{"id":240672,"date":"2026-07-11T15:08:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T20:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/complex-numbers-are-not-needed-for-quantum-mechanics-physicists-develop-quantum-model-that-uses-only-real-numbers-for-first-time-ever"},"modified":"2026-07-11T15:08:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T20:08:54","slug":"complex-numbers-are-not-needed-for-quantum-mechanics-physicists-develop-quantum-model-that-uses-only-real-numbers-for-first-time-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/complex-numbers-are-not-needed-for-quantum-mechanics-physicists-develop-quantum-model-that-uses-only-real-numbers-for-first-time-ever","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Complex numbers are not needed for quantum mechanics\u2019: Physicists develop quantum model that uses only \u2018real\u2019 numbers for first time ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/complex-numbers-are-not-needed-for-quantum-mechanics-physicists-develop-quantum-model-that-uses-only-real-numbers-for-first-time-ever.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the first time, physicists have built a working version of quantum mechanics without complex numbers \u2014 numbers that have been considered essential to the theory for nearly a century.<\/p>\n<p>Complex numbers combine a regular \u201creal\u201d number with an \u201cimaginary\u201d one \u2014 a multiple of the square root of-1, represented by the symbol <em>i<\/em> \u2014 into a single value, like 3 + 4i. The square root of-1 doesn\u2019t correspond to any quantity you could count or measure directly (you can\u2019t have negative one apple, for instance), which is why mathematicians call it imaginary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time, physicists have built a working version of quantum mechanics without complex numbers \u2014 numbers that have been considered essential to the theory for nearly a century. Complex numbers combine a regular \u201creal\u201d number with an \u201cimaginary\u201d one \u2014 a multiple of the square root of-1, represented by the symbol i \u2014 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}