Exact uncertainty sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that's what governs the quantum world, according to a theoretical physicist who has created an improved version of the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Heisenberg worked out that there is a degree of inherent fuzziness to the world. You can't measure both the position and the momentum of any particle with perfect accuracy. The better the accuracy of your momentum measurement, the more uncertain your position measurement must be, and vice versa. Heisenberg quantified this in the uncertainty relation, which says that the product of the two uncertainties must always be greater than a certain fixed amount. This doesn't say how big the uncertainty might actually be, however.
展开▼
