Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2021 December 27

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December 27

A physical void with a single quant

Let's imagine a physical space (void) in which the only existing energy is just one quant.

Would this quant just change place every passing moment, totally randomly? 109.66.33.120 (talk) 08:25, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

The concept of location looses all meaning in a universe where locations are indistinguishable. Also, a "quant" is not a physical entity (such as a photon) but an amount of some physical quantity possessed by some entity. In quantum physics, such an entity is described by a wave function, which does not assign a location to the entity, so (independent of the assumption of an almost void universe) it does not have a definite location anyway. The uncertainty principle only kicks in when a property such as location is measured, implying wave function collapse.  --Lambiam 09:36, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

But there are indeed these most tiny "energy particles" appearing and vanishing (and reappearing and revanishing continuously) constantly in different random areas of the void every moment right? I think the term is "fluctuations" which don't necessarily only happen in the "quantum vacuum", rather everywhere in the void. 109.66.33.120 (talk) 09:53, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

As the term "particle" is understood in the context of quantum foam, it is a virtual particle, a particle that cannot be observed. In the treatment of virtual particles in the interaction calculations in quantum field theory, they are elementary particles as classified by the Standard Model, albeit with a different mass than the standard issue. There is no such thing as an "energy particle" in the Standard Model.  --Lambiam 12:34, 28 December 2021 (UTC)