Originally posted by Masaki:
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schroedinger's Cat in linguistics?? I love it! :D
Masaki
Glad you liked it! It's possible for me to talk for hours on end about quantum so I should stop now. But...since you mentioned Heisenberg, I will add one thing. It looks like there is actually an exception to the Uncertainty Principle as demonstrated by scientists at IBM. Under normal circumstances, observation prevents a precise measurement of both position and momentum at the same point in time. However, if you utterly destroy what you're trying to measure, you can capture, at the moment of destruction, position and momentum of all sub-atomic particles. In theory, you could collect all of the exact quantum information necessary to reconstruct what was destroyed (does the Star Trek transporter come to mind anyone???). Obviously all the computing power in the world couldn't handle the amount of data yielded by a single bacterial cell, but it does show that good ol' Gene wasn't so far-fetched!