Quantum Physics

Self confessed physics junkie here. Quantum I think falls into the world of “the more you know, the more you realise you don’t”. But, as a layperson, the way I see it is, like you, I am interested in it and have a basic grasp of the quanta of Quantum Theory; I get the idea of different types of particle separated into their spin, I love the Uncertainty Principle and wave/particle duality and the doors of thought that opened, and I have tried to learn more about Chaos Theory (James Gleick - Chaos dry read, but blew my mind when it was released). But, I have learnt and enjoyed what I have so I can enjoy podcasts which delve deeper a bit more.

You’re right though, it is witchcraft!

Have a listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast from BBC with Prof Brian Cox and Robin Ince - funny science.

As for history, You’re Dead To Me, also by the BBC - funny history 

OP, like you, I have been drawn by a general curiosity to Quantum Physics, and more intensely so, on and off at various times.

My curiosity is more attuned to whether QP can help me understand how Space is composed, astrophysics and cosmology, etc. 

But also, I read a small book titled A General Theory of Love that presents an argument that love, as between for example a mother and a young child, operates at the particle level of physics and can include QP types of phenomena like entanglement.

My level of understanding is, I like to read as much as I can about the concepts, but if proofs of the concepts were displayed as physics formulae, I would quickly struggle to keep any real comprehension up. 

Have you studied the basics of linear algebra?

At the very least you need to know how a 2x2 matrix and a 2x1 vector behaves to have any quantitative grasp of quantum mechanics.

I studied QP at uni. I didn’t do very well. You need a brain wired in a way that doesn’t work well in society to grasp most of it, and to come up with new theories you need to be an alien.

i loved some of the topics and wish i was less human. But in the end all it did for me was give me more of an understanding of the song “Quark, Strangeness and Charm”

Isn't that just the cat is both dead and alive until you look? ez pz

I'm a beginner. I got into quantum physics because Quantum Computing really causes a problem for current encryption algorithms and I was looking for a solution. Let's just say that after many sleepless nights I've decided to stick with my day job. Still, it's a fascinating subject. 

Science is the basis of our current model of reality and how we see the world. Something is as true and real as we can, with our limited knowledge, fully understand. Then when time passes and science advances we build upon this model of reality. A new hypothesis could either disprove or build upon old ideas.

While science is highly factual, there will always be a debate about the parts we don't know. We have the dots (the facts) but often refuse to acknowledge the politics and guesswork (the lines connecting the dots) involved. 

As for conspiracy? I believe things we don't quite understand are often indistinguishable from 'magic', for the lack of a better word. Gravity was pretty magical until we understood it. Maybe someday quantum physics will be just like that. 

As for Schrödinger's cat: if you'd run an experiment like that today ASPCA would come after you faster than you could spell science. 

First, I don’t understand it at all.  I know I don’t understand it because when I think about it, I’m not doing calculations or thinking about math.   Which means I don’t understand it at all.

After reading the opinions of people who understand it best (though they also say they do not understand it - but I trust them more than I trust myself on the topic, as they’ve at least tried some math), I have this to say:

Either we are missing a huge (and possibly mind bending or earth shattering) piece of the puzzle OR

it’s not making sense, and never will, because of our perspective.

With regard to the matter of perspective, suppose you were looking at a massive brown wall.  “Well,” you might say.  “This is a brown wall.”  And for you it is - perhaps you could travel up, down, left, or right along the wall for ten years and it would still be a brown wall.  But if you could somehow zoom out faster than the speed of light for a few decades and look back at it, it’s actually a mosaic of the Mona Lisa, and your brown tile is only one of billions of tiles, because the whole mosaic would take billions of years to traverse due to your tiny size.

Except it’s not a mosaic at all - you’ve been thinking flat, and it’s really the top of a table with infinitely long legs.

Unfortunately the universe doesn’t owe us answers.  Solenopsis invicta are never going to make sense of Shakespeare no matter how long they crawl across his pages  - it’s beyond their capability.  And while we won’t know unless we try, it would be the height of arrogance to assume the same is not true for us in at least some regards.

And the table exists in n spatial dimensions.  Occasionally.  If it isn’t being observed.

"it’s not making sense, and never will, because of our perspective."

This is just not true!

One of the key milestones in the development of quantum theory occurred in 1900 when Max Planck found a solution to the ultraviolet catastrophe.

At the time, there was lots of interest in understanding how a certain ideal object, called a "black body", sitting in thermal equilibrium, would radiate light. There was a discrepancy between theory and experiment.

Planck's solved this problem by introducing a new equation into the theory, namely, E = hv, with E being energy, v being the frequency of light, and h being a quantity we now call Planck's constant. This equation effectively meant that light was being emitted from the black body in the form of discrete packets of energy h.

Five years later, another famous scientist would provide a physical interpretation for this mathematical result, ushering in the dawn of quantum mechanics....

Adding on to this:

Niels Bohr famously said "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."  It's very true, though most of the insanity stems from two main principles that are both pretty crazy and then have insane implications.  I have graduate level education in chemistry, though 99% of my work in chemistry doesn't require thinking about quantum mechanics.  The orbits of electrons are dependent on quantum mechanics but you can get by without having to do any actual quantum math.

The rub of it all is quantum mechanics works.  We create experiments and get results that can only be explained through quantum theory.  Even the craziest implications of quantum theory have been shown to be correct. 

The solution of quantized light Matchlock mentioned created the first crazy bit, wave particle duality, where all materials exist as both a particle and a wave to some extent.  For large particles like a proton, their wave-ness is miniscule.  But electrons are small enough that they still have very wave-like behavior.  Double slit experiments with light create patterns of interference spectra because waves travel through both slits and then create areas of positive and negative interference.  If you fire electrons through a double slit, they also show interference patterns that are formed from waves.  This happens even if you only fire ONE electron at a time!  This means the single particle electron is also...as a wave...effectively travelling through both slits and interfering with itself.  This kind of property is why electrons do not "orbit" the nucleus of an atom but exist as clouds of probability in discrete orbital shells and shapes around the proton.  Transition metals behave differently than the other common elements because of differences in electron orbital shapes.  

The craziest part about quantum theory is the idea of the "wavefunction" which dispensing with the complicated mathematics, means that a particle's properties are not fully decided until you measure them.  Discussing electron "clouds" is an example of that.  An electron orbiting an atom does not have a discrete location unless something (an observation, which doesn't mean human observation) requires its position to be known.  All you have is a distribution of where the electron is most likely to turn up upon any given observation.  In a sense, the electron is technically "everywhere" that there is a non zero probability of it showing up, all at the same time.  Similarly, properties like particle spin are not known until an observation forces one answer or the other and until that observation happens and forces a 'wave function collapse' the answer is that the particle is effectively BOTH.

Bohr and Einstein famously argued and discussed potential issues with everything being probabilistic and such with Bohr managing to explain any potential paradoxes, but most famously Einstein argued that quantum theory's wavefunction approach could lead to instances of non-locality, where particles could be impacted by events nowhere near each other. Two particles like electrons could be created simultaneously through the same event and due to the conservation of momentum, the particles would necessarily have opposite particle spins.  But like with everything, which one had which spin was only decided once an observation was made.  So if you separated the two particles by miles or light years etc and measured the spin of one of them, you had also collapsed the wave function of the other.  Spooky action at a distance.  To Einstein this implied there needed to be some deeper set of principles that was determining these properties but which still seemed purely probabilistic to us.

It turned out Einstein was half correct.  Later research has shown that locality is actually violated in such circumstances and all the fundamental actions of energy and matter exist as a set of probabilities that only resolve when it becomes necessary for them to do so.  But at a macro scale, all those probabilities add up into very solid definite existence.  The average person doesn't need to understand anything about relativity or quantum mechanics to get by in daily life.

Then the really really crazy stuff happens.  The uncertainty principle implies that the total level of energy in a given location cannot be absolutely zero and thus even the vacuum of space has minute vibrations of positive and negative energy and mass blinking in and out of existence and this leads to the concept of Hawking Radiation, among other things, which gradually causes black holes to lose mass and eventually completely evaporate away.

Feynmann formulation of Quantum Mechanics may be some interesting for y’all. Some quirks of quantum mechanics that may seem unintuitive in the Max Borne’s statistical interpretation may be explained in this formulation. The math needed is nooooot that bad, unlike other formulation (Schrodinger and Heisenberg) where you need heavy use of Linear algebra and Dirac notation.

I was accompanying a friend to Elite Dangerous in my spaceship, and a conversation arose about the universe—how can it be infinite and expanding? From that day on, I immersed myself in physics, although I'm ignorant of the underlying mathematics. I've loved reading your comments. Thank you.

Modern theory with the big bang would say the universe is not infinite, but even if it was, it could expand. The analogy of spacetime expanding is like two galaxies are like two raisons in a loaf of bread. The batter between them spreads out and creates more distance between them.

Quantum physics, the more I learn the more I question concrete evidence of the past results. Realization in graphical terms are far too rudimentary like using broken crayons to stencil out finite arrays of particle wave vibration around dense mass gravitation fields. Then leaving it in the summer sun to melt. Knowing neutron valances are in constant flux to neutrinos bombarding the spaces between proton and electron bonds, pulsing in halo waves, manufacturing radio emissions that defy mass presence but is effected by electrical fields. 

Some days it feels like playing darts while driving around an indy race car using only feathers.

I read a couple of books about quantum mechanics. To be honest, it gave me a head ache as my brain recinfigured...

Once you know this, your thoughts change. The world is no longer the thing you thought you understood, it is just particles. As you are, the aif you breathe and the food you eat, just particules. Everything changes... Load image: sick