Essay 3: The Quantum World

Albert Einstein published his seminal article on Special Relativity in 1905. During that same time, Einstein and other brilliant physicists, many of whom would go on to win Nobel prizes, were uncovering a bizarre world of inexplicable conundrums. This world concerned things too small to see, like atoms and their constituent parts. It attempted to decipher how light worked and how certain phenomena, such as radioactive decay, could be explained. The study of these phenomena became known as quantum mechanics or quantum physics.

As scientists began to investigate the quantum world, they discovered some very strange and unsettling phenomena that upended everything previously known about how nature works. This subject is immense and insanely complicated. Since my goal here is to demonstrate that the world we know is, in many ways, not what we have assumed it to be, I will limit the discussion to a few digestible examples.

When we throw a ball into the air, we can predict how high it will go, where it will land, and what speed it will have along the way, all because of the laws of physics divined by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century. We are confident that if we know everything about the ball–how hard it was thrown, how much it weighs, the wind resistance, and so on–we can calculate precisely where and when it will come back down. Its motion is not a mystery. That is not true of very small things like electrons. Electrons are the negatively charged particles in atoms. Initially, after their detection by J.J. Thomson, they were assumed to behave like little tiny planets circling the nucleus of the atom, just as the earth and her sister planets of the solar system circle the sun. Rapidly, it was determined that this could not be the case. Just how to explain the electron’s behavior became a major challenge.

It turns out that electrons–and other components of an atom–behave quite strangely, not anything like the ball we threw in the air. In the previous paragraph, I described an electron as a discrete thing, a particle of something. That’s not exactly accurate. Electrons, like photons, which are the particles that compose light, can sometimes act as waves–similar to water or sound waves–and sometimes behave like particles, like little baseballs. Here is the crazy part. Whether one of these entities behaves as a wave or as a particle is determined by whether or not we try to figure out which it is at any one time. Observation, meaning any attempt at measurement or visualization, changes how these entities behave. Observation changes reality. How is that even remotely possible?

There is more. Though nearly impossible for most of us to imagine, an electron has no specific location at any moment in time. We can only determine a probability for where it might be. An electron can be circling the nucleus of its atom, or it might be under your bed, or in another galaxy. It doesn’t have a definite position until you look for it. Until then all you can do is calculate the probability of it being here or there.

Why I am spending an entire essay time talking about electrons and photons? Why does any of this matter? It matters because everything is made of these particles, including you and me. While we don’t notice any of the craziness of quantum physics in our daily lives, it is real. Once you delve into quantum physics and learn about the many discoveries it has revealed, you discover that the quantum world is beyond strange. Here are just some of the conclusions that quantum physics forces upon us:

–Nothing can be predicted with absolute certainty. It seems that we can be confident of the result of so many things because that is our daily experience in the world in which we live. That confidence is unwarranted. It is another illusion. Our world is probabilistic. You can only know the probability of something occurring. You can never be 100% certain of anything.

–It’s not just that the world is probabilistic. It is more than that. All outcomes of any event have some probability of occurring. For example, a ball we throw straight up in the air will almost certainly come back down back into our hands, but not 100% of the time. Once in an inconceivable number of throws, it could end up on the moon. The point is that it is not simply that we cannot predict with 100% accuracy the result of an event. The point instead is that all possibilities remain in play. The most probable outcome will dominate, but the exceedingly rare outcome remains possible until one result is observed.

–As already mentioned, observation of an event changes the outcome. One of the best-known experiments in physics is called the double-slit experiment. It is here that physicists first observed that an electron or photon will behave as a wave if you don’t try to figure out its path and as a particle if you do. It is as if the New York Yankees win the game against the Boston Red Sox if someone is watching, and the Red Sox win if no one is.

–The future can affect the past. Brilliant, detailed experiments, like the above-mentioned double-slit experiment, have proven this true.

–Things that are far apart–even billions of light-years apart–can be entangled, meaning doing something to one of them will instantly affect the other, completely upending Einstein’s well-accepted law that says nothing can go faster than the speed of light. Something else is going on, but what that something is remains unexplained.

Many theories have arisen about how the quantum world works. Some of these have led to sensational conclusions. Among these is the Many Worlds theory, which states that our universe is one of a near-infinite number of universes. You, in this universe, are reading this essay, while you in another universe are doing something completely different. Just as there are many, many universes, there are many, many copies of you. This is no crackpot theory. A great number of highly respected, published, academic quantum physicists from universities like Caltech believe this to be the case. Alternative theories to explain quantum behavior have their own set of eye-popping consequences. Every quantum physicist agrees that no matter which theory one prefers, quantum physics reveals a world previously unimaginable and stubbornly inexplicable.

We have only barely scratched the surface of Einstein’s relativity theories and quantum physics. I have introduced you to these for a reason. Our confidence in how our world works should be shaken. We are indeed living in a science fiction novel. When I learned about how time works, I was stunned and speechless. All of time exists contemporaneously. There is no single master clock. We all experience time differently if we are in motion relative to each other. The future has occurred. The past never “dies”.

Quantum physics insists that there are only probabilities in our world. Nothing, not even the position of an electron in an atom, can be known with certainty. Particles sometimes behave like waves and vice versa, and they decide which based on whether or not anyone is looking. Don’t believe it? Quantum physics is the most tested of all physics theories and has held up every time.

My goal in this and the prior essay is simply to prove beyond any doubt that the world you thought you knew is not the world in which you live. Our senses deceive us. These hard clues are like icy cold water poured on us as we sleep. They should cause us to leap up and question just about everything.

In the next essay, we will begin to discuss the softer clues. These are derived from what I refer to as “peculiarities” we encounter in our daily lives. They are not scientifically proven like relativity and quantum physics, but that doesn’t diminish their contribution to our search. The hard clues we have just discussed force us to open our minds and to appreciate that much is not what it seems. The softer clues we are about to encounter will add to the evidence that there is another story percolating just below the surface of our mundane lives. I suspect that many if not most of you will begin to share that conclusion as we continue our journey.

Possibilities abound.

Next: Just A Coincidence?

When: April 6, 2022