Poll of the Day > The universe has shader errors

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs

Apparently, you can make it so that you can block all light, yet see the light anyway by holding up another filter, because the odds of each photon getting blocked by a filter add up and subtract at the end.

This glitch will be patched next month.

The quantum world knows when you observe it.
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bump for education

What if we download reshade?
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I think this is related to light passing through lenses. it goes in a circle, similar to the twisting of the filters in the video.

as the thickness of a lens increases, light is blocked more and more and then less and less and then more and more, basically on a sin wave.

it has to do with probabilities. the probability that a photon will or will not arrive at a particular destination (really, be absorbed by a particular electron), is determined by its "magnitude" which is a complex number (basically, a "2d" number, which can be thought of as a spinning vector). the time that it takes (would take) the photon to arrive at its destination allows the complex number to spin more (or less), modifying the probability of where it will interact/arrive. so, thinking about the filters as "blocking" photons is why it's counter intuitive. really, the filters are modifying the probability, and those probabilities are circular (basically on a sin wave).

this is all known as "quantum electrodynamics" and is one of the most accurate, if not the most accurate, physics theory we have. it basically explains like 99% of all phenomena at an extremely fundamental level. the only things it doesn't explain are gravity and nuclear stuff.

one example: why does light tend to move in straight lines? well, because the probabilities are circular, if you add up the probabilities, the distances away from straight all going to infinity, the circular probabilities all cancel out, leaving you with a single probabilistic hot spot right at the straight forward direction.

another example: why does light bend at a particular angle when entering water? basically the same reason as above, except that light moves at a different speed through water, so the 'probabilistic hot spot' is now slightly offset. (you can think of it as light taking the 'shortest route'. if you think of it as a lifeguard swimming to a drowning victim, there is an optimal path with more time spent on the beach and less time in the water. ends up being the same angle light uses.)

another one is bubbles: why does a soap bubble look all rainbow-y? the bubble actually has various layers, similar to the lenses in the video, and are each mono-chromatic, and also with a more or less randomized surface. pile up randomized mono-chromatic surfaces, with the circular probabilities thing happening, and you get rainbows.

for the best of the best explanation of this (and where I got basically everything I've said here) see Richard Feynman's QED lectures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLQ2atfqk2c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMSgE62S6oo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNNXD7fuE5E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UigjOJm6F9o
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Wow, that's a good 5 hours long. I don't know when I'm going to have time to watch that, but I should. Quantum mechanics are cool.

I also want to get one of these. That would be such a cool thing to just have on display as a decoration. I thought you needed liquid nitrogen to use a superconductor, but that looks like dry ice, so what do I know. I don't know what kind of superconductor he's using either.

Edit so he confirms it's liquid nitrogen in the video, he must have a container in there? But how does the gas escape?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKFgw7A1fpU

k that was pretty awesome thanks. I'd seen tiny examples of hovering superconductors before but nothing like that.
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just more proof we live in a holographic universe, that apparently has programming errors

http://alienryderflex.com/polarizer/
What actually happens when light goes through three polarizing filters.