July 17, 2003
Quantum Mary Jane
I've been reading a book on Quantum physics. This is slightly like
deciding to rewrite the rules of logic, mathematics, and English and being told "The experiments support this as the best way to do math, logic and speak." (Note: The English must be rewritten by something more confusing than just placing it in ASL, American Sign Language, word order.)
I wonder if Quantum Physics was the inspiration for Weird Al's song "Everything you know is wrong."
Okay just a recap of some of the strange things I've read in the past week:
- Particles that receive photons that from our perspective have not yet been emitted.
- Kittens and even people who are in Quantum Flux (my term) because of an atom's lack of ability to determine if its on the side of a box with the detector hooked up to the lethal device.
- The apparent faster than light communication due to the atom's same inability to be decisive about which side of the box it swings to. This involves two space craft, one each with half of the box in question, two lethal devices and one alien. (After reading this I expressly forbid my kittens, George and Shaun, from having any contact with anyone with a PhD in Quantum Physics of the last name of Schrödinger, in addition they are to run and if need be climb up a very tall tree when coming in contact with any of the aforementioned persons. (I will begin holding Quantum Physics PhD/Schrödinger drills for my cats in the near future.)
- Individual particles of light that know if they are being watched and behave appropriately
- Individual particles that go through two holes simultaneously, interfering with themselves and act the same as they would if there were multiple particles.
I know strange shit ain't it? The thing is these are answers that are accepted as valid. The book I'm reading, Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality states that a major theory of Quantum mechanics "...is the most successful and accurate scientific theory there has ever been." (p. 90) It goes on to support this by stating one specific measurement is as accurate as measuring the distance between NYC and LA and being off by the width of a human hair.
All I can say is I'm waiting for the paradigm shift to get us out of this seemingly Mary Jane induced Achem's razor violating, overly absurd paradigm, so we all can get to the stage where we say, "what? They thought that?"
I'm really interested if at this point the paradigm shift inducing problem is floating around waiting to reach a crisis in the quantum physics research community.
Of course I wouldn't be able to see it if it came speeding at me at greater than the speed of light. (err excuse me, I'm going to rephrase that to spare myself contact with anti-particles.) Take two: I wouldn't be able to find it even if it was emitting and reabsorbing photons as if it was the hippest thing to do.
My knowledge of Quantum Physics is at the same ability of being able to add the numbers 1-5 together. I really should at least be able to do algebra... But I don't want to get a degree in this, just study it.
Anyone care to mix a few particles with me and talk about this stuff in depth?
hey
i came across your website while searching for some info on quantum mechanics. i know this stuff is really weird but sometimes it makes sense, and sometimes i have no idea what they're talking about. I am studying quantum rightnow and believe me i am going nuts. but i guess people buy it because most of these theories were proven experimentally, so i am not gonna worrry about it too much. Some things can only be understood by few people, like those who came up with these quantum mechanics theories, and for the rest of us we just have to trust them and make use of these theories!
All this talk about quantum mechanics is curiously apt to my comments a year-and-a-half later - er, yesterday, or, oh, whenever - about Oriental religious traditions. Hindu and Buddhist scriptures make absolutely no bones about that fact that the everyday reality of "common sense," also known sometimes as Newtonian physics, is an illusion masking the true and ultimate nature of reality. That the physical laws of that illusory universe become useless and void on the subatomic level is precisely the point the Buddha, his predecessors and followers have been trying to make now for several millennia.
The theories and experiments of Maxwell, Roentgen, Rutherford, Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac and etc - validated by the existence of both the hydrogen bomb and the exquisite slow cautionary performance art of the Chernobyl reactors - confirm Vedic/Buddhist doctrines very neatly: atomic physics declares the observable universe - and every sensible object within it - void to the 99.999999999999th percentile, the remaining 00.000000000001% being a conditioned lattice of pure indestructible eternal energy (not matter, as we conceive it). The White House, Saddam Hussein, Mount Everest, Shaun and George, the sun and planets, you, I, and everyone we have ever known are ... nearly perfect Voids, empty shadows in fathomless space, temporarily associated impulses of dancing immortal power. We shall every one of us eventually die and dissolve back into the Whole, but not one single piece of us will ever be destroyed, so long as the universe remains.
What possible relevence all this may have to the everyday world of simple and scratching mortals like ourselves, is surely debatable. For me, it puts a particular spin on the prospects for an afterlife, if nothing else: apparently making it a fairly workaday and inevitable thing, though perhaps not very much like the one projected by Christian and Muslim theologians. On the other hand, there is still the nagging problem of the hydrogen bomb, which still bears some import and relevence for every advanced mortal lifeform on this planet.
What to do; what to do: what to make of Schrödinger's Cat?