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Write-up on a new take on parallel universes being the reason behind quantum mechanics' fuzziness:
http://theconversation.com/when-paralle ... born-32631

More quantum bizarreness, this time physicists think they might have shown that an electron's wave function can effectively be divided into smaller pieces, ie the chances of finding an electron at a given location can be divvied up into bubbles of probability.

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-function-electron.html

Almost seems as if it'd certainly be in one place.

New baryons found at Large Hadron Collider predicted by Canadian physicists. Because theres nothing Phigure hates more than Canadians or me, and me talking about physics.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/new-s ... -1.2840199

Quantum physics just got less complicated

Oh, they weren't already linked? What the hell have quantum physicists been up to all these years???

kay wrote:Write-up on a new take on parallel universes being the reason behind quantum mechanics' fuzziness:
http://theconversation.com/when-paralle ... born-32631

This almost seems like a get-out clause to some quantum physics behavior we don't quite understand.... blame it on the parallel universes!!!
Cool publication though, even though I've never heard of Physical Review X.
Impact factor of 8.4 is pretty serious! That's higher than a few Nature Research Journals.

kay wrote:Oh, they weren't already linked? What the hell have quantum physicists been up to all these years???

I've not read the article, just the title and sub-title.
I want to wait for your response.
How did you think they were linked? Like specifically?
How does not being able to measure position and velocity, for instance (my knowledge is very limited), simultaneously relate to duality? Doesn't the immeasurability arise whether particle or wave motion is being observed?

Forgive these potentially ignorant waffles.

I gave-in and started reading, their definition of duality really put it into perspective. Ignore the ignorant waffles.

kurzweilai.net wrote:Wave-particle duality is the idea that a quantum object can behave like a wave, but that the wave behavior disappears if you try to locate the object

Afaik it was mostly assumed to be the case anyways

LeanSound wrote:

kay wrote:Write-up on a new take on parallel universes being the reason behind quantum mechanics' fuzziness:
http://theconversation.com/when-paralle ... born-32631

This almost seems like a get-out clause to some quantum physics behavior we don't quite understand.... blame it on the parallel universes!!!
Cool publication though, even though I've never heard of Physical Review X.
Impact factor of 8.4 is pretty serious! That's higher than a few Nature Research Journals.

This is kind of what i was getting at... speculative theories
http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-m ... ign=buffer

Mostly agree with that article. Don't get me wrong - speculative theories are great. If no one ever speculated about how things work we'd still be cavemen. However, to be scientific, a theory has to correctly match observations and be provable/disprovable. Otherwise it's just a thought experiment. Ultimately, theories are frameworks for describing what we see around us and elegant solutions that can't be proven one way or other aren't terribly useful.

However this doesn't mean we should abandon speculative theories that can't be proven. It could be that we have not developed them sufficiently or have the right mathematics or worldview to deliver proof. It's just that no one should tout them as The Truth.

Finally, I don't really see anything wrong with theories where every parameter can be tweaked to make it match reality. After all, physics is all about modelling reality. Also, there's nothing wrong with having multiple theories to model reality - they are after all just ways of framing how the universe works and different situations may benefit from a different way of framing the problem.