Why? The best explanation I have heard is advanced by the physicist John H Marburger, who is currently science advisor to US President George Bush. By 1930, Marburger points out, physicists had found a perfectly adequate way of representing classical concepts within the quantum framework using Hilbert (infinite-dimensional) space. Quantum systems, he says, “live” in Hilbert space, and the concepts of position and momentum, for instance, are associated with different sets of coordinate axes that do not line up with each other, thereby resulting in the situation captured in ordinary-language terms by complementarity.“It’s a clear, logical and consistent way of framing the complementarity issue,” Marburger explained to me. “It clarifies how quantum phenomena are represented in alternative classical ‘pictures’, and it fits in beautifully with the rest of physics. The clarity of this scheme removes much of the mysticism surrounding complementarity. What happened was like a gestalt-switch, from a struggle to view microscopic nature from a classical point of view to an acceptance of the Hilbert-space picture, from which classical concepts emerged naturally. Bohr brokered that transition.”
thinkahol * on 31 Jul 11Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/23/Marcus_Chown_in_Conversation_with_Fred_Watson Marcus Chown, author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe, discusses the mechanics behind quantum computers, explaining that they function by having atoms exist in multiple places at once. He predicts that quantum computers will be produced within 20 years. ----- The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einsteins general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world in which we live. But almost a century after their advent, most people havent the slightest clue what either is about. Radio astronomer, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown talks to fellow stargazer Fred Watson about his book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. The Magic Furnace, Marcus' second book, was chosen in Japan as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun. In the UK, the Daily Mail called it "a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter". His latest book is called Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.
