Double Slit Experiment No Mystery • Hacker News Board

Re: Double Slit Experiment No Mystery

#121

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #120

kgwgk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the reality then? Let’s accept for the sake of the argument that it’s a clownish thing to do in the 21st century to report that you’re sending electrons one by one (at intensities low enough so the interaction is necessarily that of independent particles, not that of a beam) towards a metal plate with two slits (which can be opened and closed at will) and detecting the arrival of individual electrons at the ot…

I'd say you either don't understand the english language or are a bored grad student with nothing better to do than attempt to defy objective reality on the internet.

Maybe there is a misunderstanding. What I originally said is that “Doing it with actual slits and standalone particles is not so easy”.

Are you claiming that it is absolutely trivial to do it with a double slit and single electron detections, and you were doing it in 1989, or not?

Probably not, but then I don’t know why did you choose to reply to my comments in the way you did.

(I don’t know either what do you imagine that I think that the paper I cited means, or what do you believe that the paper claims that is so innovative that it would belong in a much more reputable journal.)

Re: Double Slit Experiment No Mystery

#122

Post by Koshkin » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #101

Koshkin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. The duality is the fact that an elementary particle is point-like but requires wave mechanics to describe its motion. Another related discovery was that energy waves, too, consist of quanta, which in many respects behave as particles. Those are valuable physical insights (similar in its power to the idea that “everything consists of atoms”).

I disagree with your disagreement, but perhaps we all three agree. The electrons/photons/whatever must be described quantum field theory, but the math is too complex to use it unless it's a very simple experiment with a few particles or with a computer. So it's good to have some simplifications. In some cases, you can approximate an electron/photon/whatever as a wave. The math is much simpler and with some training y…

Except we may never know what's "really happening." Field theory is, well, "just" a theory, that is to say, an approximation, albeit a better one.

Re: Double Slit Experiment No Mystery

#123

Post by gus_massa » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #122

gus_massa wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your disagreement, but perhaps we all three agree. The electrons/photons/whatever must be described quantum field theory, but the math is too complex to use it unless it's a very simple experiment with a few particles or with a computer. So it's good to have some simplifications. In some cases, you can approximate an electron/photon/whatever as a wave. The math is much simpler and with some training y…

Except we may never know what's "really happening." Field theory is, well, "just" a theory, that is to say, an approximation, albeit a better one.

Yes, perhaps string theory is correct.

Re: Double Slit Experiment No Mystery

#124

Post by ryanthedev » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #109

ryanthedev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the fact that no two reference frames are the same. Based on the fact that everything points to the universe being deterministic. Also we have never been able to even prove it mathematically.

How about radioactive decay? Is that deterministic? Do atoms contain extra state somehow that determines when they will decay?

Yeah. It is? I mean that's how we determine the half life of things...