Posted Tuesday 9th October 2007 14:32 GMT
/pedant
Err, if you know where the photon is, you can't know where it is going and if you know where it is going, you can't know where it is... Werner Karl Heisenberg strikes again.
So saying the position is unknowable in physics terms isn't strictly true...
Posted Tuesday 9th October 2007 15:29 GMT
I've seen the error message: 'Word cannot edit the unknown', which puzzled me for a while, but perhaps it was just thinking about evanescent light waves...
Posted Wednesday 10th October 2007 11:34 GMT
This seems to be the initial press release (with pretty picture):
http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=1544
Couldn't find the paper on arXiv.
Posted Wednesday 10th October 2007 12:05 GMT
They probably just can't get their kit in the gap. ;)
Actually, there's more to QM than Heisenberg. For example, the position of an electron in a Hydrogen Atom is unknowable, thanks to wave-particle duality and the need for its Energy etc.. to be quantised.
Plus evanescent waves are little buggers. For example, frustrated total internal reflection (which is what is being described in the article) is a form of "tunnelling" that can be modelled classically using Maxwell's equations without QM. And the PR link above claims the photon's *direction* is imaginary, which, if correct, would make it tough to pin them down.
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