A big Hallelujah if this were really true!

Quantum physics just got less complicated

Here's a nice surprise: quantum physics is less complicated than we thought. An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered distinct are different manifestations of the same thing. The result is published 19 December in Nature Communications.

Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner made the breakthrough while at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. They found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.

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rOZZ
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I'm usually pretty good at mathematics Julie, but trying to work out quantum physics gives me a migraine even in the easiest of cases. :-(

But thanks for the link anyway. ;-)

Cheers.

Welcome Wiggo:)

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rOZZ
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Very interesting!
I am anxious to learn more. At least I have next week off. :D

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not more (Albert Einstein). A recent outline of quantum mechanics was made by Federico Faggin in the video I have posted recently. But it is in Italian, of course.
Tullio

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There are a lot of things that are lumped under the rubric of "Quantum Mechanics". It all started with the discovery that energy from a heated Black body radiated only at distinct frequencies instead of a continuous spectrum. This is easy enough to see why if you look at a standard model of the atom with the electrons orbiting in different radii around a nucleus. Jumping from one allowed orbit to another requires an input or outflow of energy that corresponds to the different energy levels of the allowed orbits of the electrons.

The electron of course carries with it it's own level of fiction which helps us understand and control it.

The uncertainty principle says that in trying to measure both position and momentum the act of measuring will will alter one or the other of these quantities. Then things get stupidly weird with the Schrodinger wave equation, his dead or alive cat and quantum entanglement.

A quantum computer mat simply be the fact that the smaller and therefore closer together transistors the faster the computer. If these were shrunken down to atomic size the expectation is that the computer would be faster, I have not seen an explanation of how a computer that uses any of the weird quantum dualities would offer an advantage over a modern day computer.

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Perhaps this is not the correct thread, but our current understanding of physics (and not necessarily mathematics) is related to astronomical and other phenomena as they are being observed in space.

Physics and chemistry are still not the same thing, but methane is being found on the four giant outer planets in the solar system as well as on Saturn's moon Titan.

Chemistry, especially organic rather than inorganic such may be the basic ingredients for the possible origins of life.

We think that the most primitive forms of life started with RNA, DNA, viruses and bacteria and that the single cell is a result of such elements being created.

Evolution leads to both development as well as change over the course of time.

A famous laboratory test back in the 1950's was showing that methane, together with combinations of ultraviolet light could possibly create life.

Assumedly artificial life has yet to be created, even in the laboratory.

Everything we assume to be life is based on the life forms that are being found in nature.

Intelligence becomes as a result of a multi-celled organisms developing a brain. Everything from water through magnesium (when it comes to plants, iron for the blood in animals and humans), through enzymes and hormones governing living organisms is based on the principles of chemistry and biology.

Most people, including chemists suffice to be dealing with just that part, definitely wanting to neglect the possible part of this that is related to the subject of physics.

In space everything from galaxies through stars and black holes are making their presence by means of their physical characteristics or behavior.

Therefore we would very much like to use mathematics in order to be able to understand the properties of such objects.

But similarly you may not be willing to explain an organic substance like a sea manet or maybe not even a sheep in the same way because such creatures are animals which are based on the laws of chemistry and biology rather than the laws of physics.

This is where there will always become a difference. Both when it comes to our way of understanding as well as approaching these two different subject fields.

Just to show that the subject of Quantum Mechanics is being related to the world of physics and not the world of chemistry and biology.

Of course I love the subject of Quantum Mechanics as well.

All of chemistry and molecular biology research uses the Schroedinger equation, first with Hartree-Fok method, then with other methods such as the density functional. The covalent bond is not explained by classical electrodynamics, as the ionic bond is, but only by a quantum mechanical phenomenon. Without quantum mechanics structural chemistry is not possible.
Tullio
Footnote: molecular biology was started by Erwin Schroedinger with his book "What is life?" in 1947.

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Not exactly the same as Quantum Physics, but perhaps of importance still.

Found this link on the web after the word came across me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence

Knowing how or in which way different things interact and work with each other definitely is an important subject.

Even the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (1935) which Einstein hoped would demonstrate that QM is not a complete theory is no longer a paradox. It has been demonstrated by Alain Aspect using photons and the Bell inequalities. All this is in full development now with people sending entangled photons over longer distances.
Tullio

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Quite happy to accept all that Tullio, quantum entanglement is a fact and as you say is being demonstrated. But this business with a cat in a box really irritates me!

Before the box is opened, OUTSIDE the possibility that the cat is alive or dead is equal at 50/50, it could be either, so both possibilities exist side by side. At the same time the cat INSIDE the box will be either alive or dead, one or the other. That fact won't be known until the box is opened.

It is the possibility of the cats demise that could have equal odds at the same time, NOT the physical condition of the cat, which can only be one or the other at that time, but which won't be known until the box is opened. The uncertainty outside the box may have a link to what is the situation inside the box, but to say that the cat can be physically alive and dead at the same time is definitely some woolly thinking there.

I think I see an issue with your understanding of the problem. Don't think of a big lump source of radiation. Think of a single atom. Don't worry if it is 50/50 or not, that would depend on how long the box is closed and the half life, but for a single atom, half life makes no sense!

And yes, that cat is both dead and alive at the same time. The thought experiment is a metaphor for a quantum state. Until you observe, the state isn't picked.

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Maybe it's like this:

Until you roll the die you don't know what number will come up. All six "states" are equally likely--you won't know which number will come up until you throw the die.

I think that semantics is getting in the way of understanding what is trying to be taught and explained here about this duality (uncertainty) principle.

In the book "Shadows of the mind" by Roger Penrose the story is told of two Jewish physicists who invented a way to get a warm coffee on Saturday morning.The fire is lighted by a quantum machinery similar to Schroedinger cat. If the fire is lighted that is not by a human action, but by the laws of probability.And if it is not lighted? Then you repeat the experiment.
Tullio
As a footnote, once I had to walk from Tel Aviv to Jaffa on a Saturday morning fore the sake of a hot espresso. When I found an open bar in Jaffa,it was not managed by an Arab, but by a Neapolitan Jew. Coffee is coffee. Shalom.

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It doesn't seem any less complicated to me but maybe a tad more confusing.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

The best introduction to quantum mechanics that I know is a book by Albert Messiah, La mecanique quantique. I think it has been translated in English. I studied on it and then I passed it to my daughter for her thesis. The book by Paul Dirac, Quantum mechanics, is rather more difficult since you have to know the Hilbert spaces in order to understand it.
Tullio

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It doesn't seem any less complicated to me but maybe a tad more confusing.

Same here LOL

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rOZZ
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Take an hour off and go watch The Secrets of Quantum Physics, you've missed the first program in series but this one might increase your knowledge a little bit.

That's Fyzix for you! ...

BTW - thought for the day. If I waggle both my hands at you is that a wave duality?

Groan... That is worse than the worst of my multiple puns! ;-)

Here's hoping you don't need that for the signals replacement service to get King's Cross back rolling...

Then again... Slow running planned with an extra 20mins just to get through the station... Perhaps they're falling back onto the old tech of walking red flags...


Good luck! Hope you get to your Christmas lunch on time!!


Merry Christmas,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Penrose is a very kind man. He was quick to answer a letter I had sent him with a text written by me in 1980, before reading his books, and said it was "very interesting".
The seashore of Tel Aviv is clean and beautiful even on a Saturday morning. I enjoyed the walk along the sea shore. You know, I was born in Trieste, where it s sufficient to take a tram and have a bath in the Adriatic.
Tullio

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I was not a young scientist but a retired theoretical physicist. I still conserve the letter by Roger Penrose.
Trieste is a beautiful town, very close to Slovenia, and the Carso (Karst) highland and its caves and rocks for climbing schools.I worked there fron 1991 to 1994 in the Area Science Park near the Elettra synchrotron light source built by Carlo Rubbia. Then I had to come back to my home near Milano. Trieste is also the site of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, founded by Abdus Salam. It stands very close to the Miramare Castle and Grignano bay, from where Maxilmilian of Absburg sailed to Mexico and his death. A very romantic place.
Tullio

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