No one is about to claim that quantum physics is now easy to understand, but maybe it’s not quite as devilishly complicated as we thought.
New research suggests that two of the quantum world’s most mysterious features–the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality–are simply two sides of a single coin.
“The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you consider them as questions about what information you can gain about a system,” Dr. Stephanie Wehner, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and one of the scientists behind the research, said in a written statement. “Our result highlights the power of thinking about physics from the perspective of information.”
Wave-particle duality is the idea that elementary particles can exhibit wave-like behavior–for example, as seen in the classic double-slit experiment. The uncertainty principle holds that it’s impossible to know both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time.
The proposed unification of the two features may bring new advances in cryptography, Dr. Patrick Coles, a postdoctoral fellow […]
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