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A comment on Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality. Parent comment

Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by GoblinSlayer on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:42AM (#26330840)
Complex numbers themselves can be explained with real numbers only.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by ko27 on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:48AM (#26330941)
You didn't define what you meant by "explained". You are more then welcome to explain the results of the linked study (once its released) with real numbers only.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by GoblinSlayer on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @01:36PM (#26332549)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26329883 - like this. AIU the article disproves a specific theory that threw away the imaginary part of wave function or something like that, so the result is kinda expected, but it doesn't mean that complex numbers are indispensable.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by ko27 on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @02:47PM (#26333392)
That doesn't explain complex numbers with real numbers (matrices are not real numbers). So the point of the article, and my comment still stands.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by GoblinSlayer on Thursday March 04, 2021 @11:12AM (#26344214)
You can say that about anything, like real quantum mechanics isn't just real numbers, but also functions, equations, operators and a lot of stuff like that.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality by ko27 on Thursday March 04, 2021 @04:42PM (#26348795)
> Functions, equations, operators

All of those are part of Peano and ZFC axiomatic systems, which were thought to be enough to explain all of physics (albeit not easily). Matrices and imaginary numbers are not part of those formal systems.

Just ask yourself. If you are right, why didn't Schrodinger or the researches that are publishing this study just think of your idea of using matrices?

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