量子力学最后挑战.doc

姓名：胡思怡 学号：S100100022 课程标题：Quantum theory’s last challenge 日期：2010.10.03- Quantum theory’s last challenge 量子理论最后的挑战 ABSTRACT Quantum mechanics is now 100 years old and still going strong. Combining general relativity with quantum mechanics is the last hurdle to be overcome in the “quantum revolution”. 摘要： 量子力学至今已经有100年了，并且依然强盛。结合广义相对论的量子力学是突破“量子革命”的最后的屏障。 正文： This year we celebrate 100 years of quantum theory, and in particular the anniversary of an announcement made by Max Planck at a meeting of the German Physical Society on 14 December 1900. Planck was interested in the nature of radiation emitted by hot objects, and in 1900 he devised a theory that described all of the experimental evidence, but that required a radical new concept: energy is not emitted or absorbed continuously, but in discrete amounts, called quanta. At the time, Planck was not aware of the profound consequences of his work, but gradually physicists realized that they needed quantum concepts to understand the structure of all matter and radiation. 今年我们庆祝量子理论建立100周年，特别是这个纪念日是马克思普朗克在1900年12月14日德国物理学会的会议上宣布的。普朗克对发热物体的热辐射性质感兴趣，并于1900年，他发现了一个能解释所有实验结果的理论，但需要一个完整的概念：在离散量里能量不能连续不断的辐射或者吸收，被称做量子。当时普朗克没有发现他的研究的更深远的影响，但是渐渐的物理学家们意识到了他们需要量子的概念去了解所有物质和辐射的结构。 Over the past century there have been many successful tests of quantum mechanics (see accompanying commentary by Anton Zeilinger in this issue [1]). Experiments have confirmed even some of the most counter intuitive predictions of quantum theory, including “particle-wave duality”, the idea that a particle should be treated as a wave. But some physicists still wonder whether quantum theory is a truly fundamental ingredient of the laws of nature, or just a convenient description of some aspects of the microscopic world. It is still possible that quantum mechanics is an approximation to a more fundamental theory, just as Newtonian gravity is a special case of the more accurate description of gravity and the relationship between space and time provi