Читать книгу Quantum Physics is NOT Weird - Paul J. van Leeuwen - Страница 6

“If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”

Niels Bohr, quantum physicist 1885-1962

‘Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of the double-slit experiment’.

From ‘The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory’, by Brian Greene, 1999

At the end of the 19th century, promising students were strongly discouraged from studying physics and were advised to strive for a different career since the practice of physics would from then on only be a matter of determining the next decimals.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the understanding of the workings of nature by physics – Newtonian mechanics – became dramatically overturned with publications by Planck, Bohr, Einstein, De Broglie, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and many others. Quantum physics was born, shaped, and applied, but poorly understood. The bewildering impression taking shape was that the act of measurement materializes the measured particles. Because of that, Schrödinger formulated his 'simultaneously dead and living cat in a closed box' paradox.

The following quote from the famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman is often repeated: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Pretty discouraging for someone who really wants to understand quantum physics. Meanwhile, the technical applications of quantum physics – the transistor, the laser, the LED, the computer, the Internet, quantum cryptography, quantum biology, superconductivity, MRI scanners, etc. – have become indispensable for us and can no longer be ignored. In 2015, the media, the daily papers, the science magazines, and the Internet, wrote excitedly with capitals about an experiment carried out by Delft University of Technology researchers that allegedly proved Einstein definitively wrong. The experiment was performed using pairs of entangled electrons with an intermediate distance of 1.3 kilometers and it proved that there had to exist an interaction between them requiring faster-than-light communication. Quantum physics was definitely weird.

In the present time many academically educated people are still living in a mainly Newtonian universe, where everything is objective and must obey immutable laws. This Newtonian image is, now already since more than 100 years, proven as false. It is my deeply felt opinion that a true understanding of the reality where we experience our existence is of enormous importance for the way we deal with ourselves and our environment. What I’m going to tell here could seriously undermine your idea of an objective reality outside and independent of us, by turning it inside out. Hold on and watch your properties.

The Newtonian model of the world is an excellent and extremely powerful tool. I do not mean to diminish that. However, when it is the only tool that we allow ourselves in our search for understanding the universe, it will become a confusing stumbling block. If you choose a hammer as your only tool, everything you encounter will start to look like a nail. In a lot of articles and books popularizing physics by ‘hammering’ physicists and other physics writers it seems obvious that Newton’s objective material reality is still unrefuted in their way of thinking, and often precisely when it concerns quantum physics. This leads to literally incomprehensible statements, like particles being simultaneously waves and traveling physically every possible path. Trying to preserve Newtonian materialism as the only allowed description of the real world ensures misinterpretation and clouds our minds in quantum confusion. Especially when the mind of the observer enters the stage.

All the important contemporary interpretations of quantum physics are treated extensively in this book, either materialistic or consciousness oriented. It is up to the reader to make his or her own informed choice between them. For a deeper understanding, after having completed this book, there is a wealth of information on quantum physics available for self-study on the Internet, something I wholeheartedly recommend. You will also find a list of recommended literature at the end this book. I won’t ask you to master physics formulas and mathematic expressions that are more complex than E = mc².

In my opinion, you don’t really need mathematics to understand the meaning of quantum physics. Any formula that you will encounter in this book can be skipped without any consequences for your understanding. Being able to do mathematic calculations is not the same as understanding physical processes. However, do not skip the double-slit experiments that will be discussed.

Understanding the workings and the meaning of the double-slit is an essential part of the argumentation in this book. For that task I recommend the full dedication of your imaginative quantum coherent grey cells and also some perseverance.

To show you the eyebrow raising confusion concerning quantum physics, I present on the next page a small anthology of interesting quotes on quantum physics I encountered in different media:

• If you could behave yourself like an atomic nucleus you would sometimes be able, like a ghost, to go through a massive wall.

From: ‘Life on the Edge’ ^[1] by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden

• And then there is the phenomenon of ‘entanglement’ – something happening elsewhere, instantaneously and regardless of the distance, when you do something here. Concepts such as superposition and entanglement are too weird for words.

From: ‘Real Quanta’ ^[2] by Martijn van Calmthout.

• In two places at the same time? “Quantum mechanics states that a particle such as an electron can be in two different states at the same time, and even in two different places, as long as it is not observed.

From: Loophole-free Bell test TU Delft crowns 80-years-old debate on nature of reality: Einsteins “spooky action” is real. ^[3] – Delft University of Technology – October 2015

• Quantum mechanics is one of the best-tested theories in science, and it's one of the few where physicists get to do experiments proving that Einstein was wrong. From: Physicists Prove Einstein Wrong With 'Spooky' Quantum Experiment ^[4] – NBC News, Jesse Emspak – March 2015

• Reality does not exist until we measure it, quantum experiment confirms. Mind = blown.

From: www.sciencealert.com, Fiona McDonald ^[5] – June 2015

• One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system cannot change while you're watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists. From: ‘'Zeno effect' verified – atoms won't move while you watch’ ^[6] – Phys.org – Bill Steele – October 2015

The aim of this book is that the reader should ultimately be able to judge, understand and value messages and statements like above on its own. At the end, we will investigate whether we can arrive at an explanatory model of nature in which all basic quantum phenomena are given a suitable place. The aim is that we can understand it without having to suffer inexplicable paradoxes. To achieve that lofty goal, we shouldn’t be scared off by paradoxes we will meet on the way. Instead, I aim to use these as the important road marks and signposts on the path to understanding reality.

When you have finished this book, I advise you refresh your opinion on the above quotes.

In this book I will approach quantum physics in the way I learned at the university, the scientific way: hypothesis, observations, predictions, and experiments. From this should rise an explanation of the quantum world, as simple, acceptable, and satisfying as possible.