This is probably the slowest branch of the sciences, not able to get out of labs even after a century. The fundamental problem appears to be that we are trying to control probabilistic nature using concrete real world things. I suspect this is not allowed, at least at an industrial scale. At some point humanity might need to stick what they need instead of what they can.
What do you mean? We have been profiting massively from the fruits of QM for the last five decades easily. Transistors, LEDs, Lasers, MRT imaging, solar panels, CCD cameras, etc. have arguably changed the world and would not have been possible without QM. It came out of the lab a long time ago.
Not to mention the entire science of chemistry and everything made from it.
Quantum mechanics started with the description of electron orbitals around an atom; how they work is the foundation of chemistry.
I think GP was thinking of quantum computers, maybe?
I think they made a very uninformed comment, that's all.
That’s engineering not science
Engineering is how science gets out of the lab...
I think you just wrote that 'off the cuff' but it's really a brilliant quote that succinctly clarifies science vs engineering.
How else does science get 'out of the lab'?
>not able to get out of labs even after a century
It got out of labs in a quite spectacular way in the summer of 1945, eighty years ago.
Thought experiment: did we really need quantum mechanics to build an atom bomb? Couldn't we have built one with a model of the atom based on classical particles (with protons leading to a chain reaction)? Is either the quantized or the uncertainty aspect of QM necessary for this?
Most of the science going into the Manhattan Project was experimental measurements and phenomenological models, not fundamental physics at the QM level. There were no usable quantum-mechanical models of nuclear physics at that point.
No; they didn't really need it.
It’s just a coincidence that they employed so many experts in quantum mechanics to do those nothing-to-do-with-quantum-mechanics experimental measurements.
Coincidence. If you wanted to do something with elementary particles, you couldn't possibly ignore quantum physics.
Nucleon orbitals rely a little on Pauli exclusion principle, which you need to add as an ad hoc hypothesis every time in classical physics.
The very idea of matter and energy being quantized into particles and photons is the starting point of “quantum” mechanics.
>Planck discovers the quantum nature of energy in 1900
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp00qu.html
It wasn’t developed into a mechanics until the 1920’s.
>did we really need quantum mechanics to build an atom bomb?
Yes. Nuclear reactions require understanding and modeling of the strong force, you can't understand or even see what protons and neutrons are without understanding the strong force. The mixture of positively charged and neutral particles being stuck together with enormous force which essentially does not exist at all outside of the nucleus of an atom. (there is more than three pounds of force between every pair of protons inside every nucleus with the strong force counteracting the electrostatic force)
You couldn't design a bomb without being able to model the strong force and you couldn't get to that point of investigating the atom without coming up with QM.
You couldn't get the idea of isotopes and enriching U-235 to U-238 or transmuting uranium to plutonium without understanding QM.
Or the circumstances that would lead someone to blindly creating a controlled nuclear reaction without coming up with QM in the process would be pretty absurd.
The idea for the bomb came from the understanding of the strong force. Step one: notice that there's a crazy powerful force keeping positively charged particles stuck together in the nucleus. Step two: the eureka moment of realizing you can "release" that force by causing a chain reaction of fission in heavy elements.
Nature is probabilistic. And we know how to calculate those probabilities, that is one of the core ideas of quantum mechanics. Why is it "not allowed"? By whom? Since you are commenting on HN, you are already are using the very mature applications of QM out of laboratory. The proverbial cat (is it Schröedinger's?) is out of the bag!
Theory is probabilistic, nature isn't.
Of course it is. What you are suggesting is classical determinism.
I don't know dog, that is a pretty bold statement given everything we can presently firmly say about the universe.
Like we can imagine some kind of purely deterministic thing going on but when the rubber meets the road the best ways of working stuff out seem to very strongly imply some fundamental indeterminism. No one likes it, but thats the way it is.
When the rubber meets the road the best ways of working stuff out is to shut up and calculate, you don't figure out anything by assuming unobservable fundamental indeterminism.
No one assume it.
Nature doesn't obey your opinions.
That's an argument against solipsism at best, not much else.
What a take. All of modern technology, materials, solid state, semiconductors, transistors... And uhhh did you forget chemistry itself?
What has physics ever done for us? Apart from computers, satellites, planes, communications, sensors, and health... What has physics ever done for us?
The roads?
Well obviously the roads go without saying!
Just came back from work to see all the battering and downvoting. Clam down. I meant Quantum computing using qubits. Apologies for not being specific. Quantum computing itself is also a century old (almost)? Where are we with this?
Jeez - HN is brutal. Even a bot could have understood the context I meant.
Quantum computing is very much not a century old