> Those who took a closer look, however, realized that Hotta was suggesting a subtly different quantum stunt. The energy wasn’t free; it had to be unlocked using knowledge purchased with energy in a far-off location. From this perspective, Hotta’s procedure looked less like creation and more like teleportation of energy from one place to another — a strange but less offensive idea.
Hey, my professor is quoted! Unfortunately I took his class before I took the requisite math class and had a very bad time, leading to me switching to CS from Particle Physics.
Where do discoveries about quantum mechanics come from? My understanding is that we've had the laws written down pretty much in their entirety for a while now. Is it just people doing calculations that hadn't been done before? New experimental data that's upending the laws? Or are there a lot of parameters in the laws that still are not yet known?
The discoveries come from inferring,and calculating, from those laws, what is possible. What do those laws really mean? If the law is true, then it follows that this other thing must be also be true because the law expressly says it is true (or the law allows it).
In this case, it's mostly about headline writers coming up with new ways to be misleading.
Buried a few paragraphs in, it says "The energy wasn’t free; it had to be unlocked using knowledge purchased with energy in a far-off location." In other words, the opposite of the headline.
That doesn't mean it isn't nifty. It is, however, just what you said: "people doing calculations that hadn't been done before". People shove the equations around until they get a result that strikes their fancy, and then (ideally) goes off to perform an experiment that confirms it.
New discoveries are made every day, just by converting the equations into a form you haven't seen before. Most are boring. Some are interesting, and those make journal articles. Some are then exaggerated to make them seem more interesting than they really are, because what everybody wants is a once-in-a-century revolution to occur every week.
> Now in the past year, researchers have teleported energy across microscopic distances in two separate quantum devices, vindicating Hotta’s theory. The research leaves little room for doubt that energy teleportation is a genuine quantum phenomenon."
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadWhat are you talking about? This is literally the first line:
> For their latest magic trick, physicists have done the quantum equivalent of conjuring energy out of thin air
So you see, the article does say that they got energy out of thin air.
In fact, the first line is arguably the title, which is:
> Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing
Which also says they pulled energy out of nothing. VERBATIM.
So when you say I didn't read the article, maybe YOU didn't read the article?
6 sentences into the article.
So I maintain my original claim. quantamagazine used to be high quality, now they're publishing bullshit. They published bullshit in the title.
Buried a few paragraphs in, it says "The energy wasn’t free; it had to be unlocked using knowledge purchased with energy in a far-off location." In other words, the opposite of the headline.
That doesn't mean it isn't nifty. It is, however, just what you said: "people doing calculations that hadn't been done before". People shove the equations around until they get a result that strikes their fancy, and then (ideally) goes off to perform an experiment that confirms it.
New discoveries are made every day, just by converting the equations into a form you haven't seen before. Most are boring. Some are interesting, and those make journal articles. Some are then exaggerated to make them seem more interesting than they really are, because what everybody wants is a once-in-a-century revolution to occur every week.
> Now in the past year, researchers have teleported energy across microscopic distances in two separate quantum devices, vindicating Hotta’s theory. The research leaves little room for doubt that energy teleportation is a genuine quantum phenomenon."
Quantum foam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam
Abother perpetuum mobile with 51 points on HN. Is physics banned in schools ?