Can Fractals Make Sense of the Quantum World? 236
Keith found a New Scientist story about fractals and quantum theory. The article says "Take the mathematics of fractals into account, says Palmer, and the long-standing puzzles of quantum theory may be much easier to understand. They might even dissolve away."
Re:Quantum Exploration (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Quantum Exploration (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Black hole information loss? (Score:3, Informative)
> ...to an outside observer, an object never falls into a black hole, it only approaches
> the event horizon without ever quite reaching it.
This implies that a black hole can never be observed to come into existence.
The theory needs proofreading (Score:3, Informative)
From the author's abstract at http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1148 [arxiv.org]
The Invariant Set Hypothesis: A New Geometric Framework for the Foundations of Quantum Theory and the Role Played by Gravity
T.N.Palmer
"Combining these, an entirely analysis is given of the standard "mysteries" of quantum theory: superposition, nonlocality, measurement, emergence of classicality, the ontology of uncertainty and so on."
Re:Poppycock (Score:3, Informative)
You're confusing the uncertainty principle with the observer effect.
It isn't possible to know the position and velocity of a particle exactly, *even in theory*. I.e. if you could know everything about the particle magically without doing any measurements then you still wouldn't be able to write down its exact position and velocity. In that sense the uncertainty principle is badly named - there isn't really any uncertainty involved.
It's just that velocity and position are macro quantities that don't make much sense on a quantum scale. It's the same as not being able to 'know' the frequency and arrival time of wave packets at the same time.
Re:New Scientist (Score:3, Informative)