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It's not supposed to make sense...
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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Sorta! According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, there's an upper limit to how much we can "know" about the given state of a quantum system. This isn't an issue with our measurements, but a fundamental property of the universe itself. By measuring one aspect of a quantum system (for example, the momentum of a particle), we become less certain about other aspects of the system, even if we had already measured them before (such as the position of the same particle).
Though (as far as we know), we aren't going to run out of quantum states or anything like that.
Thank you for your answer!
Maybe I'm too dense, but what happens with other quantum states that aren't position/velocity based? I'm thinking things like when we collapse spin, e.g. in entangled particles.
I've heard that entangled particles are "one use", I'd assume they can be restored and possibly re-entangled, but how?
Good question! You are certainly not dense!
The position-momentum uncertainty relationship is just a specific case of a more general relationship. There are other uncertainty relationships, such as between time and energy or between two (separate/orthogonal) components of angular velocity. The relationships basically state that whenever you measure one of the two values, you are required to add uncertainty to the other.
Unfortunately, this is kinda where my knowledge on the subject starts to hit its limits. As for spin, it has a lot of effects on the energy of the system it's involved with, so I believe the energy-time or angular momentum exclusion principles would apply there.
You might also be thinking "why not have two entagled cloned particles, and measure the momentum of one and the position on the other?". While you can duplicate particles, there are reasons why that doesn't work that I don't really remember tbh. I'm sure PBS Spacetime on Youtube has an episode on it somewhere though if you're interested