Heisenberg, Bohr: the Friendship behind the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory
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Date: 2022-12-27
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Comments and reviews: 20
Ray
The Copenhagen interpretation do dismantle the concept of cause and effect, by dissolving both waves and particles in a cloud where the particle (or the wave) is in all possible states; where the energies become a density of probabilities with Schroedinger equation.
The theory seems to have no sense, but all our current technology is based on it.
But the theory is incomplete, because it can't fit the force of gravity in it.
It is 80 years that there are no advancement in science. Theories like the String theory are proving inappropriate.
Thanks for the video; I never heard of such deep historical awareness before!
P. S. The role of Lise Meitner is bigger than what historians attribute her. She didn't just guessed what the uranium fission products were; she appeared to know the behaviour of all fissioning atoms in advance, which clearly was the trait of a great but unrecognised genius. The unfairness of history diluted her achievements. You may would want to dig deeper into Meitner role and character, and on how Otto Hahn won a Nobel just like Watson and Crick.
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The Copenhagen interpretation do dismantle the concept of cause and effect, by dissolving both waves and particles in a cloud where the particle (or the wave) is in all possible states; where the energies become a density of probabilities with Schroedinger equation.
The theory seems to have no sense, but all our current technology is based on it.
But the theory is incomplete, because it can't fit the force of gravity in it.
It is 80 years that there are no advancement in science. Theories like the String theory are proving inappropriate.
Thanks for the video; I never heard of such deep historical awareness before!
P. S. The role of Lise Meitner is bigger than what historians attribute her. She didn't just guessed what the uranium fission products were; she appeared to know the behaviour of all fissioning atoms in advance, which clearly was the trait of a great but unrecognised genius. The unfairness of history diluted her achievements. You may would want to dig deeper into Meitner role and character, and on how Otto Hahn won a Nobel just like Watson and Crick.
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bill
Thanks for the great presentation! A question and a spoiler, nevertheless:
Why is the character of Schrodinger dropped without elaboration? Central to 'Copenhagen' is understanding that his equation offers two solutions. My understanding, btw, is that it was Heisenberg that told his friend that this was okay. Bohr's 'Copenhagen' inclusion was that 2 solutions were necessary per equation.
Kindly consider or research the possibility that Heisenberg sabotaged the bomb project as a passionate opponent of weaponizing nuclear energy. For example, his 'miscalculation' by a magnitude of 1000 that the bomb was not possible? Are you aware of the 43. 5 lb pineapple lecture he gave while under voluntary detention after the war?
Lastly--and i confess to having seen your next presentation-- any conjecture as to what might have been said between 2 old friends is fictional. Therefore, it's only Broadway material suitable for making a point or 2 deemed provocative by theatre goers. It cannot serves as archival veracity.
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Thanks for the great presentation! A question and a spoiler, nevertheless:
Why is the character of Schrodinger dropped without elaboration? Central to 'Copenhagen' is understanding that his equation offers two solutions. My understanding, btw, is that it was Heisenberg that told his friend that this was okay. Bohr's 'Copenhagen' inclusion was that 2 solutions were necessary per equation.
Kindly consider or research the possibility that Heisenberg sabotaged the bomb project as a passionate opponent of weaponizing nuclear energy. For example, his 'miscalculation' by a magnitude of 1000 that the bomb was not possible? Are you aware of the 43. 5 lb pineapple lecture he gave while under voluntary detention after the war?
Lastly--and i confess to having seen your next presentation-- any conjecture as to what might have been said between 2 old friends is fictional. Therefore, it's only Broadway material suitable for making a point or 2 deemed provocative by theatre goers. It cannot serves as archival veracity.
reply
Erik
The Copenhagen interpretation is quite low on my list, where I personally sorted interpretations that I know of (and that are not crack-pottery. While I assign a quite low probability that the Copenhagen interpretation is the correct one (if there exists a correct interpretation of QM, I am not sure what interpretation I should pick as the most likely. There are numerous reasons to pick one or another, depending if I take the philosophical or mathematical/logical approach. While e. g. the pilot wave theory would be so nice philosophically, I must discard it for its logical inconsistency, not the mention the mathematics. I hate the many worlds interpretation philosophically (mostly because it tells me very little to nothing about my world, I like its simplicity and logical consistency. I can only hope there is another me that likes it. As a logical consequence, there is a high probability that there is an infinite amount of mes, who like it. And this I do not like. Funny, right?
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The Copenhagen interpretation is quite low on my list, where I personally sorted interpretations that I know of (and that are not crack-pottery. While I assign a quite low probability that the Copenhagen interpretation is the correct one (if there exists a correct interpretation of QM, I am not sure what interpretation I should pick as the most likely. There are numerous reasons to pick one or another, depending if I take the philosophical or mathematical/logical approach. While e. g. the pilot wave theory would be so nice philosophically, I must discard it for its logical inconsistency, not the mention the mathematics. I hate the many worlds interpretation philosophically (mostly because it tells me very little to nothing about my world, I like its simplicity and logical consistency. I can only hope there is another me that likes it. As a logical consequence, there is a high probability that there is an infinite amount of mes, who like it. And this I do not like. Funny, right?
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David
Quantum mechanics is utterly bewildering when it is first encountered, and Niels Bohr's ideas are a first step in helping us to make some sense of it. That is why the Copenhagen Interpretation deserves a chapter in every textbook, while other interpretations are best left out to begin with. However I don't think Copenhagen is the last word on the subject. I would like to be able to do computer simulations which make use of a random number generator and where I can do numerical experiments with antimatter before considering real experiments. The Copenhagen Interpretation gives little guidance on what to do, and if it is identified with logical positivism, then it could be telling me not be curious from the very start.
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Quantum mechanics is utterly bewildering when it is first encountered, and Niels Bohr's ideas are a first step in helping us to make some sense of it. That is why the Copenhagen Interpretation deserves a chapter in every textbook, while other interpretations are best left out to begin with. However I don't think Copenhagen is the last word on the subject. I would like to be able to do computer simulations which make use of a random number generator and where I can do numerical experiments with antimatter before considering real experiments. The Copenhagen Interpretation gives little guidance on what to do, and if it is identified with logical positivism, then it could be telling me not be curious from the very start.
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Daemon
A Neutron as an electron-proton pair makes sense, since a neutron decays into an electron and a proton. There is a group today working on developing what they call the Structured Atom Model, built on the simple classical premise of an electron, a proton and a neutron, which is an electron-proton pair smushed together. Like others such as Prof Unzicker out of Germany, they feel the modern model of the atom has become a convoluted jumble of ad hoc adjustments.
I love your videos, as they reveal so much about the people involved and this for me has profound context. There is, in my opinion a lack of philosophy in modern science.
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A Neutron as an electron-proton pair makes sense, since a neutron decays into an electron and a proton. There is a group today working on developing what they call the Structured Atom Model, built on the simple classical premise of an electron, a proton and a neutron, which is an electron-proton pair smushed together. Like others such as Prof Unzicker out of Germany, they feel the modern model of the atom has become a convoluted jumble of ad hoc adjustments.
I love your videos, as they reveal so much about the people involved and this for me has profound context. There is, in my opinion a lack of philosophy in modern science.
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AD
The driving idea behind Heisenberg's quantum mechanics actually came from W. Pauli. I know the stories that some would have come from cph, but that is essentially just the correspondence principle and that one needed a generally new physics. So qualitative ideas that weren't very special or unique.
I wonder, frankly, whether one should ramble like you about such history without any background in natural science. At least state your sources pls. Selling unreferenced statements as bare truths does not do good justice to the discipline of historical science either.
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The driving idea behind Heisenberg's quantum mechanics actually came from W. Pauli. I know the stories that some would have come from cph, but that is essentially just the correspondence principle and that one needed a generally new physics. So qualitative ideas that weren't very special or unique.
I wonder, frankly, whether one should ramble like you about such history without any background in natural science. At least state your sources pls. Selling unreferenced statements as bare truths does not do good justice to the discipline of historical science either.
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Michael
to discuss with Born his idea born out of his discussions with Bohr. Pardon me while I just sit here under my desk in a fetal position rocking gently back and forn. I mean, forth!
Also, it seems it's impossible to mind both your Ps and Qs, the more you mind one, the less you mind the other!
EDIT: Finally, wasn't Heisenberg eventually proven right that neutrons are smooshed together protons and electrons as proven by the existence of neutron stars, which indeed result from the gravity pressure forcing the electrons into protons?
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to discuss with Born his idea born out of his discussions with Bohr. Pardon me while I just sit here under my desk in a fetal position rocking gently back and forn. I mean, forth!
Also, it seems it's impossible to mind both your Ps and Qs, the more you mind one, the less you mind the other!
EDIT: Finally, wasn't Heisenberg eventually proven right that neutrons are smooshed together protons and electrons as proven by the existence of neutron stars, which indeed result from the gravity pressure forcing the electrons into protons?
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Peter
Fabulous Kathy, thank you! The more of your videos I watch the more I start to understand the play, which has been made into movies, of course, one with Daniel Craig (007. Ive never fully bought that Heisenberg did not think to explore the diffusion equation as portrayed in the movie, and therefore miscalculated the critical mass (as he described to colleagues in the secret farmhouse recordings. That he had begun to sympathize with nazi politics is believable esp. if his wife had that leaning. Thanks again.
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Fabulous Kathy, thank you! The more of your videos I watch the more I start to understand the play, which has been made into movies, of course, one with Daniel Craig (007. Ive never fully bought that Heisenberg did not think to explore the diffusion equation as portrayed in the movie, and therefore miscalculated the critical mass (as he described to colleagues in the secret farmhouse recordings. That he had begun to sympathize with nazi politics is believable esp. if his wife had that leaning. Thanks again.
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Patrick
I love your videos, and you need not change a thing for my appreciation. In that spirit I would like to make one constructive remark. I think it would be good to pronounce Leipzig with a long I (Lie-p zig. This is not the German pronunciation, but what I believe is a more correct English pronunciation of a very famous city, Leipzig (the rule is: ei and ie combinations take the long sound of the second letter. Impulsively pedantic
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I love your videos, and you need not change a thing for my appreciation. In that spirit I would like to make one constructive remark. I think it would be good to pronounce Leipzig with a long I (Lie-p zig. This is not the German pronunciation, but what I believe is a more correct English pronunciation of a very famous city, Leipzig (the rule is: ei and ie combinations take the long sound of the second letter. Impulsively pedantic
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Cesar
Copenhagen Interpretation still taught in undergraduate introductory QM courses is what derails the young physics student from a foundational understanding of what the theory of QM can potentially tell us about reality. One exploration of a reality is through the (Everettian) Many Worlds Interpretation of QM, which Bohr vehemently rejected, but today is growing more acceptance in foundational quantum theoretical work.
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Copenhagen Interpretation still taught in undergraduate introductory QM courses is what derails the young physics student from a foundational understanding of what the theory of QM can potentially tell us about reality. One exploration of a reality is through the (Everettian) Many Worlds Interpretation of QM, which Bohr vehemently rejected, but today is growing more acceptance in foundational quantum theoretical work.
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Dana
thank you for this wonderful talk but I am appalled by the fact that Heisenberg who was such a visionary could have Nazi sympathies it just seems inconsistent with his vision of reality but I'm also appalled by the fact that such a media product like Olivia Newton-John has a connection to quantum physics that is so repulsive to me why couldn't it be someone like Aretha Franklin or Joan Baez
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thank you for this wonderful talk but I am appalled by the fact that Heisenberg who was such a visionary could have Nazi sympathies it just seems inconsistent with his vision of reality but I'm also appalled by the fact that such a media product like Olivia Newton-John has a connection to quantum physics that is so repulsive to me why couldn't it be someone like Aretha Franklin or Joan Baez
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Pete
A fantastic video. Further example of why it was the Nazi's and Lenard that prevented Einstein from accepting Maxwell's aether, the real cause of accepting probabilities and the Copenhagen interpretation. That's the reason gravity and quantum mechanics don't mix. Einstein's 1922 presentation is a lame excuse for giving up particulate space.
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A fantastic video. Further example of why it was the Nazi's and Lenard that prevented Einstein from accepting Maxwell's aether, the real cause of accepting probabilities and the Copenhagen interpretation. That's the reason gravity and quantum mechanics don't mix. Einstein's 1922 presentation is a lame excuse for giving up particulate space.
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Peter
I find the personalities behind the science very interesting and you cover that topic as well as can be done in 15 minutes. Who are these people who can come up with such extraordinary scientific advances in a time when the horse was still a major form of transport.
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I find the personalities behind the science very interesting and you cover that topic as well as can be done in 15 minutes. Who are these people who can come up with such extraordinary scientific advances in a time when the horse was still a major form of transport.
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TheAbc45678
Max Born was the grandfather of Olivia Newton John, and both Olivia and Albert Einstein visited Born's house often. Olivia's (and Einstein's) approaches were Let's Get Physical, while Born's (and Heisenberg's) approach was Let's Get Quantum.
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Max Born was the grandfather of Olivia Newton John, and both Olivia and Albert Einstein visited Born's house often. Olivia's (and Einstein's) approaches were Let's Get Physical, while Born's (and Heisenberg's) approach was Let's Get Quantum.
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David
Between 1933 and 1939 Germany was the world's principal exporter of clever scientists, and there were indeed some very clever people. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of the Nazis or to Heisenberg that maybe there could be something wrong here.
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Between 1933 and 1939 Germany was the world's principal exporter of clever scientists, and there were indeed some very clever people. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of the Nazis or to Heisenberg that maybe there could be something wrong here.
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Ken
A fine post - very interesting and very clear. But one little thing that bugs pedantic listeners - could you try and get the pronunciation of names a bit better? It is especially annoying to hear Werner mispronounced. It's pronounced vairner (sorta.
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A fine post - very interesting and very clear. But one little thing that bugs pedantic listeners - could you try and get the pronunciation of names a bit better? It is especially annoying to hear Werner mispronounced. It's pronounced vairner (sorta.
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peterhaslund
I have no idea if it has been translated to English, but there's a great book in Danish: Det Udelelige (The Undividable) describing this amazing period in physics that people still struggle to understand this day and age
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I have no idea if it has been translated to English, but there's a great book in Danish: Det Udelelige (The Undividable) describing this amazing period in physics that people still struggle to understand this day and age
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Aaron
I think it might add a little more to the story if you also discussed Einstein and Heisenberg's disagreements on the inclusion of only Observables in a theory. In it, Heisenberg lays one of greatest burns in science history.
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I think it might add a little more to the story if you also discussed Einstein and Heisenberg's disagreements on the inclusion of only Observables in a theory. In it, Heisenberg lays one of greatest burns in science history.
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Calvin
History itself is a science based on facts. Mythology is the art of story telling, not a lie but a useful story. We may never know everything about these physicists but you honestly state the facts. Thank you Kathy.
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History itself is a science based on facts. Mythology is the art of story telling, not a lie but a useful story. We may never know everything about these physicists but you honestly state the facts. Thank you Kathy.
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ZEE
Sooooo, interesting the history behind all this matter and this guys/gals.
and the way you put it is very nice and accessible,
now I must go. I need to sniff on all the videos you have already made. ;-)
reply
Sooooo, interesting the history behind all this matter and this guys/gals.
and the way you put it is very nice and accessible,
now I must go. I need to sniff on all the videos you have already made. ;-)
reply
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