Pages

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Follow-up of my FQXi essay: Ordinary analogues for Quantum Mechanics

Today I had the good surprise to discover the article "Quantum mechanics writ large" written by John W. M. Bush, Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, promoting the work of Couder, Fort et al. on the bouncing droplets. John Bush writes: "At the time that pilot wave theory was developed and then overtaken by the Copenhagen interpretation as the standard view of quantum mechanics, there was no macroscopic pilot wave analog to draw upon. Now there is."

I'm totally in line with this opinion. Quantum mechanics has macroscopic analogues which have so far nearly never been discussed and from which we would learn a lot. There has already been some discussion along with my 2009 FQXi essay. In the abstract, I wrote something similar to John Bush: "Classical physics was not sufficiently advanced to deal with macroscopic particle-wave systems at the birth of quantum mechanics. Physicists therefore lacked references to compare quantum with analogous macroscopic behaviour. After consideration of some recent experiments with droplets steered by waves, we examine possibilities to give some intuitive meaning to the rules governing the quantum world."

So, I hope this new article will gain much attention and foster discussion about macroscopic analogues for quantum behavior.

No comments:

Post a Comment