Re: Quantum accident survivor

From: David Kwinter <david.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:46:17 -0700

OK, what about heat? Heat fills low pressure areas uniformly so there
could be no "bubble" of non-vaporizing heat for the scientist to live
in. Isn't the heat an absolute killer?


On Friday, October 31, 2003, at 10:55 AM, Hal Finney wrote:

> David Kwinter writes:
>> The concept of what makes a real quantum branch
>> irks me. Surely a man standing beside a nuclear explosion will never
>> survive.
>
> Not necessarily. What exactly kills a man standing by a nuclear
> explosion? Well, probably a lot of things, but let's think about the
> radiant heat energy released by the blast. This heat is carried by
> photons, each of which is emitted by some atom in the nuclear device.
> When an atom emits a photon, the direction of its emission is random.
> With the large numbers of atoms and photons involved, the emission is,
> on average, uniform in all directions, which is what we expect.
>
> But each individual emission is a quantum effect, and there is a chance
> that all of the atoms in the nuclear device could happen to emit their
> photons in a different direction than towards the man. In that case he
> would not experience the heat energy from the device and would not be
> killed by it.
>
> I think similar arguments are possible for the radiation and all other
> sources of destruction coming from the nuclear explosion. So a man
> standing beside such an explosion could in fact survive.
>
> It's also possible that the photons and other radiation from the device
> might happen to pass through the man's body without being absorbed.
> Each photon has a certain probability of being absorbed, per unit
> distance
> that it travels through biological tissue. And each absorption event
> is
> governed by quantum randomness. Therefore there is a nonzero chance
> that
> a photon could pass entirely through the man's body, and in fact that
> all of the photons could do so. In effect the man might just happen to
> become transparent at the precise instant necessary to survive the
> blast.
>
> Probably there are other bizarre quantum coincidences which could occur
> to let him survive as well.
>
> Hal Finney
>



David Kwinter
Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 14:12:21 PST