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@mrtn-vgng.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy Sep 28, 2026, 10:52 AM

#physics #reality #weareallanimals

Just submitted my bachelor thesis – wow – what a fight. I am quite happy with it, but its evaluation is a black box, so I am not publishing it until I get my results.

Anyway, while it was extremely tough, it was also tremendously rewarding: it is interdisciplinary work (quantum physics, information theory and computer science), but it forced me to acknowledge the weird predictions of quantum theory (which I mastered in a module before) as real.

For example, in so-called Twin-Field QKD, you can send quantum states involving a superposition of |one photon⟩ and |no photon⟩ from lasers about 1,000 km apart to a central detector and observe single-photon interference. This is similar to the two-slit experiment, where ONE photon interferes with itself after the two possible paths through the slits – but here the two optical paths originate from opposite ends of a fibre link hundreds of kilometres apart! The two quantum states together form a joint state in which the single-photon excitation can be delocalised across the two distant optical paths – there is no definite classical answer to which side the detected photon came from. Totally contradictory to our day-to-day experience, but real. Several interpretations exist for how to make sense of this, but all have their weaknesses.

Indeed, it is these contradictions that are one reason why we do science. It is about exploring untouched terrain. Here, in particular, it may be comparable to a fish in a small pond who knows almost everything about his/her world, but then, for a brief moment, jumps into the air and experiences a strange, inexplicable world.

BTW: this is not yet the end of my studies, there's still one amazing module left - cosmology!

#physics #quantummechanics #reality #weareallanimals

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