Quantum mechanics is a branch of quantum physics that describes the properties and structure of subatomic particles and their systems. Heisenberg’s method required working with matrices (a mathematical table representing a set of ordered numbers).
Ideas and principles of quantum mechanics
At the beginning of the twentieth century, physicists adhered to the same views as Isaac Newton, who laid the foundations of modern science. As far as light is concerned, its behavior was to be described as the behavior of a wave. This model worked well in explaining refraction and interference, but it did not explain other phenomena at all – for example, the absorption and propagation of light. It was because of these discrepancies that the first steps were taken in developing a new theory.
One of the important shortcomings of the classical model was its inability to explain the “radiation of an absolutely black body”: why, as it heats up, a red-hot object emits a glow, first red, then yellow, and finally white. Attempts to explain this anomaly brought the German physicist Max Planck, in his own words, “to a desperate step.” In order for the equations describing this radiation to come together at last, Planck decided on the bold assumption that the radiation (energy) emanating from the object is not constant, but is emitted in separate portions, which he called quanta (from the Latin word “quantity”).
Planck himself believed that his assumption does not reflect reality and quanta are nothing more than a convenient mathematical abstraction. Five years later, Einstein successfully applied a similar method to unravel another problem that had long defied the classical model — the problem of the photoelectric effect, where matter emits electrons when exposed to light. Inspired by Planck’s idea of ”energy quanta”, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by the fact that light is also made up of individual particles (that is, quanta), which he called photons. And in 1913, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed a new model of the structure of the atom, in which the stability of the atom during absorption and emission of energy was explained using quantum principles
Contradictions in quantum mechanics
An international team of scientists from Austria, Great Britain and France conducted experiments that confirmed the existence of contradictions in the existing theory of quantum mechanics. The description and results of the experiment are published in the journal Science Advances.
Physicists have long been trying to find contradictions in the theory of quantum mechanics that prevent the observation of quantum entanglement or quantum teleportation in the real world. Many modern scientists believe that there are no boundaries between the quantum world and the macrouniverse, so quantum theory can describe absolutely all processes that take place.
Despite this, in 1967 Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner discovered the so-called friend paradox with a thought experiment showing the limitations of quantum mechanics.
Scientists conducted laboratory confirmation of Wigner’s idea. They used several pairs of observers, one of whom is conducting a quantum experiment, while others are trying to guess its results and results.
We managed to show that in the microcosm of atoms and particles, whose behavior is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, two observers can simultaneously have different sets of completely verifiable facts. In other words, quantum physics indicates that the phenomena it describes can be subjective.
Experiment participants
As the experiment showed, different pairs of scientists will absolutely always come to opposite conclusions, observing the same process or object of the microworld, if some will analyze what is happening using the principles of modern physics, while others will use quantum mechanics.
During the experiment, scientists used a prototype of a quantum computer, which is now being created by Scottish scientists. In their experiments, they used a pattern: the behavior of these pairs of scientists is described by the well-studied “Bell state” – the simplest form of entanglement, if they measure the properties of entangled particles of light that come from the same source.
In the “Bell state” the particles are always either in coinciding or in opposite states. Moreover, in the context of quantum physics, this experiment showed that, in fact, objective reality cannot exist, since virtual observers showed different measurement results.
