Ora che hai divelto i cardini e deviato gli argini
e distolto gli occhi dai margini delle forme
che si susseguono ai lati, spargimi
come neve al sole di fine inverno,
come i semi fertili nel ricco suolo
e al suono crescimi delle nostre vite esili
che vibrano unite dall'archetto
di un concerto eterno.
Saturday, 12 December 2015
Di venti
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Quantum Annoyance
Quantum mechanics as a field of science is old. Guys, we are talking of a theory completely developed before 1930 (the main contributors Schroedinger, Heisenberg and Dirac got their Nobel prizes in 1933). Sadly enough, quantum mechanics (qm hereafter) did not receive that much popular acclaim like Einstein's Relativity, mainly because qm wasn't the product of a singular mind, but the joint collaboration of the most brilliant minds of the last century (Einstein too, in a peculiar way).
Only in recent times I've seen an increasing interest, and an increasing misuse, in the word 'quantum'.
The fact that qm is perceived as an interesting topic is good, but the true reason is its mystic nature. And that really pisses me off.
Quantum mechanics, and its relativistic covariant version quantum field theory (qft), is nothing like mystic. It is a theory: a set of laws and rules that describe nature, based on some principles believed absolute.
If you are reading this and you do not know much about qm, then you better know that qm is just the crowning jewel of the human thought and it is a direct evolution of Galilei's and Newton's work. Never in history of science has a theory struggled so much on the meaning of Measurement and Observation. Qm is basically the only scientific theory that embodies in itself the existence of a measurement device inside the system we are describing.
This is an evolution of the concept of Observer in Galilei's and Einstein's Relativity.
Qm looks strange and mystic because for the first time we have a theory which KNOWS that in the end we have to compare to the experiments. It's a huge breakthrough: we do not have a theory constructed in some hyperhuranium, like Plato's ideas, that needs to be dirtied when applied (because every other scientific theory does exactly that).
Qm is strange because it's not shy, qm doesn't lie about the ugly difficult job to understand reality.
Is an electron a particle or a wave? Well it's neither and it's both (that is what experiments tell us!). Qm describes them exactly them as probability distributions! What does it mean? It means that qm can not tell you what an electron is, but can tell you where you can find it, how often and also why you can find it here and not there.
It looks strange, but science is not Tolkien, there is no background story to the characters, only Possibilities.
You may have heard that qm is no more a deterministic theory, but it is probabilistic. In fact qm gives you probabilities that something is somewhere, but you could not find a trajectory for your objects from day zero to the doomsday. In qm there is no fate. Only possibilities.
Can you now see why, as a theory, qm is both appealing and scary?
But in the end this is not Scientology, qm is as it is because people spent nights looking at papers with experimental results. I like to picture in my mind Wolfgang Pauli staring at a blackboard with a cup of coffee the whole night trying to figure out why things went that way.
Think of a physicist as you would think of Sherlock Holmes. You have a crime scene and, no matter how odd your reasoning, you have to connect the dots.
Qm is not fancy or strange by construction, it became the way it is because it's the only way, the only rulebook, that allows us to decode the reality.
This is no alchemy, it is war against reality. And we won this battle.
It is no matter of science, faith, aesthetics or art. That's what i would like the people to understand: qm is just something you should be proud of, as a human being. Nothing to fear, worship or admire. Just be proud of this achievement.
Only in recent times I've seen an increasing interest, and an increasing misuse, in the word 'quantum'.
The fact that qm is perceived as an interesting topic is good, but the true reason is its mystic nature. And that really pisses me off.
Quantum mechanics, and its relativistic covariant version quantum field theory (qft), is nothing like mystic. It is a theory: a set of laws and rules that describe nature, based on some principles believed absolute.
If you are reading this and you do not know much about qm, then you better know that qm is just the crowning jewel of the human thought and it is a direct evolution of Galilei's and Newton's work. Never in history of science has a theory struggled so much on the meaning of Measurement and Observation. Qm is basically the only scientific theory that embodies in itself the existence of a measurement device inside the system we are describing.
This is an evolution of the concept of Observer in Galilei's and Einstein's Relativity.
Qm looks strange and mystic because for the first time we have a theory which KNOWS that in the end we have to compare to the experiments. It's a huge breakthrough: we do not have a theory constructed in some hyperhuranium, like Plato's ideas, that needs to be dirtied when applied (because every other scientific theory does exactly that).
Qm is strange because it's not shy, qm doesn't lie about the ugly difficult job to understand reality.
Is an electron a particle or a wave? Well it's neither and it's both (that is what experiments tell us!). Qm describes them exactly them as probability distributions! What does it mean? It means that qm can not tell you what an electron is, but can tell you where you can find it, how often and also why you can find it here and not there.
It looks strange, but science is not Tolkien, there is no background story to the characters, only Possibilities.
You may have heard that qm is no more a deterministic theory, but it is probabilistic. In fact qm gives you probabilities that something is somewhere, but you could not find a trajectory for your objects from day zero to the doomsday. In qm there is no fate. Only possibilities.
Can you now see why, as a theory, qm is both appealing and scary?
But in the end this is not Scientology, qm is as it is because people spent nights looking at papers with experimental results. I like to picture in my mind Wolfgang Pauli staring at a blackboard with a cup of coffee the whole night trying to figure out why things went that way.
Think of a physicist as you would think of Sherlock Holmes. You have a crime scene and, no matter how odd your reasoning, you have to connect the dots.
Qm is not fancy or strange by construction, it became the way it is because it's the only way, the only rulebook, that allows us to decode the reality.
This is no alchemy, it is war against reality. And we won this battle.
It is no matter of science, faith, aesthetics or art. That's what i would like the people to understand: qm is just something you should be proud of, as a human being. Nothing to fear, worship or admire. Just be proud of this achievement.
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