Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below
Quantum theory
- Thread starter anthrax
- Start date
"On the side of Niels Bohr, we have the Copenhagen interpretation. This can be described as syncretic, with basic concepts the collapse of the wavefunction, nondeterminism given by the Born probability, and the correspondence principle. On the side of Albert Einstein, we have realism, determinism, causality, and locality."
Ahh, okay. I see some of that in non-text physics books, but never came across the debate in school anywhere. It's probably more of a science history thing.
All I know is that involving Einstein and QM was basically a failure, lol.
If one side is arguing probability and one is arguing against it, the side arguing probability would be the credited response.
Ahh, okay. I see some of that in non-text physics books, but never came across the debate in school anywhere. It's probably more of a science history thing.
All I know is that involving Einstein and QM was basically a failure, lol.
If one side is arguing probability and one is arguing against it, the side arguing probability would be the credited response.
anthrax said:
I think Bohr, and I think of his stupid atom picture they still teach kids to this day, lol. Probably 'cause I was in chem for so long. I always forget to put him in the physics category, lol.
Schrodinger was quantum mechanics. He is the father (err... maybe grandfather, lol) of QM as far as I am concerned.
samoth said:
Yep, it look like Einstein was plain wrong on this one
On the other side "The difficulty is not that quantum mechanics is probabilistic—that is something we apparently just have to live with. The real difficulty is that it is also deterministic, or more precisely, that it combines a probabilistic interpretation with deterministic dynamics."
Not sure what that means though ....
anthrax said:Yep, it look like Einstein was plain wrong on this one
On the other side "The difficulty is not that quantum mechanics is probabilistic—that is something we apparently just have to live with. The real difficulty is that it is also deterministic, or more precisely, that it combines a probabilistic interpretation with deterministic dynamics."
Not sure what that means though ....
Eeeerrrrgggg... umm, it has to do with, well, things having predetermined fates. Stuff gets more mind-bending with this junk, and the sense is solely in the mathematics.
Lemme see if I can find something explaining it well...
What it boils down to is that you can never know all the information about something such as a proton at one time. You can either know the momentum fully or the position fully, but never both at the same time. But you can know something about both at the same time and that is what the Heisenber Uncertainty principle is about.
One of the newer fields is QED or Quantum Electro Dynamics.
Another interesting tidbit is that at the moment 3 of the four forces have been unified into a single equation. Gravity is the only force not yet combined with the other three to form the single unified theory.
It was rumored that Einstein had indeed been able to do this and was freightened at not only the simplicity with which it was made, but at the implications it held as well so he destroyed his work so no one could duplicate it.
One of the newer fields is QED or Quantum Electro Dynamics.
Another interesting tidbit is that at the moment 3 of the four forces have been unified into a single equation. Gravity is the only force not yet combined with the other three to form the single unified theory.
It was rumored that Einstein had indeed been able to do this and was freightened at not only the simplicity with which it was made, but at the implications it held as well so he destroyed his work so no one could duplicate it.
The cat-in-the-box or wave function thing is referring to the fact that the person doing the observing forces the wave function to collapse into a state determined by the user. In other words, we create our own reality as we go.
Star Trek the Next Generation had an episode about that and it was very interesting and the science they were portraying was not for the average trekkie fan. It was probably the most in depth show involving quantum theory and the theories of Schroedinger and Heisenberg
Star Trek the Next Generation had an episode about that and it was very interesting and the science they were portraying was not for the average trekkie fan. It was probably the most in depth show involving quantum theory and the theories of Schroedinger and Heisenberg
Here's a thread from PF about deterministic quantum mechanics. Hopefully it'll help a bit:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showth...ght=determinism+in+quantum+mechanical+systems
http://www.physicsforums.com/showth...ght=determinism+in+quantum+mechanical+systems
chesty said:
Exactly... the cat's fate is pre-determined for as long as someone cares to resist the urge to open the box and look thereby collapsing the wave function.
"Determinism" can mean way too many things from literature to philosophy to semantics, so I'm trying to get at [what I think is] exactly what he's addressing.
anthrax said:
Mainly, we weren't ready for a unification theory at that time. Hell, I don't think we're even close to ready now.
Einstein was looking for something waaaaayyy ahead of his time... the answers just weren't there, and they still aren't there today, lol.
Even if the direction we're heading today will lead to a GUT (which I doubt it will...), the mathematical methods used currently didn't even exist when Einstein was looking for unification.
Similar threads
