《双缝实验和量子力学》我们在中学物理课都会学到,一道光穿过两道狭缝后将会发生干涉形成明暗条纹,这就是众所周知的双缝实验。如果只让单个光子进入设备,光子竟然也会自己与自己发生干涉,在多次实验后同样形成明暗条纹。更神奇的是,一旦研究者试图探测光子到底通过了哪道狭缝,干涉条纹即刻就消失了,仿佛能感知到我们的意识一般。
托马斯·杨在19世纪早期设计了这个模型,以证明光像波一样运动,这与艾萨克·牛顿的粒子观点形成了鲜明的对比。近一个世纪后,阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦证明了光以量子或粒子的形式存在,这个实验成为爱因斯坦和尼尔斯·玻尔之间关于现实本质的激烈辩论的关键。可以说,双缝实验串起了人类对物质世界规律,乃至现实本质的探索。十年又十年,一个又一个假设,科学家们以这个实验为蓝本,回答了关于宇宙结构的越来越深的问题,它也催生了2022年诺贝尔物理学奖。
在这本书中,作者周游世界,穿越历史,深入探索了我们尚未了解的物质现实的最小尺度,为读者展现了一幅兼具科学与美感的画卷。
作者简介
阿尼尔·阿南塔斯瓦米,《新科学家》杂志的前任副主编和现任顾问,加利福尼亚大学圣克鲁斯分校科学写作项目客座编辑。他为《国家地理新闻》《探索》等杂志撰稿,并且是美国公共广播公司(PBS)新星纪录片频道开设的博客“现实的本性”的专栏作者。他曾获得英国物理学会物理新闻奖和英国科学作家协会最佳调查新闻奖。他的首部著作《湿婆之舞》被评为《物理世界》“2010年年度图书奖”。
"The Double Slit Experiment and Quantum Mechanics" We all learn in high school physics class that a light passing through two slits will interfere to form light and dark stripes, which is known as the double slit experiment. If only a single photon is allowed to enter the device, the photon will even interfere with itself, forming light and dark stripes after many experiments. Even more amazing, once the researchers tried to detect which slit the photon passed through, the interference streaks disappeared immediately, as if they could sense our consciousness.
Thomas Young devised this model in the early 19th century to demonstrate that light moves like a wave, in stark contrast to Isaac Newton's idea of particles. Nearly a century later, Albert Einstein proved that light exists in the form of quanta, or particles, an experiment that became key to a heated debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr about the nature of reality. It can be said that the double-slit experiment strings together human's exploration of the laws of the material world and even the nature of reality. Decade after decade, hypothesis after hypothesis, scientists used this experiment as a model to answer deeper and deeper questions about the structure of the universe, and it led to the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
In this book, the author travels the world, traverses history, and delves into the smallest scales of physical reality that we do not yet understand, presenting readers with a picture that is both scientific and aesthetic.
About the author
Anil Anantaswamy is a former associate editor and current advisor to New Scientist magazine and guest editor of the Science Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He writes for National Geographic News, Discovery, and other magazines, and is a columnist for the PBS Nova Documentary Channel's blog, The Nature of Reality. He has won the British Physical Society Award for Physics Journalism and the Association of British Science Writers Award for Best Investigative Journalism. His first book, Shiva's Dance, was named Physics World's 2010 Book of the Year Award.