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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?
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:14PM
"who would care to explain this in layman's terms?"
I'll give it a try. Everyone else went in too deep.
In the mass media "quantum" is meaningless technobabble for "it solves all our problems" or "its new" or "its expensive" or ironically "its really big". However it actually does have a meaning and what it means to scientists is much like different ball games have different rules, there's a set of rules for really little things that unfortunately doesn't look a whole lot like the set of rules for human sized things or the ruleset for black hole sized things, unfortunately. You could get a lot of soylent news karma if you could unite all those rules successfully into one super set of rules. An a Nobel prize or two. Good luck with that.
Anyway physicists get all pissed off at "mimics" and "analogies" so when something that should run under the "human size" rules appears to run under the "tiny stuff" rules, historically they either explain it away into nothingness or get a Nobel prize by appearing on this wikipedia page (no kidding):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroscopic_quantum_phenomena [wikipedia.org]
So the guys in the article are doing weird things with droplets of levitating oil (which in itself is kinda cool) and pretty soon they could end up on the wikipedia page above with their own freshly minted Nobel prizes.
Or another possibility, is they might get the same prize and show up on a different wikipedia page that I'm too lazy to link to as yet another of the competing interpretations of the quantum mechanics rules, and perhaps their interpretation of their rules will be so good that will end the arguments. Or maybe not.
Or it'll all turn out to be statistical anomalies meaning nothing other than yet another pentium floating point division algo bug or they've built a really cool analog fluid computer that slowly solves quantum problems (our traditional digital computers obviously can solve the same problems, better and faster, but this is still a cool hack) In which case they'll still probably get their wikipedia article but maybe only get tenure or write a ton of interesting papers.
If you want a really good explanation instead of my half ass one, you're going to need to email bomb that XKCD Munroe guy and tell him to take his best shot in the style of the world famous "Up goer five" comic.