Quantum Strangeness
Main Takeaways, Questions, Moments of Genius…
Don’t focus on what Quantum Mechanics does. Focus on what it avoids doing. The theory steadfastly refuses to speak of many things. An electron can be emitted and detected there, but the theory cannot describe the path that electrons took. It tells us that an atom can have many different energies at the same time, but it does not tell us how this may be possible. It says that a particle can spin- indeed that it must spin- but in no particular direction until it is observed. It tells us that events in the atomic realm occur randomly, but it fails to describe their causes. The theory deals only in probabilities, and it never gives explicit descriptions of events- first this happened, then that. It never explains why an event occurred. This refusal of the theory to respond to certain questions, this inability to give explanations for its predictions to describe what happened, and to express certain things, deeply puzzled the theory’s creators. And it has puzzled many physicists ever since. In the world of QM there is no such reason, for radioactive nuclei are all alike- absolutely alike. And yet they behave differently. In the world of our experience identical objects behave identically. And if two objects behave differently it is because they only seem to be identical-were we look more closely, we would eventually spot the difference. But for the nuclei there is no difference. The lesson here is that nothing in the normal world of daily experience prepares us for QM. The micro-world is alien- absolutely alien. If there is anything I have learned about the world of the quantum, it is that normal thinking does not apply. Even now, so many years after the creation of QM, physicists keep on arguing about it. There is still a profound disagreement among researchers about how to understand what it is telling us about the world.