Thursday, March 29, 2007

Einstein Sir::You are wrong


Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics.

His explanation of the photoelectric effect showed that light itself is quantized, and it was this work that won him his Nobel in 1921 (He didn’t get it for relativity, which was more controversial.)

Yet as quantum mechanics developed, he refused to believe what became a central tenet: that all events could be described only in terms of probability.

Einstein summarized this by his famous statement, "God does not throw dice." According to quantum mechanics, two absolutely identical radioactive atoms will probably decay at different times.

Einstein believed that there must be something hidden inside the nucleus, a hidden variable that was different for the two. Very sensitive statistical tests performed by experimentalists have shown that he was wrong. There aren’t any hidden variables, at least not the simple kind.

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