Wave Particle Duality: Exploring Matter & Particle Properties

[DrChinese]

I believe counterfactual definiteness(CFD) refers to the fact that the values exist without measuring that is, there is a definitive value for every aspect that if measured would have been obtained. The bell inequalities said that you had to discard either CFD or locality, hidden variable theories kept CFD and discarded locality, while mainstream quantum physics discards CFD and keeps locality to better agree with relativity.

I think that is one of the reasons why it is said that even failure to interact with some detectors, constitutes a measurement, and disturbs a particle. I mean if you gain information about the state of a particle through a series of lack of interactions, then you could probably obtain all the properties without disturbing the particle, but if even lack of interaction can disturb, be considered a measurement, than you cannot do this, that would at least protect the idea that there are no definite values for all the properties when not measured.

Consider a photon emitted from a free excited atom in outer space. That photon may only be detected at a single spot (say on the Earth), yet its wave packet expands to much of the universe... long after it was detected. But because of CFD, you would be hard pressed to prove it. Yet with entangled particle pairs, you can do "tricks" that are not possible with single particles. And those tricks show that probability amplitudes (wave packets) are very "real".

My point being that you need to consider the entire context, as you say. That context can be very big. Or it can be small and controlled.

I am going to start another thread (since I don't want to meander off-topic in this one) in the next couple of days to discuss an interesting way to consider the "reality" of a probability amplitude. Assuming, of course, that anyone wonders about this...

 

[Frame Dragger]

Consider a photon emitted from a free excited atom in outer space. That photon may only be detected at a single spot (say on the Earth), yet its wave packet expands to much of the universe... long after it was detected. But because of CFD, you would be hard pressed to prove it. Yet with entangled particle pairs, you can do "tricks" that are not possible with single particles. And those tricks show that probability amplitudes (wave packets) are very "real".

My point being that you need to consider the entire context, as you say. That context can be very big. Or it can be small and controlled.

I am going to start another thread (since I don't want to meander off-topic in this one) in the next couple of days to discuss an interesting way to consider the "reality" of a probability amplitude. Assuming, of course, that anyone wonders about this...

Considering how often this very question seems to arise, I'd say starting a thread might even warrent a sticky if it goes well.

 

[flashprogram]

Things that behave as waves and particles depending on if they are being observed. Things that seem to exist in some ethereal manner whereby they pop in and out of our existence that we cannot identify both speed and position of . Transfer of information faster than light speed seemingly over any distances . Nothing funny going on has to be the greatest understatement of all time .

But true indeeed nevertheless.

My suggestion is to reintegrate finite difference ideas.

 

[flashprogram]

Hallow no one is giving me answers seriously, may anyone help me have a picture of the wave particle duality and probably giving in detail the uncertainity principle and the wave function as been stated in some replies

rued 7n , check into cellular automata, finite yet instantaneous speed across the whole system with possibility of simultaneous action across an infinityof squares.

I personally read a new kind of science by wolfram, and tolkiens books to fill in the details later.

For more information talk to the guy behind minecraft and ask him how you scale it up with infinite computational resources within finite time on aturing machine, i suggest using the cloud for computational resources at a planetary scale, with perfectly encrypted maximal compression transmission costs are negligible ,after all zeno proved it, and later Newton and some other guy reproved it, motion appears impossible yet is possible.

 

[badel hyder]

wave-particle duality, possession by physical entities (such as light and electrons) of both wavelike and particle-like characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence, the German physicist Albert Einstein first showed (1905) that light, which had been considered a form of electromagnetic waves, must also be thought of as particle-like, or localized in packets of discrete energy. The French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed (1924) that electrons and other discrete bits of matter, which until then had been conceived only as material particles, also have wave properties such as wavelength and frequency. Later (1927) the wave nature of electrons was experimentally established. An understanding of the complementary relation between the wave aspects and the particle aspects of the same phenomenon was announced in 1928 (see complementarity principle