Arcane Gazebo

Crackpot spam!

One of the joys of membership in the physics community is that one's inbox will occasionally collect unsolicited treatises on Why A Fundamental Element of Modern Physics Is Wrong. Today's installment:

THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS UNTENABLE

By re-analysing Heisenberg's Gamma-Ray Microscope experiment and the ideal experiment from which the uncertainty principle is derived, it is actually found that the uncertainty principle can not be obtained from them. It is therefore found to be untenable.

The author goes on to explain the problems he perceives with a couple of uncertainty-principle-related gedanken experiments. The sad thing is not that his criticisms are faulty (though they are), but that these thought experiments are just examples used to illustrate the uncertainty principle -- the principle doesn't derive from the examples, but is a mathematical property of solutions to the Schrodinger equation. But I suppose if he understood quantum mechanics, he might be less inclined to spam the Berkeley physics department with objections to it...

Posted by Arcane Gazebo at June 21, 2004 1:41 PM | Tags: