Heisenberg uncertainty principle

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a fundamental statement in quantum mechanics, formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, that there is an irreducible lower limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle — most famously position and momentum, or energy and time — can be simultaneously known; the uncertainty is not a limitation of measurement technology but an intrinsic feature of quantum reality: the more precisely position is determined, the less precisely momentum can be known, and vice versa; the uncertainty principle has profound implications for the stability of atoms, the energy of the vacuum, and the minimum energy of any quantum system, and it sets ultimate limits on the precision of any physical measurement