Thursday, February 6, 2014

Solution Geneva part 3

"_Ouai_," said Jacques. "He is your boss, _n'est-ce pas_?"
"He didn't tell me he was going to this meeting. He set me up with an intern at the lab. Now he shows up without letting me know. I am pretty sure something is wrong."
"_Vraiment_," said Jacques. "I could not discuss over the phone. Come, we will get down from the bus and go the meeting room. It will start at noon. You should have rested a little."
"No, I'll have a bag of peanuts and some gum from the vending machine," she said.
"Ach, not healthy," said Jacques. "I will arrange for some breakfast. We are arriving at the end of the line at the CERN visitor centre. Let me help you with your bags." He looked around. "Didn't you have more than one bag with you?"
"Yes, it's..." Sam trailed off. Her luggage was nowhere to be seen. "I was struggling to get on the bus," she said. "Then we put the luggage..."
"Ach, _non_, you left it on the number 57. _Il n'y a pas de problème_. We know what bus it was. Here in Switzerland everything is planned like clockwork. We can file a claim on the mobile app and they will let me know when they have it in the lost items." Jacques took out his mobile phone and began to poke and swipe at the screen with one hand.
They got off the bus and checked into the  visitor centre. After a breakfast at the cafeteria, they settled in the meeting room.
"Fortunately you have your computer with you," Jacques said. "But don't worry,you will get your luggage back by the time you get to your hôtel. Don't worry about that at all."
"I'm not worried, Jacques," said Sam. "You need to tell me what you couldn't tell me about that is so secretive."
"Ah, yes," said Jacques. "Well, you know the mess with Dieter in 2011. Signore Bertolucci was upset about the whole event. Herr Dieter was removed from the OPERA program but he still works here at CERN."
"The clock was wrong," said Sam. "It's very tempting to believe in faster than light speeds. It's also very tempting to imagine cold fusion and perpetual motion."
"_Oui_, which both exist."
"Shadows move faster than light," said Sam. "But you can't move information, mass, or energy faster than light in a vacuum."
"_Oui, oui_," agreed Jacques. "So Herr Dieter was moved to other functions. But there have been anomalies in the other departments where he has gone. It's like a curse has followed him wherever he goes."
"He is incompetent and should be banned from working in physics projects, obviously," said Sam.
"It is not so simple in Europe," said Jacques. "In any case, I do not believe it has to do with incompetence or sabotage."
"What could it be?"
"I was hoping that there could be an explanation by a theoretical physicist, not by an engineer like myself."
"I have done some experiments with observer effects. But each observer that is accurate should record the same information. An observer could be a human but it could also be a sensor. Quantum behaviour does not change differently for some people versus others."
"Are you sure?"
"No one is sure. I do not know everything. But let's imagine a very 'lucky' person who observes Schrödinger's cat when the lid is opened. This 'lucky' person always sees the cat is alive. It is possible the lucky person could influence the experiment in such a way that the cat lives indefinitely. Each time the lid is lifted, the cat meows."
"Yes," said Jacques.
"It's possible but doubtful. For that 'lucky' person must be balanced out by an 'unlucky' person who always kills poor Schrödinger's pet every time the experiment is run."
"Must 'luck' be conserved in the universe?"
"There is no such thing as conservation of luck because luck does not actually exist. It is an illusion created by short intervals. If the experiment is repeated indefinitely, the lucky and unlucky person will eventually revert to the mean observation that the cat has a fifty-fifty probability of surviving."
"Still, Herr Dieter or anyone else might have a localised influence for some short observations."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I do not know," said Jacques.
"You are saying that Herr Dieter may have a 'special propensity' to affect the outcome of an experiment that has some random outcome?"
"You are the scientist," said Jacques.
"Imagine instead of Schrödinger's cat we have a Schrödinger's particle that exists in a superposition cloud. Let's say the cloud fills a box which is marked with a right and left side. Whenever the lid of the box is lifted, we observe the particle is on the left or right side of the box."
"_Ouai_."
"Now a 'lucky' person always observes the particle on the right side of the box. Just by random chance somehow. Every time they lift the box, they see the particle on the right side, never on the left side. Does this mean the particle exists only on the right side of the box?"
"No, the particle is on  both sides equally while the lid is closed. And as soon as the lucky person sees it on the right side, it will move quickly within its cloud superposition anywhere inside the box."
"Exactly, so the 'lucky' person just sees a small part of the world and assumes that everything else extends linearly from that observation. But the 'lucky' person is wrong. The particle is not affected by this person and the particle does not 'obey' any commands or influence from the 'lucky' observer."
"_Excellent_," said Jacques. "But you must explain that to Monsieur Mathiason because the original clocks that measured the tau neutrino in 2011 are acting up again. That is why we fear the beams are dumping."
"So the clocks are broken. Fix the clocks."
"You know that Monsieur Mathiason is the president of the Thorne industries solid state products division. And he gives money generously to your projects at Micron U. and also to the CERN projects here and elsewhere. You can imagine the difficulties."
"Oh," said Sam.
Jacques smiled.
"Oh," said Samantha again.

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