Particles and Waves

Posted on March 13, 2007  Comments (1)

Science team shows light is made of particles and waves:

Work completed by a visiting research professor at Rowan University, physics professors and a student from the institution shows that light is made of particles and waves, a finding that refutes a common belief held for about 80 years.

Shahriar S. Afshar, the visiting professor who is currently at Boston’s Institute for Radiation-Induced Mass Studies (IRIMS), led a team, including Rowan physics professors Drs. Eduardo Flores and Ernst Knoesel and student Keith McDonald, that proved Afshar’s original claims, which were based on a series of experiments he had conducted several years ago.

An article on the work titled “Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality” recently published in “Foundations of Physics,” a prestigious, refereed academic journal, supports Albert Einstein’s long-debated belief that quantum physics is incomplete. For eight decades the scientific community generally had supported Niels Bohr’s ideas commonly known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

“The important new contribution is that light carries both wave and particle aspects at all times, and future experiments will further clarify the nature of each component.” Afshar said.

Related: Einstein, Bohr and the Nature of Light (PBS podcast) – Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality

One Response to “Particles and Waves”

  1. Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Home Experiments: Quantum Erasing
    August 29th, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

    “the individual photons that make up the light wave are indeed doing the full quantum dance with all its weirdness intact, although you could only truly prove that by sending the photons through the apparatus and detecting them one at a time…”

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