• Question: Why is there so much quantum frustration?

    Asked by eringracecooke to Christina, Jess on 28 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 28 Jun 2013:


      The thing with quantum physics is that the maths just works – you cna use it to make incredibly precise predictions which have been proved right over and over again (agreement between theory and experiments is perfect to over 14 decimal places!)… BUT the implications of the maths leads to an interpretation of reality that just doesn’t match our experience… and so we find it really hard to understand how, say, something can be in two places at once or how *deciding* to look at an experiment changes what happens even if you only decide (just) after the experiment has happened but before looking at the results!! how do you explain that?! but it happens, and we’ve shown it happens over and over. Physicists are still arguing over what it all means for reality 🙂

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