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----------------------------- 2198 - Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
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- Heisenberg was a German physicist who reasoned that an atomic particle could not be defined as to position and momentum simultaneously. It became known a the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It is not certain because it is in determinant.
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- Heisenberg developed the concise math expressions in 1927 defining:
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-------------- delta position * delta momentum = > Planck’s Constant
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- Where delta position is the uncertainty of then position ,and, delta momentum is the uncertainty of the momentum. Planck’s Constant is a very small number.
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----------------- h = 6.625 * 10^-31 gram * m^2/sec
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- When Heisenberg announced this Einstein made his famous statement , “ I can not believe that God would chose to play dice with the world.”
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- The uncertainty is so small it would not be seen with any object above the atomic scale. On the other hand at the atomic scale and below this uncertainty is part of an every day reality. It forces physicists to work through complex math and deal with probabilities of where a product will be with certainty.
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- The theory of Quantum Mechanics would suggest that the whole Universe would work the same way. Or, maybe not and maybe the theory of Quantum Mechanics is incomplete?
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- In either case since 1927 we have had to live with the fact that a particles position and velocity cannot be determined simultaneously. Delta position and delta velocity creates a little teeter totter of inexactitude in measurements of the velocity the particle is moving or where it is at the time of measurement.
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- If you start getting a position more and more accurate, you start measuring velocity with less and less accuracy. And vice versa. When one goes up the other goes down.
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- The cosmological constant is another enigma that is hard to comprehend. This constant is not “constant” over time as it tries to explain the apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe. Today the constant for pace expansion is:
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--------------- 49,30 6 miles per hour for every million lightyear distance.
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- This constant expansion is believed to be due to Dark Energy, a type of anti-gravity that permeates all of the vacuum of space.
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- We can create a vacuum in the lab. After removing all the air and other particles and we remove all the heat down to absolute zero temperature that vacuum still contains measurable energy
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- How can energy still exist in an absolute vacuum that is at absolute zero temperature?
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- This residual energy , this dark energy in a vacuum, helps explain why helium will not freeze by cooling alone. Pressure must be applied to overcome the residual energy and that can never take it to zero.
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- This residual energy is also what causes the random noise in electronic circuits. It is sometimes called thermal noise that gets amplified in radio receivers as a hiss.
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- The vacuum contains randomly fluctuating electromagnetic fields with an estimated energy density of 10^114 ergs per cubic centimeter. If this number can be believed then one cubic centimeter of vacuum contains the total energy expended by all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy shining for a million years.
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- How can a normal human even comprehend this number?
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- At a large scale, a vacuum in space is smooth ad featureless. At the atomic scale the vacuum is seething in a sea of activity. The size of the atom is 10^-8 centimeters. An electron is 10^-13 centimeters. At the smallest scale the Planck length is 1.616 * 10^-33 centimeters.
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- It is at the Planck scale that space looses its smoothness and assumes a granular structure. It is assumed that this granular structure is in fact particles with a diameter in Planck lengths and with a mass in Planck mass at 2.17 * 10^-5 grams . Planck particles have a diameter that is equal to their wavelength in the wave-particle duality of matter. This makes them transparent to longer wavelengths.
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- A vacuum is made up of a sea of Planck particles whose density is 3.6 * 10^93 grams per cubic centimeter. How can atomic particles move in such a dense medium? Because the heavier the particle the shorter the wavelength and the lighter the particle the longer the wavelength
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- All the known elementary particles have wavelengths much longer than the Planck length. The vacuum then becomes transparent to these elementary particles that have longer wavelengths. This is much like how infrared light can travel through a thick dust cloud or how ordinary light can pass through dense glass.
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- The high energy density in a vacuum can be temporarily converted into mass according to E=mc^2.
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----- Energy = 89,900,000,000,000,000 * mass kilograms * meters^2 / seconds^2
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- In other words you can get a whole lot of energy out of a little bit of mass. The bomb over Hiroshima converted less than one half pound of mass into energy. That energy leveled the Hiroshima city and the surrounding country side. The nuclear flash could be seen by an observer on the planet Jupiter.
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- In this energy vacuum particles and antiparticles are winking in and out of existence continuously. The exact relationship between the energy of these particles , 10^-13 centimeters in diameter, and the brief time of their existence is the source of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
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- The uncertainty of time multiplied by the uncertainty of energy is equal to Planck’s Constant / 2*pi = 1.055 * 10^-31 grams * meters^2 / second.
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- These particles and anti-particles can only exist for an extraordinary short period of time, 10^-23 seconds. An electron n this environment is continually absorbing and emitting these virtual particles from the vacuum. The electron is in constant motion of jitter even in a vacuum at absolute zero temperature. It is in a center of constant activity interacting with these virtual particles causing a cloud of virtual particles.
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- The further you penetrate this cloud of virtual particles the more “point like” the electron becomes. The further you penetrate the cloud the more pronounced the electric charge becomes. This cloud of virtual particles is screening the full electronic charge of the electron thus causing its unpredictability.
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- The jitter and the particle - wave indeterminacy are what cause the Heisenberg Uncertainty. Because we are observing clouds of activity and jitter we must deal with these uncertainties as probabilities of position and movement. This is true even in a vacuum and at temperatures at Absolute Zero degrees.
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- You can say that an electron 99% probability of being in this specific location, but there is still a 1% probability of it being somewhere else. Mass and energy are constantly being exchanged and particles and antiparticles are constantly annihilating each other in his sea of uncertainty.
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- Infinite precision is just not a possible condition in this Universe. We have to learn o live with fuzziness and the probabilities and uncertainties it brings all of us. It is a wonder we even got here. Thank God we made it his far.
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- Footnote: Werner Heisenberg was a genius but pretty much a jerk from what I have read. He was one of the world’s greatest physicists after Albert Einstein. At the time he was 24 years old he was working in Quantum Mechanics when he developed the Uncertainty Principle.
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- During World War II he was a Nazi working on the German atomic bomb. He was only allowed to use E=mc^2 as long as he disavowed Einstein himself, who was a disavowed Jew.
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- Heisenberg became a member of the German army weapons bureau in 1939. In February 1940 he published a paper on how to build an atomic bomb. He almost had the bomb working but he needed heavy water (deuterium) to slow the neutrons down enough to be absorbed by the uranium 235 nuclei.
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- He had a shipment coming from Norsk hydro plant in Vemork, Norway. But, fortunately, the allies and the Norwegian s sabotaged the ferry that was to take it to Germany. Heisenberg was without the heavy water he needed to make the nuclear reaction work.
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- At the same time, Robert Oppenheimer was full steam ahead on the Manhattan Project.
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- After the war Oppenheimer was tormented and be leagued by the military intelligence and became an unhappy man. Heisenberg , on the other hand was welcomed as a hero in Germany after his release in 1946. At he time he claimed he could have easily had the bomb built but dilly-dallied so the Nazi’s would never get to use it.
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- Judging by he way Heisenberg treated his Nazi compatriots during and after the war ,he only looked after himself and no one else. That is my definition of a jerk.
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- December 3, 2018 18
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