Quantum Physics Basics 3

 There are those who think scientists must just accept that quantum physics explains the material world in terms they find impossible to square with their experience in the larger, “apparent world.” Others think there must be some better, more intuitive theory out there that scientists have yet to discover.

   Even given all of the above, quantum theory has not been able to explain the second of the five fundamental forces of nature—gravity.

   Gravity remains the exclusive territory of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a firmly non-quantum theory that does not even involve particles. Every intensive effort over the decades to bring gravity under the quantum umbrella and so explain all of fundamental physics within one “theory of everything” has come to nothing.

   Meanwhile cosmological measurements indicate that over 95 per cent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, phenomena for which scientists have no current explanation within the “standard model,” and conundrums such as the extent of the role of quantum physics in life itself remain unexplained.

   What is known so far is that the “apparent world” is at some level quantum, but what is demonstrably clear is that quantum physics is by no means the last or best word about how the “apparent world” or the other worlds which I have not discussed—alternative universes or states of matter and being that quantum physics experiments allude to, or by implication, predict or confirm their existence.  

   If the quantum world behind our “apparent world” is not objective—i.e., it does not exist in isolation from our observation of it, but rather is influenced by our attempts to measure it—then the “apparent world” must not be objective to that same degree.

   This means not only that our engagement with the invisible quantum world influences how it behaves under certain circumstances, but also it means that our engagement with the visible “apparent world” influences how it behaves under certain circumstances.

   So, it must be said that if you cannot “see through and past” the visible all around you, it is extremely doubtful that you will have complete insight into the invisible world that is also all around you through strictly scientific means. You will need something more.

   You will have noticed that I left the elephant in the room undisturbed and unexplored—Spirit, the Original Cause of everything—without discussing Him. I will bring you back to the Alpha and Omega later.

   Suffice it to say that I have raised these challenges in quantum physics to lay the foundation for a fuller discussion of how you can take advantage of what quantum physics has taught you, and use that knowledge (or lack thereof) as a launching pad for initiating your own personal expansion as a human being, who has been called by God to be an ever-expanding, ever-evolving human being, in rank just slightly below that of angels…and so says the Scripture.

   

Quantum Physics Basics 2

    Over the past five decades or so three theories have been brought together in a catch-as-catch-can manner, known as the “standard model” of particle physics. Despite the fact that this model on close examination appears to be held together by spit and chewing gum, it turns out that until recently, it was the most accurate basic picture of how matter works that had ever been devised.  

   The “standard model” proved its worth in 2012 with the discovery of Higgs boson, the particle that gives all other fundamental particles their mass, whose existence was predicted on the basis of quantum field theories as far back as 1964.

   Conventional quantum field theories work well in describing the results of experiments at high-energy particle smashers such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was discovered, which probe matter at its smallest scales. (CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory—an international scientific collaboration without parallel in its scale and ambition—located on the border between Switzerland and France.)

   CERN was established by international convention in the aftermath of the second world war by the European Council for Nuclear Research and was originally intended to foster collaborative research into fundamental physics for peaceable purposes. Today, some 12,000 researchers from across the globe use its facilities each year, and it has been the scene of seminal scientific and technological breakthroughs—notably the World Wide Web, invented in 1989  within its doors to allow particle physicists to exchange data across borders.

   In spite of these great scientific breakthroughs using quantum physics, there are some lesser problems that still remain insoluble—e.g., how electrons move or do not move through a solid material and so make a material a metal, an insulator, or a semiconductor.

   The multiplied billions of interactions in these crowded environments require the development of what are called “effective field theories” that gloss over some of the gory details. The challenge quantum physicists face in constructing such theories explains why many important questions in solid-state physics remain unresolved—e.g., why at low temperatures some materials are superconductors that allow current without electrical resistance, and why scientists cannot find a way to get this to work at room temperature.

   Beyond these practical problems lies a huge quantum mystery. At a basic level, quantum physics predicts very strange things about how matter works that are completely at odds with how things seem to work in the “apparent world.”

   For example, quantum particles have the capacity to behave like particles that are located in a single place; or they can act like waves, distributed all over space or in several places. How they appear seems to depend on how scientists choose to measure them, and before they are measured, they seem to have no definite properties at all. This leads to a fundamental insoluble problem related to the nature of basic reality itself.

   One example of this is the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, in which, thanks to an uncertain quantum process, a cat is left dead and alive at the same time. Quantum particles also seem to be able to affect each other instantaneously even when they are far away from each other. This is called entanglement or, in a phrase coined by Einstein, who contributed to, but was quite critical of quantum theory, “spooky actions at a distance.”

   Even though these quantum powers are by no means completely understood, yet they are in fact the basis of emerging technologies such as ultra-secure quantum cryptography and ultra-powerful quan-tum computing.

 

Quantum Physics Basics 1

   Quantum physics (sometimes called quantum mechanics), is the branch of physics that explains how the invisible particles that make up matter behave and the forces with which they interact.

   Accordingly, its venue is in the realm of sub-atomic particles which cannot be seen with the naked eye. Quantum physics is the modern explanation for how atoms work, and why chemistry and biology function as they do. From quantum mechanics we learn how electrons move through a computer chip, how photons of light get turned into electrical current in a solar panel, or amplify themselves in a laser, or how the sun keeps burning.

   Although modern scientists can learn a great deal from quantum physics, it can also—and often does—give them huge headaches. For instance, there is no single quantum theory, which means scientists have had to innovate and adapt in order to alleviate their headaches.

   In the 1920s, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and others developed quantum mechanics, the basic mathematical framework that underpins (theoretical) quantum physics. It characterizes simple things such as how the position or momentum of a single particle or group of few particles changes over time. But to understand how things actually work in what I prefer to call the “apparent world”—in opposition to what others might call the “real world”—quantum mechanics must be combined with Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

   Einstein’s theory explains what happens when things move very rapidly, and it is his special theory of relatively, combined with quantum physics, that give quantum physicists the ability to create quantum field theories that alleviate at least some of their headaches.

   There are actually five fundamental forces that govern everything in the universe: 1) Spirit; 2) gravity; 3) the weak force; 4) electromagnetism; and 5) the strong force. Physical sciences are concerned with the last four of these, while three quantum field theories have been able to grapple only with three of these.

   Three different quantum field theories have carved out three of the five fundamental forces by which matter interacts: electro-magnetism (which explains how atoms hold together); the strong nuclear force (which explains the stability of the nucleus at the heart of the atom); and the weak nuclear force (which explains why some atoms undergo radioactive decay).

  

Start with Faith

 

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 3:11

 

   You must begin your quest for personal expansion with faith in order to understand what you learn on your journey. Then you must apply that learning to your present conditions in ways that lead to your psychological soundness and physical/mental wholeness. When you move in this direction, your present endowment of Eternal Life in joy and fulfillment will begin to help you “see through a glass darkly” your limitless potential for growth and productivity of good.

   And note that it is not some undifferentiated, nebulous faith, but a specific, localized, personal faith in the One God who is the Originator of all that is inanimate and animate wherever situate in the Universal Worlds. To begin your journey on any other ground is to leave the foundation of The Truth (Rock) to build on a lie (sand).

   Once you are firmly established upon The Truth, you are ready to examine your personal relationship to The Truth, for this relationship determines whether you will either open up or close down the opportunities afforded you for limitless possibilities that simply await your coming.

   So, armed with the foregoing perspective and vantage point, you will begin with looking at what is visibly solid matter—chairs, rocks, tables, and any other thing that comes to your mind—from within or from the inside out.

   This brings me to the first Law that you must acknowledge before going further—the Law of Polarity. In order to exist, a thing must have an opposite pole: if light exists, so must darkness; if there is a left, there must of necessity be a right; and if there is good, there must be bad.

   Since science has already proven the biblical statement with which I began, I will continue the next phase of this discussion from a strictly scientific point of view—a view from the lens of quantum physics.