4 ms·

Is it possible to to construct probability amplitudes out of quaternions, etc?

• kgwgk 8y ago
  I’ve not read TFA, but it mentions quaternions multiple times...
  • auntienomen 8y ago
    It's worth reading. "But, while I remain less than 100% satisfied about “why the complex numbers? why not just the reals?,” there’s one conclusion that my recent circling-back to these questions has made me fully confident about. Namely: quantum mechanics over the quaternions is a flaming garbage fire, which would’ve been rejected at an extremely early stage of God and the angels’ deliberations about how to construct our universe."
• Syzygies 8y ago
  I was going to bring up the quaternions if no one had. When I was asked to bring in a fictional approach to the Riemann Hypothesis for the film "A Beautiful Mind", the quaternions were my first thought. There's a pecking order here. I was at a tech party in Berkeley last fall. When various gamers (such as the founder of "Second Life") learned that I was a mathematician, they fawned over the octonions. I'm sure there's something there (the octonions seriously screwed with my first research idea in college) but I can't say what it is.
• cryptonector 8y ago
  In the comments on TFA the author (and others) shows that the lack of commutativity in the quaternions leads to faster-than-light signalling.