Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by solid_fuel 14 hours ago
> It is not a breakthrough, it is just something we refuse to see, something that was known for a century.

This sounds like you're about to try selling me a crystal and a magic ritual. The wording here is far too grandiose, and I assure you physicists are not "refusing to see" that "everything is a wave". Whatever you imagine that might mean.

> The very notion of calling it "qunatum" physics is probably wrong since quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents."

> And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave.

Mumbo-jumbo.

It's called "quantum" physics because of the discovery that many parts of nature do indeed exist in discrete steps. Yes, electron orbitals are described with wave functions - that is, the electron exists as a probability cloud, but the functions themselves are still discrete! When an electron gains energy, it jumps from one orbital to another without passing through a continuous state in the middle. That is the fundamental insight of Quantum Mechanics - energy, momentum, etc are all quantized and not actually continuous.

The wikipedia article on quantum mechanics literally covers this in the intro - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics

1 comments

Isn’t the wave function only discrete when we measure it?

The field is the continuous state so nothing has to jump through anything.

For example the hydrogen wave function does not tell us where the electron will be located, only where most likely will be located. What is discrete about that?

> Isn’t the wave function only discrete when we measure it?

No.

> The field is the continuous state so nothing has to jump through anything.

No.

> For example the hydrogen wave function does not tell us where the electron will be located, only where most likely will be located. What is discrete about that?

Read what I wrote again. The wave function itself is continuous but the jump between states (aka between wave functions) is discrete. This is because energy is quantized and does not exist in continuous quantities. The transfer of energy in quantum systems is therefore discrete, which is the whole reason it is called quantum mechanics.

> The wave function itself is continuous but the jump between states (aka between wave functions) is discrete.

What exists between the wave functions?

> This is because energy is quantized and does not exist in continuous quantities.

"Quantized" in quantum mechanics means that a physical quantity can take only a discrete set of values rather than any value from a continuous range.

Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.

Since you have another theory, that the wave function can have properties of a particle and a wave, so you disagree with me. To me, the wave function only shows the properties of a wave, after you have made a measurement, the probability of what you have measured suddenly changes to 1, and the wave function appears as a particle, but still has the properties of a wave, which are there, but ignored.

> What exists between the wave functions?

There is no state between the stable wave functions, because when energy is delivered to an electron in an orbital it comes as a discrete quantity all at once.

> Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.

Sure, and your "theory" is wrong. Energy only exists in quantized steps, it is not continuous. That's not just an artifact of measurement, it's an artifact of reality.

If you have serious disagreements about quantum physics, derive the math to describe your theory and publish a paper. Show some math. Show some evidence. You're one step away from being written off as a crank right now. Don't just go around talking about how you and you alone have somehow "cracked the code" that physicists just can't get. It's nonsense.

> Energy only exists in quantized steps, it is not continuous.

The fact that you think I disagree with this means you do not understand me, nor the idea of the wave function.

> The fact that you think I disagree with this means you do not understand me, nor the idea of the wave function.

You said

> Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.

It's not that I don't understand you, it's that you clearly don't even understand what you're trying to say.

Right here, you say energy is not quantized but we think that it is because "we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum". You are contradicting yourself because you are very far outside your limit of understanding.