Some spikes added to the highlights using Noel Carboni’s plug-in  So this water drop collision took an exposure time of 9-millionths of a second, and the beer can pinhole camera project used a 6-month exposure time – that’s over 12 orders of magnitude difference in exposure time!

“It really is very strange that mathematics should describe our physical world so well.  There is after all no good reason why certain mathematical functions should so precisely describe what goes on in our physical world, unless there is of course some hidden link between these two sciences.  In fact some people find this link is so peculiar that they have written papers on the subject, as Eugene Wigner first did with  “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences”.

Einstein is said to have remarked, “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible.” And I think this guy knew what he was talking about.

To quote Eugene Wigner:

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.”

Is this one of those cases where one introduces complexity when it isn’t really there, or is there something deep and meaningful here?  Why should mathematics be able to describe physical events so well?  As any Mathematician will tell you, the maths is already “out there” it has an existence of its own independent of us, all we do is occasionally turn over a new stone and find a new piece of maths that had always “been in existence” independent of us.  Likewise with our physical measurements and experiments, the results of these experiments has always “been out there” we just came along at this particular point in time to uncover some of them.

If you were to apply Occam’s Razor to this problem, where Occam’s Razor states that the simplest most logical answer is usually the right one – you might be led to conclude – as some people firmly believe, that the reason mathematics so “unreasonably” describes the “real” world we live in is because we really are “living” inside a computer simulation – the Matrix had it right all along!

Thank you for listening, have a good evening, and let’s hope the program doesn’t decide to crash tonight!”

In trying to show those poor wayward Quantum Scientists where they were going wrong, Einstein came up with a number of “thought experiments” which tested and probed Quantum Mechanics to its limits.  One such thought experiment involved the simultaneous emission of two oppositely polarised photons from a source (something which can be achieved, and which has actually been practically carried out in ground-breaking experimental work by Aspect et al) and then measuring the polarisation state of each photon when separated by a distance greater than that which would allow “communication” between the two photons during the polarisation measurement.  In other words the polarisation state of each photon was measured in a time shorter than that which would allow a photon to travel between the two polarised photons being measured.

For many years I didn’t think this was much of an experiment.  For conservation reasons the two photons will be emitted in opposite polarisation states from the source, so that if at some large separation distance I measure the polarisation state of photon A and then I measure the polarisation state of photon B it is hardly surprising that I find the polarisation states are separated by 90 degrees.  This is in fact true and correct and shows that both common-sense and Quantum Mechanics agree for this special case.  Now what I cannot simply explain is that if the polarisation measurements are made for angles other than 90 degrees (and in fact 45 degrees where again common-sense and Quantum Mechanics agree) we find a discrepancy between the common-sense expected result of the polarisation measurement and the Quantum Mechanical result.  How very odd!!  As mentioned above, this experiment has been carried out practically by Alain Aspect and his team, and the experimental results agreed with …………………………Quantum Mechanics.  How extremely odd!!!!!

Now this is not the first time that a Quantum Mechanical result has gone against “common-sense”  but the repercussions of this are a little more far-reaching than in some of the other cases.  Einstein, together with Podolsky and Rosen (hence EPR) came up with this thought experiment to show an inconsistency in the Quantum Mechanical theory that required the theory to be “non-local” that is it allowed photon A to know what polarisation state photon B was in at any separation distance, even if that distance was greater than a photon could travel during the measurement time.  Einstein having created the Special Theory of Relativity would have been extremely unhappy with this possibility existing within another theory (Quantum Mechanics) – and this was the whole idea behind the EPR thought experiment – to show that the current ideas of Quantum Theory were “incomplete” as they required QM to be a non-local theory.

If you go into great detail regarding this experiment and where it “goes wrong” as far as common-sense is concerned, there are just three basic principles, one (or more) of which must be violated.  These principles are:

1)  The Reality principle.

2)  The Induction principle.

3)  The Locality principle.

Reality – regularity of phenomena is due to an underlying physical reality.

Induction – it is possible to reach conclusions valid for all systems of a given type from a consistent set of observations on a large sample of systems of that type.

Locality – if two systems have for a time been in dynamical isolation from each other, then a measurement on the first system can produce no real change in the second.

Now it is the Locality principle that was being “probed” by Einstein’s thought experiment – so it seems extremely perverse to me that out of the three possible principles that could be at fault – this is the one chosen by the Quantum Mechanical theorists to be the “joker”.

Surely in this post-Matrix age where the possibility exists that we are all part of a computer simulation, it is the Reality principle that needs to be called into question – and that the EPR Paradox is actually an extremely testing experiment into the very reality of our Universe – not simply a statement about the light-like separation of particles that had once interacted.

This month’s object is open cluster M39 in Cygnus.  Not too surprising we are looking at a Cygnus object in July, but M39 is pretty much overlooked by imagers – perhaps because it is noted as being a “very large, very poor cluster, very little compressed, of 7th – to 10th- magnitude stars” – not exactly a great advert for M39 is it?  But then you put some imaging time on this one and get a little depth and you realise that although large and sparse it is a very colourful cluster.  Being large [30' diameter] you need a decent field of view, and the Hyperstar III with the SXVF-M25C camera with its 2.4 x 1.6 degree field of view is almost ideal for imaging this object.  Clusters as we know need less sub-exposure time, and we have the bonus that we can also work on them when the Moon is about.  For the Hyperstar III at f#2 I typically use 3-minute subs on clusters, and for the Sky 90 at f#4.5 I often used 4-5 minute subs.  However, as with any object things simply improve with total exposure time and I always like to get an absolute minimum of 4-hours on an object – even a cluster.

Give M39 a try – open clusters in general are often overlooked by imagers, yet they have so much to offer.

Until August – Clear Skies, and happy imaging!

So – just as I did with the Hyperstar I, I took the whole lens assembly apart (scary) and then painted the edges of the lenses matt black (VERY scary!) they are now all sitting on my desk in the sunshine for the paint to thoroughly dry off.  I use Revell colour Black Matt 9 – this is the paint used on Airfix kits.  It is probably not the best paint to use – there is a proprietary paint you can get from the States that is made especially to paint the edges of lenses.

I will keep you informed of how things progress (or not) when I rebuild the Hyperstar III and take my first image with the modified lenses.  Keep everything crossed for me