A Century of Quantum Mechanics
34 comments
·July 10, 2025beckthompson
sampo
There is no new foundational physics. The standard model of particle physics is from the 1970s, and the lambda-cmd model of cosmology is from late 1990s.
Of course there is lots of new speculative ideas being produced, but it's really difficult to get anything confirmed.
volemo
I think "new foundational [science]" is a bit of an oxymoron: theories need time to become established as foundational. There may well be ideas (currently hypotheses) that will someday be considered foundational, but we lack the hindsight and experimental validation to claim that status now.
And if you try to present your theory as foundational from the outset — like S. Wolfram does — you’ll be laughed at, much like he is.
adastra22
Quantum mechanics is not the standard model. Quantum mechanics is the stuff developed in the 20’s and 30’s. It is really useful for solving real world problems, and for that reason is what is taught to undergraduates in a “modern physics” class. It is not a correct or complete description of reality, however, and is about 50ish years out of date.
thyristan
Every physical description of reality is correct to within some error bars. Quantum mechanics is still useful and correct, there are just more precise theories that provide refinement. And in that sense are the "current" theories if they are the most precise ones currently known.
andrepd
What do you mean? It's not "out of date", as Kepler's laws or the ideal gas law or whatever is not out of date. It's just incomplete.
Also, "modern physics" is a term of art, vs "classical physics".
GoblinSlayer
Is standard model confirmed? Then what is dark matter?
ks1723
One of the major problems with dark matter and dark energy is, that the standard model has been experimentally confirmed to such high precision. All possible extensions proposed so far which tried to explain dark matter /dark energy have been basically falsified by the experiments.
The standard model is so descriptive and accurate, there is just no room for extensions which predict new physics but are still consistent with existing data.
thyristan
In physics, there is never confirmation. At best there is "measurement agrees with the model as exactly as it is currently possible to measure". The standard model is confirmed in that sense.
Dark matter is a problem from cosmology and astronomy, that maybe has a solution in an extension to the standard model. Maybe it hasn't and that solution will come from elsewhere, maybe there is a totally cosmological explanation after all. In all cases, the dark matter problem is not a contradiction to the standard model in our current experiments. If there were a particle-physics explanation to dark matter, it would be a sufficiently small alteration to the standard model that our current experiments couldn't tell the difference, to within experimental error. That's how confirmation and new models in physics work.
dave333
Interesting that QM was based on the impossibility of "circular or elliptical orbits" that would radiate energy and spiral into the nucleus. They did not consider spherical orbits like Dr. Mills' orbitspheres that have charge moving along all great circle routes but do not radiate because there is no net movement of charge from an external viewpoint. At any point in time the charge is the same all over the sphere, but it's all moving.
thyristan
It was known at the time that elliptical orbitals or even more complex shapes are necessary, because certain atoms and molecules exhibit axes and binding angles. Water for example. That excludes spheres.
dave333
According to BLP for a molecule like water the electrons don't form distinct bonds or lone pairs in the quantum sense. Instead, they form a single, shared, physical electron shell (a prolate spheroidal orbitsphere) that encompasses all three nuclei. The bent shape and specific bond angle are the direct, deterministic result of the nuclei and this orbitsphere arranging themselves into the most stable, lowest energy configuration dictated by classical electrodynamics and mechanics, without any reference to quantum uncertainty, probability, or abstract orbital shapes.
thyristan
> The bent shape and specific bond angle are the direct, deterministic result of the nuclei
That then contradicts the fact that ions form orbitals according to their number of electrons, not according to their nuclear properties. That was also known before quantum mechanics.
zkmon
This is probably the slowest branch of the sciences, not able to get out of labs even after a century. The fundamental problem appears to be that we are trying to control probabilistic nature using concrete real world things. I suspect this is not allowed, at least at an industrial scale. At some point humanity might need to stick what they need instead of what they can.
mr_mitm
What do you mean? We have been profiting massively from the fruits of QM for the last five decades easily. Transistors, LEDs, Lasers, MRT imaging, solar panels, CCD cameras, etc. have arguably changed the world and would not have been possible without QM. It came out of the lab a long time ago.
colechristensen
Not to mention the entire science of chemistry and everything made from it.
Quantum mechanics started with the description of electron orbitals around an atom; how they work is the foundation of chemistry.
kqr
I think GP was thinking of quantum computers, maybe?
colechristensen
I think they made a very uninformed comment, that's all.
novaomnidev
That’s engineering not science
isolli
Engineering is how science gets out of the lab...
ekunazanu
How else does science get 'out of the lab'?
kgwgk
>not able to get out of labs even after a century
It got out of labs in a quite spectacular way in the summer of 1945, eighty years ago.
isolli
Thought experiment: did we really need quantum mechanics to build an atom bomb? Couldn't we have built one with a model of the atom based on classical particles (with protons leading to a chain reaction)? Is either the quantized or the uncertainty aspect of QM necessary for this?
GoblinSlayer
Nucleon orbitals rely a little on Pauli exclusion principle, which you need to add as an ad hoc hypothesis every time in classical physics.
adastra22
The very idea of matter and energy being quantized into particles and photons is the starting point of “quantum” mechanics.
the-mitr
Nature is probabilistic. And we know how to calculate those probabilities, that is one of the core ideas of quantum mechanics. Why is it "not allowed"? By whom? Since you are commenting on HN, you are already are using the very mature applications of QM out of laboratory. The proverbial cat (is it Schröedinger's?) is out of the bag!
GoblinSlayer
Theory is probabilistic, nature isn't.
andrepd
What has physics ever done for us? Apart from computers, satellites, planes, communications, sensors, and health... What has physics ever done for us?
The roads?
Well obviously the roads go without saying!
randomNumber7
When you do not make progress in 50 years by banging your head against the wall you need to try s.th. different.
thyristan
When a "bang" takes 30 years and costs 100 billion units of money, progress will be slow. "Something different" will have to be within the margin of error of all the successful "bangs". So this something won't likely be cheaper or faster. Physics is just at a state of sophistication where the scale of things to look at is so small or so vast that quick and cheap isn't possible anymore. At least for the last 100 years or so.
haha I remember taking my quantum mechanics class. I thought I finally had "finished" old physics and was finally doing "newer" stuff.
In the library there were some old physics books, looked at one that was like 70 years old and it was covering the stuff we learned that quarter... Guess I have a LONG way to go until I learn "new" things xD