Reality and Quantum Physics

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“Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.” Niels Bohr

What is reality?

For most people, reality is what is taken in by their senses. What they see, touch, feel, taste, and hear forms a body of information that allows a person to form a construct of reality.

But suppose that your very presence altered what reality was. Suppose the action of observing things CREATED a reality that didn’t exist until you were there.

Forget the saying “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

How about “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to observe it, is there really a tree? or a forest?”

Seems a little strange?

In religion, Hinduism states that reality and the whole universe has its origin in non-existence, meaning that existence must be the product of some manifested potentialities.

In Buddhism, the perceived reality is considered illusory not in the sense that reality is a fantasy or unreal, but that our perceptions and preconditions mislead us to believe that we are separate from the elements that we are made of. Reality would be described as the manifestation of Karma.

Some schools of Buddhism hold that reality is something void of description, the formless which forms all illusions or maya. Buddhists hold that we can only discuss objects which are not reality itself and that nothing can be said of reality which is true in any absolute sense.

Similar is the Taoist saying, that the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao, or way.

For scientists, reality might take the form of….

In which reality is just a range of statistical probabilities, never taking form until observed or measured. A concept unheard of in the science world until the field of Quantum Mechanics came along. But how did this concept develop?

Quantum mechanics started with the question, “Does light travel as a particle or a wave?” Seems simple enough question. Particle or a wave?

Newton, after coming up with the why’s and math for the movement of the planets, thought that of course it was a particle. This was taken as the way it was until around the 18th century when famous mathematician, Euler started producing evidence that in fact it was a wave.

Experiments by an Englishman, Thomas Young, also supported that light was in fact a wave. By the time around 1870, everybody “knew” that light traveled in waves and to introduce anything different was cause for ridicule.

Around the 1890’s, Max Planck was working on some theoretical physics and came up with some mathematical equations that just didn’t fit. The math was right but it went against a lot of what was accepted. This “Planck Trick” agreed with experiments, but it was confusing.

Then along came Einstein to take Planck’s work and see it for what it really meant.  That it was not a mathematical trick and it implied a whole new set of idea’s.

Interesting in that Einstein was one of the principal founders of Quantum Mechanics and once he realized the consequences of what it meant, spent the rest of his life trying to prove it was incomplete and the outcomes of it couldn’t possibly be right.

One of Einsteins quotes…”God does not play Dice” comes from his struggle with the implications of his discovery.

Here is an excellent clip explaining an experiment with the particle/wave duality of light and it’s implications.

Again, these experimental results have been repeated over and over again by scientists around the world. It is not some mathematical trick but actually happens. Reality may not be so defined and concrete after all, eh?

————————————————————————————————————————
If you think that this is weird, maybe challenges your concept of reality, what until the next post of the series.

Part 2 Reality and Quantum Physics – Quantum Entanglement

** Many thanks to Dr. Quantum, whoever you may be. I appreciate your cartoon and it’s ability to explain.

*** From information given from our resident Quantum Goddess here at MMA, the excellent MOVIE and animation of Dr. Quantum can be found at WhatTheBleep


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13 years ago

I’ve been giving seminars on indigenous shamanic interpretations of the whole What the Bleep dialog. (to say it broadly or trying for simply) Quantum theory explains the extension of your awareness as consciousness – you begin to understand that the body is simply a vehicle of expression for another dimensional or unseen master system / mind (your consciousness) or perhaps I should say it: soul! It plausibly explains why we have dual sensuality: ie/ vision – clairvoyance. Our ancestors understood this basic nature and called it a sacred science: As Above, So Below. When What the Bleep came out, I was stunned happy to see energy medicine, multidimensional and quantum theory put into a broad circulation!
It should give atheists a nice pause, to contemplate that in the description of quantum theory they are actually “god”…
and
we go back to the forest, the tree and the question of sound and effect and
on
and on
and on….. what a treat Krell! Excellent post!

13 years ago

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by James Benton, Robert P Reibold. Robert P Reibold said: Reality and Quantum Physics: “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly… http://bit.ly/bGCQD1 […]

osori
13 years ago

OK bear with me and understand I am barely above the primates when it comes to this stuff (Jess please DO NOT pass this on to Sophie).

In telephony if one monitors a digital stream of data, there has to be a certain amount of resistance at the monitoring point so that a portion of the signal can be split off without affecting the integrity of the signal. Without enough resistance in theory you might short the signal to your monitor point, or at least attenuate it.

So could some type of resistance at the observation point cause the reality to change back to what it might be prior to being observed?

Reply to  osori
13 years ago

Oso, probably what you are dealing with loading the circuit.

Assuming you are tapping the circuit in parallel, your tap runs the risk of loading up so that you lose signal integrity. Most digital drivers have something called a fanout rate or max drive current.

When you put things in parallel, impedance drops,current drive needs to go up or the signal goes to hell.

Now, I do remember this movie that had a radio that went back into the past….

osori
Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

Getting scary here now….

Reply to  osori
13 years ago

Sorry, it’s the combination of candy corn, ibuprofen, scotch, and NyQuil. Mother Hen says that it’s some sort of Nordic penicillin. I’m starting to wonder….

Jess
Reply to  osori
13 years ago

Trust me, the only thing that made any sense to me in your words, Jess do not pass this on. The rest it might as well have been written in Greek.

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

I will have to keep coming back to this . . . again and again

Jess
13 years ago

I was with you all the way, till I saw letters together in a mathematical equation. It’s an abomination, I tell you an abomination, numbers and letters do not belong together for those of us that are math challenged.

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

LOL. I am the same way. When I took Calculus, I remember the prof putting an obscene strand of alpha-numeric horror on the board, and my mind recoiling like a scrotum in icewater.

Krell has a book, worse than any Lovecraftian nightmare, that is full of nothing but equations such as these. The only thing I understand in it is the page numbers.

osori
Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

scrotum in icewater – ROFL

Jess
Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

It’s a long time running joke in the family, with me and my non existent math skills. Any kids we have, will have to rely on daddy for the math homework.

osori
13 years ago

Gonna have to read this a couple times – the light bulb not only isn’t coming on, it apparently never existed in this reality.

13 years ago

I thought I had a handle on physics and quantum physics until I started reading about nano technology.

I’m not really here. I’m just a figment of your imagination unless you say otherwise.

13 years ago

Ha! You know I love this stuff. That goofy little cartoon was the clearest explanation of wave/particle duality I have ever seen.

Reply to  The Lawyer
13 years ago

That cartoon really is quite good, isn’t it.

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

I Think this is a part of a movie… “What the Bleeep we know..”

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