Passer wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Passer wrote:

twistor59 wrote:

No, the extra dimensions of string theory constitute a tentative model for the universe which will eventually either be confirmed or falsified by experimental results.

The woo was in that "consciousness causes stuff" in The Self Aware Universe book you were talking about.

But wasn't there an experiment, which showed that atoms/waves/particles or whatever they were, begin to act differently when we observe them?

no, they begin to act differently when they are measured. Which kind of is the same as 'they act different when they interact with other particles'. (Ultimately, taht bunch of particles also act differently, until you are in the same bunch of particles, to simplify the matter a lot)

"they begin to act differently when they are measured" That's still very amazing, not sure what it entails, but I find that fascinating. When you say 'measured', how would they do that exactly?

"measuring" is the term normally used, but essentially, whenever two particles interact, they "measure" each other. if a particle is totally isolated, it doesn't interact with anything, so what state it's at is irrelevant (and hence unmeasured). Now, two particles can interact and measure each other, without interacting with anything else. etc. It's as if the universe only cares to give an absolute value to anything when the point of view of something else is involved.