An Improvement Upon Heisenberg's Uncertainty Theorem

Mick Mick writes "This New Scientist article claims that Heisenberg's uncertainty theorem has been improved upon by replacing an inequality with an equation. It also says that the Schrödinger equation has been derived from this new equation. Google found the paper here."

Comments

5-7-5

[aozilla]

Heisenberg was right
That God really does play dice
With the universe

Re:Physics fascinates me

[Jerf]

You want to fully comprehend this? Unless you are a highly motivated mathematical mega-genius (and you can't drop either criterion... merely being a mega-genius won't help if you're not motivated), a good University education is the only way to go. Even if you are a highly motivated mathematical mega-genius, you'll still want to use the actual textbooks you'd use in a Uni course series. . . be prepared to read more then just a couple of books, and be prepared to learn a hell of a lot of math.

And if math isn't easy for you (and I mean math, not namby-pamby arithematic, I mean real math, like topology and geometry and all forms of calculus), and you aren't truly seriously motivated to spend years on this, even the Uni won't be enough; most people drop out of the serious Physics courses!

I can't give you a reading list; all I can say is if anyone else gives you one, and you can understand the books past the third chapter (assuming you know little/nothing about the subject, which I'm inferring from not trusting Uni educations right where they are the absolute strongest (hard sciences)), you're getting a "Slashdot" understanding, i.e., absolute crap. This isn't really a reading list problem; more of a reading bookshelf thing.

Quantum mechanics drives PhDs nuts; you probably aren't going to just "pick it up". And I say this as a guy who "picks things up" pretty routinely (not just computer stuff). You have to know your limits, and if you're asking, this is extremely highly likely this is beyond yours. (And if you have trouble understanding that sentence literally, don't even bother starting... statistically, there's a chance I'm wrong but I wouldn't bet, well, anything on that remote chance.)

Now, if you don't mind being a poser, as I am, then there are lots of great choices; the best thing to do is hike on down to a good physical bookstore, peruse the science shelves, and look for something that looks to be at your level, or better, slightly above. But don't think for a second you're getting anything more then the cliff notes of the cliff notes of a summary of quantum physics. (And highly opinionated ones, too; when physicist run out of math to talk about in popular-interest books, they tend to start shooting their mouths off and irresponsibly speculating wildly about cosmology. It makes good copy, but frankly, they're only slightly better equipped to speculate about the nature of the universe then you are; if anything, they get to be even more wildly wrong. You gotta seperate the physicist's wanking from the real facts.)

A reading list [Re:Physics fascinates me]

[skwang]

Okay, you want a reading list. I have one for you.

First brush up on your classical mechanics, you will need to study Lagragians and the Hamitonian formulation as they are both very important for the formation of Quantum Mechanics. Lets see, you could try:

• Marion and Thorton, Classical Dynamics, Saunders College Publ., Philadelphia, 1995.
• Goldstein, Classical Mechanics 2nd ed. , Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1980.

For a good mathematical methods reference read:

• Arfkin and Weber, Mathematical Methods for Physicists,Harcourt / Academic Press, 2000.

You want to rigorously learn all of Electricity and Magentism; there is only one source:

• Jackson, J.D., Classical Electrodynamics 3rd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Now you have to start on Quantum Mechanics. There are many different books you could try; here are some of them:

• Sakurai, Modern Quantum Mechanics
• Dirac, Principles of Quantum Mechanics
• Cohen-Tannoudji, Diu and Laloe, Quantum Mechanics
• Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics

Now that you have learned Quantum Machanics you can move onto some field theory:

• Riazzudin & Fayazzudin, A Modern Introduction to Particle Theory, World Scientific.
• Mohapatra, Unification and Supersymmetry, Springer Veriag.
• Marshak, Conceptual Foundations of Particle Physics, World Scientific.

At this point you may want to deviate slightly and read some books on relativity and cosmology

• Misner, Wheeler and Thorne, Gravitation,W H Freeman & Co, 1973.
• Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology,Princeton Univ Press, 1993.

When I started college, I chose physics because I liked it. I soon realized that the physics you learn at a univeristy is not the physics a physicists does. Instead, everything you learn as an undergraduate classes are tools. These tools are to be used in graduate school as a foundation for more complex concepts.

It's been four years and I am about to go off to grad school to study elementry particle physics (experimental). I don't claim to have read any of the books above, but I hope it might show you that if you want to "*fully* comprehend stuff like particle physics, quantum phenomena, etc." it is not easy. Most popular science books you will find on a bookshelf do not contain much substance. Many are good reads. Brian Green's Elegant Universe and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History are good examples that are constantly recommended here on slashdot. But if you really (and I mean really) want to learn physics, you can do one of two things:

1. Read all the books above while doing most if not all the problems.
2. Spend a good amount of time (most people spend four undergraduate years) learning the "tools of the trade" and then spend five to six years in graduate studies, researching a single topic.

My purpose of this post is not to be harsh, but realistic. I am glad you are fasinated with physics. My fasination led me to the point where I want to spend years in school studying it. But I think many people don't realize that the subject is really difficult, and that it takes years of university education to even begin to understand it.