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Letter: Getting to the bottom of the quantum world (2)

Published 14 May 2025

From Nick Rowden, Liverpool, UK

Could the ancient Greeks have invented quantum theory? While a full-blown version probably couldn’t have been formulated much earlier than it was, all you would need to postulate a sort of quantum theory would be to assume that nothing in the real world can be infinite. This probably isn’t an unreasonable assumption. After all, if infinity crops up in modern physics, it is normally taken as a sign that a theory is incorrect.

Once this assumption has been made, it is clear nothing can be known with infinite precision and some form of quantum theory is required. Perhaps the ancient Greeks could have thought of this?

Issue no. 3543 published 17 May 2025

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