> Does the universe collapse in a screaming heap of
> contradictions?

All over the place. It's just that Joe electrical engineer in the 
street largely seems not to have noticed.

Read Zik's fascinating and useful commentary.
Parts of this say:

... instantaniety is undefined for events that occur at different 
places.

...  within our current framework it is unclear what faster than light 
action means.

... As a single particle example take the photon we irradiated from 
that dipole antenna  ... Let's
surround.. that transmitting antenna with a sphere of receivers that 
can
absorb the photon. Once the photon has been detected by one of the
receivers, all the others are prevented from sensing it. The receivers
don't communicate between themselves, but they are 'coupled' all the
same - once the photon hit one detector, it will have never went in 
the
others' direction in the first place, although until then its
propagation was perfectly symmetric.


Leading to:


... This is maddeningly counter intuitive, although perfectly 
predictable.

... **** The only physicists still bothered by this behaviour today 
are people
who actively try to understand what's going on there. ***

And

... But most just got used to it and went on.

Good ol quantum mechanics has wrought utter havoc with our conceptions 
of reality. Fortunately the vast % of people don't know this :-). Not 
only is QM not understandable but it demands that it be 
ununderstandable and even goes so far as to demand (Copenhagen 
flavour, not necessarily all) that even the concept of understanding 
what happens between emission and detection is meaningless.

Our oh so solid reality is built, it seems, on a totally 
ununderstandable and indeed meaningless foundation. yet QM predicts 
results with an accuracy that is astounding. It is thoroughly 
empirical in nature. If we assume that this happens then it must 
follow that xxx. And they did and it did so they do. And nobody knows 
why. Or, QM says, ever can. And even the concept of understanding why 
is meaningless.

So, "screaming heap" doesn't even start to cover it.

Take Zik's advice - Get used to it ;-)




            Russell McMahon

_____________________________________________________________________________

'It always puzzles me that so many people can "believe in QM" but have 
difficulty with the concept of God :-)'






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