What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole

There is a movie called What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit hole. I watched this movie yesterday and finished it up today. It is a movie about quantum physics. Man... our world is seriously messed up. Here are some of the things that were cool:

1) Superposition
So at the quantum level, Newtonian laws do not apply (gravity, friction, etc.) It turns out that even our most fundamental sense of logic is thrown out. There is a phenomenon called superposition where one particle can be in multiple places at the same time. There are documented pictures of this. This is real stuff! On the documentary there were particles in two places at the same time and an example of one particle in 3,000 places at the same time. Someone asked whether one of the particles would weigh 1/3000 of the particle and the scientists explained that you couldn't weigh it because it was all one particle in 3000 places at once. Man... that is so cool.

2) Slit test
This is a pretty famous test and I had heard of it before, but it was cool to see it happen. The observation of the electrons made them act as particles instead of waves. The act of observation changed the result. If the recorder were to be unplugged, then it would act as a wave. It is the human observation that alters the results!
When they tried to find out mathematically whether it went through slit 'A', slit 'B', both slits, or neither slit, they found that none of these happened. The scientist being interviewed during this portion said that asking where the electron went was like asking whether the number 5 is married.
"No" you would say, "the number 5 is not married."
"Oh" the unenlightened you would conclude, "so the number 5 must be single."
Asking where the electron was is an inappropriate question for the sequence. I don't know why, but that is pretty cool.
Here is that clip (and watch for West Wing Joey at the end):


3) Intention and random event generators
This portion has some skeptics within the scientific community, but it is still pretty cool. There are lots of experiments that show that intention can alter random number generators. If the observer wants more 1s than 0s, then the RNG will produce more 1s than 0s. There was an experiment where this was tested retroactively. There was a machine to produce random clicks into a pair of headphones. It would send a click to either the left or right speaker. It was recorded with no one listening to it, a copy was made and sealed, and the master was sent to a person hundreds of miles away. This person was instructed to want more left clicks than right clicks. There were considerably more left than right, and when they checked the sealed copy, it was identical. wooOOooOOooOOoo.

4) Peptide addiction
I don't really know why this part was in the movie but it was still cool. I was watching Soapy and we were playing with dominos so maybe I missed some sort of segway. The film talked about addictions to feelings. It said when someone feels a certain way very often, it is probably because they have an addiction to feeling that way. The hypothalmus produces peptides that are sent to the cell receptors that influence feelings and emotions. The cells produce their own proteins to keep it up. When we think about something often enough, we hardwire the neuro cells' receptors to create those connections. This happens physically all the time- it is why after practice, people can perform complex activities (typing, knitting, signing, even running or swimming) without consciously thinking about the location of fingers, arms, legs, or center of balance.
Emotions can become interlaced with memories and thought processes. As we go through our day, our thoughts can guide or reactions and our self-programmed responses. If we are overly concerned with feeling victimized, lonely, angry, or even happy, then those thoughts create the lens through which we interpret our reality. It is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy- if you feel a certain emotion, your environment will catalyse it and it will become real. Thoughts will shape your life.
Man radiates what he is, and that radiation affects to a greater or less[er] degree every person who comes within that radiation” (David O. McKay “Free Agency … The Gift Divine,” Improvement Era, Feb. 1962, 87).
“Thoughts mold your features. Thoughts lift your soul heavenward or drag you toward hell. … As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood.” (David O. McKay “Those Sculptors Called Thoughts and Ideals,” Improvement Era, July 1960, 495)