Slashdot Mirror
100th Anniversary of Quantum Physics
EricR writes "On December 14, 1900, Max Planck presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets, which he called "quanta." Today is the 100th birthday of Quantum Physics."
Of course describing energy as quanta is just a way for us to understand how things work. Anytime we discover and present a theory as to how things work in the universe we are presenting a picture or an incomplete slice of the whole (as how we understand it). Sure it helps us understand better, but we have to realize that it is not the way things work out per say (as a whole). Meandering on: A GUT theory is an admiral thing to strive for, but we must understand what it must take to come to such a comprehensive theory. All present theories will have to be thrown out of the window. They will never make cohesive integral sense incorporated into a GUT. Each time we delve further into quantumn particles we find more and more suprises. Likewise with peering into the vastness of space.
It is all so amazing and we must realize that any theories we come up with will never be able to describe things as a whole. It is basically the universe trying to understand itself...when it already knows. Dang....now I am getting into Zen philosophy so I will jsut shut up becasue I don't know where this is leading towards.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
I read a thing about entanglement; that's a quantum-physics thingy when one particle is "entangled" with another particle; it means that the two particles are exactly the same; they're a pair which do the exact same things at the exact same times, and it doesn't even matter how far apart they are in the universe; they'll always do the same things at the same times no matter where they are in the universe. One could be on mars, and a person could drain two electrons from it, and its partner could be on pluto with two electrons jumping from it. Yes, you can manipulate these particles and their manipulations would be copied wherever else they are in the entire universe -- isn't this freaky stuff? Ever since hearing this entanglement thing, which isn't a theory THERE'S PROOF!!! Anyhoo, once I heard about this, it started me thinking about communications applications, and soforth. Ever heard of an ansible? If you have, you're gasping now at the possibility of such things actually existing, all thanks to entanglement. For those who don't know, an ansible is an instantanious communication device which can be used anywhere in the universe; it's currently just a theory, but thanks to quantum entanglement of particles, it's more possible. See, entangled particles come in pairs. One could be on earth, and the other could be on Catland, which is the planet in the center of the universe. Someone makes the one on earth cause an atomic blast, and the one on Catland will cause an atomic blast -- faster than lightspeed travel because it's not actually faster than lightspeed travel because the pair of particles are the same thing! Trippy, ain't it? It's quantum physics. Quantum Physics is cool! Happy birthday Quantum physics! (Banana Chan, which wasn't mentioned here, is at http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/ )
I have an enormous amount of respect for Feynman, because his formulation of quantum mechanics that makes my job a lot easier. However, I have to regards this statement as empty retoric and/or false humility. Understanding quantum mechanics is not more difficult then understanding classical mechanics. When you write both in the Hamilton formalism, the difference is not that big. This statement arises from a false interpretation of the word "understand". If you mean by understanding that you want to know why the mathematics looks the way it does, I agree, but by that definition, nobody understands classical mechanics either. Why does action equal and opposite reaction? Because assuming it does explains the world around us. Do I "understand" why? No, I just got used to the fact. Do I "understand" the consequences? Yes, using Newton's equations, I can accurately predict an awful lot of stuff going on in the world.
I the same sense, I do not "understand" why the world would obey something as counterintuitive as quantum mechanics. On the other hand, I can see the close mathematical analogy to classical mechanics (which we have all accepted), so it is not hard to imagine that this might actually work. Using the postulates of quantum mechanics, I can then calculate a huge amount of new stuff that I did not understand before I learned quantum mechanics.
I think my conclusion is that there is no such thing as understanding exactly why nature follows a certain set of rules. It's just that experiments lead us to believe that the mathematical formalism gives us something that looks like the reality around us. And besides devine intervention, that's the only thing we can ask from our theories. Clinging to the believe that understanding should be more than that is what religion is all about, but it has little to do with science.