The Uncertainty Principle

[Robert]

"The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." --Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927.

The Uncertainty Principle, more descriptively the Principle of Indeterminacy, places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of simultaneous measurements of the position and momentum of a given subatomic particle.

This Quantum Anomoly was originally suggested by TimLong and appears below:

Probably the most unsettling anomaly of QM is the limitation denoted by the "Planck length," etc. that are a result of the breakdown in calculating accurate values below this threshold.

Dr. John Wheeler has proposed
"quantum foam" and "wormholes' to describe the situation and we all know what this has spawnned: black holes & white holes as shortcuts across the vastness of the universe and the denial of processes that occur at smaller scale measurements. Now that we have seen larger scale phenomena such as the "Great Wall' at vast astronomical distances, might not we suppose that similar structures occur at smaller & smaller scales.

In David Bohm's book, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Louis DeBroglie is quoted as stating, "The construction of purely probabilistic formuli that all theoreticians use today was...completely justified. However, the majority of them, often under the influence of preconceived ideas derived from positivist doctrine, have thought that they could go further and assert that the uncertain and incomplete character of the knowledge that experiment at its present stage gives us about what really happens in microphysics is the result of a real indetermancy of the physical states and of their evolution. Such an extrapolation does not appear in any way to be justified. It is possible that looking into the future to a deeper level of physical reality we will be able to interpret the laws of probability and quantum physics as being the statistical results of the development of completely determined variables which are at present hidden from us...To try to stop all attempts to pass beyond the present viewpoint of quantum physics could be very dangerous for the progress of science and would furthermore be contrary to the lessons we may learn from the history of science. This teaches us, in effect, that the actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and that there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover."

In addition, Alfred Lande has developed a remarkable analysis which reduces the uncertainty in QM to the Uncertainty of Measurement rather than its usual representation as a physical uncertainty. This view is also supported by the astronomer Henry Russel who calls the Principle of Indeterminacy "the principle of limited human measurability." Based on Lande's analysis, it is apparent that the indeterministic aspect of QM is due to the statistical nature of its formulations as well as limitations of our measurement techniques. (See From Dualism to Unity in Quantum Mechanics, by Alfred Lande.)

Additional Resources:

1. American Institute of Physics
2. Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[Guille]

I belief that the Heisenberg uncertainity principle is no more a quantum anomaly but a quantum property.

[Mr. Nobody]

Why is it so hard for us to see the universe as probability waves? Why do we insist on QM being incomplete and its description of the subatomic lacking? QM has been well established and is in accordance with its description for optics and may harness future application in quantum fluids and solids.

The C60 and C70 atoms are the largest objects for which quantum interference has been demonstrated (after passing through a multi-slit assembly and being properly isolated to prevent decoherance) I think of the particle as a bit of information (an idea from Wheeler). The reason you can not determine place and speed of a photon or electron at the same time is because it represents one bit of information, so either chose speed or location. Particles are not like kernels of sand, they are information of a wave. No true solids exist, what we touch, what we feel, is the electromagnetic force field of fingers interacting with the electromagnetic force field of objects. Even atoms are not matter, there core are quarks and leptons bound together by the strong force. And all we know is that quarks and leptons are smaller than 10-19 meters in radius. As far as we can tell, they have no internal structure or even any size. It is possible that future evidence will, once again, show this understanding to be an illusion and demonstrate that there is substructure within the particles that we now view as fundamental. Here we go again, even quarks are nothing tangible. It is pure energy at the boundary of becoming realized.

So, how do I see the famous double split experiment?
I see particles as a quantisized wave, not something solid flying through one or the other slit, but as a wave flying through both slits, creating the interference. If we peek then we "collapse" the wave and extract the one bit of information available and see the bit (particle) going through one or the other slit.

The atom experiment mentioned above shows that everything can be described as a wave and that a wave is a more correct way of "seeing" the universe. It seems that if you want to define what is "more real" you arrive that everything is a wave and that particles are just the description of the wave and the actual illusion and are subject to decoherance. Decoherance acts as the catalyst for appearance of this reality as it exits the fog of uncertainty in a haze of overlapping and interfering waves.

Just my humble imagination

[Guille]

hi,

I agree with you. You really wrote very well-based this post.

Probability is one more thing of nature.

[SinJin]

I always thought of this one analogy for the uncertainty principle, although I'm not sure how correct it is. If you have a car that is constantly moving, and you want to know it's speed, you have to take a snapshot of the car's location, wait for a few moments to pass, and then take a snapshot of it's new location. You can then aquire the car's speed using the two locations, along with the lapsed time. But if you have the cars speed, then it is in motion, and does not have a specific location. On the other hand, if you take a snapshot of the car's location, it's not in motion and has no speed. Hence if you know one, you can't know the other.

[Mr. Nobody]

However, each snap shot needs time for exposure. And if the exposure is too long for the car (really fast car) than you get a blurry picture, meaning an inexact location.
Actually since I think of the electron more of the information of an electron wave, it should be invalid to use expressions that lead us back to the "nugget" phrase of particles)

[Brian Jakub]

Mr Nobody,

You also would slightly alter the course of the automobile in some slightly unpredictable way with your first picture, because some energy was absorbed from the automobile to make your picture, so you wouldn't no exactly how accurate your second picture was. But what if you knew exactly how much energy it took to make the picture, and exactly what path that energy took when it went from the car to your camera. If the car was in the vacuum of space, and a large enough distance from any significant gravitational force, and far from all other cameras, could we predict the path because there is order in the medium carrying the energy transfer, namely the aether. It just looks disordered on Earth because there are too many cameras we don't know about taking pictures at the same time, and Nature has her own interferences in gravity, and the weak electro forces.

Brian

[Mr. Nobody]

How long is your exposure? My car travels at 99% light speed (my secret design)

The subatomic uncertainty is not a problem with measurement, it is a problem with indeterminism. Quantum fluids and solids actually exist, so how can a measurement problem cause an actual entity?

[Brian Jakub]

Mr. nobody,

I have a really fast camera one electromagnetic wave per frame. If you have a slow camera you don't need two pictures. You've got all the information you can possibly get in one blurry picture. The first instant of the picture is clear and the last instant is clear. It's is the middle that makes it blurry. If you could predict what happened to the car from the beginning of the picture to the end, the uncertianty principle would virtually disappear. The problem is just me looking at this experiment and asking whether it is going to work or not is going to introduce uncertianty into the measurement in the smallest way, because my thoughts take energy and the way people think varies from person to person. So in the end all human activity, and nature itself, would introduce uncertianty into the aether, even if it was contstructed as some kind of matrix with order to it. Even if the aether had perfect order there is so much interference on Earth, perhaps even in the vacuum of space, it would make the order of the matrix undetectable. Thus the uncertianty principle makes our universe look like it has less order in the aether than is actually there, namely a near perfect matrix in the nearly empty places in the vacuum of space. I don't think there is much randomness in the location of a particle, instead it is just nearly impossible to take into account every electromagnetic force and gravitaional force acting on a particle.

Brian

[Mr. Nobody]

So you think that there is a definate location, we just have too much interference to obtain it. Then how do you explain the double split experiment?