Text File

Awatmath.2346 net.misc utzoo!decvax!watmath!djmdavies Fri May 7 20:15:39 1982 wavefunction propagation speeds Er, i do not think wave functions 'propagate' at a speed limited to the speed of light. Schroedinger's equation is "definitive" (though hard to solve except in standard cases, and especially tricky in most time-dependant cases). Remember that QM and its successors (Quantum Chromodynamics, etc) were developed to meet the experiences in the 'small'. General Relativity is experimentally verified (so far, if it is) only in 'large' scale phenomena; Special Relativistic effects have been verified in both the small and the large, in different ways, but the 'speed limitation' effects only show up directly in the large. The concept of 'propagation' in the wave function is at odds with an idea of limiting speed of something, because the concept 'speed' presupposes an idea of localising a sharp object at several different places in succession, and this sort of thing doesn't really make much sense as a way of looking at sub-atomic phenomena. The conceptual frameworks are somewhat incoherent. Hence all this inconclusive discussion in net.misc I suppose. Julian Davies, Waterloo.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.