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Quantum mechanics is not the standard model. Quantum mechanics is the stuff developed in the 20’s and 30’s. It is really useful for solving real world problems,
by adastra22 1y ago
Quantum mechanics is not the standard model. Quantum mechanics is the stuff developed in the 20’s and 30’s. It is really useful for solving real world problems, and for that reason is what is taught to undergraduates in a “modern physics” class. It is not a correct or complete description of reality, however, and is about 50ish years out of date.
- andrepd 1y agoWhat do you mean? It's not "out of date", as Kepler's laws or the ideal gas law or whatever is not out of date. It's just incomplete. Also, "modern physics" is a term of art, vs "classical physics".
- thyristan 1y agoEvery physical description of reality is correct to within some error bars. Quantum mechanics is still useful and correct, there are just more precise theories that provide refinement. And in that sense are the "current" theories if they are the most precise ones currently known.
- IAmBroom 1y agoNot true at all. Blackbody radiation goes to infinity with Wien's distribution; error bars aren't going to get you there. Likewise, our 1/r^2 understanding of forces goes to infinity as distance goes to zero, but we currently can't resolve that problem with error bars for the nucleus of an atom, where Heisenberg tells us any two protons can sometimes appear closer to each other than the "radius" of the nucleus. You can't make Schottky diodes using Maxwell and error bars. That is the entire problem: the classical models weren't merely inaccurate; they predicted completely absurd (and provably wrong) results at extreme scales.
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoInfinite error bars.
- chermi 1y agoWhat? What are the more precise theories that aren't fundamentally QM?
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoQuantum field theory and string theory. Fundamentally they are QM, but not formally.
- hoseja 1y agoI didn't know string theory makes any verified more precise predictions.
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoQuantum gravity is difficult to verify, because it's exotic, so it remains a theoretical exercise.
- pessimist 1y agoThe standard model is 100% quantum mechanics. It's just QM as applied to fields. While undergrads start with single or few particle quantum mechanics. There is a lot of hard math and fundamental physical ideas that pop out when we apply quantum mechanics to fields, but it's still QM. The work of Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, Pauli from 1925-28 or so is absolutely not our date.
- adastra22 1y agoWe are getting into definitions and common usage debates, which is the most uninteresting debate to have. I will simply state that “quantum mechanics” unqualified typically refers to the description of reality developed on Copenhagen in the 1920’s. When people are referring to quantum field theory, they are usually explicit in doing so.