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."

Comments

My thoughts on the matter.

[Sean Johnson]

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.