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Physicist's Verified Quantum-"Uncollapse" Hypothesis

rochester.edu — In 2006, Andrew Jordan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, together with Alexander Korotkov at the University of California, Riverside, spelled out how to exploit a quantum quirk to accomplish a feat long thought impossible, and this week a research team at the University of California at Santa Barbara has tested the

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  • arobicha, on 08/06/2008, -0/+6This is huge. I'm surprised the "amateur physicist league" isn't all over this.
  • Shogi, on 08/07/2008, -1/+7If this is true then as I understand it, he's just broken quantum encryption before it even started. Being able to observe quantum particles without altering them completely ruins all security of quantum encryption.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography
    • Fallenshadow, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0well, im curious to see what type of information is gained from a "weak" measurement. It may not be enough information to break the encryption.
    • dafragsta, on 08/07/2008, -1/+0Uuuh... if a quantum particle can be in an INFINITE number of collapsed positions, how is this breaking quantum incryption? That's like saying that I think your pin number is written down on a piece of paper in a hotel drawer in Moscow when the quantum computer says it's under a doghouse in Idaho. They are saying that you can cause the particle to RECOLLAPSE by using multiple weaker measurements. This would create the illusion (or maybe not an illusion as far as our perspective is concerned) that the particle is literally teleporting with each measurement.
      • NathanielJ, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0There aren't an infinite number of collapsed positions though, just an infinite number of uncollapsed ones. Even still though, what on earth does that have to do with this? Quantum cryptopgraphy relies on the eavesdropper not being able to measure particles without being detected. What the article describes, assuming "weak" measurements are good enough (which I doubt they are), implies that the eavesdropper could do exactly that.
    • L0C0loco, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0This was precisely what I was wondering. If it is true that the partial collapse can be completely undone, then quantum encryption is doomed. Or is this going to be made top secret and only allow the government to snoop.

      Unrelated: Why have all of the comments been dugg to zero? Is someone angry because their worthless comment got dugg down this morning?
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Something is different with the comments; I keep getting the 'enter the text you see' capta crap with every comment, for one thing. And they all seem to start with 'zero' diggs upon submission instead of the usual 'one' now.
      • sysop073, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Do people not know you can click the "0 diggs" text to get the breakdown of votes? They're starting at +0/-0, they're not being dugg down. It's a bug, they're working on it
  • BuLong, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1THIS IS MADNESS!!!
  • juliohm, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0quantum physics is dah *****.
  • jamspt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Cogito ergo sum.
    I think, therefore I am.

    In other news, I wonder how schrodinger's cat is doing.
    • Yout, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0He'll be fine as long as you only peak inside the box.
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Or dead. Sniffing is probably a weaker measurement than peeking -- just to be safe.
      • Hangly, on 08/07/2008, -0/+2sorry, no. Peeking will kill him.
    • merlin5, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Correction...You thought therefore you were. At any given moment you may not be, in fact. At least as I interpret quantum theory.
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I was will be wondering if the cat was will be dead.

        We're not 'all here' and 'all now' but only mostly here and mostly now with the rest spread out in all time and space. -- think about that one (would that not explain some 'paranormal' type activities?)
      • merlin5, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Exactly!Not!Probably?
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0This!Xor!That?
    • danielquinn, on 08/09/2008, -0/+0The cat will eventually die
  • Yond, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1This is truly amazing. It seems to me as if the quantum world is literally the physics of possibility itself. To think that a particle does one thing when you are not observing it, and another when you do.
    • honthraj, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Sounds like my kids. No amazing story there.
  • sc0rpi0n, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Wow is that "Undo" in real world? Make a mistake? Undo undo undo.
  • biggrz, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Mulligan?
  • Maizuru, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I understood that quantum entanglement couldn't be used for communicating data - but if you can weakly measure the state and only partially collapse it before recovering it, does this means that now this could be possible?
    • MacEnvy, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Very good point - if we can weakly measure the particle, then all we need to do is entangle and stabilize a batch of particles and then they could be shipped anywhere in the universe for instant weak measurement - and thus, instant communication.

      If this breakthrough holds we may have just seen the basis for the invention of "subspace communication", Star Trek-style. Truly an amazing discovery.
      • Aero347, on 08/07/2008, -0/+01. Send Quantum message to an unknown destination.
        2. ???
        3. Profit!
    • thorseth, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0This is exactly why I remain very skeptical of this, the implications would be completely mind blowing. However nature has a way of making the pieces fit and to laugh at people trying to do "workarounds".
  • ShoesChrist, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Neat!
  • medarby, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Finally, a great science/tech article that made it to the front page of Digg! Fascinating stuff.
  • MrFurious2k, on 08/07/2008, -0/+4Inspect. Ctrl-Z.
  • gabugala, on 08/07/2008, -3/+0I can haz know how?
  • Timborako, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0'take a "weak" measurement of a quantum particle, which triggered a partial collapse.' Holy god thats cool
  • stfuitsalex, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I go to the University of Rochester and this is definitely awesome. We have a great physics department. We also have one of the world's strongest lasers which the US currently does fusion research with. However, I myself am in Chemical Engineering. Still cool to see Newsweek's "new ivies" and my school featured on the front page of digg.
    • Lythium, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Great: then YOU can explain to me how you can "unmeasure" something, because my un-scientific brain is just not getting it.
      • gn0stik, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0K, I'm not sure if I'm on the right path or not here, but it seems that this type of thing would be based on M theory. Strings. Imagine matter in the universe as a guitar string. When a guitar string vibrates, the vibration sort of consolidates at certain points along the string. At these points, the string looks more solid compared to other points along the string. This is a natural result of the frequency of the vibration. In musical lingo these are the harmonic points. In physics this would be a particle. If you touch one of these points, the vibration begins to collapses. However if you just tap it for a second, it rings, and vibration continues.

      • Lythium, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Quoting from xkcd is a faux pas on Digg, I know, but your explanation just begs for it (no offense intended - I do appreciate the effort).
        http://xkcd.com/397/
      • gn0stik, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1lythium, love it.

        I hadn't seen that one yet.
    • senatorpjt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Yeah, the only reason I read this is because I'm at UR. Of course, I'm not in physics and I have no idea what this article is talking about. As far as I can tell it's some sort of violation of the observer effect.
  • Croaton, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0It would certainly be interesting to know what differentiates a "weak measurement" from a normal measurement. If the amount of information is the same and nothing is lost with the weak measrement then this is seriously cool!
    • NathanielJ, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0If the amount of information were the same then it probably wouldn't be called a "weak" measurement.
    • gn0stik, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0It doesn't have to be the same amount of information. All you have to do is effect a difference in the entangled particle, which can somehow be detected at the other end, and translated into 1s and 0s.
  • stfuitsalex, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I actually had Jordan as a prof as well.
  • Uthman, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0i thought this article was very interesting -- but nowhere in the article did it actually discuss how these professors went about measuring the particle.. nor did it discuss any of the procedure the other set of processors used to verify it.

    in addition to hearing 'about' the news, i would also like to know at least a brief outline of how the news was accomplished.. anyone feel the same..?

    '=/
    • Sonan, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I agree, and after spending a few minutes searching for a better article, I've come up empty. With the level of detail here, I'm left with more questions than answers. But it's still very interesting though.
    • Perceptor, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0On mr. Jordan's site (http://www.pas.rochester.edu/%7Ejordan/ ) is a link to the article on arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3547
      and to the Nature News article: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/454008 ... or http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~jordan/Nature-news-u ... (PDF)
      • SirBruce, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1The last link to the PDF article is HIGHLY recommended. Basically they've found a way to take a measurement of a qubit to find it it's likely value, and then interfere with it so it goes back to being indeterminate again. The measurement still disrupts the system, but now they can knock it back into random. The measurement is "weak" because there's always going to be some small probability that it's wrong.

        I'm not really sure that this breaks anything in quantum computing or communication or encryption, but it doesn't seem to at first blush. All that he's really shown is that the traditional Copenhagen interpretation of waveform collapse is wrong, which most physicists have come to except by now anyway.
  • steve558, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Does that not mean eavesdropping on a optical communication link, which uses quantum encryption, is possible?
  • Versh, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Werner Heisenberg will be pissed! "What a weak measurement!"
    • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0There is some degree of uncertainty as to how pissed he would be vs exaclty where he will be when he gets that pissed.

  • smek2, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Judging from the majority of the comments here, one would assume that the average Digg user is a moron. Regarding the article, not enough information is given as to how these measurements were taken and how they actually "undone" them. I'm surprised too that there are not many more source reporting this. If this were true it would be a milestone.
    • BoneheadFarker, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0What can I say...uneducated speculation is fun sometimes...
    • gn0stik, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0and how they actually "undone" them

      Who's the moron?
  • fx666, on 08/07/2008, -2/+0If this were article were true, it would spell the end of quantum mechanics as we know it, as a scientist with PhD in physics, I am quite aware of that. All quantum mechanics is based on the notion of so-called collapse of the wave function. But I do not think this is what that poorly described experiment proves. What does it actually prove? Unfortunately, the description of it is so vague and unprofessional that it is impossible to draw any conclusion.
    • BossX, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0806/0806.3547 ...
      • MacEnvy, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Very nice, thanks for that. It's nice to see the full paper on these sorts of things.

        Now can someone smarter than me read it and tell us what it means?
    • wonderbriefs, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0As a former congressman I can tell you that you're full of it.
      And as a moo-cow, I can give milk.
      It's fun to pretend, isn't it, Jay Stalin 666?
      • fx666, on 08/08/2008, -2/+1Prove me to be scientifically wrong and then lay a claim of being a former moo-cow politician, and I might believe you. Otherwise, do not forget about the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
    • JigoroKano, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1I hope your specialty wasn't in quantum mechanics. Wave function collapse is inherently incompatible with the unitary dynamics of the Schrodinger equation. The challenge is and has always been to unify the two.

      From the perspective of the Schrodinger equation as being more fundamental. Wave function collapse can be achieved in an open system treatment with a large environment. A measurement can be simulated with strong coupling to the environment. Weak measurements aren't a surprise. Measurement reversal is. That is what is novel here.
      • fx666, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1Apparently, you do not have a faintest idea of what quantum mechanics is. The wave function collapse follows directly from the Schrodinger equation. Foe more information on this topic consult the book Quantum Theory by David Bohm.
        The phrase "A measurement can be simulated with strong coupling to the environment" has no meaning because any measurement is inseparable from the environment, as Niels Bohr pointed out in numerous articles, so there is no such thing as a weak coupling. "Weak measurement." is a reference to certain types of elementary particle interactions and not to the measurement itself, it is just a technical term for several type of interactions.
        There are reversible processes, mostly in quantum and classical statistics, but there is no such thing as a reversed measurement, every scientist knows that-- once a measurement is recorded it becomes irreversible.
        I suspect that you are one of those science buffs who uses what he thinks is a scientific terminology without understanding of its real meaning.
      • JigoroKano, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1Wave function collapse is a non-unitary and irreversible process. It doesn't follow directly from the Schrodinger equation as the Schrodinger equation only allows for unitary and time-reversible processes.
        You are probably confused in that wave function collapse is one of the Born measurement postulates of QM. It is, but at the same time it is not a type of evolution describable by the Schrodinger equation, at least not in a closed system formalism.
        This is very basic. It is one of the 2 biggest outstanding problems of QM, although I think it is pretty much resolved. You should have learned this in your introductory quantum mechanics course in graduate school if not undergraduate school.

        Measurements are interactions with a fairly classical environment. To say otherwise reveals profound ignorance.

        There is always such a thing as weak coupling. I take it you've never heard of the Lindblad equation or Redfield equation. So that means you haven't done any real work in dissipative or decoherent quantum mechanics. Here's a hint, you can't even prepare a thermal state without weak coupling.

        All processes described by a time-independent Hamiltonian are reversible, quantum or classical.

        A full wave collapse isn't reversible. The partial wave collapse from a weak measurement could possibly be reversible. Maybe you should read the arXiv paper.

        Your suspicions are pretty poor as is your knowledge of quantum mechanics. You might have a degree in physics, but that doesn't make you a specialist in quantum mechanics. You aren't and it shows painfully.
  • Icebath, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0An hypothesis can never be "proven," "verified" or "correct." It is supported or not. I find the reporting on this story well meaning but lacking clarity.
  • Marrach, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0 I would say: umm. . . .Wow!
    Except then I realized that I really did not understand what he was describing. Or I DID understand it-- except now it stopped making sense when I understood what I thought I understood.
    Does this throw 'Quantum Encryption' out the window?
  • Miff, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0How do you unmeasure something?
    • Zeigy, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0My sentiments exactly.

      You take a measurement and then because the quantum particle has to go back out of the classical world, to the quantum state, you lose the measurement. Can't they just write it down so that it exists on paper as well?
  • zeta77, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1The press release is a poor substitute for the actual article http://arxiv.org/pdf/0708.0365, which while interesting, is not quite so earth shattering. Many posters above are correct in thinking that the weak measurement does not provide enough information about the quantum state to learn anything. In fact, if you look at example one, the strategy is to wait until your weak measurement current (which is driven by an essentially white noise process) hits 0, at which point you know the current state has returned the initial state. This is random, so there will be only some probability of succeeding in the reversal. Even when you succeed, you don't know *what* the initial state is, just that you returned to it; which is precisely the information you would need to do anything useful! So from my cursory reading, I would say that you can call this undoing the measurement, but no useful information is gained by the experimenter.
    • goatrandy, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0 Actually I think it may be the single most important discovery in the history of humankind.

      The qubit has a 70% chance of being restored to it's 'un-collapsed' state by 'erasing' the information they gained about it.

      Now imagine a machine that repeatedly measures the velocity of a particle, then if it is measurable and high fully collapses it, but otherwise un-collapses it (by 'erasing' the information about it's velocity). You have a free energy machine.

      Now imagine one that measures position in the same way. Teleportation. Time, time travel. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

      You get my point. This could allow you to at least partially CHOOSE the state you prefer.

      Think maxwells demon, but on a sub-atomic scale.
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Yea, I saw that machine on Eureka; It whacked the sheriff on the head.
      • Dereliction, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Goat: They aren't "erasing the information gained" by the measurement in order to cause an uncollapse. Rather, they are "undoing" the effect that *the act of measuring has caused* on the quantum system being inspected. To try and simplify, there are two measurement states--strong and weak. Strong quantum measurements irreparably alter what is being observed; some would say that the measurement actually produces the result. According to this new paper, the effects produced by measurement--when it is a weak measurement--can be "repaired" if you will, removing any altering effects that weak measurement have produced.

        It is important, what has been uncovered here, but not at all in the manner you suggest. The implications are key in a philosophical sense (at least initially) as relates to the nature of our universe, classic or quantum alike, as being natively nondeterministic.

        To try and shed a little light in that direction, we might like to consider the "quantum" as "chaos incarnate". Interactions at the very base, the lowest most fundamental core of our universe and very existence, are in fact nondeterministic--utterly uncaused. This notion seems to defy everything we see in "classical" reality because cause and effect are so prevalent in our day to day lives. The universe, in spite of this, is by its very nature a beast of chaos. Quantum particles flit in and out of existence without any underlying cause whatsoever. Nondeterministic reality is the rule of the universe.

        What the scientists here have done is demonstrate that the conceived line between "classical" and "quantum" states are not sharp, certainly not as we've understood it to date. The discovery helps to describe why we tend to perceive so-called "deterministic" events when observing things in a classical sense--that is, why it is that we can make sense of chaos, if you will. The line between the classical and quantum states we have laid out before are now in fact blurred by this discovery, you might even say that the line is now "blurred beyond repair" if you prefer to comment on it with a bit of irony involved.
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0"nondeterministic" as in the 'subjective' sense?

        Karl Popper? Is that you? Christ, man! Good to see ya! Wikki said that you were dead!
  • drgreenberg, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1From my reading of Jordan's hypothesis, it just moves around uncertainty in a different way. The stronger the intial measurement, that is, the smaller the uncertainty of the result, the less the chance that you are able to restore the system back to its original state. This seems to mean that the measurement does leave a scar beyond ... the confidence that the restored state is actually the restored state.

    I also don't see how they've proven that they've restored the state back to its original condition. They may have created a state of equivalent uncertainty to the original state, but is this really the original state? I can measure something and rescramble it to the point of no longer being able to trust my original measurement, but is this is the same thing as a restoration of the state? For instance, how would this affect correlation between the state and any entangled states upon future measurement?
    • Pittance, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Yeah, since when does altering a particle somehow "undo" something? You can't undo anything, ever. You can only do. So what the hell is this physicist talking about?
    • 054k4, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Although this is great, I also have to agree with you. How does one tell if the particle in question is undone without measuring it ? Moreover, if you measure it, that "strong" measure will surely affect that particle.
    • eyal0, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1According to the article, the original measurements didn't completely collapse the qubit. Thus further measurements might happen to give the other result (|1> instead of |2> or vice-versa). You can't be sure that it'll work, but it's possible that enough further measurement will balance out the previous measurement and the sum of all the measurements will be zero, meaning that the particle is back to where it started, even if you're not sure where that was.

      For instance, you can step left 5 times and then right 5 times and have no idea where you are but still be certain that you're back where you started. You know where you started nor where you ended up, but you know that the two are the same.
  • XchrisX, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Schrödinger's cat is not amused
    • dafragsta, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0whoever buried you doesn't even know who Schrodinger is.
    • BoneheadFarker, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0And soon we can verify this without opening the box.
    • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0How do you know? Did you look in the box?

      {Though it's been in there many years now so that I *have faith* that the superposition of states tend probabilistically to lean a bit to the 'dead' side of life; Thus you are most likely correct in *assuming* the cat is not "amused" -- he's probably not 'anything' at all.}
    • danlowlite, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Schrodinger's Cat is only _mostly_ dead. Which is partially alive.

      It'll take a miracle.
  • mass, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I partially understood the research paper, but then I un-understood it.
  • o0joshua0o, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0WTF is a "weak" measurement, and how can you "unmeasure" something?
    • eyal0, on 08/07/2008, -0/+2In laymen terms using a so-so metaphor: Say you flip a coin 100 times and you get 60 heads and 40 tails. You'd have a suspicion that the coin is weighted unfairly to give heads most of the time, right? It's a weak measurement because you didn't weigh the coin so you don't really know that heads is preferred over tails, but in 100 trials it sure looks like it. Might be that the coin was totally fair but you just got lucky to throw a bunch of heads.

      Now imagine that each time the coin landed heads, the coin got dinged up and heads got an even bigger bias to be even more likely. And when it lands tails, tails get a bigger bias. So while you were flipping the coin, you were changing the bias. Your measuring was making the coin change but you didn't want that because you need the coin to stay the same. You wanted your measurement to have no effect.

      So what do you do? You keep flipping the coin and hope to see more tails than heads by 20. If you get lucky and eventually see, say, 321 tails and 301 heads, now you've dinged up each side of the coin equally and you're back to your original coin. That's the unmeasurement.

      Problem is, the more you see heads, the more likely you see heads. Once the ball gets rolling, you might eventually see so many heads that your coin is dinged up beyond repair and will never show you tails again. Now you'll never get your original coin back.

      Instead of flipping 100 times at the beginning, you could have just flipped 10 times and maybe get 6 heads, 4 tails. Now you're not so sure that the coin is biased. But on the other hand, you only need to get tails twice more than heads in subsequent flips to put the coin back. So it's less likely that your coin will snowball to always heads or always tails.
      • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0hehehehhee... Hey Bevis, he said "throw a bunch of heads." hhehehehehehe.
    • Dereliction, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0When you commit a "strong" measurement on some quantum state, you cause it to collapse. That is, you effectively transition from quantum to classical states. Weak measurements cause only partial collapse and it is not a matter of "unmeasuring" what has been measured. Rather, the "uncollapse" that is referred to here is a reference to repairing any damage done by the act of measuring (and not "undoing" the measuring itself in some fashion). The repair is to the quantum state, undoing whatever degree of partial collapse which occurred by engaging in a weak measurement. Said differently, it "uncollapses" whatever amount of partial collapse occurred while measuring, but does not affect the measurement (or the act of measuring) itself.
      • SirBruce, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Indeed, the "weak" measurement isn't all that useful, because not only does it have a non-zero chance of being completely the opposite of "truth", but the subsequent uncollapse restores the thing you're measuring to an equally indeterminate state.

        You're not really peeking into the box and finding out that the cat is going to be alive or dead when you open it all the way in the future. You're just peaking into the box and finding out if that cat is most likely alive or dead at that moment, and then randomizing the cat's ultimate fate afterwards.
      • o0joshua0o, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1How can the act of measuring something have such a strong effect on a thing's nature? Is measurement some kind powerful force in and of itself? What happens if a robot measures something? Does that count? What if something is measured by a robot that doesn't tell anyone the outcome? Are particles like the toys in Toy Story, that act differently when no one is looking?
      • Ryven, on 08/08/2008, -0/+0o0joshua0o - Think of it this way - objects aren't really solid, Newtonian things; they're more like the probability of an object being there. As one state becomes overwhelmingly more probable, they start to behave like everyday objects.

        When you can't measure something, you can only make guesses about where it is, and what it's doing there, and its behavior is uncertain. You're not at home: where is your furniture, and what state is it in? You can guess that it's still sitting where you left it, but nobody can tell without interacting with the inside of your house to find out. Nevertheless, in all probability it's still there, because macroscopic objects are easy to pin down.

        At a very small scales, though, it's VERY hard to guess where a particle is or what it's doing without measuring it - they move around and change energies a lot, and the degree of uncertainty is very large. At this level, something strange happens - unless you're measuring the particle, interacting with it, it behaves as a wave, exhibiting interference patterns and such, because it's about equally probable for it to be in any of several places at once. But when you look at it, you find out where it really was when you measured it, and the probabilities changed so that for a while it behaves a little more like a classical object.

        I didn't explain that very well... try looking up the Double-Slit Experiment, which is a good visual aid.
  • JBrown99, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Dugg for U of R.
  • Gendibal, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Way to go, Rocha-cha-cha!
  • Cyberdactyl, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Eat this Werner !!
  • floatingorb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Something is obviously screwd with the comment system now; I keep getting the 'capta' and it also blew this site:
    http://garycarstensen.googlepages.com/comments7.ht ...

    That comment trakker now shows 0 diggs 0 buries 0 net....

    Anyone else having this problem? Or Is it just me heavy-handedly 'sandboxed' by Digg now?
  • Dereliction, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1For anyone wanting a clearer understanding of this discovery and how they went about the "uncollapse", check out this Nature article on this discovery (PDF):

    http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~jordan/Nature-news-u ...
  • GalaxyJob, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Want to predict more quantum theories? Imagine electrons, protons and neutrons as bubbles - it becomes easy to explain how could particles be at same time in many places and act like waves (+ atoms and molecules acts like foam).
  • chungyc, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0This sounds like it could give a boost to the relative state formulation of quantum mechanics.
  • Oneirix, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0My head is about to explode. I'm positive I don't understand the half of this discovery, but I got enough to glean that this is amazing. Hooray for science!
  • Mac_Dre, on 08/07/2008, -0/+4I don't like how they fail to include at least a rudimentary understanding of the "measurement" they did. In simpler words what they said in this article is "we did something great, this is what we did... end of story" It would be like McDonald's coming out and saying they created a super sized hamburger meal that has no calories and cures cancer, and not saying what the hell is in the ingredients and the cooking procedure. A more concrete true life example is when they got the guy who played superman, the guy who was paralyzed from the neck down, to actually move his hand a little bit. That's all they said. They refused to say what they did to do it.
  • badmephisto, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1People not involved with QM do not understand measurement. It has nothing to do with humans, or our perception of "knowing" something about the particle. A measurement is simply an interaction. You need to interact with particle to make a measurement on it.
    I dont think this breaks quantum encryption. It is my belief that this partial measurement only yields partial results, which may not be all that useful. But then, I only took 1 full year of Quantum mechanics, so I am still pretty much a newbie.
  • udahlen, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1Quantum Physics is offending to me as a believer in The Holy Stable Particle. I demand this "theory" not being taught in our school.
    • Mac_Dre, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1I'm pretty sure that even the wealthiest of public schools do not have a quantum physics class.
  • MrColdheart, on 08/09/2008, -0/+1This is bigger than we all think!
    It states that a professor and a student from two different colleges used a quantum quirk "exploit" to measure quantum objects without them collapsing.
    The concept alone is matrix-like.
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