habeus_coitus t1_j29h6ky wrote on December 30, 2022 at 4:51 PM

Reply to comment by pumpkin_enthusiast_ in harnessing quantum mechanics, physicists discovered a new way to observe objects without directly looking at them. Using a superconducting qubit called a transmon device, they were able to “see” microwave pulses generated by classical instruments without having to absorb or re-emit any light waves. by MistWeaver80

There aren’t any paradoxes in QM that I know of (purely within QM, there is a paradox between it and GR concerning black holes). A paradox means that a framework allows for two or more completely contradictory outcomes to occur, implying that the framework is flawed/incomplete. There’s nothing contradictory within QM atm. It does predict seemingly contradictory things, but these have all been experimentally verified, proving that they actually aren’t contradictory, our everyday intuition just doesn’t apply at quantum scales.

One arguable shortcoming of QM is that it only describes how things behave (the mechanics part of quantum mechanics), not how the underlying phenomena arise. Like, we know what happens to particles when you entangle them, but we still don’t fully understand what entanglement is. We’ve verified that it propagates faster than the speed of light, but we don’t know why. It would be like us understanding how things move under the influence of gravity but not knowing what gravity itself is (which we do know thanks to GR).

IcyOrio t1_j29l5zm wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:16 PM

What about the double slit experiment?

sticklebat t1_j29mmmp wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:25 PM

Nothing about the double slit experiment is paradoxical. It’s just unintuitive.

habeus_coitus t1_j29mdgj wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:24 PM

What about it? The outcomes of the experiment are unintuitive but repeatable.

Kali_Drummer t1_j2aaaqu wrote on December 30, 2022 at 7:55 PM

My question also.

pumpkin_enthusiast_ t1_j29ziir wrote on December 30, 2022 at 6:46 PM

Maybe paradox is not the right word, but if this new method help give some amount of explanation of why those phenomenon that we observe happen then i think it's a pretty big deal.

i personally do not find the "this is how particle behave because magic" to be a complete and satisfactory answer.

edit : spelling

habeus_coitus t1_j2a64j2 wrote on December 30, 2022 at 7:28 PM

My read of the article is that this will not do that. This appears to be a novel technique for measuring information about quantum objects (specifically microwave photons) in an indirect way. What are the implications of that? Hard to say. But it probably won’t lead to any insights or discoveries in fundamental physics.