Posted on 09/16/2013 1:40:34 PM PDT by neverdem
Physicists have spent a century puzzling over the paradoxes of quantum theory. Now a few of them are trying to reinvent it.
If the truth be told, few physicists have ever really felt comfortable with quantum theory. Having lived with it now for more than a century, they have managed to forge a good working relationship; physicists now routinely use the mathematics of quantum behaviour to make stunningly accurate calculations about molecular structure, high-energy particle collisions, semiconductor behaviour, spectral emissions and much more.
But the interactions tend to be strictly formal. As soon as researchers try to get behind the mask and ask what the mathematics mean, they run straight into a seemingly impenetrable wall of paradoxes. Can something really be a particle and a wave at the same time? Is Schrödinger's cat really both alive and dead? Is it true that even the gentlest conceivable measurement can somehow have an effect on particles halfway across the Universe?
Many physicists respond to this inner weirdness by retreating into the 'Copenhagen interpretation' articulated by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and their colleagues as they were putting quantum theory into its modern form in the 1920s. The interpretation says that the weirdness reflects fundamental limits on what can be known about the world, and just has to be accepted as the way things are — or, as famously phrased by physicist David Mermin of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, “shut up and calculate!”1
But there have always been some who are not content to shut up — who are determined to get behind the mask and fathom quantum theory's meaning. “What is it about this world that forces us to navigate it with the help of such an abstract entity?” wonders physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer of the University of Portland in Oregon...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Bazinga.
Boonga boonga!
‘“What is it about this world that forces us to navigate it with the help of such an abstract entity?” wonders physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer of the University of Portland in Oregon...’
Search me. God made it that way; ask Him.
Where is the old sense of awe. Now that the world is deemed no more than our personal toy box, we yawn.
Most moderns can’t handle awe - it scares them.
LoL.....
God might reply, study My Creation,
I have made it Understandable
I have Given you Reason and Logic
One might say that we Honor God by Honoring His Creation
By Studying it and using it Prudently.
We Honor God by being Good Stewards of
the Gifts of Logic and Reason.
Always Honoring the Giver of the Gifts
In all Gratitude and Humility.
And Knowing that ALL is Freely Given Gifts.
The Quantum Mechanics Conundrum is, I Believe, Resolvable.
In this Context
Thank you.
That ranks as one of the most enlightening things I've ever read on FR!
Einstein: “G-d does not play dice.”
Bohr: “Albert, quit telling G-d what to do!”
It is quite simple. We may know “this much” but not more. Period.
See my tag line,
When I read this I felt awe.
When I read this I felt awe.
And yet I would imagine our bleeding edge science is the equivalent of Lincoln logs. We don’t know what we don’t know. Like an eleven year old :)
I've always been uncomfortable with Einstein's words here
With his profound Gifts of Reason, and dare we say, Vision
Einstein was able to look “Differently” at
our understanding of Physics.
But to state these words,
especially from a Jewish perspective,
might be thought of as... blasphemous
Better would be to say,
I cannot comprehend a Physics where G-d Rolls Dice
It would seem to be a breach in Causality and Determinism,
both strong features of our understanding of the Universe
This also implies, in part, a subjective, user-created reality.
I find it only too fitting that the more we get closer to the nature of 'what is real', the more unreal it becomes.
There can not be any paradoxes in nature. What appears to be a paradox is just humans’ imperfect understanding of the universe.
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