yes jell, as Isa said, it should take some 2-3 years just to recreate it. so you understand why you don't hear about it again.

That experiment of a year ago that claimed to have possibly found the Higgs particle took about 6 months of testing. The LHC works at far higher energies, so it should be able to find it faster. But so far nothing.
About that second experiment, I made a mistake there. It wasn't Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that got violated there but Pauli's Exclusion principle. This experiment could be done in under a week. It involved an alloy of a specific ferromagnetic metal and a specific paramagnetic metal being hit by laser pulses to change the magnetic moment of the material faster than Pauli's Exclusion Principle allows. This testing can be done within a day.

I have read the actual article published by the scientists today. They themselves are extremely skeptical about their results. They believe that a systematical error is pretty likely with results such as these and for that reason refuse to give any theoretical or experimental interpretation of the results until they have been confirmed by a different research facility.

Also, take a look at the Bell Inequalities. There used to be two major interpretations of quantum mechanics.
There was Einstein's interpretation of hidden variables: a system is already in its own state before a measurement and has hidden variables defining this state. Even if you don't look inside the box, the cat is still either dead or alive. You can't know this before a measurement, but that doesn't change the fact that the cat is still either dead or alive.
Then there was Bohr's interpretation: before measurement a system is in a superposition of all its possible states. If you don't look inside the box, the cat is in a superposition of being dead and alive. The cat won't drop in either state until you actually look inside the box and measure the state of the cat.
On the surface there isn't any difference between the two situations. Interacting with reality requires observing it and collapsing it into one of its states. So it doesn't matter if it is in a superposition of all its possible states before interaction because you can never realize this.
But there is one case where there actually is a difference. Bell figured out that measuring the position of separated entangled pairs does in fact give different results in both interpretations.
Up to this date over 10 independent experiments have been done. One has an accuracy of over 30 standard deviations. But even then there is discussion today about how these experiments could have influenced the results. So it still can't be said with full confidence if these experiments are valid or not.

the example you gave is only hypothetical tho. assuming you learnt quantum mechanics, you should know that einstein's interpretation works well since we define what we call the wave function, and that has meaning only once | |^2 -ed, which gives you the chance for every state. but Bohr's interpretation does not work that way. once a measurement is being made, the two are the same. but without it, well, if the cat is dead, Bohr is wrong and einstein is right. That is, when I'm talking for real.

I did not know about Bell's inequality. but the way you put it, you need to measure the position to have the difference? I don't quite understand. is this a case of, for example, having a particle in a box and guessing its position? explan further?

It was a result of the EPR thought experiment. If you have two entangled particles that share a wave function, measuring one particle automatically gives you the state of the second particle. So if you take these two particles, separate them and measure them at exactly the same moment over a long a distance, you should get the same result. Under Einstein's interpretation both particles already had their state decided so nothing spectacular happens. But under Bohr's interpretation, the moment you measure the first particle that wave function of the second particle must also collapse at that exact moment. Because this collapse is instantaneous, the information of the state the first particle is in must travel faster than the speed of light to the second particle.

Bell's Inequalities considered the spin of two entangled electrons. Because of Pauli's Exclusion Principle, putting these two electrons in the same location forces one electron to take the up-spin state and the other the down-spin state. Now you can remove them from each other and measure their spin in random directions and plot the correlation of these two electrons to the angle between the two detectors.
Bell mathematically worked out this thought experiment with Bohr's interpretation and came to a result that can't be described through variables.
This has something to do with the fact that the measured direction directly influences the state of the electrons in Bohr's interpretation but not in Einstein's interpretation, causing the correlation to be higher with Bohr's interpretation than with Einstein's interpretation.

well teh problem with what you're saying is that there really isn't any couple like that that instantaneously change the other. even in the electrons - suppose we remove them quasistatically? then what?

Actually, entangled pairs do change their state instantly. At least, that is what these experiments show. This also the principle that quantum computing and quantum cryptography is based on.
Because you can't measure one of the electrons without untangling the pair and because entangled pairs violate Bell's Inequalities while untangled pairs don't, you can send cryptography keys using entangled pairs and then comparing the results to find out if there is an eavesdropper along the line. And because the pairs can be in an infinite amount of superpositions of their states, instead of just two states, you can somehow perform infinite simultaneous computations on a quantum processor. Although I have no idea how quantum computers are actually supposed to work beyond that.
The one catch is that this can't be used to send information. You can't force one of the two electrons to fall into a state of your choice. This is entirely random. So causality actually isn't violated, which is what General Relativity really prevents.

If you want to learn more, I suggest Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox

Today started the new Jewish year dam, I ate ALOT.

If anyone's counting, this is year numbher....5,772 starting. we're old

lol, I forgot the point of the message, well, happy new year everybody!

Happy Jewish new year, Shos!

All I want for New Years... is Jew!

lol bmw, and thanks kooler

No problem, Shos!

STEVE JOBS DIES? !!! Seriously, that's a bummer though. He was only in his 50's. I guess he knew what he was doing when he resigned.

Wasn't expecting that.  That's pretty sad.

Well, there goes more Jobs.

HOLY !5!#5^!$!$ I didn't know that yet! woah, why did he die? I guess I'll read in the newspaper tomorrow morning...

Pancreas cancer. He had in since 2004 atleast.

So we lost Jobs to pancreas cancer?

He had been in poor health for some time now. Last year he had a liver transplant. So it doesn't really come as a shock to me.
I don't like Apple or their business strategy, but I'm still sad that he passed away. He turned Apple from near doom to one of the world's greatest companies. He was a brilliant man.

A leading innovator of our time has passed away. I've never owned an Apple product; doesn't mean I don't think this is a sad thing.

Just out of curiosity Isa,  what kind of digital music MP3 thing do you have/do you even own one? Cuz in most of the US it's either iPods or bust.

I have never owned a pure MP3 player. I use my Sony Ericsson w595 to play music.

I also don't use headphones, so when I am in public I just hold my phone really close to my ear. When I am alone I crank it up to 11 and sing along.

Lol, that kinda sounds neat actually, but I'd be a bit turned off by the whole "cell phones cause cancer/give off harmful radiation" theories.

I do that too, but only when I don't have headphones. in bus, for example, my headphones rock. or when I study. there was one time when I hear this song on my headphones, and someone from the other side of the lab(like 5 meters away) came and told me to lower the volume. on my headphones.

Yes, it happens all the time, people who use headphones think that their music isn't leaking through - SPOILER, IT IS