Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

[_cognitiveharmony]

Why would anybody want to deny that the activities of a conscious brain can affect matter? Look, my brain is currently affecting matter by typing this message. That kind of thing can only happen when I am conscious. So?

Clever. But I'm not sure why you would respond with this when the only thing to be gained is irrelevant rhetorical prose. You understood full well that my statement referred to conscious observation affecting the state of matter.

Oh I see - when you say 'consciousness', you are not referring to a state of the human brain (and perhaps some other kinds of brain) like I am, but to some kind of non-physical 'mind' or 'soul'? Well, you'd first have to establish that such things exist before talking about them, wouldn't you? One reason for doubting that they do is the difficulty of seeing how they could affect matter. You can't wish that difficulty away by begging the question.

I'm not sure where you get your definition of consciousness but I would prefer to use what we find in the dictionary rather than...."the state of the human brain" or even "some kind of non-physical 'mind' or 'soul' ". I wouldn't think that we would first need to prove that ANYTHING exists before talking about it, although I would agree that we should before attempting to present it as evidence.

Er, yes. And all processes of observation known to science involve the interaction of one physical system with another. Even if you believe that a non-physical soul can obtain knowledge about electrons by observation, and thus affect them, it can only do so by affecting my brain (physical) by means you have not explained, so my brain then operates my body including its sensory organs (all physical) to operate scientific apparatus (physical) which gathers data by interacting physically with the electrons.

Seeing as how you're attributing arguments to me here that I haven't argued, I'm not sure how to respond other than to say this. Conscious observation affects the state of matter. Your brain is made up of matter, thus we can conclude with a surety that conscious observation affects the brain physically. We can't explain exactly how or why yet but to the best of our current knowledge, we know this to be true. I'm confident that we'll understand it one day but not if we close our minds and limit our inquiry. One thing is for sure. Idealism can explain the universe including physicalism as a subset. Physicalism can NOT explain what we currently know regarding QM and thus the universe. Einstein spent a good chunk of his life trying to harmonize relativity with QM and failed. I believe there's no need to harmonize the two as they very well may be two separate complex systems of which the laws of one (physicalism) are defined and governed by the laws of the other (QM).

That's a claim, not a conclusion.

It is both a claim and a conclusion depending on context. Take it as you will.

[Guest]

The following two quotes don't seem to be in agreement to me.

You keep returning to the mind as the actuator for wave collapse of which I've already said I don't personally believe this to be the case other than a loosely coupled relationship.

What do you mean by a loosely coupled relationship?

Interesting, I wonder what observation took place to know or understand the interaction of radium with mica in the Earth's crust? It's as if he's trying to say that human consciousness has never observed this interaction that we somehow know about?

So which is it? Do you state that consciousness is a necessary ingredient to the collapse of a wave function or not? It is a trivial tautology that someone has to observe it before we are aware of it. That is different then being the cause of a collapse of a wave function.

This is hardly a good characterization of the observed phenomena in QM. Are you implying that the experimentation is faulty? Are you implying the the fundamental principle of superposition that we observe in the two slit experiment as well as others is incorrect? I'd love to hear about it. Honestly.

I know, wikipedia, feel free to correct them won't you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_ ... physics%29

In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on a phenomenon being observed. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A commonplace example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire; this is difficult to do without letting out some of the air, thus changing the pressure. This effect can be observed in many domains of physics and can often be reduced to insignificance by using better instruments or observation techniques.

In quantum mechanics, there is a common misconception (which has acquired a life of its own, giving rise to endless speculations) that it is the mind of a conscious observer that affects the observer effect in quantum processes. It is rooted in a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process.[1]

According to standard quantum mechanics, however, it is a matter of complete indifference whether the experimenters stay around to watch their experiment, or leave the room and delegate observing to an inanimate apparatus, instead, which amplifies the microscopic events to macroscopic[2] measurements and records them by a time-irreversible process.[3] The measured state is not interfering with the states excluded by the measurement.

As Richard Feynman put it: "Nature does not know what you are looking at, and she behaves the way she is going to behave whether you bother to take down the data or not."

When discussing the wave function ψ which describes the state of a system in quantum mechanics, one should be cautious of a common misconception that assumes that the wave function ψ amounts to the same thing as the physical object it describes. This flawed concept must then require existence of an external mechanism, such as the mind of a conscious observer, that lies outside the principles governing the time evolution of the wave function ψ, in order to account for the so-called "collapse of the wave function" after a measurement has been performed. But the wave function ψ is not a physical object like, for example, an atom, which has an observable mass, charge and spin, as well as internal degrees of freedom. Instead, ψ is an abstract mathematical function that contains all the statistical information that an observer can obtain from measurements of a given system. In this case, there is no real mystery that mathematical form of the wave function ψ must change abruptly after a measurement has been performed.[1]

http://cosmology.com/Consciousness139.html

Again superposition suggests that this particle may be existing in all theoretical states until an actuator forces it to one specific state.

I gave you a reference in my very first post to you that removes this mystery of QM. Did you bother to look it over? Are you familiar with QFT? The "probability states" of ordinary QM become the virtual particles in QFT which really aren't virtual at all but are disturbances of fields.

Going back 2 million years would have no affect on this as time and space don't apply in QM.

What!? Have you read anything about decoherence at all? Seems quantum computers should be a snap to build then.

In quantum mechanics, quantum decoherence is the loss of coherence or ordering of the phase angles between the components of a system in a quantum superposition. One consequence of this dephasing is classical or probabilistically additive behavior. Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with its environment in a thermodynamically irreversible way. This prevents different elements in the quantum superposition of the total system's wavefunction from interfering with each other. Decoherence was first introduced in 1970 by the German physicist H. Dieter Zeh and has been a subject of active research since the 1980s.[1]

Decoherence can be viewed as the loss of information from a system into the environment (often modeled as a heat bath),[2] since every system is loosely coupled with the energetic state of its surroundings. Viewed in isolation, the system's dynamics are non-unitary (although the combined system plus environment evolves in a unitary fashion).[3] Thus the dynamics of the system alone are irreversible. As with any coupling, entanglements are generated between the system and environment. These have the effect of sharing quantum information with—or transferring it to—the surroundings.

Decoherence does not generate actual wave function collapse. It only provides an explanation for the observation of wave function collapse, as the quantum nature of the system "leaks" into the environment. That is, components of the wavefunction are decoupled from a coherent system, and acquire phases from their immediate surroundings. A total superposition of the global or universal wavefunction still exists (and remains coherent at the global level), but its ultimate fate remains an interpretational issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

Here's an anology. You have a Yatzee cup with dice and give them a shake and a roll onto a table. While in the cup the dice exist in a superposition of possible states anyone of which might be actualized when the dice hit the table. Of course without someone to shake the cup and toss out the dice onto a table we will not get an outcome.

Can the cup be overturned by a passing cat or a strong gust of wind? Yes, but for us to get an outcome we have to shake the cup.

Regardless of the state of evolution on the Earth, we can't prove that no consciousness was observing or measuring this evolution.

Hence the warning by Feynman about going down the drain. So freely wandering disembodied minds that at some point found they could possess certain products of evolution?

This theory makes no claims that consciousness or some other outside force controls or changes the chemistry in the mind violating any known physical laws, but rather, it is the fundamental building blocks for those laws and insures that they exist and function as we observe them.

So this means the laws of chemistry are followed for the brain chemistry. If those laws remain inviolate then there is no difference between what the next state of the brain is according to chemistry regardless of mind collapsing wave functions. But given that you stated you don't accept this idea anyhow what exactly are you arguing for by idealism? It has a lot a variations. It might help if you clarified what it is you are arguing for here. So the problem I raised early for dualism still remains. How can anything other than the chemistry of the brain control the body unless it violates the laws of chemistry to effect a different outcome? QM results in the laws of chemistry not in their violation.

And besides, the collapsing of a wave function is restricted to very narrow possibilities. You get this eigenstate or some other. You can't get whatever you imagine. And it has to occur in a manner to support a certain limited probability range of outcomes with repeated runs.

And the ability to observe and measure anything in our universe only has meaning when interacting with consciousness.

For us, yes. This is not very deep. We are trapped inside our consciousness.

And to take this one step further, to imagine a universe without consciousness is an ABSTRACT FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Another "deep" tautological statement. There is nothing "that it is like" to be dead, however.

This idea doesn't prove that consciousness is the actuator but it's worth exploring these relationships in order to fully understand why matter behaves the way it does.

Good news! Scientists have been busy doing just that. Have you heard of the LHC and the standard model?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wld0fHk9WFw

[_spotlight]

Back to the reason I brought up non linear collapse theories. The point was to make you think about the collapse of the wave function which is not explained in QM being a linear model. To collapse requires non linearities. They are not there yet there are collapses of wave functions. I am merely pointing out that the model has issues even though it can predict correct outcomes. (So can Newton's laws) This did not bear fruit since you deflected with consciousness possibly doing the job (how?), despite your proclamation that this is not what you believe to be the case anyhow. So I'll try another tact to make the same point.

QM is not compatible with SR.

Hegerfeldt and Malament have each presented rigorous no-go theorems (a theorem that states that a particular situation is not physically possible) demonstrating that, if one assumes a universe containing particles, then the requirements of SR and quantum physics lead to a contradiction.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616.pdf

Beta decay cannot be explained in terms of QM.

For the beta decay we need another type of interaction that is able to create massive particles (the electron and neutrino). The interaction cannot be given by the e.m. field; moreover, in the light of the possibilities of creating and annihilating particles, we also need to find a new description for the particles themselves that allows these processes. All of this is obtained by quantum field theory and the second quantization. Quantum field theory gives a unification of e.m. and weak force (electro-weak interaction) with one coupling constant e.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engi ... ec_ch7.pdf

Two vacuum effects--the Unruh effect and single-quantum nonlocality--imply a field view.

“The greatest significance of this work is that it shows how superposition and entanglement are the same ‘mystery,’” Dunningham explained to PhysOrg.com. “Feynman famously said that superposition is the only mystery in quantum mechanics, but more recently entanglement has been widely considered as an additional fundamental feature of quantum physics. Here we show that they are one and the same.”

The single-state nonlocality demonstrated here reinforces the equivalence of a single state and an entangled state—giving more credence to the position that quantum field theory, where fields are fundamental and particles secondary, is a close representation of reality.
http://phys.org/news/2007-11-nonlocality-particle.html

QM (unlike QFT) cannot deal with changing particle number. Hilbert space
(the position basis) changes dimension as you increase the particle number.

Field theory is needed to calculate the electron's anomalous magnetic moment.
http://www.springer.com/cda/content/doc ... p176377607.

The most accurate measurement of the fine structure constant α comes from our 2008 measurement of the electron magnetic moment together with QED calculations. Quantum electrodynamics theory (QED) relates the electron magnetic moment in Bohr magnetons (called g/2) to the fine structure constant α.
http://gabrielse.physics.harvard.edu/ga ... stant.html



It seems dubious to attempt to establish the nature of reality based upon QM. Much better to use QFT.

http://www.quantum-field-theory.net/qua ... t-problem/

https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0205

http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 7.full.pdf

QM is a good approximation of QFT for systems at low energy when the number of quanta is conserved.

The irreducible nature of a single event - irreducible for the statistical interpretation – justifies the
introduction of causality. It is the quantum active information inaccessible in the explicate order
which prevents us from following the single event [9]. Thanks to non-locality, the quantum causality
becomes intelligible, but not less radical. Einstein was right, and Bohr too!!!
http://inspirehep.net/record/1292251/fi ... _00039.pdf

[_Chap]

In case anyone is still interested, this is the way I am currently thinking as a result of my exchanges on this thread:

(a) When I see a conscious human being in a laboratory actuating a piece of apparatus that ultimately interacts with an electron so as to ascertain and record information about its state (what we commonly call 'making an observation'), hence ensuring that its state is no longer indeterminate, I see a physical system (the brain) interacting with a chain of other physical systems to cause this to happen.

(b) I use the word 'conscious' to describe the state of that brain, in the sense that the brain is not in the state associated with sleep, or anesthesia. (Those are states that can be verified objectively by observation of brain activity.) For those who care about dictionary definitions, that's sense 10 in the OED (see below).

(c) There is in my view no way that what happens to the electron differs whether or not the person presses the 'observe electron and record state' button while in the 'conscious' waking state, or whether they fall asleep at their laboratory bench and their head hits the button. Nor do I see how what happens to the electron would be different if a cat stepped on the button. Nor do I see how what happens to the electron would be different if an apple feel off a tree and hit the button. In all these cases, information about the electron exists that did not previously exist, and has been embodied in a physical system separate from the electron, a system that did not previously contain that information.

(d) So even in the limited sense of the word as I use it in (b), I do not see why a 'conscious' entity needs to be part of the system in order for the state of the electron to be made determinate after the 'observe electron and record state' button' has been pressed.

(e) Even less do I see the need for an entity to be involved of whom it can be said that it is 'conscious' in any of the wider senses that people seem to believe make sense when (for instance) they ask if a cat, or a snail, or an amoeba or a bacterium or a virus or a rock is 'conscious'. (Probably OED sense 8 below? I'm not sure, by the way, what people really mean when they ask that question, but I don't have to be sure in order for (a) to (d) to be coherent statements.)

Oxford English dictionary:

10. Aware of and responding to one's surroundings; having one's mental faculties in an active and waking state.
1728 Z. Mayne 2 Diss. concerning Sense, & Imagination. With Ess. on Consciousness 187 A Man in Dreaming, for want of being Conscious, knoweth not that he has a Dream.
1818 S. E. Ferrier Marriage (1819) I. iii. 24 Lady Juliana stood the image of despair, and scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new relations.
1841 E. Bulwer-Lytton Night & Morning v. xxi, And when at last he was conscious, her face was the first he saw.
1860 T. Holmes Syst. Surg. (1883) I. 505 The sister reported that he had become conscious, having recognized her and called her by name.
1904 V. Cross Tomorrow? v. 182 Lucia was conscious, awake.
1961 W. R. Russell & M. L. E. Espir Traumatic Aphasia iii. 23 He was seen within a short time of wounding and was fully conscious without evidence of intracranial damage.
2010 W. Berry Guesthouse p. xxvi, Amanda called for an ambulance and her mother was rushed to the hospital, barely conscious.

8. Philos. and Psychol. Having the faculty of consciousness; characterized by the presence of consciousness. See consciousness n. Second Amendment.See also conscious subject at subject n. 9.
1725 I. Watts Logick i. ii. 18 Among Substances some are thinking or conscious Beings, or have a Power of Thought, such as the Mind of Man, God, Angels.
1766 London Mag. Jan. 5/2 Dr. L.— considers the soul as a essential part or quality, if you will, of the compound, conscious being, man.
1797 J. Walker Crit. Pronouncing Dict. (ed. 2) 171/2 To Understand,..to have use of the intellectual faculties; to be an intelligent or conscious being; to be informed.
1825 T. T. Biddulph Theol. Early Patriarchs II. xxxvii. 413 Than that God left his fallen but conscious creatures, for almost two thousand years, without any specific acquaintance with the method which his wisdom and mercy had devised.
1876 J. B. Mozley Serm. preached Univ. of Oxf. xvi. 264 Man..as a conscious being, conscious of himself, and conscious of others around him.
1900 F. S. Turner Knowl., Belief & Certitude i. iv. 224 What brings to light the conscious being is reflection on the plurality of states and objects, in all of which the conscious being is the uniting fact.
1949 J. Loewenberg Dialogues from Delphi viii. 270 The facts and events that occasion distress and affliction, pity and fear,..are painful or lamentable only from the point of view of sentient or conscious creatures whose aims or purposes they frustrate or defeat.
2006 B. Gert et al. Bioethics (ed. 2) xi. 292 Although death is a biological phenomenon common to members of all species, criteria for the death of a plant are not as precise as the criteria for the death of a conscious animal.

[_DrW]

In case anyone is still interested, this is the way I am currently thinking as a result of my exchanges on this thread:

(a) When I see a conscious human being in a laboratory actuating a piece of apparatus that ultimately interacts with an electron so as to ascertain and record information about its state (what we commonly call 'making an observation'), hence ensuring that its state is no longer indeterminate, I see a physical system (the brain) interacting with a chain of other physical systems to cause this to happen.

(b) I use the word 'conscious' to describe the state of that brain, in the sense that the brain is not in the state associated with sleep, or anesthesia. (Those are states that can be verified objectively by observation of brain activity.) For those who care about dictionary definitions, that's sense 10 in the OED (see below).

(c) There is in my view no way that what happens to the electron differs whether or not the person presses the 'observe electron and record state' button while in the 'conscious' waking state, or whether they fall asleep at their laboratory bench and their head hits the button. Nor do I see how what happens to the electron would be different if a cat stepped on the button. Nor do I see how what happens to the electron would be different if an apple feel off a tree and hit the button. In all these cases, information about the electron exists that did not previously exist, and has been embodied in a physical system separate from the electron, a system that did not previously contain that information.

(d) So even in the limited sense of the word as I use it in (b), I do not see why a 'conscious' entity needs to be part of the system in order for the state of the electron to be made determinate after the 'observe electron and record state' button' has been pressed.

(e) Even less do I see the need for an entity to be involved of whom it can be said that it is 'conscious' in any of the wider senses that people seem to believe make sense when (for instance) they ask if a cat, or a snail, or an amoeba or a bacterium or a virus or a rock is 'conscious'. (Probably OED sense 8 below? I'm not sure, by the way, what people really mean when they ask that question, but I don't have to be sure in order for (a) to (d) to be coherent statements.)

Oxford English dictionary:

10. Aware of and responding to one's surroundings; having one's mental faculties in an active and waking state.
1728 Z. Mayne 2 Diss. concerning Sense, & Imagination. With Ess. on Consciousness 187 A Man in Dreaming, for want of being Conscious, knoweth not that he has a Dream.
1818 S. E. Ferrier Marriage (1819) I. iii. 24 Lady Juliana stood the image of despair, and scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new relations.
1841 E. Bulwer-Lytton Night & Morning v. xxi, And when at last he was conscious, her face was the first he saw.
1860 T. Holmes Syst. Surg. (1883) I. 505 The sister reported that he had become conscious, having recognized her and called her by name.
1904 V. Cross Tomorrow? v. 182 Lucia was conscious, awake.
1961 W. R. Russell & M. L. E. Espir Traumatic Aphasia iii. 23 He was seen within a short time of wounding and was fully conscious without evidence of intracranial damage.
2010 W. Berry Guesthouse p. xxvi, Amanda called for an ambulance and her mother was rushed to the hospital, barely conscious.

8. Philos. and Psychol. Having the faculty of consciousness; characterized by the presence of consciousness. See consciousness n. Second Amendment.See also conscious subject at subject n. 9.
1725 I. Watts Logick i. ii. 18 Among Substances some are thinking or conscious Beings, or have a Power of Thought, such as the Mind of Man, God, Angels.
1766 London Mag. Jan. 5/2 Dr. L.— considers the soul as a essential part or quality, if you will, of the compound, conscious being, man.
1797 J. Walker Crit. Pronouncing Dict. (ed. 2) 171/2 To Understand,..to have use of the intellectual faculties; to be an intelligent or conscious being; to be informed.
1825 T. T. Biddulph Theol. Early Patriarchs II. xxxvii. 413 Than that God left his fallen but conscious creatures, for almost two thousand years, without any specific acquaintance with the method which his wisdom and mercy had devised.
1876 J. B. Mozley Serm. preached Univ. of Oxf. xvi. 264 Man..as a conscious being, conscious of himself, and conscious of others around him.
1900 F. S. Turner Knowl., Belief & Certitude i. iv. 224 What brings to light the conscious being is reflection on the plurality of states and objects, in all of which the conscious being is the uniting fact.
1949 J. Loewenberg Dialogues from Delphi viii. 270 The facts and events that occasion distress and affliction, pity and fear,..are painful or lamentable only from the point of view of sentient or conscious creatures whose aims or purposes they frustrate or defeat.
2006 B. Gert et al. Bioethics (ed. 2) xi. 292 Although death is a biological phenomenon common to members of all species, criteria for the death of a plant are not as precise as the criteria for the death of a conscious animal.

Chap,

Still interested. Read it. Still agree.

Waiting to see what the idealists say.

Will be gone for a few days.

[_EAllusion]

Subjective idealism cannot be attacked on this ground.

Remember me mentioning Berkeley as a hardcore empiricist before? He's one of the key inventors of what we understand empiricism to be. Berkeley noticed that when you describe observable properties in things, you are describing it in perceptual terms. This is limited to the knowledge of his time, but understand if you describe something in terms of what can be observed by our senses, you are describing it in terms that describe how we perceive something. In the case of objects with exotic properties that seem queer to our ordinary senses, there is still a very concrete chain of perception between the object and our experience of it. That might be a long, complex series of observations, but it ultimately reduces into our ordinary perception.

Empiricists of the time realized that you can never know the object itself directly because you only have access to the experiences of it. The world as you are able to describe it is just you describing your perceptions. And remember, a perception is made up of mental qualities. What color, temperature, shape, speed, position, etc. are all perceptual concepts. Some philosophers argued that this is made sense of by proposing the properties of the theoretical object acting on the subject, thus producing perception. Physical properties, if you think about it for a second, are an abstraction of experience. What Berkeley and those who followed him argued is the object as we are able to describe it cannot exist apart from perception. We only have mental terms to know of and think about them. It need not possess any properties to act on us because we can only imagine objects in perceptual terms. He offers some (ultimately flawed) arguments to this end that are quite clever and were influential for a time. I recommend reading up on him.

This doesn't mean Berkeley was a solipsistic or rejected "the real world." (In fact, Berkeley rather staunchly believed that God created "the real world.") It also isn't refuted by simply talking about brain states or physio-psych of perception.

[_Chap]

Subjective idealism cannot be attacked on this ground.

I would not dream of attacking idealism, whether subjective or any other kind, or realism for that matter. My reasons for that are, I hope already quite clear.

In my recent post I was essentially commenting on the idea characterized by spotlight as "the appeal to collapse of the wave function by consciousness" - 'consciousness' being an entity of which no very clear characterization has been attempted on this thread, which is why I structured my argument in the rather cautious way that I did.

[_spotlight]

Here's an article that effectively eliminates consciousness as a cause of quantum behavior.

Loss of quantum properties without influence from outside

As the atoms interact with each other, disorder begins to spread with a certain velocity. Atoms in the already disordered regions lose their quantum properties. A temperature can be assigned to them – just as in a classical gas. "The velocity with which the disorder spreads depends on the number of atoms", says Tim Langen. This defines a clear border between the regions which can be described by a classical temperature and regions where quantum properties remain unchanged.

After a certain time the disorder has spread over the whole cloud. The remarkable observation is that this loss of quantum properties happens just because of quantum effects inside the atom cloud, without any influence from the outside world. "So far, such a behavior had only been conjectured, but our experiments demonstrate that nature really behaves like this", Jörg Schmiedmayer points out.
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists ... world.html

[_spotlight]

I would not dream of attacking idealism, whether subjective or any other kind

I am confused by two separate minds, each owing its existence to the perception of the other.
Berkeley's idealism seems more like theology masquerading as philosophy. I thought the whole point of philosophy was to replace the gods with rational thought.

Now for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the idea of the Greek deities came to make little sense in the light of reason and so the idea of a more abstract entity emerges with them as more satisfying as an explanation of origins and order. Their ideas satisfy the dictates of reason for which they abandoned the blind adherence to the stories of their ancestors. These are developments that mark the origins of philosophical thought in the West.

http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ ... and_Us.htm

[Guest]

Here's an article that effectively eliminates consciousness as a cause of quantum behavior.

Loss of quantum properties without influence from outside

As the atoms interact with each other, disorder begins to spread with a certain velocity. Atoms in the already disordered regions lose their quantum properties. A temperature can be assigned to them – just as in a classical gas. "The velocity with which the disorder spreads depends on the number of atoms", says Tim Langen. This defines a clear border between the regions which can be described by a classical temperature and regions where quantum properties remain unchanged.

After a certain time the disorder has spread over the whole cloud. The remarkable observation is that this loss of quantum properties happens just because of quantum effects inside the atom cloud, without any influence from the outside world. "So far, such a behavior had only been conjectured, but our experiments demonstrate that nature really behaves like this", Jörg Schmiedmayer points out.
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists ... world.html

That's ... beautiful. Really lovely science. I confess that I have always wondered about the transition from states best discussed in quantum terms to the largely classical world we perceive most of the time. Same goes for when it is appropriate to start talking about a collection of molecules as having a temperature.

A good example of why I find thinking about science such a rewarding thing to do. There are really hard problems, and really difficult questions - but quite often, if you are clever enough and work hard enough you can find answers whose reliability you can test, and whose explanatory power can take you in unsuspected directions. There are other worthwhile ways for human beings to use their brief flickering of consciousness, but science does have something that other ways to apply your mind just don't have.

But this article also underlines the debt we owe to good science journalists - the increasingly less common kind that actually understand the science, and can point out what it means without making a nonsense of it. Here is the abstract of the original letter in Nature - I'm not sure I would have got the significance of the article just from reading this.

Understanding the dynamics of isolated quantum many-body systems is a central open problem at the intersection between statistical physics and quantum physics. Despite important theoretical effort1, no generic framework exists yet to understand when and how an isolated quantum system relaxes to a steady state. Regarding the question of how, it has been conjectured2, 3 that equilibration must occur on a local scale in systems where correlations between distant points can establish only at a finite speed. Here, we provide the first experimental observation of this local equilibration hypothesis. In our experiment, we quench a one-dimensional Bose gas by coherently splitting it into two parts. By monitoring the phase coherence between the two parts we observe that the thermal correlations of a prethermalized state4, 5 emerge locally in their final form and propagate through the system in a light-cone-like evolution. Our results underline the close link between the propagation of correlations 2, 3, 6, 7 and relaxation processes in quantum many-body systems.

by the way - I am not criticizing either the authors of the letter, or the editors of Nature. That was a good and professionally written piece, intended for a specialist professional readership, and I am sure it did its job well. My point is that the journalist who wrote the article cited by spotlight also did his or her work well.