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To: FredZarguna

I think people are just stuck thinking of the “solid particle” model, they can’t conceive that we are really talking about waves here.

What is one standing wave versus ninety-two standing waves, if they are superimposed on top of each other, or in close proximity? You can’t lay your finger on any physical substance and say “there is the wave”, it’s just an oscillation in the medium. If you have more than one oscillation pattern, there is still nothing to point at, even if you have ninety-two of them.


55 posted on 05/30/2014 6:37:56 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Boogieman
Not a physicist anymore, but when I was, I greatly preferred the term "state vector" to "wave function," because it conveys the fact that some of the particles' components in Hilbert Space are discrete and don't fall under the rubric of what people with some basic math or elementary calculus ordinarily consider a "function."

In the instant case, the distinction is not entirely nit-picky: these state vectors are entangled via their spin, and their is no discernible overlap of their spacial extent. That is, they "overlap" in Hilbert Space, but they don't "overlap" in Minkowski spacetime the way the electrons in an atom do.

66 posted on 05/30/2014 4:00:03 PM PDT by FredZarguna (Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!)
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