stark

English translation: distinguishable

08:38 Apr 23, 2017
English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Science - Physics / Quantistic theory
English term or phrase: stark
What the Viennese researchers did was, effectively, to try melting the seal on those letters. At first just a little bit. They heated up the photons, and then they looked at the pattern on the detector. I know I’m conflating letters, photons and arrows here, but what they saw was that the arrows were less clumped. The pattern was less STARK. As they heated the photons more, so the distribution of the arrows became more and more like you’d expect in the everyday world – focussed on the bullseyes, with just a few strays elsewhere.
The act of heating, they suggested, tells us something about measurement. As anything gets hot, it radiates energy. That’s how we began this whole tale, if you remember. And the different wavelengths – the colours of that light energy – can carry contain different quantities of information. The result of heating was that some of the information about the photon – the contents of the letter – became readable. It’s as if the yielding wax allowed a corner of a page to roll up and be read. Only a few words became visible, but it was enough to allow the reader to see that it was probably a love letter. Perhaps the words “your lips” came into view. Now it was definitely not a bill, nor an order for unicorn horn. It might still have been something other than a love letter. It could have been an instruction to keep silent: a threat, for instance, to a witness of a crime not to let a single word about the incident pass their lips. Whatever the truth, not all possibilities about the nature of that information are open any more. And so the weird quantum pattern is less STARK.
budu
Local time: 12:47
Selected answer:distinguishable
Explanation:
Less stark=barely distinguishable
- The pattern was not clear enough to be recognized or identified as different.

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Note added at 51 mins (2017-04-23 09:29:52 GMT)
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"Not" all possibilities about the nature of the information are open, so it is "not" more defined.

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Note added at 1 hr (2017-04-23 09:43:17 GMT)
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Ok. Yet the possibilities may have been considered so endless that excluding some may not make a diffidence to the result (i.e., defining the information).

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Note added at 5 hrs (2017-04-23 13:43:26 GMT)
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Ok, i'm happy that you finally identified the source of the problem.
Selected response from:

Morad Seif
Türkiye
Local time: 14:47
Grading comment
Selected automatically based on peer agreement.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED
4 +3distinguishable
Morad Seif
4 +1defined
Terry Richards
4complete
Juan Arturo Blackmore Zerón
4obvious
D. I. Verrelli


Discussion entries: 1





  

Answers


33 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +3
distinguishable


Explanation:
Less stark=barely distinguishable
- The pattern was not clear enough to be recognized or identified as different.

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Note added at 51 mins (2017-04-23 09:29:52 GMT)
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"Not" all possibilities about the nature of the information are open, so it is "not" more defined.

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Note added at 1 hr (2017-04-23 09:43:17 GMT)
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Ok. Yet the possibilities may have been considered so endless that excluding some may not make a diffidence to the result (i.e., defining the information).

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Note added at 5 hrs (2017-04-23 13:43:26 GMT)
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Ok, i'm happy that you finally identified the source of the problem.

Morad Seif
Türkiye
Local time: 14:47
Native speaker of: Persian (Farsi)
PRO pts in category: 4
Grading comment
Selected automatically based on peer agreement.
Notes to answerer
Asker: Thank you, BUT: in the last sentence (Whatever the truth, not all possibilities about the nature of that information are open any more. And so the weird quantum pattern is less STARK) why the pattern is less stark, if the information is more defined? Do you happen to understand maybe elementar physics?

Asker: No, it is the opposit, it is more defined, because you exclude some of all possibilities, so the choice is narrower, more defined. (But it is not such a simple idea, you should know somethhing about quantistic mechanic to understand the real meaning)

Asker: No it makes a GREAT difference: it causes it to exist! Now I'm quite sure it is an errror of print.... thank you for all


Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  philgoddard: Yes, less stark = more random.
4 hrs
  -> yeah, thanks.

neutral  Terry Richards: The pattern is NOT the information, the pattern is HIDING the information. As the information becomes clearer, the pattern becomes less clear (and vice-versa).
7 hrs
  -> Ok. Thanks

agree  Yasutomo Kanazawa
18 hrs
  -> Thanks a lot.

agree  acetran
2 days 8 hrs
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5 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
complete


Explanation:
Absolute, downright.

Juan Arturo Blackmore Zerón
Mexico
Local time: 06:47
Native speaker of: Spanish
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46 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
defined


Explanation:
When the photons were cold (low energy), there was a rigidly defined pattern (presumably, caused by some characteristic of the photons themselves). This pattern was hiding the information that the photons were carrying. As the photons were warmed up (given more energy), the information started to dominate over the pattern and could be read.

As an analogy, when you are asleep, the only things we can tell by looking at you relate to what you ARE. Two arms, two legs, etc. When you wake up, we can watch you and tell a lot more about you. If you go to a grocery store, we can know that you eat. This is more about what you DO. Similarly, the pattern only tells us things about what the photon IS, it's actions tell us a lot more about what it DOES (and therefore, more about what is affecting it).

Information is energy. The photons can only provide us with information if they have enough energy to do so.

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Note added at 8 hrs (2017-04-23 17:07:32 GMT)
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I think you are barking up the wrong tree.

- The pattern is NOT the information, the pattern is HIDING the information.
- When we give the photons more energy, they are better able to transmit the information and the information starts to overwhelm the pattern.
- The photons cannot transmit both the pattern and the information - it's one or the other (within quantum limitations).
- The pattern is therefore LESS defined as the information becomes MORE defined.

Terry Richards
France
Local time: 12:47
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 12

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Yvonne Gallagher: not my field but this makes more sense...
1 day 23 hrs
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7 days   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
obvious


Explanation:
The word "stark" is often used in the phrase "a stark contrast", meaning a "a clear/obvious/huge/dramatic difference".
Here it seems to be used to mean that the pattern was respectively more/less "obvious".
By the way, I'm not sure if that is a direct quote or not, but text such as "[...] Whatever the truth, not all possibilities about the nature of that information are open any more. And so the weird quantum pattern is less STARK." seems quite florid and somewhat unnatural to me.

Example sentence(s):
  • There was a stark difference between what I could afford and what my parents could afford.
D. I. Verrelli
Australia
Local time: 22:47
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
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