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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."
Would it be the 102nd? Or am I missing something here.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Gotta love quantum physics...
Check out the University of Chicago's Physics Department for all the information you could want to know about modern research in quantum physics.
Oh, and December 2, 2002 was the 60th Anniversy of the first self-sustaining controlled release of nuclear energy
I didn't understand the impact of uncertainty until I saw The Crying Game.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
Of course describing energy as quanta is just a way for us to understand how things work. Anytime we discover and present a theory as to how things work in the universe we are presenting a picture or an incomplete slice of the whole (as how we understand it). Sure it helps us understand better, but we have to realize that it is not the way things work out per say (as a whole). Meandering on: A GUT theory is an admiral thing to strive for, but we must understand what it must take to come to such a comprehensive theory. All present theories will have to be thrown out of the window. They will never make cohesive integral sense incorporated into a GUT. Each time we delve further into quantumn particles we find more and more suprises. Likewise with peering into the vastness of space.
It is all so amazing and we must realize that any theories we come up with will never be able to describe things as a whole. It is basically the universe trying to understand itself...when it already knows. Dang....now I am getting into Zen philosophy so I will jsut shut up becasue I don't know where this is leading towards.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Since I goofed on the last post, I'll add the obligatory links to:
CERN
The Enrico Fermi Institute
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratories
Agronne National Laboratories
Los Alamos National Laboratories
Yep, all the information you could want on modern Quantum Physics.
Happy Birthday Quantum Physics! :)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
There is a finite probability that this will be modded up to 5.
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
this page talks about some other interesting scientific events that have their anniversary today:
1986 - First non-stop, non-refuelled flight around the world
1967 - Announcement of first synthesis of biologically active DNA
1962 - Mariner transmits information from first-ever rendezvous with Venus
It all goes downhill from first post
As you can doubtless see from a second look, it all fits into place that Planck's announcement, which lead to other scientists further investigating the full ramifications of the theory, was the conception of Quantum Physics as we know and love it today. Whilst the title is obviously innacurate, the observation that today is Quantum Physics' 100th birthday is clearly correct, as it is broadly accepted that models of reality have a 2 year gestation period- a similar duration to elephants, I believe.
Sadly, though, Quantum Physics has not been too lucky in love, having had occasional brief flings with 50's icon Relativity, whom everyone would have liked to see it matched up with, but it never quite seemed to work out for them- it seems they just had too many differences.
Although we all wish Quantum Physics well, and it seems surely impossible that such a great catch would never get married (who knows, maybe good old Q.P will be able to patch things up with Relativity after all), it shall obviously not be having any anniversaries for some time yet.
Hope this clears everything up,
Tomble
Be careful! New moon tonight.
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft - [ Translate this page ] ...
n
Max-Planck-Institute betreiben Grundlagenforschung in den Natur-, Bio-
und Geisteswissenschaften im Dienste der Allgemeinheit. Insbesondere
Description: Übersicht aller Institute in Deutschland.
Category: World>Deutsch>Wissenschaft>Forschungseinrichtunge
www.mpg.de/ - 20k - Dec. 13, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages
MPIfM ... Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science Max ...
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR MATHEMATIK
Vivatsgasse
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Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik: Home Page
... International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science (IMPRS) PhD Programme ...
g en
and fellowships for graduates of all nationalities European Union Marie
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Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik, Garching - [ Translate this page ]
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Planck
... Max Planck came from an academic family, his father being professor of law at ...
Kiel and both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been professors of
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Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen - Home
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German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften eV Currently
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... The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies is an institute ...
for advanced research in the social sciences. It builds a bridge
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Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik - [ Translate this page ] ...
Das Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik untersucht die physikalischen Grundlagen
für ein Fusionskraftwerk, das - ähnlich wie die Sonne - Energie aus der
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Max Planck Institut fuer Radioastronomie Bonn - [ Translate this page ]g en
[english]. Aktuell, Das Institut. Forschung, Mitarbeiter.
Öffentlichkeit, Intranet. webmaster@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de.
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As such, there is a risk of discussions developing that involve people talking out of their
completely uninformed ass. Some of the most common symptoms of Quantum Ass-Talking Syndrome (QATS) involve the following topics:
If you feel the urge to discuss these topics, we advise that you immediately consult somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about. If further trouble develops, a dose of reality is recommended.
Wow, I guess that means that this is the 2-year anniversary of that story being first submitted to /. I'm glad to see it finally made it on to the front page. Congrats, EricR. :)
The wavelength distribution of blackbody radiation had been determined some (many?) years earlier. However, no one could figure out how to to explain how it could come about.
Somehow, Planck worked out an equation which yielded that wavelength distribution quite precisely. I believe that it is correct that his model was a "what if" conjecture about energy exisiting in discrete packets.
As discussed, the rest is history.
53 years of passing time has dimmed my memory, but I'm pretty sure that is the story.
Republican Majority Leader, Trent Lott, made a birthday speech congratulating Quantum Physics with its 100 year anniversary, and fondly recalled when during the planning stages of the Manhattan project, scientists were considering building a weapon of mass destruction based on Quantum Physical principles.
"I can tell you now, I wish they'd picked Quantum Physics," Lott said, "If they did, I'm sure the world as we know it would be a better place for white people to live."
Are you on drug(s)?!! Why not?
It might be possilbe to use entanglement to send [instantaneous] information by using spin states, but until they solve the issue of seeing the states without changing them, much the same issue with quantum computing
God is teasing us. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. QP is just like this all over. If I was religious, I just might interpret this as a big Neener Neener Neener from the beyond. It is the biggest sign of a Teasing God since the discovery that zits appear mostly on the body parts most visible to the public. Does the act of observing a face cause zits? Nobel in there for somebody.
Table-ized A.I.
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
Wow... I don't even know where to start...
"it doesn't even matter how far apart they are in the universe; they'll always do the same things at the same times no matter where they are in the universe"
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Quantum entanglement says that the two particles *started off the same (or opposite or some such relationship of the initial states). It follows, then that if you do not *observe* either particle for quite some time, and take the two of them far distant from one another, then the instant that you *observe* the state of one particle, you immediately *know* the state of the other particle (wherever it is).
This gives at first pass the illusion that you have gotten information at faster than the speed of light... I mean, you did just *instantaneously* learn the state of a particle far, far away, right? That's gotta mean that you communcated with that thing way over there, right? No. Not at all.
Now, what makes this interesting is the fact that quantum mechanics tells us that if you don't *observe* either particle's state, then neither particle has actually "picked" a state yet. So, it's as though the one particle *told* the other one that "hey I was observed at state A, so you must now occupy state B". So, now it appears that information has traveled faster than the speed of light... and I won't argue that point, because last I knew better scientists than me were still duking that one out.
However, one thing that anyone with a basic understanding of this can agree upon is the fact that there is no way to *use* the possible information transfer involved in the collapse of a wave function to TRANSMIT INFORMATION. Why? Well, there is no way to observe a wave function directly. You can only measure some operator on a wave function (like energy, position, spin), and by doing so, you collapse the wave function into an eigenfunction of that operator. However there is no way to tell whether the eigenfunction you observe is the result of *your* observation or someone elses. In other words, you can't tell if you collapsed the wave function or if someone else did, and quantum entanglement doesn't *do* anything other than pre-collapse the wave-fcuntion for you.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
.. Just had to share that.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
...will it change?
Here goes...
One of the odd phenomena observed in quantum mechanics is the creation of tandem photons from certain kinds of light sources that have the odd characteristic that their dynamic properties are very strongly correlated. That is, if two observers measure the polarization of one photon each, they will observe the same value for the polarization. Quantum mechanically speaking however, if, say, the two photons are polarized at some angle perpendicular to its line of travel, and you set up your measurement apparatus to measure the polarization at a different angle, then QM does not tell you what polarization value you will observe, but gives you a probability. The observed polarization for one photon is essentially random, but the distribution of values for many photons will follow the probability predicted.
Now several physicists, notably Einstein, took this bizarre feat of the correlated photons to mean that the polarization values for the two photons had to be dependent on some hidden variables that QM just didn't know about, but that became apparent in the experiment, which became known as the Einstein-Podalsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox.
Now, in the '60s, along came Bell, who was working on the EPR paradox hoping to prove Einstein et al correct. Bell's inequality reasons what the maximum possible correlation between the two photons should be, assuming that once the two are created, the one cannot affect the other. The problem is, the EPR paradox, when carried out in real experiments, has been shown to violate this inequality: the two photons are much more strongly correlated than they have any right to be according to a hidden-variables-locality-preserved interpretation of QM.
In the mathematical description of QM, this behavior has to do with the fact that in QM the two photons are not treated separately, but must be modelled by one function in hilbert space. The two photons are "phase entagled". Einstein particularly disliked this property of QM because it seems to throw out the principle of locality (no action-at-a-distance), although currently I believe the accepted idea is that no "information" can be sent non-locally using entaglement. I'll leave those questions to a real physicist.
See EPR Paradox
"When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me"