dc.contributor.author |
Calude, C.S |
en |
dc.contributor.author |
Stay, M.A |
en |
dc.date.accessioned |
2009-04-16T23:16:15Z |
en |
dc.date.available |
2009-04-16T23:16:15Z |
en |
dc.date.issued |
2004-02 |
en |
dc.identifier.citation |
CDMTCS Research Reports CDMTCS-235 (2004) |
en |
dc.identifier.issn |
1178-3540 |
en |
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/2292/3742 |
en |
dc.description.abstract |
In 1927 Heisenberg discovered that the “more precisely the position is determined,
the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa”.
Four years later Gödel showed that a finitely specified, consistent formal system
which is large enough to include arithmetic is incomplete. As both results express
some kind of impossibility it is natural to ask whether there is any relation between
them, and, indeed, this question has been repeatedly asked for a long time.
The main interest seems to have been in possible implications of incompleteness
to physics. In this note we will take interest in the converse implication and will
offer a positive answer to the question: Does uncertainty imply incompleteness?
We will show that algorithmic randomness is equivalent to a “formal uncertainty
principle” which implies Chaitin’s information-theoretic incompleteness. We also
show that the derived uncertainty relation, for many computers, is physical. In
fact, the formal uncertainty principle applies to all systems governed by the wave
equation, not just quantum waves. This fact supports the conjecture that uncertainty
implies algorithmic randomness not only in mathematics, but also in
physics. |
en |
dc.publisher |
Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, New Zealand |
en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries |
CDMTCS Research Report Series |
en |
dc.rights.uri |
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm |
en |
dc.source.uri |
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/staff-cgi-bin/mjd/secondcgi.pl?serial |
en |
dc.title |
From Heisenberg to Goedel via Chaitin |
en |
dc.type |
Technical Report |
en |
dc.subject.marsden |
Fields of Research::280000 Information, Computing and Communication Sciences |
en |
dc.rights.holder |
The author(s) |
en |
dc.rights.accessrights |
http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess |
en |