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Owen Maroney worries that physicists have spent the better part of a century engaging in fraud.
Ever since they invented quantum theory in the early 1900s, explains Maroney, who is himself a physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, they have been talking about how strange it is — how it allows particles and atoms to move in many directions at once, for example, or to spin clockwise and anticlockwise simultaneously. But talk is not proof, says Maroney. “If we tell the public that quantum theory is weird, we better go out and test that's actually true,” he says. “Otherwise we're not doing science, we're just explaining some funny squiggles on a blackboard.”
It is this sentiment that has led Maroney and others to develop a new series of experiments to uncover the nature of the wavefunction — the mysterious entity that lies at the heart of quantum weirdness. On paper, the wavefunction is simply a mathematical object that physicists denote with the Greek letter psi (Ψ) — one of Maroney's funny squiggles — and use to describe a particle's quantum behaviour. Depending on the experiment, the wavefunction allows them to calculate the probability of observing an electron at any particular location, or the chances that its spin is oriented up or down. But the mathematics shed no light on what a wavefunction truly is. Is it a physical thing ? Or just a calculating tool for handling an observer's ignorance about the world ?
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @08:08AM
The real issue is that physicists, including yourself, act in attitude one way and when challenged become highly technical, backpedaling with frightening speed. Quantum theory is right, quantum theory explains this thing and that thing, but when pressed it is found that such statements are emotional in nature and not factual. Really with all the high-flying statements about quantum theory ending encryption as we know it and the like without the slightest bit of real-world evidence except squiggly lines on a chalkboard, it certainly does begin to look fraudulent, doubly so when grand statements are reversed through technical language such as what you are using now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @01:13PM
The bigger problem is that you don't really understand science in the grand scheme of things. Real science is highly technical and very nuanced. You need to talk in very precise language. It is people like you who demand sweeping generalizations, then run around crying the emperor has no clothes because your overgeneralizations don't apply to a specific case. The grand irony is your casting stones at quantum theory by using electronic devices that could only have been invented based upon that theory. You need to keep in mind that sometimes when you don't understand something, that doesn't mean there is something wrong with that something, but rather it has more to do with your personal shortcomings in that area.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Friday May 22 2015, @04:07PM
You completely failed to read/understand what I wrote. As I very clearly state, there is nothing wrong with QM. I cast no stones, and in fact the very example you appear to have misread or misinterpreted was included specifically because of the direct success of predictions made by QM.
It appears you're projecting, and I dismiss ad hominem attacks. Please make at least three attempts to read and understand what I wrote before you post again.
"Real science" isn't just impenetrable technological terms, spiced up with run-on sentences and bad grammar. It's at least as important to properly and correctly convey the findings to the public. Randal Munroe's new book Thing Explainer uses just most common 100 words in the English language to explain very technical things. He's close to taking things to the absurd, but the point is that you can explain these things to lay people and that empowers both the work and the public.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @07:07PM
Are you sure you are responding to me, or did you mean to respond to the AC before me (the one who answered you directly)? You could help by reading my response to that AC and see that I am generally in agreement with you. However, you might need to read it three times to see that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @01:44AM
Thus my criticism of not using precise language to make claims (the attitudinal part), then using them to defend claims. We are saying the same thing but were moderated in different directions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @01:58PM
You fell victim to new-age hocus focus quantum this relativictic that. Take a basic course on QM and you'd be better equipped to smell out the bullshit in pop media.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Friday May 22 2015, @03:57PM
Which is... exactly what I did. And I have.
Methinks you failed to read or understand what I wrote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @05:56PM
Calm down, fool - you got mixed up who's responding to whom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @07:10PM
I don't think he is viewing at the -1 level because he went off on me when I replied to the AC who is currently sitting at -1. Good to see he pops off on others too. I was starting to think it was just me he didn't like. Boy, with friends like that . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @07:16PM
Methinks you shouldn't so vocally cast aspersions on other's reading comprehension when you demonstrate multiple times that the comprehension issue is with yourself (Protip: make sure you can see ALL the comments AND WHO WROTE THEM before firing off condescending responses). Oh, and, er, ad hominem!!! (I felt compelled to throw that in as it seems to be what you are supposed to say to cut off someone's argument).