Re: No new Einstein

cmaj10@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> If all things are being equal, and we observe two nuclei with different
> lifetimes, then I would admit that nature is quite certainly
> probabilistic. But that's where this theory is so specious: no-one that
> I know of can guarantee that a pair of nuclei (along with their
> neigborhood) are exactly equal in state. The "all things being equal"
> part of the contract is nearly impossible to meet.

If you have just one radioactive nucleus you cannot even speak about
it lifetime. You can observe its decay and see that it has decayed,
say, 1 hour after it was created. From this you cannot make a prediction
of how long similar nuclei will live. They may live 0.1 ns or 1000000
years.

You need to observe a huge number of nuclear decays, collect
statistics, and only after that you can determine (experimentally)
the lifetime of nuclei of this type. The lifetime (just as the
wave function, in general) does not describe one particular
nucleus. It describes a statistical ensemble of similarly prepared
nuclei.

Eugene.

.

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