A way around the Uncertainity principle

[ktpr]

Can (two or more) simultaneous observers work around the limitations of Uncertainty? if not, then why?

[TeleMad]

I'm no physicist, but I'd say no.

 

First, if we consider the explantory light microscope, we'd presumably have one person trying to use a long wavelength, low energy photon to try to determine an electron's velocity accurately without disturbing it and another observer simultaneously using a short wavelength packet to precisely determine the electron's position. But one of the simultaneous measurements would disturb the object being measured nonetheless. Futher, how would one go about ensuring that the two independent measurements were made simultaneously? The long wavelength photon is relatively spread out in space so can't be localized, so you can't know exactly when it would be encountering the electron.

 

Second, many physicists state that it is a fundamental aspect of nature that an electron simply does not actually have both an exact position and velocity simultaneously. So no number of people could measure both at the same time, even if they didn't distrubed the electron at all.

[ktpr]

Well isn't the idea that elections are somehow both waves and particles. Not one or the either? If that's the case each observer would be look into a different realized concept of the election. But I'm just a beinging mech engineer student so I should read up on physics.

 

But, if you can measure them both, but not simulaneously, that would still be useful. There might be lag of a picosecond or something but information is so close im sure you could experimentally validate something. Thanks for the reply though. Gives me much to ponder

[Tormod]

TeleMad is correct, there is no way around the uncertainty principle. That's why it is a fundamental principle!

 

To simplify - one aspect of the uncertainty principle is that theoretically, the particle you want to observe could be anywhere in the universe at any given point in time. So mere picoseconds would count.

 

But as TeleMad says, the act of measuring for the uncertainty principle would have an effect on the particle so your measurements would fail.

[Freethinker]

Actually, I heard a very interesting discussion the other day on

 

"Einstein, Bohr and the Nature of Light

 

Listen to this story...Talk of the Nation audio

 

Talk of the Nation, July 30, 2004 · Is it a wave or a particle, or both, or neither? Well, maybe it depends on who is looking. In this hour we take a new look at an old quantum question about the nature of light."

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3804795

 

It has a link that allows streaming of the interview.

 

It was being suggested that a photon is neither/ both and not the particle/ wave collapse we are most familiar with. If memory servers (I will listen to the stream again tonight I hope and chase more info) the suggestion is more that if we use a particle detector it DETECTS it as a particle and same for a wave. That it is a function of the DETECTOR that determines which we detedt, not the photon's "state" itself.

 

But I am uncertain about it. lol