Yes, indeed there are strange realities of a different and distinct world we do not see and even with our senses we would be oblivious to them.
You were sound asleep one night when nightmare paid you a visit. You were in prison with another prisoner in the same cell. Your cell mate was ordered out by the evil-looking warden. The other prisoner was taken inside a smaller cell of solid metal walls all around and sealed closed. The warden said, addressing you, "There is a vial of cyanide gas inside that cell. The vial will shatter if a heavy weight above it is released. The release will be triggered by a switch that will turn on with a 50-50 probability programmed into a small computer. The computer will either turn the switch on at some point or keep it off but either event is not for certain to occur one way or another." Then, after a few moments, with a loud guttural laugh, he declared, "So, you see, right now your friend is both dead and alive. But we won't know for sure until we open the door, would we?". His laughter trailing, you woke up in a cold sweat.
Somehow, you managed to drift back to sleep. But dreams won't leave you alone. This time you're in another room. Tennis balls were being propelled against a wall. There are two vertical slits parallel to each other a foot apart and wide enough for the balls to go on through. Most tennis balls bounced back off the solid wall but many others went through the slits. When you went behind to look there was a white wall against which the tennis balls that went through the slits hit. The balls left marks on the white wall and sure enough there were two vertical bands of green ( they were green tennis balls).
You were led back to the other side and this time only one tennis ball at a time was being propelled in very rapid succession through just one of the slits, which you watched intently. After a while, you turned away and lost interest with the now seemingly boring spectacle. After several minutes the racket (pun intended) stopped. You went to the other side to see the marks. To your astonishment there were two vertical marks as if some of the balls went through the other slit. Suddenly one of the tennis balls lying on the floor started talking (remember, you are still in a dream). "Hah, you wondered how that happened? Well, when you were watching, we, like an obedient herd of sheep went through just that one slit. When you were not looking we, each one of us individually, went through the two slits simultaneously. Yes, we can do that! You see we behaved one way when you were watching and we misbehaved when you were not." Then, with the tennis ball still grinning, you woke up in another cold sweat.
Again, against all odds, you drifted back to sleep.
This time the dream was incredibly serene. You were in some kind of laboratory or studio filled with all sorts of monitors and sensors. Someone was there and he spoke to you. "See this baseball with a trademark to one side. It has a twin", and pointing to one of the monitors, he added, "Look at that other baseball. It is about a million miles away from here. It could also be just a hundred miles away, it doesn't matter. Watch as I turn this baseball here and quickly look at the monitor." As the trademark moved from left to right on the baseball in the room, the baseball on the monitor turned exactly the same way. The man said, "These two baseballs will move simultaneously together no matter how far they are from each other without any apparent physical or electronic connection to make them do that. The other baseball could very well be in another star system or even another galaxy and one will behave the same way as the other simultaneously. Distance are of no consequence and barriers that isolate or insulate do not hinder the behavior of the two baseballs".
Then you woke up again.
Those were nightmares all right. In the macro world, that is. In the sub-atomic world of particles, electrons and where other much smaller microscopic denizens reside, those are not uncommon. They are everyday occurrences. Where they occur is the domain of quantum mechanics, the quantum world is as real as our everyday world that we can see and touch.
With those examples, you have just been introduced to the world that even Albert Einstein refused to embrace. Up to the day he died he was skeptical of quantum physics, or at least the behavior of particles as prescribed by it.
But it is real. Smart phones, TV, radio, even the propagation of photons from the center of the sun to its surface up to the moment it reaches our face to warm us on a cold morning, quantum physics rule the phenomenon. I cannot pretend to understand even ten per cent of quantum mechanics but no one person alive today can claim to fully understand it either. It is a strange world but it is real.
The dreams above are just a handful of examples of quantum mechanics - a branch of physics - described albeit a little differently but they are true. In the first example, probability rules the movement and location of particles. Well, how different is that when you ponder what you will do tomorrow, a year from now, or the next moment? Everything in front of what we consider the present moment resides in the realm of nothing but several probable outcomes, sometimes too numerous to consider each. Until it happens. And when it does, every conceivable probability collapsed into just the one reality. That is not too hard to understand, is it? Every morning when you wake up, no matter how much planning you formulated the night before - what time to get out of bed, what to have for breakfast, what to wear - are all "probables" until you actually did what you intended to do. Simple enough; however, do not forget that your brain functions are a series of interactions between the countless neurons and electrical signals as synapses between nerve cells that operate in the quantum world. But the next two examples are really weird.
The double slit experiment is now a common place laboratory phenomenon done even by physics majors in college. When they place detectors to monitor the path of an electron going through one of the slits the electron will be observed doing that - go through one slit. Remove the detector and in a few moments the image on the second wall will show that the electrons - pointed to just the one slit will seem to have gone through both slits at the same time. The electron's behavior seems to indicate that it knows if it is being observed. There lies the phenomenon that the electron and other sub atomic entities can behave either as a particle or a wave. Here's how best to imagine it. Imagine a single wave on a still pond approaching the same first wall with two slits. The single wave will come out to the other side as now two waves - one per slit. They will mark the second wall with images of two waves. How does a particle behave that way also? And how is it able to choose to behave as a particle or a wave? It is a mystery.
The two baseballs are examples of particle entanglements that is the weirdest of all. How is the behavior of one particle affecting the other when there is clearly no physical way they are communicating with each other? That is not just weird, it is another great mystery. And this is one that we are not able to observe in the macro world. You would think, but stranger things do happen in our observable world too.
How often we hear of someone thinking about a friend or relative and almost in a few moments the phone rings. It is from the very same friend or sister or brother one was thinking about. What about two friends who had not seen each other for years, as they each moved to other cities only to see each other at some bazaar while vacationing in the same far flung middle eastern country, looking at carpets at the same exact place and time. These are all ruled as coincidences. But coincidences follow the rule of probabilities. In some experiments dogs were able to sense when their owners are coming home long before they can hear the car. We sense sometimes when someone is looking or staring at us. What can explain what most consider a gut feeling that turned out either as a good decision or one that was a portent of something bad?
Back in the days I used to joke that it is a quantum thing. Sometimes this quantum thing even defies the rule of probability. Why is it that Murphy's Law still torments us these days even when every precaution is taken to insure a catastrophe doesn't happen?
The field of quantum physics appeals to very few because few cares about what happens in the world of the very small. But it is not true that quantum mechanics (QM for short) has no effects on the macro world. Stars, lasers and even the way the galaxies behave are subject to quantum effects even though QM is more probabilistic than anything with total certitude.
Here is where it all settles down. Let's assume we aim to build a computer that can predict every probable event that can happen in the entire universe so that we can know with 100% certainty everything that will occur. It will not happen because QM maintains its probabilistic nature and an inherent error in prediction. However small an error is, QM maintains and even insures that such a probability exists. QM prevents us from knowing everything. Omniscience - the complete ability to know everything and the omnipotence to wield power to control or cause events to happen or not happen - is that quality we can only ascribe to an infinitely powerful and all knowing God. Nothing short of that, even if only by a little, will do. There lies the greatest gift we have. First, is that we are equipped with a mind to ponder these things and, second, we are led to understand that there is such a thing as quantum mechanics to set limits to everything we can know or predict. Short of that we are left to defer to the Omniscient and Omnipotent God. Something must have caused the phenomenon of quantum mechanics. Once we acknowledge that, what more proof do we need?
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