The Secrets of Quantum Physics
Discussion
Toltec said:
It appears they have gone a bit further than merely 60 atom molecules
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/physicis...
Wow!
Thanks for the link - some other interesting stuff on there too!https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/physicis...
Wow!
Toltec said:
It appears they have gone a bit further than merely 60 atom molecules
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/physicis...
Wow!
One thing I can't quite figure out from the article.https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/physicis...
Wow!
Are they just getting wave/particle duality from these molecules, IE interference? Or are they getting the really spooky effect of interference even when one molecule at a time is pushed through the equipment?
Dr Jekyll said:
One thing I can't quite figure out from the article.
Are they just getting wave/particle duality from these molecules, IE interference? Or are they getting the really spooky effect of interference even when one molecule at a time is pushed through the equipment?
Good point, however even the former is pretty weird. I thought I was fairly comfortable with QM as only relevant at the very small scale of particles, however this is decidedly odd. Are they just getting wave/particle duality from these molecules, IE interference? Or are they getting the really spooky effect of interference even when one molecule at a time is pushed through the equipment?
Edited by Toltec on Thursday 18th December 18:51
I got quite a lot out of the second episode but I was a bit irritated by those balls. I'm all for analogies but using just the one is like trying to paint a picture with just the one color, which was the same as the paper.
I'd read about the robins but this programme went a bit further, and was a bit clearer, compared to the brief article. It is fair to say, though, that the short series taught me that I know nothing about QM.
I once had bhp and torque explained to me by a mechanical engineer. He chatted on for a while and drew some pictures. He then asked if it was becoming clearer. I said that I thought I was beginning to understand and he said that meant he must have missed something out. I feel the same way about QM.
I'd read about the robins but this programme went a bit further, and was a bit clearer, compared to the brief article. It is fair to say, though, that the short series taught me that I know nothing about QM.
I once had bhp and torque explained to me by a mechanical engineer. He chatted on for a while and drew some pictures. He then asked if it was becoming clearer. I said that I thought I was beginning to understand and he said that meant he must have missed something out. I feel the same way about QM.
My physics teacher said that it is not the job of science to explain but to predict. Prediction, according to him, was the only test of science. We had a long discussion about whether Newton was still 'right' after Einstein rubbished him, or at least his version of gravity, and what right meant.
He and our biology teacher didn't get on too well and he was always having digs, little asides that he knew would get back to her. She was in love with Darwin's theory and our physics teacher once said something along the lines of 'I'll call Darwin a scientist when he predicts the next species. Up until then, he's merely guessing.'
He was the same with plate tectonics. 'Can they predict an earthquake? When they do, I'll consider believing them.'
So if QM says that we'll never be able to predict except in general terms, what's left for scientists?
He and our biology teacher didn't get on too well and he was always having digs, little asides that he knew would get back to her. She was in love with Darwin's theory and our physics teacher once said something along the lines of 'I'll call Darwin a scientist when he predicts the next species. Up until then, he's merely guessing.'
He was the same with plate tectonics. 'Can they predict an earthquake? When they do, I'll consider believing them.'
So if QM says that we'll never be able to predict except in general terms, what's left for scientists?
Derek Smith said:
My physics teacher said that it is not the job of science to explain but to predict. Prediction, according to him, was the only test of science. We had a long discussion about whether Newton was still 'right' after Einstein rubbished him, or at least his version of gravity, and what right meant.
He and our biology teacher didn't get on too well and he was always having digs, little asides that he knew would get back to her. She was in love with Darwin's theory and our physics teacher once said something along the lines of 'I'll call Darwin a scientist when he predicts the next species. Up until then, he's merely guessing.'
He was the same with plate tectonics. 'Can they predict an earthquake? When they do, I'll consider believing them.'
So if QM says that we'll never be able to predict except in general terms, what's left for scientists?
That core truth regarding empirical prediction is true, but it depends what you're making a prediction about. QM makes predictions based on probability, so by nature it's never going to be deterministic and say that a particle is definitely at point x with speed v. You can't predict a chaotic mechanicals system either, like a doube pendulum or a three body problem. It's the same for Darwin that you mentioned - he (along with AR Wallace) discovered the mechanism by which species are formed - because he can't predict the drivers of this (environmental conditions etc) he can't predict the species. If animals were left to evolve in a closed world with known conditions (like Cat in Red Dwarf!), then you could predict things very well, but ultimately the selection mechanism, DNA mutation, is, as Jim said in the QM programme, random. For example, the need for fish to swim flat on the ocean floor has two solutions in nature: a ray, which swims flat to the ground with eyes on top, and a flatfish, which swims on its side with its eyes awkwardly pulled round to one side. Fish themselves, with their gills, are accompanied in their ocean environment by mammals without gills such as whales; the eye has evolved several times (mammals, cephalopods, insects etc), and so on.He and our biology teacher didn't get on too well and he was always having digs, little asides that he knew would get back to her. She was in love with Darwin's theory and our physics teacher once said something along the lines of 'I'll call Darwin a scientist when he predicts the next species. Up until then, he's merely guessing.'
He was the same with plate tectonics. 'Can they predict an earthquake? When they do, I'll consider believing them.'
So if QM says that we'll never be able to predict except in general terms, what's left for scientists?
There's an interesting piece of Nature this week on a growing move in Physics to remove theoretical physics from the empirical, so to exempt physics theories from needing to be tested. The piece was in the 'comment' section and they closed the piece with a quote that summed up their opinion on the matter: that "non empirical science is an oxymoron". I agree
Edited by RobM77 on Friday 19th December 09:49
I saw an interesting vid not too long ago that mentioned that we will need to program quantum computers to then write their own quantum programs/experiments which will then be able to return/interpret data that we can input in to maths for us to understand what is happening at the quantum level.
I think it mentioned that we are not too far away from that being able to happen.
(Was just trying to find the specific vid on youtube but have totally drawn a blank - there maybe some irony in that, given the subject
)
I think it mentioned that we are not too far away from that being able to happen.
(Was just trying to find the specific vid on youtube but have totally drawn a blank - there maybe some irony in that, given the subject
)RobM77 said:
That core truth regarding empirical prediction is true, but it depends what you're making a prediction about. QM makes predictions based on probability, so by nature it's never going to be deterministic and say that a particle is definitely at point x with speed v. You can't predict a chaotic mechanicals system either, like a doube pendulum or a three body problem. It's the same for Darwin that you mentioned - he (along with AR Wallace) discovered the mechanism by which species are formed - because he can't predict the drivers of this (environmental conditions etc) he can't predict the species. If animals were left to evolve in a closed world with known conditions (like Cat in Red Dwarf!), then you could predict things very well, but ultimately the selection mechanism, DNA mutation, is, as Jim said in the QM programme, random. For example, the need for fish to swim flat on the ocean floor has two solutions in nature: a ray, which swims flat to the ground with eyes on top, and a flatfish, which swims on its side with its eyes awkwardly pulled round to one side. Fish themselves, with their gills, are accompanied in their ocean environment by mammals without gills such as whales; the eye has evolved several times (mammals, cephalopods, insects etc), and so on.
There's an interesting piece of Nature this week on a growing move in Physics to remove theoretical physics from the empirical, so to exempt physics theories from needing to be tested. The piece was in the 'comment' section and they closed the piece with a quote that summed up their opinion on the matter: that "non empirical science is an oxymoron". I agree
Our physics teacher was only indulging in a little argumentum ad absurdum over Darwin, mainly, he said, to make us think, but I reckon he just liked to argue. He was adamant that a theory was always temporary. Some discovery would always come along that the originator of the current accepted truth missed which would fall outside the explanation and so require a new one.There's an interesting piece of Nature this week on a growing move in Physics to remove theoretical physics from the empirical, so to exempt physics theories from needing to be tested. The piece was in the 'comment' section and they closed the piece with a quote that summed up their opinion on the matter: that "non empirical science is an oxymoron". I agree
According to him the answer to his little ‘is Newton still right’ conundrum was that Newton was never right. And logically, of course, neither is/was Einstein. Yet both predicted, and, for the needs of the time, accurately. Yet even after that, I still believed Einstein rather than accepting it as a useful hypothesis until a better one came along. So in one way he predicted quantum mechanics by suggesting that we will never be able to prove everything.
As if in support of him, we had a history teacher who started off by saying to us all: Everything I am going to teach you is wrong. I know this because everything I was taught was wrong. And this was for something that had, by definition, happened.
My school had some excellent teachers. I’m still fascinated by history and science after all these years, thanks to their teaching.
Great two programmes can't wait for quantum pair entanglement to aid my god navigation!
Bumped into this just now http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-compl...
Bumped into this just now http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-compl...
There's a new vid out that attempts to explain quantum entanglement...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuvK-od647c
I'm still having issues with the final part and the use of the word 'random'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuvK-od647c
I'm still having issues with the final part and the use of the word 'random'.
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