Here's a why for you:
Posted on 06/03/2019 9:20:45 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Quantum mechanics’ core assumption is that on the smallest scales, atomic properties are quantized...For example, an electron can be in a lowest-energy state, but if you add a little more energy, it doesn’t slowly transition into the new higher-energy state. Rather, it unpredictably snaps into the new state. If you’re not looking at it, the atom can take on intermediate states—but these aren’t midway points. The atom would be in both states at the same time, and then once you observed it, it would immediately snap into one state or the other.
The team’s artificial atom is an experimental apparatus composed of a circuit made from wire that carries charge without resistance with a special kind of insulating fence, called a Josephson junction, placed in the middle of the wire. In regular atoms, “states” are represented by the location of the electron around the atom’s nucleus, but in this artificial atom, the state is represented by a quantized property whose value changes as electrons pass the insulating fence. This is a quantum system (it’s technically a two-qubit quantum computer) and follows the same rules as other quantum systems, including electrons around atoms.
The researchers apply two specially tuned microwave signals. One signal supplies just the right amount of energy for the atom to transition between the ground state and the excited state, while the other signal indirectly measures the energy of the circuit during this transition.
Detectors measure a bright flashing photon signal—reflections from the second microwave pulse—when the artificial atom is in the ground state... The sensitive detectors were able to measure every last photon until the signal went dark—the sign that the transition was about to occur. When researchers sent another pulse at just the right time, they were able to stop and reverse the transition.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
NO justifiable first-principles reason WHY
“All cats aside, i believe it’s imprecise of the article to say a quantum particle is in two places or states at once. Rather, quantum mechanics says it cannot tell which place or state a particle is in until it’s measured.”
I always wonder to what extent these things are truly empirical truths or merely a result of the fact that we cannot measure anything beyond however it is that we have designed our means of taking that measure; which is based on assumptions we have had to make with our so far limited knowledge. Therefor our measurements are never any better than what I think are as yet our still kindergarten-grade understanding of the things being measured. Do the electrons truly change “state” or are they always at a core state we do not have the means to either identify or measure, because we only have measurement devices that can “see” one of two things about electrons, and no more.
yes,
and further....
one way of looking at this question.. is...
that when we measure or “ask” for more specific information (such as an “electron’s’ (or any quantum entity’s+ “exact location” from within the range of possible sites that Quantum physics predicts it MAY be at...).......
that the ‘system’ responds to us/our measurement effort.. by “answering” with one of the predicted/permissible answers/locations/sites
this is sometimes called the “collapse of the wave function”...but that is easily misunderstood.........
the wave function was never a statement of where the quantum entity was....and the wave function never said that the quantum entity was spread out over a range of sites or an area..............
...the wave function was only a prediction of the range of locations whereat our future measurement might find it.....(with probabilities for each location)..
insofar as quantum physics (Schroedinger’s equation) is concerned, the maths never said exactly where the quantum entity/electron was located.....and never tried to...it gave us no such information about anything....it does not describe the present reality....it merely predicts the odds of the results of our future measurement
in other words, consider one horse on a race track. Schrodinger’s equation does not tell us where the horse is presently on the race track. Schrodinger only gives us the odds on one characteristic of the horse in the future when we measure for that characteristic....
say, we “measure’ for the time of the horse’s arrival at the location of the finish line (maybe we watch.measure for his arrival at the finish line with a stop watch)......Schrodinger’s equation predicted for us the range of the horse’s arrival times... with probabilities for each possible arrival time.
So, we could say that Schrodinger is a bit like an race track oddsmaker or tote maybe....but the key idea here is that Schrodiner and Quantum physics do not attempt to tell us where the horse is on the track at any present moment, they only predict the odds of each of his possible finish times.
re: “The premise you unsuccessfully tried to smuggle
in is that science is concerned with WHY. WHY
presumes motivation, and there are none. Science
is interested in HOW.
QM can’t say HOW either.
The ‘why’ would be the same thing in my book.
QM fails in providing any rationale for the so-called ‘ground state’ being what it is; the point you missed, for the pleasure of a ride on the ‘hobby horse’ you just rode in on.
They both saved and unsaved it. We can’t know until we make an observation.
re: “ from within the range of possible sites that Quantum physics predicts it MAY be at”
QM, just one big “curve fit”.
Where’s the “predictive” capability in that? And the reason science has stalled out, QM has an erroneous basis ... no basis on “first principles” such as electromagnetics (Maxwell) for instance.
...the wave function was only a prediction of the range of locations whereat our future measurement might find it.....(with probabilities for each location)..
It’s called quantum tunneling and Luddites who declaim the absurdity of something so counter-intuitive are left to explain the successful application of quantum tunneling microscopes.
ps:
as i understand it, then....
Schroedinger/Quantum physics leave open the question of where a quantum entity or “particle” as it is often imprecisely called...............actually IS...at any specific time....
the equations only predict the outcome of a future measurement.....what’s interesting is that these mathematical predictions are amazingly accurate
so right now, physics can predict some future events (results of measurements) a lot better than the same physics can tell us anything about the present state of things (or “reality”)
this odd sounding fact.....leaves open for discussion just what is (presently) “real”....or what is, for that matter, ‘reality’........the philosophers have to take this over! ha!
AND.......there are physics that indicate that the entire “time dimension” is maybe more an artifact of our brain chemistry than it is any actual ‘progression’ or ‘movement’ of anything in the external “real world”
by these theories, everything that ever “was” and “is” and “will be” already exists.....out there....and it is us, our consciousness (as provided by our brain function) that is the “moving” part of of the relationship between “us” (our awareness) and “reality” (the “out -there”)
ps: it comes to mind.... that when God told Moses...’I will be what I will be’ (can be translated several ways, including ‘I will create what I will create’).....but in the original Hebrew it clearly indicates a futurist component...
that is a succinct approximation to the above physics...
or rather, the reverse is probably the case, smile smile
or we could ask Popeye?
Here's a why for you:
quantum tunneling certainly exists, as evidenced by the millions of tunnel diodes at work all around the world since our Japanese/Sony friends invented them in 1957
some people who object to this physics... do so quite understandably from the “lens” of their everyday experience .. where we do not observe such phenomena in our daily macro lives experience
but at the quantum level... we KNOW it is part of the actual physics of the universe
Here is a partial list of predictive results
•A particle in a spherically symmetric potential can only occupy a certain number of energy states always. This fact successfully explains all atomic structure.
•Electron degeneracy pressure occurs when fermionic (matter) particles are squeezed tightly together but are forbidden from squeezing even tightly together because Pauli’s exclusion principle forbids them from sharing the same state. This fact explains what keeps white dwarf stars alive.
•The application of an external magnetic field to a a collection of magnetic dipoles causes energy states to split into two, separated by a small amount of energy. This is the secret behind magnetic resonance imaging.
These predictions can be tested both qualitatively and quantitatively - quantum mechanics predicts the exact energies of each state, not just the most likely ones; it predicts the exact amount of pressure you can expect, not a distribution; and it predicts the exact amount that the energy levels should diverge by.
None of these are influenced by the uncertainty principle - which only applies to specific pairs of measurable properties, and not to every possible pair of them - because we aren’t measuring pairs of properties simultaneously. Remember: the uncertainty principle doesn’t stop us from measuring any one property as accurately as we like, only on measuring some pairs of properties with the same level of accuracy at once.
In such cases, of course, it’s very easy to check if quantum mechanics is correct: simply compare the value obtained from theory to experiment. We have already done this, and in every case the predictions have been borne out successfully. These predictions are what we refer to when we talk about quantum mechanics being the most precisely tested theory in history.
Quantum tunneling is real. It is a major issue in the design of modern microchips because at a sufficiently small feature size, electrons start jumping nonconductive barriers and mess up the state of the chip. Intel had to resort to using high-k materials to combat the problem.
If it didn’t work and current QM didn’t give useful “predictive results” how are we pounding on the computer arguing about it?
and of course quantum mechanics can at a later day be subsumed into a new theory that says “hidden variables” (or something!) are right after all. I won’t hold my breath but I guess it could happen.
That’s what science does, new data ,new explanations or theories. The past theory becomes a part of the new theory. Maybe an integral part & maybe be relegated to an obscure creaky corner. (and even if its a part of the bigger theory it may remain useful for human-scale engineering purposes!)
If you don’t do that you’re doing dogma not science.
There’s people taking pot shots at QM. Here are some!
So far they have missed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory#Bell’s_theorem
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