Re: Travesty of quantum decoherence

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At a time incorrectly stated as 10:36 PM 8/19/99 +0000, the alleged Phil P.
Johnson wrote:
> No physicist can refute the following facts that prove the God of the
> Bible created the world as per the Genesis account.

Au contaire.  I am a physicist.  I can and do refute many of the
creationists' so-called facts.  Here's another refutation:

> Quantum mechanics proves the existence of a creator, since there must
> have been some entity external to the universe to observe it and thus
> collapse it into a determinate state.

The passage to the classical limit, which is colloquially called "collapse"
of the wavefunction, does not require an observer.  It requires only
dissipation, plus a careful application of the usual equations of motion.
It doesn't even require very much dissipation, as anyone who has ever
prepared and sustained a macroscopic Schroedinger-cat-like superposition
state can tell you.

Oliver Sacks told the story of the man who mistook his wife for a hat.
Well, that's nothing.  Today we learned that apparently it is possible to
mistake a heatsink for a deity.