Quantum prime numbers

kshegunov

People work on finding tests for this theory.

So? They may be misguided, this doesn't prove or disprove a theory. It's either right or wrong. If it's wrong it either can be corrected or it can't. In the latter case it's just discarded. People worked on the idea that aether is somehow involved with light transmission, this by itself doesn't make it correct.

Some would say that quantum behaviour shows that "parallel universes" actually is the repeatable test/theory/verification/explanation for the behaviour observed.

Some would be wrong. :)

JonB

@kshegunov

Some would be wrong. :)

Well, I've yet to read a better proposed explanation for quantum phenomena like Young's Slit or Feynman's Path Integral, or even Schroedinger's Cat, so there! Maybe, just maybe, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then....

sierdzio

Does the explanation matter, though? If numbers add up, theory works and gets confirmed experimentally, then that's good. Humans do no need to intuitively understand it.

JonB

@sierdzio
Sorry, I could not agree with you less on this. To me this is like saying that Thor sends thunderbolts rather than physical processes cause them, because the Thor theory "works". I accept that with Bohr's "Shut up and compute" "interpretation" we can get on with the necessary technology, but I believe science is about more than that; and eventually, hopefully, a better understanding will open up new vistas we would not get without it.

BTW, I never intimated that our understanding should be intuitive. Much of physics etc. has been about supplying non- intuitive explanations, and we have worked at understanding these to our eternal betterment.

J.Hilk

@JonB said in Quantum prime numbers:

Maybe, just maybe, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then....

it could be anything until you measure it. And I know, if those results indicate, that it's a duck-robot you'll say the measuring changed the result
;-)

JonB

@J.Hilk
Firstly, for as-yet-unknown reasons, duck-robots will not collapse the wave function, only real flesh-and-blood ducks will....

And secondly, I don't have any "measurement problems" or "measuring changed the result" issues. Nothing got changed, instead I simply discovered my current consciousness happens to be in the universe where the duck quacked left rather than right. An interpretation with which my other infinite selves in parallel universes agree, and another bunch of my infinite selves disagree....

;-)

kshegunov

@JonB said in Quantum prime numbers:

duck-robots will not collapse the wave function

And here we have a crux of sorts. The wave function does not collapse per se, and moreover wave functions aren't real, both metaphorically and mathematically. The second one is also the reason you can't ever measure a wave function, nor any of its prescribed properties; it's imaginary (pun intended)!

Well, I've yet to read a better proposed explanation for quantum phenomena like Young's Slit or Feynman's Path Integral, or even Schroedinger's Cat, so there! Maybe, just maybe, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then ...

Young's experiment shows what you observe, which is not the state of the system but the averaged out of all the photons (electrons, neturons, etc.) passing through the slit. As a matter of fact this has been replicated by using an electron gun that fires single photons and the result is exactly the same (after enough time to acquire enough events). Pretty cool, right?

The path integral is the same idea - getting all the possibilities and averaging them out, that is a single particle does not behave in deterministic fashion, it's the averaged you can observe and measure.

And the similarly with Schrödinger's cat - until you measure something the state of the system is undetermined, that is to say it exists in a superposition of its pure states. When you measure it you break the coherence as the system is no longer conservative and the state collapses in one of the two possible pure states. It's an illustration more than anything.

The uncertainty principle is actually nothing QM specific. If you account that the momentum is the Fourier image of the coordinate(s), you're probably going to realize that there's an uncertainty principle in good ol' electronics:
Take a signal and do itss Fourier transform, what's the spectrum at a specific time of that signal? Nobody can say. The spectrum of the signal pertains to the whole time, not to a specific point. One point of the spectrum relates to the frequency you'd observe if you had an infinitely long signal. So it's not hard to realize that dirac's delta (an infintely short impulse) generates all frequencies equally and vice versa - a dirac's delta as a spectrum just means a constant signal.

sierdzio

@JonB said in Quantum prime numbers:

@sierdzio
Sorry, I could not agree with you less on this. To me this is like saying that Thor sends thunderbolts rather than physical processes cause them, because the Thor theory "works".

That's not what I meant. Ideas are tested and they work, this is different than saying "Thor did it". It's rather "Thor did it, and here's the proof".

What I mean was rather to say that the Universe is under no obligation to make sense to us. Thus, I view these quantum-related ideas similar to wave vs. particle - particles are both waves and particles, and it does not make sense, but that's just how nature works. In "reality" it only does not make sense to us, because we lack a good analogy for it in our "big" world. It's us who lack the proper dictionary.

And in any case, an "explanation" is always over-simplified. "Lies to children", as Ian Stewart says. They are just tools to get us to some better understanding of the phenomena, but they are not true and not right, for the most part. The equations are.

... eh I have a feeling I'm not explaining this properly and you'll misunderstand me again :D Well, no problem.

BTW, I never intimated that our understanding should be intuitive. Much of physics etc. has been about supplying non- intuitive explanations, and we have worked at understanding these to our eternal betterment.

Yep. I think we agree here, we just didn't understand each other ;-)

fcarney

I thought Google had a 72 bit quantum computer? As in 72 individual bits they could manipulate.

I have to imagine that if there is a 4th dimensional (or higher) being that their view of the universe is quite different than ours. So when I hear about wave vs particle inconsistencies I think that our current understanding of how the universe is structured might be based on assumptions we don't even see as assumptions. From our viewpoint we see the world as solid. However, to gamma the world is swiss cheese. Is our viewpoint just skewed?

JonB

@fcarney

I thought Google had a 72 bit quantum computer? As in 72 individual bits they could manipulate.

I've always marvelled at how fast my Google searches are, now I know!