I know that place. The borders between the Ellestraat (Hulst, NL) and the Hellestraat (Stekene, BE).
The right side of the street on the Belgian part is actually Dutch for a few 100 meters. If you look around on street view the part with a bicycle lane is Belgian, the part without it is Dutch.
This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn’t actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that’s mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger’s equation + boundary conditions.
The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as “Particles + extras”, you will fail. You have to think of it as “Waves + extras”. It then, suddenly makes logical sense.
It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.
The big problem isn’t that the math is hard, or that’s often impossible to visualise. The problem is that a whole bunch of charlatans intentionally misinterpret what “observing” is in QM, to make money off of gullible victims.
To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied. It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.
Have you seen supercritical water and/or helium? The “surface” of Jupiter is probably supercritical hydrogen. I don’t know if there’s a sharp cutoff like Earth’s oceans or a gradual thickening, but it’s still only half the density of water. It’s possible to build a boat for that!
However, the pressure would be around half a million bar, or 500 times the pressure of the deepest part of the ocean. This is also 5× the pressure used to make synthetic diamods too, and probably about the same temperature too. If the boat had any grease left outside, it would be diamond grease at this point.
If you went further down to where the density increases to about the same as water at sea level, the pressure would quadruple to nearly the same as Earth’s core, and the temperature would be about the same too. At this pressure, there’s probably another indistinct boundary of metallic hydrogen, and if the boat has survived the ultra-high-pressure hydrogen embrittlement, the steel-liquifying temperatures, and diamond rain, this metallic hydrogen will almost certainly reduce it to a lump of novel metal hydrides.
unrealistic, the botanist didnt reply “ah yes, it is the humble [some latin bullshit], my fifth favorite tree in its order, most noteworthy for the shape of its leaves. it’s actually most closely related to carrots.” and then, of course, add “fuck yeah big tree”
I can understand your sentiment, but when I look at a giant black maple and say, “yeah this thing is related to lychee fruits”, I’m not saying it to be a snob. I just think the world is an amazing place and love to share it
Well, his research was very sound by modern standards, mostly adhering to the scientific method. It would be very untimely 200 or more years prior. His paper (even in its original form!) is understandable by any modern intelligent person who can read German cursive.
“My dear fellow members, today we review the application of Mary Anning to become a member of our distinguished society. As usual, the devil’s advocate will start.”
“Thank you, Sir. Mary Anning! On one hand, she’s a woman, and on the other… No wait, actually I rest my case.”
“Thank you. Now the defense can move forward.”
“No, sorry, she is a woman after all.”
" Big no-no then. Huzzah, tradition prevails! To the smoking room, chaps."
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