Neil deGrasse Tyson explains Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Taken from Joe Rogan Experience #919.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson explains Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Taken from Joe Rogan Experience #919.
Video Source
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I love that he can dumb stuff down without talking down its a completely undervalued skill and earns respect when I see it.
I'm not a quantum physicist, and I'm sure Tyson is smart. But I've read enough books on the topic to something about it. He is completely off on this. The Heisenberg Principle isn't predicated on the measuring instrument altering a particle. It's a description of an intrinsic property of the universe at the subatomic scale. It's not that a measuring instrument disturbs a particle (although it can), it's that a particle actually has no definite place/location before a wave function collapse (which is what "measurement" entails in quantum physics). Funny thing about celebrity scientists is that they think they know everything about everything even if it's outside their field of expertise.
This isn't entirely accurate as it's a mischaracterization of the double slit experiment, especially the updated 2nd one that had even more tests done. Theirs multiple reasons why this explanation doesn't work and isn't accurate, but I'll explain one.
Wave collapse still occurs when the double slit experiment is conducted using split photons. Both daughter photons go equal and opposite directions, allowing you to know which slit one of the daughter photons went through by measuring the destination of the other. This means you have not interfered with or provided energy to the photon going through the double slit experiment – yet to our measurement of the other completely separate daughter photon. If you don't measure that photon, wave patterns begin to occur again.
3:07
I came here expecting Neil to explain shit from breaking bad