punctumm

• punctumm 12 Dec 2011 5:15 UTC

  2 points

  on: Con­figu­ra­tions and Amplitude

  Now, for complicated reasons that we aren’t going to go into today—considerations that belong on a higher level of organization than fundamental quantum mechanics, the same way that atoms are more complicated than quarks—there’s no simple measuring instrument that can directly tell us the exact amplitudes of each configuration. We can’t directly see the program state.

  I’m not sure if you cover this in further articles… but it is worth saying:

  The amplitudes of each state are not unique… there are more than one (in fact, there are infinitely many) different configurations that get you the same observable probability density, each differing by a phase factor.

• punctumm 12 Dec 2011 3:58 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Bob5’s comment on: De­co­her­ence is Falsifi­able and Testable

  electric and magnetic fields have actual values, which are also not simultaneously measurable.

  Actually, they are the same thing, so if you know one, you know the other… they are definitely NOT conjugate variables (variables that cannot be measured at the same time).