in the presence of the observer. Everything else is left to uncertainty.
So, if cats haven't been tortured enough... we'll take one , and put it in a box.
Inside, is an electron gun , firing through a diffraction grating to a screen
on the side of the box. The screen is connected to a sensor that will trip a hammer
and crash through a vial of deadly chlorine gas, that will kill the cat - if it reads a certain value. The electron, as it hits the grating - will either scatter, as if it
were shot from a gun - or it will behave like a wave and there will be interference patterns. From before, we see the electron in a state of probability. It has the equal
characteristic of particle - being fired from a gun - and wave - like light, it will create an interference pattern. If you took a shotgun and fired it through a grate, you would get an imprint of the shotgun. You don't. It looks like waves overlapping each other.
So the probability is 50/50 that the particle electron will fly through and hit target. Or that the wave electron will hit, make a pattern, and trip the sensor.
Now. We seal the box so that nothing gets in or out.
Is the cat alive?
Some say yes. The experiment hinges on whether or not we can actually make the observation. Brian Josephson believed that we could, even though the wall was up.
Strangely, he discovered that certain measurements can be made that yield information even distanced through barriers. He called these barriers josephson junctions. Electrons that exist in a state called 'cooper pairs' will tunnel.
Although Cooper pairing is a quantum effect, the reason for the pairing can be seen from a simplified classical explanation.An electron in a metal normally behaves as a free particle. The electron is repelled from other electrons due to their negative charge, but it also attracts the positive ions that make up the rigid lattice of the metal. This attraction distorts the ion lattice, moving the ions slightly toward the electron, increasing the positive charge density of the lattice in the vicinity. This positive charge can attract other electrons. At long distances this attraction between electrons due to the displaced ions can overcome the electrons' repulsion due to their negative charge, and cause them to pair up.
Through walls.
'Absentia' is terrifying. Eerily beautiful. And although the science behind it is weak - the filmmakers throw out a few random buzzwords in a desperate attempt to create a mechanism by which matter itself transmutes and the Pauli exclusion principle is broken down.
Solid concrete is not something very fun to be pulled through. And in a classical sense, certainly - we can't. It would be fatal.
But don't we encounter walls.. of different kinds? Aren't there things that would like to keep us within those walls...? What if, instead of seeing the film in its classical sense.. where clearly there are disparities...we saw it in quantum context? The dialogue and flash scenarios make sense. Uncertainty can be either timelike or spacelike - at those regimes. Get into that range,and a flash scenario the detectives were talking about - could have actually happened.
Absentia is a good film. See it.
If you dare.
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