3 ms·

On the other hand, the double-slit experiment doesn't take any expensive equipment, and if things had gone differently, could easily have gone un-noticed until

by xamuel 8y ago

On the other hand, the double-slit experiment doesn't take any expensive equipment, and if things had gone differently, could easily have gone un-noticed until 2019. My bet is there are other experiments like double-slit which will be equally revolutionary and dirt cheap and everyone will be kicking themselves for not discovering them sooner.

ianai 8y ago
I want to agree with you - if for no other reason than the current research path seems impossibly complicated. Needing to cool things down to milikelvin or building megastructures is restrictive.
bsder 8y ago
> On the other hand, the double-slit experiment doesn't take any expensive equipment, and if things had gone differently, could easily have gone un-noticed until 2019. This is highly doubtful. The moment you have "something <mumble> is a wave" you immediately perform an interference experiment. The photoelectric effect demands a particle interpretation. The combination of the two in a double slit experiment is almost immediate and obvious. We went from Millikan in 1913 determining the charge on an electron to DeBroglie hypothesizing electrons also having wave/particle duality in 1924 to the Davisson-Germer experiment in 1927. That's really fast given the technology of the day.
- achillesheels 8y ago
  So why did it stall? Apparently death by committee at the Solvay Conference with the insistence on an indeterministic paradigm. I've been having a field day learning about pilot wave theory and recent (this century) research that helps empirically visualize it. David Bohm had quite the mind.
  - bsder 8y ago
    > So why did it stall? Apparently death by committee at the Solvay Conference with the insistence on an indeterministic paradigm. Not completely. Some of the issue is actually the technology available at the time. Einstein (who propounded a fields explanation for things) vs Bohr is the great debate and Bohr won. The problem, at the time, is that Einstein's formulations predicted certain things. For example, if Einstein's fields formulation is correct, you don't have electron levels that decay. And that's clearly incorrect. Except ... It turns out that the better and better you isolate an atom, the longer and longer it takes for its electrons to return to ground state. So, Einstein was correct, but it's only been in the very recent decades that we can create isolated, single quantum state systems which we can probe. Physics is often constrained by the technology of the time. How long did it take until Einstein's predictions were finally tested and confirmed? Look at how much engineering it has taken to bring the Kibble balance up to enough accuracy to become the new kilogram standard.
mikewarot 8y ago
I strongly suspect that there are some experiments that can be done similar to the Cavendish experiment which could prove the Quantized Inertia theory, and might even get a share of a Nobel prize. They could be done in a garage, with some cheap electronics, servos, and a raspberry pi or two.

by xamuel 8y ago

ianai 8y ago

I want to agree with you - if for no other reason than the current research path seems impossibly complicated. Needing to cool things down to milikelvin or building megastructures is restrictive.

bsder 8y ago

> On the other hand, the double-slit experiment doesn't take any expensive equipment, and if things had gone differently, could easily have gone un-noticed until 2019. This is highly doubtful. The moment you have "something <mumble> is a wave" you immediately perform an interference experiment. The photoelectric effect demands a particle interpretation. The combination of the two in a double slit experiment is almost immediate and obvious. We went from Millikan in 1913 determining the charge on an electron to DeBroglie hypothesizing electrons also having wave/particle duality in 1924 to the Davisson-Germer experiment in 1927. That's really fast given the technology of the day.

achillesheels 8y ago
So why did it stall? Apparently death by committee at the Solvay Conference with the insistence on an indeterministic paradigm. I've been having a field day learning about pilot wave theory and recent (this century) research that helps empirically visualize it. David Bohm had quite the mind.
- bsder 8y ago
  > So why did it stall? Apparently death by committee at the Solvay Conference with the insistence on an indeterministic paradigm. Not completely. Some of the issue is actually the technology available at the time. Einstein (who propounded a fields explanation for things) vs Bohr is the great debate and Bohr won. The problem, at the time, is that Einstein's formulations predicted certain things. For example, if Einstein's fields formulation is correct, you don't have electron levels that decay. And that's clearly incorrect. Except ... It turns out that the better and better you isolate an atom, the longer and longer it takes for its electrons to return to ground state. So, Einstein was correct, but it's only been in the very recent decades that we can create isolated, single quantum state systems which we can probe. Physics is often constrained by the technology of the time. How long did it take until Einstein's predictions were finally tested and confirmed? Look at how much engineering it has taken to bring the Kibble balance up to enough accuracy to become the new kilogram standard.

mikewarot 8y ago

I strongly suspect that there are some experiments that can be done similar to the Cavendish experiment which could prove the Quantized Inertia theory, and might even get a share of a Nobel prize. They could be done in a garage, with some cheap electronics, servos, and a raspberry pi or two.