Quantum Canadians... Eh

[GDS_Starfury]

nobody tell Windy there are smart people in Canadistan or he'll get all uppity.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319097

Ransom Stephens
8/1/2013 08:00 AM EDT


Physicists from the Canadian Institute for Measurement Standards have become the first to measure a quantum mechanical wave function. And it only took 88 years from the formulation of Schroedinger's equation.

The difficulty of the measurement lies in the fundamental uncertainty between position and momentum, energy and time, and a host of other so-called conjugates -- complementary pairs of quantities that cannot be measured to arbitrary accuracy at the same time.

Yes, it's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The principle came straight from Fourier and the mathematics of waves. To form a localized wave packet, we have to add up many waves of different wavelengths; the tighter and more localized that wave packet is, the larger its bandwidth will be. In the limit of perfect position accuracy, the packet is described by a Dirac delta function that has infinite bandwidth.

The tradeoff between localization and bandwidth is the heart of the uncertainty principle.

read the rest at the link.  thats a pretty decent step into figuring out what 42 means.

[Staggerwing]

Still, there is the small matter of the question.

Most cool, nevertheless

[Centurion40]

Were there cats involved?

[GDS_Starfury]

only when they werent observed.

[Windigo]

And we have commercialized quantum computers.... Fuck you guys are slow....  The F35 will be old tech by the time it gets operational

[GDS_Starfury]

by the time it becomes operational you wont be able to afford them. 

[Windigo]

Already sold working models to Lougheed Martin and google. Better keep up ...

[besilarius]

So let me get this right.
They are now Certain about Uncertainty?

[GDS_Starfury]

Certainly.

[Staggerwing]

But are you certain?

[Windigo]

So let me get this right.
They are now Certain about Uncertainty?

Well as certain about the multiple facets of uncertainty as one can be, given the size of the known unknowns ... As it were

[besilarius]

Thanks for clearing this up.

[bob48]

I'm certain that Heisenburg should know about this :-\