The Nobel Prize in Physics 1932
Werner Heisenberg
Award Ceremony Speech
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
This year’s Nobel Prizes for Physics are dedicated to the new atomic physics. The prizes, which the Academy of Sciences has at its disposal, have namely been awarded to those men, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Dirac, who have created and developed the basic ideas of modern atomic physics.
It was Planck who, in 1900, first expressed the thought that light had atomic properties, and the theory put forward by Planck was later more exhaustively developed by Einstein. The conviction, arrived at by different paths, was that matter could not create or absorb light, other than in quantities of energy which represented the multiple of a specific unit of energy. This unit of energy received the name of light quantum or photon. The magnitude of the photon is different for different colours of light, but if the quantity of energy of a photon is divided by the frequency of oscillation of the ray of light, the same number is always obtained, the so-called Planck’s constant h. This constant is thus of a universal nature and forms one of the foundation stones for modern atomic physics.
Since light too was thus divided into atoms it appeared that all phenomena could be explained as interactions between atoms of various kinds. Mass was also attributed to the atom of light, and the effects which were observed when light rays were incident upon matter could be explained with the help of the law for the impact of bodies.
Not many years passed before the found connection between the photon and the light ray led to an analogous connection between the motion of matter and the propagation of waves being sought for.
For a long time it had been known that the customary description of the propagation of light in the form of rays of light, which are diffracted and reflected on transmission from one medium to another, was only an approximation to the true circumstances, which only held good so long as the wavelength of the light was infinitesimally small compared with the dimensions of the body through which the light passed, and of the instruments with which it was observed. In reality light is propagated in the form of waves which spread out in all directions according to the laws for the propagation of waves.
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[Click on the link above to read the whole speech]
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Comments
I’m curious, since this is from 1935, do the same theories stand today, unaltered or improved upon?
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I don’t know yet. I am just starting from the beginning. There is a lot here to chew on.
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“It must be further considered, that it is impossible to carry out the measurement of the situation in an atom or molecule without the employed instruments, illumination, etc. themselves altering the situation which is under examination. The light emitted from the electrons becomes modified in the optical instruments.
In the above quote from the article, I get how the instruments that measure will themselves alter the “observation.” But other sources seem to be claiming that it is a matter of consciousness, i.e. conscious (knowing, aware) observation by those using the instruments. Can you shed more light on this for me, how it works?
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My understanding is that means to become aware (the instruments) influence the awareness of the phenomenon being observed, just as it is noted above.
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Vin, I’ve been watching a series of videos, each a 9-10 min segment of a 90-minute talk by a “consciousness physicist.” There’s some good, simplified data about quantum physics, and video #8 (the one I’m posting) has a description about unknowable that reminded me of many things you have said. Note, by “Big TOE,” the lecturer is referring to his Big Theory of Everything – he calls it Big because it includes not just physics but metaphysics, based partly on personal experience of a metaphysical nature.
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p.s. In video #1 he states that quantum mechanics hasn’t really changed since the 20’s and 30’s. So I guess that answers my question about the speech you posted – it apparently is not stale dated. Good to know since it’s a pretty good summary of the history and basics.
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I like this video. It is a pretty good explanation of the Unknowable as a super-system, which we cannot know until we get there.
But, the process of “neti, neti” says that there can be infinty of such super-systems, each beyond the previous one, and that there will always remain something that is beyond our reach.
All I am doing is applying the concept of Infinite series to knowingness. And as I have said many times, that this concept helps uncover our hidden considerations, such as here, regarding Axiom #3:
http://www.scnforum.org/index.php?t=msg&S=9fd8c221d26c228ba5ebd76b091d9264&th=183&goto=2978#msg_2995
See my comment of 11/12/11 added to what I had written earlier in December 2009. This is the progress I have made.
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I thought you would like it. As I said, it sounded like your ideas about Unknowable. And I like your additional comments on that forum, such as:
“I call it ‘Unknowable’ because it does not exist from any considered point of view.”
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🙂
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