Slashdot Mirror
Quantum Physics Just Got Less Complicated
wabrandsma sends this news from Phys.org:
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 Center 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.
Wow, loving all the ACs calling this obvious, who clearly didn't even make it to the abstract! "Such wave-particle duality relations (WPDRs) are often thought to be conceptually inequivalent to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, although this has been debated."
Clearly, all you armchair physicists need to set those ivory-tower morons straight!
Here we show that [wave-particle duality relations] correspond precisely to a modern formulation of the uncertainty principle in terms of entropies, namely the min- and max-entropies. This observation unifies two fundamental concepts in quantum mechanics. Furthermore, it leads to a robust framework for deriving novel WPDRs by applying entropic uncertainty relations to interferometric models.
So they're looking at it in terms of entropies, and when they do, it resolves a debate about whether WPDRs are equivalent to the Uncertainty Principle AND generates new WPDRs.
There is a wide gulf between suspecting two phenomena are related, and having discovered the rigorous mathematical framework that lets you translate discoveries from one theoretical framework to the other without losing information.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'd love to read a real comment (yeah, I know, it's almost like I'm new here) from someone who is actually capable of understanding the math here. It would be great to see a reasonable discussion on the actual implications here.
As to people saying "that's obvious" -- what you can intuit and what you can prove are not the same thing. The only thing prove by a "that's obvious" comment is that the person posting it doesn't have a clue.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
and arguably in some sense can't be the way Nature does what it does
citation needed.
It is approximately right, but completely wrong. These are not mutually exclusive. Arguing approximations are perfectly accurate is itself a grave error.
We do use Newtonian Physics, not because they are correct (they are not) but rather because their approximations are within tolerances of certain deviations from accurate.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No, it doesn't eliminate the dualism. Pilot wave theories are a subtype of hidden variable theories and thus were proven wrong by Bell inequalities. The fact that some fluid dynamics systems behave kinda like quantum systems (and only qualitatively so!) means nothing.
It is approximately right, but completely wrong. These are not mutually exclusive. Arguing approximations are perfectly accurate is itself a grave error.
You're abusing the semantics of "right" and "wrong" in a scientific context. A theory or law is "right" if it agrees with observations or predictions to within the accuracy of measurements. It is "wrong" if it doesn't. On that basis, Newtonian physics is "right" over a vast domain of experience, but is "wrong" in situations involving atomic particles or near-light speeds. It is not "completely wrong" -- not at all.
BTW, nobody says approximations are perfectly accurate. That's the same as saying they're perfect, and that would mean they cease to be approximations.
We do use Newtonian Physics, not because they are correct (they are not) but rather because their approximations are within tolerances of certain deviations from accurate.
Again, you abuse semantics. Scientists do not use the word "correct" in the sense of an absolute truth, but rather in the sense of what works to make accurate predictions. Science endeavors to shrink-wrap the tightest possible boundary around "absolute" truth, but does not claim to know what that truth is.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
There's no mysticism in quantum mechanics. It's pretty simple and mathematically consistent. All of the mysticism comes from popularizations of quantum mechanics. Bohmian mechanics is an unnecessary complicated interpretation of the same physical models.
While we're at it, the Second Law of Thermodynamics must be wrong because I'd like a perpetual motion machine and conservation of momentum must get temporarily suspended when someone's about to be run over by a truck.
Also, determinism doesn't conflict with free will. Determinism is a concept in physics and free will is a concept in law and philosophy. If you try to contrast them, you'll end up equating free will with randomness: you didn't write your message based on your beliefs which you've formed based on your character and experience (since that would be deterministic), but rather it's the equivalent of "cat /dev/random | strings".
No, but even if it was, it in no way would disprove it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.