How certain is the uncertainty principle?

[dsaun777]

How accurate of a measurement can we make on the position of a particle? I heard you need more and more energy to get a measurement more accurate. Would the energy needed to be infinitesimal accurate create a black hole upon. Measurement?

 

[PeroK]

An infinitesimal is not a finite number.

 

[PeterDonis]

I heard you need more and more energy to get a measurement more accurate.

From where? Please give a reference.

 

[dsaun777]

From where? Please give a reference.

Leonard susskind

 

[PeterDonis]

Leonard susskind

That's not a reference, it's just a name. What specific textbook, paper, etc?

 

[dsaun777]

That's not a reference, it's just a name. What specific textbook, paper, etc?

I can't remember the exact paper or lecture yet. I will look for it and find it, not without some uncertainty...

 

[dsaun777]

An infinitesimal is not a finite number.

I meant approaching an infinitesimally small value.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Weren't you a math major? You should know that a big plate of words is less helpful than an equation. And an undefined pointer to this big mess of words less so.

Can you write down your thoughts using equations?

 

[Fra]

How accurate of a measurement can we make on the position of a particle? I heard you need more and more energy to get a measurement more accurate. Would the energy needed to be infinitesimal accurate create a black hole upon. Measurement?

If I understand it right you mean that, just like in fourier transform, the more accurate you want to decompose a signal in time, the higher energy or frequenecy components to you need in the spectrum.

Similarly the more you want to determined position the larger momentum range do you need to get the information to confine the position. And this implies also focusing a lot of energy to almost a point, and at some point general relativity my suggest that a microscopic black hole may be created, which for other reasons than heisenbergs HUP limits our the ability of an external observer to probe into the small end of the continuum.

But as long as we have no unification of QM and GR, there is no definitive answer to this, as classical GR mainly refers to cosmological scale blackholes, not microscopic ones. QM, GR or both might need to be adjusted here. So it's a valid question I think.

/Fredrik

 

[dsaun777]

Yes, this is basically the situation I was referring to. I apologize for not making this statement more mathematically but I don't really see the need to. Despite my meager background in mathematics, I thought equations weren't necessary to start the discussion. But I would like to see mathematics also.

 

[CuriousLearner8]

We are pretty certain in uncertainty.