frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

A Century of Quantum Mechanics

https://home.cern/news/news/physics/century-quantum-mechanics
44•bookofjoe•3d ago

Comments

zkmon•4h ago
This is probably the slowest branch of the sciences, not able to get out of labs even after a century. The fundamental problem appears to be that we are trying to control probabilistic nature using concrete real world things. I suspect this is not allowed, at least at an industrial scale. At some point humanity might need to stick what they need instead of what they can.
mr_mitm•3h ago
What do you mean? We have been profiting massively from the fruits of QM for the last five decades easily. Transistors, LEDs, Lasers, MRT imaging, solar panels, CCD cameras, etc. have arguably changed the world and would not have been possible without QM. It came out of the lab a long time ago.
colechristensen•3h ago
Not to mention the entire science of chemistry and everything made from it.

Quantum mechanics started with the description of electron orbitals around an atom; how they work is the foundation of chemistry.

kqr•3h ago
I think GP was thinking of quantum computers, maybe?
colechristensen•2h ago
I think they made a very uninformed comment, that's all.
novaomnidev•2h ago
That’s engineering not science
isolli•2h ago
Engineering is how science gets out of the lab...
jeffwass•39m ago
I think you just wrote that 'off the cuff' but it's really a brilliant quote that succinctly clarifies science vs engineering.
ekunazanu•2h ago
How else does science get 'out of the lab'?
kgwgk•3h ago
>not able to get out of labs even after a century

It got out of labs in a quite spectacular way in the summer of 1945, eighty years ago.

isolli•2h ago
Thought experiment: did we really need quantum mechanics to build an atom bomb? Couldn't we have built one with a model of the atom based on classical particles (with protons leading to a chain reaction)? Is either the quantized or the uncertainty aspect of QM necessary for this?
adastra22•2h ago
The very idea of matter and energy being quantized into particles and photons is the starting point of “quantum” mechanics.
GoblinSlayer•2h ago
Nucleon orbitals rely a little on Pauli exclusion principle, which you need to add as an ad hoc hypothesis every time in classical physics.
andrepd•2h ago
What has physics ever done for us? Apart from computers, satellites, planes, communications, sensors, and health... What has physics ever done for us?

The roads?

Well obviously the roads go without saying!

the-mitr•2h ago
Nature is probabilistic. And we know how to calculate those probabilities, that is one of the core ideas of quantum mechanics. Why is it "not allowed"? By whom? Since you are commenting on HN, you are already are using the very mature applications of QM out of laboratory. The proverbial cat (is it Schröedinger's?) is out of the bag!
GoblinSlayer•1h ago
Theory is probabilistic, nature isn't.
beckthompson•3h ago
haha I remember taking my quantum mechanics class. I thought I finally had "finished" old physics and was finally doing "newer" stuff.

In the library there were some old physics books, looked at one that was like 70 years old and it was covering the stuff we learned that quarter... Guess I have a LONG way to go until I learn "new" things xD

sampo•3h ago
There is no new foundational physics. The standard model of particle physics is from the 1970s, and the lambda-cmd model of cosmology is from late 1990s.

Of course there is lots of new speculative ideas being produced, but it's really difficult to get anything confirmed.

GoblinSlayer•2h ago
Is standard model confirmed? Then what is dark matter?
thyristan•2h ago
In physics, there is never confirmation. At best there is "measurement agrees with the model as exactly as it is currently possible to measure". The standard model is confirmed in that sense.

Dark matter is a problem from cosmology and astronomy, that maybe has a solution in an extension to the standard model. Maybe it hasn't and that solution will come from elsewhere, maybe there is a totally cosmological explanation after all. In all cases, the dark matter problem is not a contradiction to the standard model in our current experiments. If there were a particle-physics explanation to dark matter, it would be a sufficiently small alteration to the standard model that our current experiments couldn't tell the difference, to within experimental error. That's how confirmation and new models in physics work.

ks1723•1h ago
One of the major problems with dark matter and dark energy is, that the standard model has been experimentally confirmed to such high precision. All possible extensions proposed so far which tried to explain dark matter /dark energy have been basically falsified by the experiments.

The standard model is so descriptive and accurate, there is just no room for extensions which predict new physics but are still consistent with existing data.

dave333•37m ago
So likely dark matter is a different flavor of something already in the model. Dr. Mills' Hydrino theory presents hydrogen with the electron in a lower orbit that does not radiate as a candidate for dark matter. These states are stable like the ground state. Transition into or between hydrino states emit light in the UV or soft X-ray wavelengths that is not seen in optical telescopes.

https://brilliantlightpower.com/atomic-theory/

adastra22•2h ago
Quantum mechanics is not the standard model. Quantum mechanics is the stuff developed in the 20’s and 30’s. It is really useful for solving real world problems, and for that reason is what is taught to undergraduates in a “modern physics” class. It is not a correct or complete description of reality, however, and is about 50ish years out of date.
andrepd•2h ago
What do you mean? It's not "out of date", as Kepler's laws or the ideal gas law or whatever is not out of date. It's just incomplete.

Also, "modern physics" is a term of art, vs "classical physics".

thyristan•1h ago
Every physical description of reality is correct to within some error bars. Quantum mechanics is still useful and correct, there are just more precise theories that provide refinement. And in that sense are the "current" theories if they are the most precise ones currently known.
volemo•1h ago
I think "new foundational [science]" is a bit of an oxymoron: theories need time to become established as foundational. There may well be ideas (currently hypotheses) that will someday be considered foundational, but we lack the hindsight and experimental validation to claim that status now.

And if you try to present your theory as foundational from the outset — like S. Wolfram does — you’ll be laughed at, much like he is.

HPsquared•3m ago
I remember thinking calculus was this modern high-tech thing in high school.
dave333•2h ago
Interesting that QM was based on the impossibility of "circular or elliptical orbits" that would radiate energy and spiral into the nucleus. They did not consider spherical orbits like Dr. Mills' orbitspheres that have charge moving along all great circle routes but do not radiate because there is no net movement of charge from an external viewpoint. At any point in time the charge is the same all over the sphere, but it's all moving.

https://brilliantlightpower.com/atomic-theory/

thyristan•1h ago
It was known at the time that elliptical orbitals or even more complex shapes are necessary, because certain atoms and molecules exhibit axes and binding angles. Water for example. That excludes spheres.
dave333•1h ago
According to BLP for a molecule like water the electrons don't form distinct bonds or lone pairs in the quantum sense. Instead, they form a single, shared, physical electron shell (a prolate spheroidal orbitsphere) that encompasses all three nuclei. The bent shape and specific bond angle are the direct, deterministic result of the nuclei and this orbitsphere arranging themselves into the most stable, lowest energy configuration dictated by classical electrodynamics and mechanics, without any reference to quantum uncertainty, probability, or abstract orbital shapes.
thyristan•1h ago
> The bent shape and specific bond angle are the direct, deterministic result of the nuclei

That then contradicts the fact that ions form orbitals according to their number of electrons, not according to their nuclear properties. That was also known before quantum mechanics.

dave333•55m ago
Not just nuclei - "result of the nuclei and this orbitsphere arranging themselves into the most stable, lowest energy configuration" - you cut off your quote too early.
thyristan•40m ago
In that case it could have worked maybe. But not every idea is known to every scientist, and often things are skipped or forgotten. I guess this is one of those instances then.
randomNumber7•36m ago
When you do not make progress in 50 years by banging your head against the wall you need to try s.th. different.
thyristan•20m ago
When a "bang" takes 30 years and costs 100 billion units of money, progress will be slow. "Something different" will have to be within the margin of error of all the successful "bangs". So this something won't likely be cheaper or faster. Physics is just at a state of sophistication where the scale of things to look at is so small or so vast that quick and cheap isn't possible anymore. At least for the last 100 years or so.

Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

https://refine.sh
144•runjuu•5h ago•61 comments

How I build software quickly

https://evanhahn.com/how-i-build-software-quickly/
75•kiyanwang•3h ago•29 comments

Let's Learn x86-64 Assembly (2020)

https://gpfault.net/posts/asm-tut-0.txt.html
275•90s_dev•12h ago•63 comments

Show HN: Ten years of running every day, visualized

https://nodaysoff.run
491•friggeri•3d ago•210 comments

Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban-persists-even-under-the-dma/
136•yashghelani•3h ago•65 comments

Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce broadly misaligned LLMs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17424
119•martythemaniak•10h ago•32 comments

East Asian air cleanup likely contributed to acceleration in global warming

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02527-3
24•defrost•1h ago•10 comments

A Century of Quantum Mechanics

https://home.cern/news/news/physics/century-quantum-mechanics
44•bookofjoe•3d ago•36 comments

How does a screen work?

https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/how-a-screen-works
437•chkhd•20h ago•90 comments

OpenCut: The open-source CapCut alternative

https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut
349•nateb2022•13h ago•109 comments

The underground cathedral protecting Tokyo from floods (2018)

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181129-the-underground-cathedral-protecting-tokyo-from-floods
119•barry-cotter•4d ago•37 comments

Binding Application in Idris

https://andrevidela.com/blog/2025/binding-application/
27•matt_d•3d ago•1 comments

Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

https://www.ft.com/content/1d4c5942-7190-45e1-9167-a5eacfd93982
16•sandbach•1h ago•9 comments

APKLab: Android Reverse-Engineering Workbench for VS Code

https://github.com/APKLab/APKLab
116•nateb2022•13h ago•8 comments

A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns

https://zola.ink/blog/posts/a-technical-look-at-irans-internet-shutdown
191•znano•17h ago•81 comments

Telefónica DE shifts VMware support to Spinnaker due to cost

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/telefnica_germany_shifts_vmware_support/
17•rbanffy•1h ago•5 comments

Show HN: FFmpeg in plain English – LLM-assisted FFmpeg in the browser

https://vidmix.app/ffmpeg-in-plain-english/
97•bjano•3d ago•22 comments

Show HN: ArchGW – An intelligent edge and service proxy for agents

https://github.com/katanemo/archgw/
88•honorable_coder•1d ago•8 comments

Show HN: Built a desktop app to organize photos locally with duplicate detection

https://organizer.flipfocus.nl/
15•mcvanhassel•4d ago•13 comments

Burning a Magnesium NeXT Cube (1993)

https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html
40•leoapagano•3d ago•15 comments

Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

https://blog.johnluttig.com/p/hypercapitalism-and-the-ai-talent
95•walterbell•14h ago•65 comments

The Scourge of Arial (2001)

https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/the-scourge-of-arial/
39•andsoitis•9h ago•24 comments

The upcoming GPT-3 moment for RL

https://www.mechanize.work/blog/the-upcoming-gpt-3-moment-for-rl/
207•jxmorris12•4d ago•87 comments

Myanmar’s proliferating scam centers

https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/myanmar-scam-centers/
79•WaitWaitWha•6h ago•14 comments

GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

https://www.glp1digest.com/p/how-glp-1s-are-breaking-life-insurance
328•alexslobodnik•16h ago•394 comments

Show HN: A Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux

https://github.com/ByteAtATime/raycast-linux
169•ByteAtATime•17h ago•50 comments

Concurrent Programming with Harmony

https://harmony.cs.cornell.edu/book/
4•todsacerdoti•3d ago•0 comments

C3 solved memory lifetimes with scopes

https://c3-lang.org/blog/forget-borrow-checkers-c3-solved-memory-lifetimes-with-scopes/
115•lerno•2d ago•95 comments

James Webb, Hubble space telescopes face reduction in operations

https://www.astronomy.com/science/james-webb-hubble-space-telescopes-face-reduction-in-operations-over-funding-shortfalls/
98•geox•8h ago•59 comments

Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

https://marketsaintefficient.substack.com/p/five-companies-now-control-over-90
236•goinggetthem•14h ago•243 comments