Objective Reality

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yogi
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Objective Reality

Post by yogi »

Sometimes in these forums we get into conversations about ponderous topics. It's mostly philosophical and doesn't have much bearing on our daily lives, but it is fun to stretch our intellectual imaginations from time to time. I often refer back to quantum physics to explain some of our esoteric notions about reality. Along with the theory of relativity quantum physics violates a lot of the traditional laws of physics we have grown to know and love. Because of that violation the greater question of what is objective reality in the first place largely has gone unanswered in our discussions.

The article I cite below is an excellent explanation of why there is some doubt about the existence of objective reality. It incorporates quantum mechanics and relativity, but it does so in a very understandable way. The article is probably of greater length that you would prefer, but I thought it was well worth the read. It may even be enlightening.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang ... ive-exist/
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Kellemora
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Re: Objective Reality

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Wow, that was a long read, but very interesting at the same time.

When I used to work on the old type of televisions, I used to play around with the yoke settings, and could get some mighty strange things to appear on the screen, but more importantly, things that should have never appeared on the screen.
It made no sense why they appeared where they did either, there was nothing to reflect them that way.

There is an odd thing that happens every so often in Ham Radio. You transmit a signal one time, and the receiver gets it two times, and very rarely, one of those is backwards or reversed. Most of the time when this happens it is two signals on top of each other with a split second delay so it sounds more like and echo. But other times, on a short transmission, when you transmit once, and they hear it twice, and once in a blue moon, the second one they hear is backwards from the first.

Something in the atmosphere causes a drag on the signal, either that or it reflected off of two different layers in the atmosphere, which could account for some of the double reception of a single signal. But the few being backwards has never yet been explained. Lot's of theories as to how that could happen, such as the signal was reflected from a higher layer, then bounced back to the higher layer from a lower layer, then passed through to the receiver in its backwards state.

I don't think my feeble mind will ever grasp Quantum anything, hi hi...
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yogi
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Re: Objective Reality

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I talk about it a lot, but I don't understand much of the theory behind quantum mechanics. The article describes an experiment where there are two slits in a medium for light to pass through. That is a widely discussed experiment that basically shows light has wave properties, but it also shows that just the measuring of the event has an effect on the outcome. The quantum state of the light beams is changed somehow by the fact that it is being measured. So it is with reality. It may not exist until there is something, or somebody, present to observe and;or measure it.

I can imagine some pretty strange things going on in the ionosphere given that it is just a huge multi-plate capacitor whose state of charge changes continuously. It's that charged state that allows ham radio to bounce its signals off them and back toward earth. There is indeed a measurable delay even when only one skip occurs. The most likely explanation for hearing the signal twice is that you heard the original bounce and then you heard the signal that bounced all the way around the entire globe and was detected a second time. Backwards signals is something I never heard of nor can I image a possible way for it to happen. A short burst of carrier maybe. A continuous modulated carrier of some duration ... I can't imagine. Even bouncing between layers doesn't allow for the signal to reverse the direction of it's radiation. It's a head scratcher for sure.
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Re: Objective Reality

Post by Kellemora »

I read about a lot of the experimenting they are doing, just short blurbs that get posted on Farcebook.
On another note, there is a species of monkey that has a short now, endangered now, that lives in cold climates instead of jungles. But not as cold as where the polar bears live. What makes them interesting is they walk around on two legs like hominids quite a bit. Most of them are small, but their are some larger ones also, that from a distance look like a person, or even a taller height than a person. Due to lack of food, they will often come down closer to where there are fruit trees and farmers crops, but still keep as far a distance as possible. I keep thinking that possibly, and because they are so rare, these might be what is being mistaked as Yeti or Ewoks.

Somehow, I think the polarity of the signal gets reversed, and that is how it comes back backwards. I'm not talking about a whole big sentence here, but only a couple of letters, like someone sent CW and the receiver got the CW and also a faint WC.

Radio signals do one of two things, depending on the frequency. They either go off in a straight line, until they reflect off something, and some follow the curvature of the earth like they are orbiting the earth. And of course get weaker with each lap around the planet.
It is said with powerful enough receivers that can discriminate from the same signals each time they pass, we could still copy transmissions from 25 or 50 years ago. Probably would sound more like cross-talk though, hi hi.
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Re: Objective Reality

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I read an article once that said rocks can be storage medium for human voice. The context of the article was somebody speculating that the voice of Jesus was still possible to be heard if you found the right rocks and had the right detectors. That's a lot of if's, and it goes along the same line of thought as does the eternal presence of modulated electromagnetic radiation - presumably it's stored in the atmosphere somehow. It's an interesting thought, but I don' think anyone has been able to prove it yet.

Also, RF travels in a straight line the same as does light. It can radiate in all directions and be reflected off the right surface. But, as far as I know electromagnetic radiation does not follow a curved path unless there is some disturbance in the gravity field. That's one of the insights that Einstein brought to the table. People used to think light traveled in a straight line in every case. Apparently if the body is large enough and has enough gravity, it will bend light waves, and presumably radio waves too. I don't think the earth's gravity is strong enough to do such a thing on it's surface.
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Re: Objective Reality

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Voice can be stored in a rock, provided the rock is liquid and being poured into a cylinder while someone is talking. The voice vibrations get permanently stored in the rock, or liquid that sets up hard fast during pouring.

One thing that surprises me more than anything else, is the rock they found that is supposed to solid oxygen. We do not have the means to solidify oxygen into a rock. Must be an alien rock, or they have misdiagnosed what the rock is comprised of.

I could be wrong about the radio waves, but I don't think so. Some bands follow the curvature of the earth, which is why they are used for things like ship to shore when they are far across the horizon.
But I would say, other than a few special radio bands, normally radio signals go in a straight line, from a beam, and all around you from a ground plane style antenna. We have charts that show the transmission pattern of many antenna designs. Some are interesting to see for sure. But those Lobes on the chart are based on over the ground transmissions.
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Re: Objective Reality

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During the Cold War what they called Over The Horizon radar was a popular way to monitor incoming projectiles, like missiles. The range of a normal radar system is about 8-10 miles and is primarily limited by the curvature of the earth. That extended range, over the horizon, involved systems that would refract the radar signals off the ionosphere -- sounds familiar, eh? The point here is that the radar could only radiate in a straight line.

Those antenna patterns you might have seen are the results of reflections and standing waves. Basically they result from interference. Unless the vertical, or perhaps dipole. is cut to the exact frequency length of the broadcasted signal, you will see something other than uniform radiation patterns in all directions. Ham gear is very much affected by the earth's surface and anything growing from it because reflections and absorption alter the the way the energy propagates. In some cases you can take advantage of those alterations and tune into the peaks or null out the valleys as desired. Be that all as it may, the RF energy itself only knows how to do one thing, i.e. move in a straight line.

Your example of freezing voice vibrations in a rock is correct, but the article I read didn't refer to that phenomena. I'm not saying the article was true science, but the theory sounded good. LOL Voice waves and RF energy theoretically will last forever in a vacuum. But, as soon as you introduce something like air, or solid rock, the energy dissipates rapidly and eventually dwindles down to zero. It might take a while for it to die off that way, but anything in it's path will sap the energy from the original signal.
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Re: Objective Reality

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Again, it depends on the frequency. Radio waves below 3 mHz operate as ground waves. This is how the AM radio stations can be heard at such long distances.
Also, when you get up in the Microwave bands, although microwaves travel in a straight line, they also have a phenomenon known as Ducting, where they will in fact follow the curvature of the earth.
Hi-Band Radar is Line of Sight - Low-Band Radar follows the contour of the earth.

I understand how antennas work. Designed a few that became popular and used by hundreds of Hams.

I know vibrations can be stored in solid matter, but how on earth would it be possible to read them is beyond me.
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Re: Objective Reality

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I know vibrations can be stored in solid matter, but how on earth would it be possible to read them is beyond me.
The pseudo-science answer to that is the vibrations are still vibrating and all you need is a sensitive detector. That could work if the original assumption was correct, but it's not. The vibrations stop, or at a minimum blend in with the background noise, after a certain time. Any interaction with its environment absorbs the energy associated with the vibration.
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Re: Objective Reality

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I know when I had a wire recorder, of course that was done using magnetics. You couldn't store what you recorded on them for very long, maybe a year or a bit longer, but then the crosstalk would get so bad, it would be useless noise.
Actually, the same thing happens with reel to reel tapes, but it takes years longer before the crosstalk gets so bad.
However, self-feeding tapes, like 4-track and 8-track tapes, didn't seem to be bothered by crosstalk from storage for many decades, and not at all of they were used often.
The reason for the crosstalk is the tape is magnetized and rolled up on itself, so the magnetized material can spread to the tape wrapped over it and keep exchanging their magnetics until nothing is readable on the tape anymore.

When I worked at the radio station, we used to bulk erase the tapes after use with a huge electromagnet. I also had a smaller one at home for erasing the little transcription tapes I used, and found it would also erase the 8-track tapes with ease too.
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Re: Objective Reality

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Storing sound waves is a whole different line of physics than is using magnetic medium to store data. Audio is an active vibration. It takes energy to sustain the vibration and that energy cannot be sustained for any length of time because it is absorbed by the environment.

Magnets do not work the same way as sound waves, obviously. There might be some confusion due to what is termed electromagnetic radiation (EMR) which involve the radiation of magnetic (and electric) fields. Sound requires a medium in order to be radiated - something physically has to be vibrating in order to transmit sound. EMR does not require a medium to propagate in that it is radiation energy and will last forever in a vacuum. However, like sound, EMR's energy is absorbed by elements in the environment. On earth there are plenty of things on and above the surface to absorb radiated energy so that RF signals, for example, die off eventually. Their energy gets transferred to solid objects which absorbs all the radiation eventually.

Magnetic tapes, wires, and solid state devices rely on magnetism to do their thing, but they are steady state. There is near field radiation associated with all those things, but the distance over which that field has an effect is negligible. If that were not the case then two bits of data physically next to each other would have nullifying effects upon each other. Crosstalk is typically the result of adjacent channels of stored data being too close to each other. The signal from one track can bleed over to the track next to it and be detected by the sensor reading the intended data. This is a problem with detection and decoding and not usually related to the storage medium itself.

Having said all the above there are forensic techniques that can detect data erased from a magnetic hard disk drive. I'm not talking about erasures that only involve altering a file allocation table. Secure erasures are performed by overwriting existing data with 1's or 0's over the entire storage surface. You would think doing that would effectively make the underlying intelligence inaccessible. In fact it does just that for most people. But there is residual magnetism present reflecting the originally stored data and it can be detected with the proper equipment. You would have to overwrite your disk with those 1's or 0's many times in order to overcome that residual - degausing it with a EM coil as you describe will also do it. This residual is not the same as the crosstalk from an adjacent track. It's actually layered into the intended track because all those original magnetic domains cannot be erased entirely with conventional equipment.

I think the issues with wire recording had something to do with the fact that the wire was not the best magnetic medium. It served it's purpose but it was stainless steel and not the high grade recording material you find on HDD's for example.
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Re: Objective Reality

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There is a difference between storing data side by side as on a hard drive, versus a tape that is wound up on itself.
Some of my old reel to reel tapes that sat for 30 years untouched, when I went to play them on my old VM tape recorder, it sounded like the song kept starting over, so that a weaker version was behind the original version by about a second or two, and then another even weaker version was behind that one by another second or two.
Like a car tire running over a wet paint strip and leaving fading imprints of the paint stripe as they drive away.
The old 8-Track tapes did the same thing sorta, but they way they worked, the just got noisier over time.
I had recorded my sisters voice when she was super young, probably around 5 years old. And when I played it back for her like 20 years later, it sounded like she was in an echo chamber.
I've had 2-track RtoR, 4-trackRtoR, 4-trackCartridge, 8-trackCartridge, and a 16-track reel to reel I got used.
The film used on 16-track recorders were wide and thick as well. So there was little to no cross-talk happening on those tapes, even though they were rolled up like normal RtoR tapes.
Also, the quality of the tape made a big difference too. Tartan tapes were the best, but NOT the Tensilized Tartan, they suffered greatly from cross-talk due to storage. And of course the cheap polyester tapes, man those things gradually lost their recording surface, making a mess both on the heads and on the tape deck itself. Iron oxide stains bad.

The old used wire recorder I got when I was young was in poor shape when I got it. My uncle replaced the heads on it for me and some belts inside, and then it worked great. But once I got the VM (Voice O-Matic) tape recorder, the wire recorder got passed on to a cousin who threw it away after about a year of playing with it.
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Re: Objective Reality

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When my first two granddaughters were 2 and 4 years old they lived with us for the better part of a year. I was well into computers back then and I don't recall if it was Windows 3.x or Windows 98 on my system, but the girls were fascinated by it. We all sang some songs and recorded them onto the computer. They giggled for days afterward about it, as little girls are wont to do. About six months ago, nearly 25 years later, I sent the song recordings to the oldest gal in New York. They were .wav files and she claimed they played perfectly. She giggled again upon hearing them. I can't say how many disk drives and silicon memory sticks those .wav files traversed, but it was quite a few. If there is any degradation, my old ears can't detect it.

I don't know from what malady your tapes suffered, but that's the nature of the medium. All of those tapes are analogy, by they way, and thus prone to being affected by outside influences. It's a shame those precious recordings were lost.
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Re: Objective Reality

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I don't think data on disks degenerate, not like they do on a CD that rots super fast.

I had a lot of store bought songs and music on tapes. Some of it still played a few years back, but you could hear the echo's getting worse.
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