• chortle_tortle@mander.xyz
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        1 day ago

        The memory required to track all these particles was insane, so we just made a wave of where they were most likely to be and picked a random spot when the exact location was needed. 🤷

      • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        there’s lots of physics that cannot be described in algorithmic terms, and (as best I misunderstand it) quantum is the most that

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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                5 hours ago

                i’m just kinda skeptical of suggesting we live in a computer simulation

                tens of thousands of years ago, people looked up into the night sky or a raging tempest and projected human-like traits onto it.

                Now instead of seeing an angry father figure in the stars, we’re surrounded by computers so we look up (or down, in quantum cases), and see a desktop environment. It’s… awful convenient.

        • chortle_tortle@mander.xyz
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          1 day ago

          Thank you!

          And yes you are correct, as it exists as a probability wave and has not finite size, it is not spinning. It does however have intrinsic angular momentum as seen in effects like Hydrogen Fine Structure, that behave exactly as though it were a ball spinning, with a set specific angular momentum. But don’t worry, the confusion is alleviated when you learn that it very definitely isn’t a ball spinning as it doesn’t have a singular spin but rather a super position of possible spin states. You can think of it like, for example, three parts spinning clockwise and one part spinning counter-clockwise.

          It usually around this point that I am reminded that the universe does not owe my puny monkey brain a lick of sense.

          • Chris@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I read an article that was arguing that the universe could be unknowable to our brains. That was real depressing