26 July 2012
I went to a lecture recently in which the lecturer said, "anyone who does not find quantum theory weird has not understood it." I want to just briefly explain why, in my eyes, reality is inherently esoteric (very difficult if not impossible to imagine).
He said this subsequently to his description of the wave-particle duality theory (which to be fair was inspiring and insightful in most other aspects). Which attributes particle nature to light. In that light is quantised in energy. And their lack of a medium in which to travel through all show solid evidence for light as particles. On a side note unlike particles light does not travel in a straight line(and if this gets enough likes then I will write about that). However they, these tiny particles, simultaneously behave as waves, they can be split into a spectrum from white light, through a prism, and reflect off mirrors. Also quite interestingly all latter points are also true for actual particles, which includes anything from the nucleus components to the partially existent electrons which are probably around the nucleus. Now your common sense is probably shouting at you now, how can two contradicting properties coexist?
To explain we need to come back to more simple terms. Because surely we do not even understand simple realities, like and including newtonian mechanics (Newton ironically played a big part in classical attempts at an understanding of wave-particle duality), to its very core. Which is the same problem the lecturer said we should have with wave-particle duality at its underlying philosophy. Sure we know that something has mass, but the equivilant question to the quantum one is what is mass? Why do things accelerate proportionally to their mass? Or fall because of their mass? Equivalently why can waves and particles coexists.
Therefore apparent contradiction of common reality is irrelevant and physical laws can only be described by their properties and behaviours to converging accuracy.
Any questions and comments about understanding and alternate ideas are relished.
Irrelevance Of The Reality • Opuss № I