So let's start at one of science's most profound new discoveries in the understanding of our reality. That discovery, while being widely accepted, appreciated, and cash'd in on, has some well established, undeniable, "side effects" that can be swept under the rug no longer. The denial of these "side-effects" must end through a thorough understanding of their implications to technology, to us, and to our understanding of reality as a whole.
That discovery is Quantum Physics and while it may sound "space-agey" it has been around since the early 1900's, and even got help from Einstein. This information took its time to spread. Remember, it took approximately 45 years for the information of just the liver to be overturned with new discoveries and be accepted as if common sense. Quantum Mechanics plays with the very fabric of reality! In 1965 Richard Feynman one of the fathers of Quantum Physics, was quoted as saying "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Well, that quote is 48 years old. Things have changed.
Without Quantum Physics there would be no transistors. Which were discovered just a few years later in the 1950's, and as a result, we now are blessed to be living in the "modern" age. So as you can see, we owe everything we enjoy today to the most precisely tested and most successful theory in science; Quantum Mechanics.
The biggest implication of Quantum Physics is that everything we think we know about the universe....is essentially wrong. Here is an amazingly well done documentary by NOVA. The Fabric of The Cosmos: Quantum Leap. Strap in, it's 55 minutes long and based off of the Host's, Brain Greene's, books. Remember information is moving fast, it takes time to be confident enough in the new information, on top of time to put together a book and then put together a documentary of this size, and the documentary is already over 2 year old! If you'd like to jump straight to the central experiment and central "mystery" in Q.P., skip this video and continue.
Without Quantum Physics there would be no transistors. Which were discovered just a few years later in the 1950's, and as a result, we now are blessed to be living in the "modern" age. So as you can see, we owe everything we enjoy today to the most precisely tested and most successful theory in science; Quantum Mechanics.
- http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/05/05/the-most-precisely-tested-theo/
- http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130124-will-we-ever-get-quantum-theory
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/2012/01/what-if-quantum-mechanics-went-on-strike/
The biggest implication of Quantum Physics is that everything we think we know about the universe....is essentially wrong. Here is an amazingly well done documentary by NOVA. The Fabric of The Cosmos: Quantum Leap. Strap in, it's 55 minutes long and based off of the Host's, Brain Greene's, books. Remember information is moving fast, it takes time to be confident enough in the new information, on top of time to put together a book and then put together a documentary of this size, and the documentary is already over 2 year old! If you'd like to jump straight to the central experiment and central "mystery" in Q.P., skip this video and continue.
There's only one experiment that you need to wrap your head around to understand the immediate and undeniable paradigm shift that results, and that's the Double Slit Experiment found about 13 minutes into the YouTube video above, or here, with Professor Jim Al-Khalili who will explain the double slit experiment in under 10 minutes. To sum it up, all matter has both particle and wave quantum mechanical properties and the act of observation is a key ingredient.
Here's a shorter 6 minute, completely animated version.
Here's a shorter 6 minute, completely animated version.
Sent one atom at a time, as Jim Al-Khalili explains it (or in packets of electrons as our floating head friend explains it), the wave-like properties of atoms exist and you might find that it has somehow gone through both slits in this experiment at the same time, somehow interfered with itself and ended up in an area where it could not possibly end up. Let's make sure that sinks in because this is where most people start sweeping things under the rug.
Atoms, the stuff that makes up everything in the universe, can vanish into a wave of possible locations, or a "probability wave" and "bump" into itself causing it to be found somewhere that it could not possibly be located at, if the electron were a solid "thing." Logically, as is the conclusion of this experiment asserts, matter itself, made up of atoms, can not possibly be solid, or at the very least, not solid at all times.
And then there comes the interesting effect of trying to watch this electron to see what exactly happens to it. Jim Al-Khalili touched on this in his last video about 6:45 seconds in. The act of observation can even effect the past but Jim didn't go into that part, but as Hawking and Mlodinow write:
Atoms, the stuff that makes up everything in the universe, can vanish into a wave of possible locations, or a "probability wave" and "bump" into itself causing it to be found somewhere that it could not possibly be located at, if the electron were a solid "thing." Logically, as is the conclusion of this experiment asserts, matter itself, made up of atoms, can not possibly be solid, or at the very least, not solid at all times.
And then there comes the interesting effect of trying to watch this electron to see what exactly happens to it. Jim Al-Khalili touched on this in his last video about 6:45 seconds in. The act of observation can even effect the past but Jim didn't go into that part, but as Hawking and Mlodinow write:
"...in the delayed-choice experiment you postpone your decision about whether or not to observe the path until just before the particle hits the detection screen. Delayed-choice experiments result in data identical to those we get when we choose to observe (or not observe) the which-path information by watching the slits themselves. But in this case the path each particle takes-that is, its past--is determined long after it passed through the slits and presumably had to "decide" whether to travel through just one slit, which does not produce interference, or both slits, which does." (Pg 82-83)
"The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history." (Pg 82)
"The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on a system in the present affect its past." (Pg 82)
"The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history." (Pg 82)
"The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on a system in the present affect its past." (Pg 82)
Now this seems very interesting when you take into account that fact that our consciousness is actually only aware of the past, not the present and that it is our perception of events which is key. I'll let science clarify:
"...many things on a micro and macroscale are directly influenced from our perspective due to a myriad of variables placed on us by the laws of physics and our anatomy itself. There is the reflection and refraction of light scattered in our atmosphere, the observer effect witnessed with subatomic particles, light at various frequencies, and even the properties of time itself, or time dilation more specifically, whose effects can be seen on our satellites in LEO and the event horizons of black holes. All of this bring up an interesting philosophical question… Are we really observing reality, or can we only see into the past–glimpse the world as it was a nanosecond ago?"
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-reality-of-perception/#more-1571
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-reality-of-perception/#more-1571
Remember, we are talking about experiments that have been performed countless times and produce the same results every time. Reality is quite clear that "probability" and observation are king.
"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet." ~Niels Bohr
Now, remember how I said that all matter has both particle and wave-like quantum mechanical properties? Well we're about to take that one step further and show how, in reality, the particle property of matter, doesn't actually exist at all. What does exist is just the wave-like nature. The "particle" that we see is just an amplified quantum fluctuation of the only things that really exist in the universe. Fields.