superposition

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    G‑d Collapses Sotah’s Wave Function

    The story of Sotah, a suspected adulteress, is very troubling on the first blush. Why would a woman be subjected to such humiliation?  The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, points out that, to the contrary, the story of Sotah is the story of the boundless love of the Creator for his people. Notwithstanding the strict Biblical prohibition of erasing G‑d’s name, to vindicate the wrongly accused woman, G‑d allows and, indeed, decrees to erase His holy Name by dissolving the scriptural verses written on a parchment in the water that the woman would drink to clear her name. For as long as a woman is being suspected of infidelity, she cannot be intimate with her husband.  It takes a Divine intervention, whereby G‑d sacrifices His honor in allowing erasing His holy Name, [...]

      Suspected Adulteress as a Schrödinger Cat

      In quantum mechanics, the state of a physical system is described by the so-called wave function (or the "wavefunction"). All attempts by Schrödinger, who first introduced the wave function, and others to interpret it as a scalar potential of some physical field, or as the de Broglie wave (as in particle-wave dualism) were not successful. In 1926, Max Born noticed that the squared amplitude of the wavefunction of a particle in a given region gives the probability of finding the particle in this region. He suggested that the wavefunction represented not a physical reality but rather our knowledge of the quantum state of an object. The wave function represents our knowledge of all possible quantum-mechanical states of an object and their probabilities. In other words, the quantum-mechanical state of a physical system is [...]

        Second Adar – The Month of Quantum Physics

        Today is Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet – the New Moon and the beginning of the second month of Adar.  If we ever to have a month commemorating quantum physics, there would be no more appropriate month for that than the second month of Adar – Adar Bet.  A state of superposition is a physical state unique to quantum theory.  In classical physics (such as Newtonian mechanics or thermodynamics) a physical system is either in one state or the other, say in a state A or a state B. Only in quantum physics a system can be in a blended state C which is a linear superposition of states A and B. For example, the spin of an electron can be either Up or Down.  However, an electron can be in a blurred state of [...]

          Manna – Superposition of All Tastes

          And the house of Israel called the name thereof manna; and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31). The taste of it was as the taste of a cake baked with oil (Numbers 11:8).   The biblical account of manna presents us with an intriguing paradox that resonates surprisingly with modern quantum physics. In Exodus, Scripture describes this mysterious desert sustenance as tasting “like wafers made with honey,” while elsewhere characterizing it as having the flavor of “cake baked with oil.” This apparent contradiction opens the door to a fascinating exploration of how biblical text might parallel contemporary scientific understanding.  The Many-Flavored Mystery The Talmud (Yoma 75b) elaborates on manna’s remarkable nature, describing it as a substance whose taste adapted to [...]

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