The cover story in New Scientist 30.04.11, seemed to suggest that uncertainty was on the way out. However, it did a U-turn before the end, in an uncertain sort of way.
The thing that puzzles me is this: Uncertainty says that complementary quantities, such as position and momentum cannot both be measured precisely. More of one; less of the other….
In the “Bob and Alice” experiment they cite, it seems that Bob can obtain a measurement of one quantity that may be more accurate than that obtained by Alice; however, he cannot obtain a measurement of the other quantity.
If my understanding of this is correct, I fail to see how this undermines uncertainty. Surely, uncertainty does not say you cannot get an accurate measurement of one quantity, only that if you do you won’t find out much about the other.
