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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

I'm no theoretical physicist, but I thought wave-particle duality was solved a long time ago by quantum field theory. Feynman, for instance, was able to formulate electromagnetism fully in terms of particles, using his path integral formulation. Since this formulation computes probability amplitudes, it seems to fit well with the uncertainty principle. This approach gave rise to QED, the most accurate physical theory ever developed.

In other words, without more detail, and not being a physicist myself, I can't tell what's actually new here.

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According to my understanding from the article...

Before:

* The wave-particle duality had its own set of formulas describing the various relationships between the wave and particle.

* There were also separate existing formulas on information uncertainty.

Now:

* Wave-particle duality can be entirely expressed within the already existing framework of information uncertainty.

What this means:

Usually, the realization that two mathematical concepts are actually equivalent leads to a better understanding of both. Concepts that were known for one can now be immediately applied to the other.

EDIT: I make no claim as to the novelty of this. This is just what I understood from the article.

You are right, quantum field theory is perfectly capable of explaining both phenomena (but not in terms of particles but rather in terms of descrete field modes). The idea that it is connected to the uncertainty principle is even older.

Reading this article made my kind of angry, as it implies that wave-particle duality was not understood until now. Like here:

> "has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered distinct are different manifestations of the same thing"

I frequently encounter this mysterious yet-to-be-understood duality in esoteric discussions (with all kinds of wrong conclusions of course). I think that ultimatly, whenever we teach someone about the paradox behavior of particles/waves, the very next sentence should be "but this is perfectly understood and not paradox at all". While we are at it, instead of saying

> "this is what happens until you sneak a look at which slit a particle goes through"

we should say, "this is what happens unless you bombard the particle with photons, which changes everything, of course".

Richard Feynman said that only about 6 people understand quantum mechanics."perfectly understood" is an overstatement.

I understand it perfectly. I'm not sure what an eigenvalue is, though, but I'm sticking to my claim of understanding.

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