Abstract
IN his very lucid and interesting article (this is no empty compliment) in NATURE of April 16, Dr. Jordan makes two misstatements. On p. 569 he says that in C. T. R. Wilson's experiments the time of a single quantum jump is a measurable quantity. But those experiments involve no time measurements at all. Time enters only through the velocity of the particles; and if inquiry is made how it enters into the value assigned to this velocity, it will be found that the time measurements concerned are made on large aggregates of atoms and have nothing directly to do with quantum jumps. Again, he says that the experiments of Geiger and Bothe and of Compton prove that the interval between emission and absorption is exactly that of the light path between the atoms concerned. But all that these experiments proved was that the interval was less than 103sec.; the interval of the light path was about 109 sec.
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CAMPBELL, N. Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Theory. Nature 119, 779 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119779a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119779a0
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