this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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Slap a "quantum" on it = Instant flux capacitor (mander.xyz)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I definitely agree it's unintuitive to the layman. We never have to deal with large scale wave interactions, on the classical physics level. I disagree, however, that we can't understand it. It does make sense, it just doesn't map to our default particle mindset.

I disagree that it breaks the laws of physics though. It just shows some flaws in our methodology. E.g. the speed of light isn't a limit on fundamental speed, but of information. It just happens that the only time we can have transmission without information is via decoherence.

QM is definitely incomplete. We know the what, but not the why. That applies to most of physics however. Newtonian physics is the same. We know what happens, but not why. It's just that Newtonian physics is intuitive to our savannah running brain, while QM requires more mental work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So the fact that quantum physics is non-local, and thus is not compatible with general relativity, is perfectly fine for you?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

QM is the only bit of physics where something can still be both physical and have zero information content. Therefore it's the only place where the difference matters between C being a universal Vs a limit for information.

Also waves are non local, an exponential decay never actually reaches zero. Accepting this is critical to QM making sense. It's just very alien to our natural sensibilities.

As for the conflict with GR, both theories are known to be incomplete since neither predict each other. Knowing how both differ is one of the few known holes in physics. Interestingly, both theories are ridiculously accurate, within their domains, making the job all the harder.