Quantum Randomness
Please note: this post is IA-free.
‘Quantum randomness is the statistical manifestation of that indeterminacy, witnessable in results of experiments repeated many times.’ In a simpler form, when doing experiments with quantum particles, there is somewhat built in, a randomness which shows up in numbers.
When it comes to the quantum world of the small, I can bet you will find there will be words that seem strange and confusing. Emagin what it was like back in 1920 when the quantum physics world was announced and many, if not all physicists, were confused that they had to learn a new set of physics and try to align these to the grand world of natural science.
You can see why Einstein pushed back a great deal and made an enemy (nemesis), of Neils Bohr at all physics European conferences - they fought tooth and nail on all subjects without settling an argument.
Dr Neils Bohr when very young – Germany
Back then, the German physicists ruled the world of the new physics with little competition from elsewhere. This new physics challenged the best of physicists and. required a uthfull person to get their head around such uncertainty. Apart from the fact that the electron was only discovered 23 years prior, it was back to school for them all.
Discovery of the electron:
April 30, 1897, British physicist J.J. Thomson announced his discovery that atoms were made up of smaller components. This finding revolutionized the way scientists thought about the atom and had major ramifications for the field of physics.13 Nov 2019.
Dr Niels Bohr:
Bohr proposed a model of the atom in which the electron was able to occupy only certain orbits around the nucleus. This atomic model was the first to use quantum theory, in that the electrons were limited to specific orbits around the nucleus. Bohr used his model to explain the spectral lines of hydrogen. This discovery heralded in the new world of quantum mechanics requiring further discoveries leading up to the beginning of the Standard Model - published in the mid 60’s.
Along comes quantum randomness:
True universal randomness does exist at the very foundations of matter and quantum physics.
Explaining quantum mechanics:
A quantum (plural: quanta) is the smallest discrete unit of a quantum particle. For example, a quantum of light is a photon, and a quantum of electricity is an electron. Quantum comes from Latin, meaning "an amount" or "how much?" This became clear when Dr Max Plank (Germany), published his papers on the smallest of length, time, mass, and energy and is still used today.
This disobedience of particle behaviour.
I call this disobedience as I like the word. Played out in the 1920’s leading to the publishing of the Uncertainty Principle. Formulated by the German physicist and Nobel laureate, Warner Heisenberg in 1927, published the Uncertainty Principle which states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we try to nail down the particle's position, the less we know about its speed. This is true to the proposition of quantum randomness.
Warner Heinsberg 1927.
For Heinsberg, to come up with solving his Uncertainty Principe and publish the paper in Feb 1927, Heinsberg spent 3 months on an island in far north Germany away from the hustle and bustle of Berlin. Like Einstein, to come up with a seriously profound theory such as this, it required solitude and thought. In the end it gained him a Noble Prize for his efforts towards quantum mechanics and a better understanding of particle behaviour or lack of particle behaviour.
