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This quantum stuff just doesn't add up

Mathematical quirk of light shines a path to quantum cryptography.

When does taking one thing away give you more than what you started with? When quantum mechanics gets involved.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on September 27, 2007 06:46 PM |

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“Physics is too difficult to be left to physicists” (David Hilbert)

The impossibility of counting quantum objects is more than just a physical insight.

It has often been argued that mathematics is partly inspired by the physical world we live in*. The physical fact that inspired humans with the concept of natural numbers is the possibility of counting objects, and it is now clear that not all objects can be counted. This suggests that natural numbers may not be that natural after all. Arithmetic may therefore be misleading when applied to describe the quantum world.

Perhaps quantum physics is about to change the way physicists understand arithmetic in the same way as general relativity changed the way they understood Euclidean geometry.

*see e.g. E. Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Com. Pure and App. Math., 13 (1), 1960.

Posted by: Cedric Gommes | October 2, 2007 01:50 PM

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