Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 01 2014, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the quantum-reality-is-just-classical-reality-in-really-tiny-bits? dept.

For nearly a century, "reality" has been a murky concept. The laws of quantum physics seem to suggest that particles spend much of their time in a ghostly state, lacking even basic properties such as a definite location and instead existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Only when a particle is measured does it suddenly materialize, appearing to pick its position as if by a roll of the dice. This idea that nature is inherently probabilistic -- that particles have no hard properties, only likelihoods, until they are observed -- is directly implied by the standard equations of quantum mechanics. But now a set of surprising experiments with fluids has revived old skepticism about that world-view. The bizarre results are fueling interest in an almost forgotten version of quantum mechanics, one that never gave up the idea of a single, concrete reality.

In a groundbreaking experiment, the Paris researchers used the droplet setup to demonstrate single- and double-slit interference. They discovered that when a droplet bounces toward a pair of openings in a damlike barrier, it passes through only one slit or the other, while the pilot wave passes through both. Repeated trials show that the overlapping wavefronts of the pilot wave steer the droplets to certain places and never to locations in between — an apparent replication of the interference pattern in the quantum double-slit experiment that Feynman described as "impossible ... to explain in any classical way." And just as measuring the trajectories of particles seems to "collapse" their simultaneous realities, disturbing the pilot wave in the bouncing-droplet experiment destroys the interference pattern.

Droplets can also seem to "tunnel" through barriers, orbit each other in stable "bound states," and exhibit properties analogous to quantum spin and electromagnetic attraction. When confined to circular areas called corrals, they form concentric rings analogous to the standing waves generated by electrons in quantum corrals. They even annihilate with subsurface bubbles, an effect reminiscent of the mutual destruction of matter and antimatter particles.

How about it Soylentils. Is there anyone here who groks Quantum Mechanics who would care to explain this in layman's terms? What shortcomings and/or benefits do you see with this theory?

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 01 2014, @01:33PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @01:33PM (#62452)

    If true it would once again push things back towards Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe" statement, wouldn't it?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Tuesday July 01 2014, @01:59PM

    by pe1rxq (844) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @01:59PM (#62460) Homepage

    Yes and no.
    If I understand the article correctly everything would be predictable, but there are to many unknowns and some of them are beyond our reach to measure.

    So it would look like someone is rolling dice, but in reality the game is rigged and we are just not capable of measuring how they are loaded...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @02:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @02:07PM (#62464)

      Wouldn't that be the case even if reality was probabilistic? How can you differentiate between determinism and a chain wave collapse reaction?

      • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday July 01 2014, @09:51PM

        by Geotti (1146) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @09:51PM (#62718) Journal

        With one it's possible to know the rules, with the other it's ultimately random (tm).

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday July 01 2014, @03:44PM

      by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @03:44PM (#62517) Journal

      Yes and no

      Until someone looks at the reply more closely, than it will collapse to Yes or no.

      SCNR

      --
      Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
    • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:00PM

      by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:00PM (#62614)

      "If I understand the article correctly everything would be predictable"

      That's mere black and white thinking and not necessarily true. In an infinitely sized universe with infinite variables, you'll never know them all and be able to fully predict absolutely everything. As it stands though science is pretty darned good at predicting most things, so it fits.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 01 2014, @08:30PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday July 01 2014, @08:30PM (#62679) Journal

      No, it would still be someone rolling dice. It's just that they would be pure classical dice: Unpredictable because you cannot know the parameters to infinite precision.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.