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100th Anniversary of Quantum Physics
EricR writes "On December 14, 1900, Max Planck presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets, which he called "quanta." Today is the 100th birthday of Quantum Physics."
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Through the wave of all the 2002-1900=100 jokes here, I would like to salute Mankinds greatest discovery, Qauntum Physics. This shows teh flexibility of the human brain, able to work with 4 dimensions (Relativity) to now (26 dimensions), and even something as strange as Quantum Mechanics, that defies our imagination and relies purely on reasoning, yet so powerful, it gave us the best of the last century's inventions, including the device you're staring at.
Quantum Mechanics is more than the kind of Physics that allows engineers to make locomotives. Its even more than what allowed us to land on the moon. As a warmer, we get nukes and the mighty computer. This physics promises us glimpses of the time the Universe was born, the quantum computer, time travel, teleportation, and many other things we have'nt imagined yet.
Physics has always been the foundation of knowledge, and it was replaced 100 years ago (+- 2 years). I think we're in for much bigger surprises this century.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Well god bless. the development of quantum mechanics has allowed mankind a look into how strange the universe can really be.
As Hawking said (to paraphrase)... not only does God play dice but some times he throws them where no one can see.
One of the things i find so funny about it is how much physicist seem to hate it, even the ones that helped found it!
However it is the most accurate theory in modern physics, which is why it has become known as the standard model.Perhaps string theory or M-theory can help make it a bit more astetic... which seems to be what most physicist go for these days.
Meh.
We don't ever 'throw a theory out the window' in physics unless it was completely useless and silly to begin with.
Newton was, conceptually, completely wrong on some important points when he came up with his ideas of gravity. Did we throw his theory out the window when Einstein came up with Relativity? Heck no! Any useful scientific theory predicts something. Things like Newtonian physics are extremely useful, and to a large degree, correct at describing every day phenomenon. It was a requirement on the theory of relativity that it in some way incorporate, or reduce to, Newtonian physics.
Any GUT theory will have to do this. We won't really be throwing anything out the window, just adding to our knowledge. In same cases (eg Newton), even though the older theory is wrong, it is still very widely used because at the velocities, masses, and energies of every day life on earth, it is quite accurate.
If we find some way to replace QM, or incorporate gravity and QM, then relativity and the Shroedinger equation will both have to somehow be a part of the new theory, because the both accurately describe the universe.
Tim
-- Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings
Whats ironic is that Boltzmann first came up with this idea, and Planck was one of his primary detractors. Boltzmann, despondent that nobody found his description of a probabilistic interpretation of things interesting, killed himself.
Not long after, Planck came forward using Boltzmann's ideas. There is some evidence to show that Planck's true hope was that he would be proved wrong -- he didn't like the quanta or probability interpretation at all.
Tim
-- Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings
.. Just had to share that.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Photons are definitely not the most understood quanta. The photons that Einstein postulate were nothing more than resonant chunks of electromagnetic radiation, i.e., they are semiclassical entities that you get when you quantize the motion of electrons around a nucleus, but not the electromagnetic field. The em-field itself is continuous, but the electrons just have a very curious taste and only eat certain chunk of light.
The "real" photons are the particles that you get when you really quantize the em-field as well. This is the theory called Quantum Electrodynamics. These photons are excitations of the light field. With this I mean, that in the absense of light, you still have the light field, it's just an empty field. To make a photon with a certain wavelength, you just excite that mode in the light field, in the same way you would excite a standing wave on a guitar string by picking it.
As you can see, to understand photons, you have to know Quantum Electrodynamics. Although I work on an everyday basis with quantum mechanics, I do not in fact know how to use Quantum Electrodynamics (because outside of high energy physics, there's not much use for it). Which means that I do not understand the details about photons. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would say that if a publishing theoretical quantum physicist doesn't understand photons, they can hardly be called "the most understood".
Ofcourse in the Einstein language of photons, I agree with you. They are very boring quanta *grin*.
p.s. Crediting Planck for laying down the fundamental parts of quantum theory is historically incorrect. Planck didn't understand quantization in the modern sense of the word and did not even realize the his mathematical trick might have fundamental consequences. He has always been a thermodynamic kind of guy and should be appreciated for his work in that field.