6 ms·
Quantum Double-Slit Experiment Offers Hope for Earth-Size Telescope
- xhkkffbf 5y agoI'm certainly interested in this, but for different reasons. Over the years, several people have bent my ears about Duane's theorem that suggests the double-slit experiment is not demonstrating quantum effects at all. It strikes me that this could help establish or overturn such claims. https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/double-slit-experiment-no-mystery/ https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/double-slit-exper... Any thoughts? Could it help to test it on a planet-sized scale?
- oogabooga123 5y agoSeems like this hypothesis shows it is indeed demonstrating “quantum” effects because the math falls out of the quantization of momentum transfer. Of course “quantum” is now widely understood to mean “the weird phenomena like the double slit experiment”... but I get what you’re saying. I wonder what’s with the downvote, though.
- selimthegrim 5y agoI would think Abraham-Minkowski problem would make people wary about defining rules for momentum exchange with solid systems.
- selimthegrim 5y agoBut as previous posters cite, Ballentine covers this as a special case and it isn’t electromagnetic.
- Diederich 5y agoThis has been previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352239
- ShamelessC 5y agoSuch claims have already been overturned - and that blog post is _very_ light on details.
- Moodles 5y agoThat animation at the top of the article of the possible locations of the photon is very cool. Quantum behavior seems so counterintuitive to us because we're just apes who evolved minds to survive in the macroscopic world of the African savanna. But I wonder if we perhaps taught quantum behavior to kids from an early age, whether they could get an intuitive understanding for it, in the the same way that I can, like, know what "feels" like the best move in Chess or something, without really being able to articulate why. That kind of intuitive feel for how something works usually leads to concrete logical understanding later on.
- lisper 5y agoIt's actually not that hard to get an intuitive understanding of QM even as an adult. The key is having the right pedagogy, which is very rare. IMHO the key to the right pedagogy is just one crucial insight: the wave function lives in configuration space, not in physical space. How physical space emerges from configuration space is a deep mystery. No one knows. But it is CRUCIAL not to conflate these two things. Most "quantum weirdness" is simply a result of confusing them. It is also important to understand that the reason these things are often conflated is that much of what is (or at least used to be before quantum computation became a thing) taught as quantum mechanics focuses on the special case of a single particle considered in isolation. In that one special case -- and ONLY in that one special case -- configuration space is the same as (or at least isomorphic to) physical space. But as soon as you add a second particle, that stops being true. So the key to understanding QM is to START with the multi-particle case. This is actually easier than the single particle case because it forces you to set aside a lot of the things that make quantum mechanics difficult in general and focus on the thing that makes it hard to wrap your brain around: entanglement. But the reason that entanglement is hard to wrap your brain around is that it's weird when considered from the point of view of physical space. If you start with multi-particle systems, that forces you to start with configuration space, and that gets you past the hard part right from the start. After that it's just math.
- Moodles 5y agowhat is configuration space
- dukeofdoom 5y agoYou can simulate quantum effects with just polarized glasses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs
- andi999 5y agoYou can't. This is just covered by classical electrodynamics. Of course in a sense you can say anything is quantum, but then the stability of a table is quantum (which it is). If you were to have a single photon source and avalanche detector, ok now you are talking quantum.
- admax88q 5y agoI'm curious, can you detail how classic electrodynamics covers this?
- kgwgk 5y agohttps://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4943751 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4943751
- infogulch 5y agoThe first 2 minutes of that video make it clear that they think it is "real" quantum effects (e.g. at 1:34 entanglement > EPR paradox > Bell's Theorem > local realism). Those are pretty quantum-y imo.
- tofof 5y agoYeah. At 9:34 they're dealing with entangled photons passing through 2 filters at different points in space, simultaneously. They affect each other, which is impossible without faster-than-light communication between them. This is absolutely quantum and cannot be explained at all by classical EM.
- andi999 5y agoIf you have entanglement then it is quantum. Yes. But the comment was you 'just' need polarized glasses. So if 'just' polarized glasses for a few $ means: "and of course a biphoton source for a couple of thousand $ and some coincidence counters for another couple of thousand $", then you only 'just' need polarizers.
- themgt 5y agoThey should name this proposal "quantum sneakernet". It's pretty weird to imagine aliens light years away could have a constellation of quantum networked telescopes and be taking Google Maps-resolution photos of Earth.
- Aardwolf 5y agoOr use it for looking at the fungi on Mars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27065361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27065361)
- randy408 5y agoCould this method be used to image exoplanets or is that still in the theoretical realm of the Solar gravitational lens[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens
- aussieguy1234 5y agoThis reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
- iaw 5y agoI couldn't find via Ctrl+F, it sounds like this exceeds the Rayleigh Criterion, is that correct?
- NZGumboot 5y agoNo, the Rayleigh Criterion is still correct, you just have to consider the "aperture size" to be the size of the combined multi-telescope device (which would be the size of the Earth if the telescopes are on the opposite sides of the Earth). In practice to get the best quality image you need a telescope every X meters (I'm not sure the exact distance required) but even a 2x2 telescope array over a large distance would still give you significantly more resolving power than just a single telescope on it's own.
- iaw 5y agoThank you!
- geocrasher 5y agoWhat I really appreciated about this article was its clear explanation of how (quarks?) acts like a wave until it is observed and then acts like a particle.