I was talking with a good friend recently about particle physics/quantum physics (I had him cornered at the Wendy's for lunch), and we were discussing some really bizarre behaviors in quantum theory. My friend kept saying "I just don't get it. It just doesn't make sense."
Well, that's okay, buddy, 'cause neither does anyone else!
Truth be told, there's a lot of brilliant thinkers working on new avenues of physics, particularly (no pun intended) quantum physics. My friend is right, there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't sound plausible. It's a hard thing to wrap one's head around these new concepts, especially when they ask us to defy all our foundation knowledge about things. Unfortunately for us mental mortals, there's a lot of math and lab-work that has proven some of these concepts, and we'll never understand it ourselves. Weird, it may be, but what is the universe if it isn't weird? When you think about all the things we take for granted in science, there's a LOT that we actually don't understand as much as we think. Of course there's gravity, but lets not forget basic stuff like how the planets formed, how the solar system formed, how atoms truly interact, or even the mechanics of granular density.
In an ironic downside (or upside) twist to quantum mechanics, the theories are so strange and so "magical" if you don't spend the time studying them, that the whole concept of "quantum" has seen a lot of science fiction mis-truths and misuse. This uneducated or misleading habit has been coined "Quantum Quackery" by many people, especially those in the scientific community who have to deal with this all the time.
"No-one knows the reason for this, but it's probably quantum," is a quote of the dog Gaspode of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
Quantum mechanics seems to provide for limitless possibilities, and so it often becomes the basis for many science-fiction foundations. Lest I remind the readers that "quantum torpedoes" are armed and ready...?
One concept that had my friend's head tilting was the concept of a distance-irrelevant quantum communications device. Such a device would in theory use a series of (usually two or four) quantum particles, in which the devices used the theories of quantum entanglement to manipulate the particle's qubit state. These devices would theoretically be capable of communicating across massive distances, because of the nature of shared-pair particle GHZ states. In lay-speak, I make one particle in my device do something, and the paired particle of my friend's device across the galaxy changes simultaneously. On a mundane scale it's quantum Morse-Code. On an advanced scale, it's supercomputer networking without cables.
The math seems to work, and some observations show effects of these theories, but then again if we truly understood how it really happens, we probably wouldn't be living like we do today.
Science (and especially astronomical science) is a lot like deep-sea vent creatures. We believe that something is impossible, and then suddenly there it is. Now we gotta figure out how, and why.
There's a lot out there that we don't even have to think up to see wacky stuff. Why is Voyager speeding up now that it's left the solar system? If the Big-Bang happened and all that matter was in that tiny little speck...where was the speck? How come when we throw a bunch of particles into a computer and code in Newton's Laws of Physics, everything goes nuts, when in the real universe under supposedly the same laws, we get galaxies, solar systems, and planets? How come we can't find dark-matter, when there's a prime example between the President's ears?
I have a confession to make: I've been exploiting my friends at work. I haven't really had a venue for theoretical discussion since leaving college, and really that's one of my favorite things to do. In my junior year of college, I probably spent more hours in a classroom, discussing and white-boarding astro-physics and theory, than I did anything else. It was nothing for me (and my one astronomy buddy who took the same classes) to descend upon my great professor at the end of advanced astro-physics, and bombard him with dozens of questions about this and that. Once that was over, we'd descend even further into the theoretical stuff, and had a lot of serious fun playing with equations, conceptualizing strange phenomenon, and discussing recent breakthroughs in physics and astronomy. My class ended at 3:45. It was not unusual for us to spend 3 hours in the classroom, then migrate to his office and spend another 3 hours continuing on.
So my apologies to my friends! I'm sure I drive them nuts with all this crap! :o)
Well, that's okay, buddy, 'cause neither does anyone else!
Truth be told, there's a lot of brilliant thinkers working on new avenues of physics, particularly (no pun intended) quantum physics. My friend is right, there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't sound plausible. It's a hard thing to wrap one's head around these new concepts, especially when they ask us to defy all our foundation knowledge about things. Unfortunately for us mental mortals, there's a lot of math and lab-work that has proven some of these concepts, and we'll never understand it ourselves. Weird, it may be, but what is the universe if it isn't weird? When you think about all the things we take for granted in science, there's a LOT that we actually don't understand as much as we think. Of course there's gravity, but lets not forget basic stuff like how the planets formed, how the solar system formed, how atoms truly interact, or even the mechanics of granular density.
In an ironic downside (or upside) twist to quantum mechanics, the theories are so strange and so "magical" if you don't spend the time studying them, that the whole concept of "quantum" has seen a lot of science fiction mis-truths and misuse. This uneducated or misleading habit has been coined "Quantum Quackery" by many people, especially those in the scientific community who have to deal with this all the time.
"No-one knows the reason for this, but it's probably quantum," is a quote of the dog Gaspode of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
Quantum mechanics seems to provide for limitless possibilities, and so it often becomes the basis for many science-fiction foundations. Lest I remind the readers that "quantum torpedoes" are armed and ready...?
One concept that had my friend's head tilting was the concept of a distance-irrelevant quantum communications device. Such a device would in theory use a series of (usually two or four) quantum particles, in which the devices used the theories of quantum entanglement to manipulate the particle's qubit state. These devices would theoretically be capable of communicating across massive distances, because of the nature of shared-pair particle GHZ states. In lay-speak, I make one particle in my device do something, and the paired particle of my friend's device across the galaxy changes simultaneously. On a mundane scale it's quantum Morse-Code. On an advanced scale, it's supercomputer networking without cables.
The math seems to work, and some observations show effects of these theories, but then again if we truly understood how it really happens, we probably wouldn't be living like we do today.
Science (and especially astronomical science) is a lot like deep-sea vent creatures. We believe that something is impossible, and then suddenly there it is. Now we gotta figure out how, and why.
There's a lot out there that we don't even have to think up to see wacky stuff. Why is Voyager speeding up now that it's left the solar system? If the Big-Bang happened and all that matter was in that tiny little speck...where was the speck? How come when we throw a bunch of particles into a computer and code in Newton's Laws of Physics, everything goes nuts, when in the real universe under supposedly the same laws, we get galaxies, solar systems, and planets? How come we can't find dark-matter, when there's a prime example between the President's ears?
I have a confession to make: I've been exploiting my friends at work. I haven't really had a venue for theoretical discussion since leaving college, and really that's one of my favorite things to do. In my junior year of college, I probably spent more hours in a classroom, discussing and white-boarding astro-physics and theory, than I did anything else. It was nothing for me (and my one astronomy buddy who took the same classes) to descend upon my great professor at the end of advanced astro-physics, and bombard him with dozens of questions about this and that. Once that was over, we'd descend even further into the theoretical stuff, and had a lot of serious fun playing with equations, conceptualizing strange phenomenon, and discussing recent breakthroughs in physics and astronomy. My class ended at 3:45. It was not unusual for us to spend 3 hours in the classroom, then migrate to his office and spend another 3 hours continuing on.
So my apologies to my friends! I'm sure I drive them nuts with all this crap! :o)
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