Quantum

 

 

If we were to go back in time and ask Isaac Newton what is the acceptable “normal” of the universe, he likely would tell you that it is constructed by predetermined laws and that the world consists of predictable motions of particles. Newton believed we are part of a machine grinding toward whatever destination God had in mind. 

 

Newton led most scientists to believe that there is a precision to the universe that allows for everything to be known. It was a concept that would be hard to shake, lasting 200 years after his death.

 

Charles Darwin started to agitate some people in the 19th century with the theory that there is random error that occurs in nature and causes us to evolve in strange and beautiful new ways. He showed us that life is not, after all, a machine created by God’s hand as a ticking watch, but something that choice and mutation and survival instincts and natural selection can steer into different patterns.

 

With Michael Faraday and Clerk Maxwell, we began to understand that there is an electromagnetic field continuously spreading out the energy waves of light, for example. Invisible radio waves, radar, x-rays, and gamma and cosmic rays also were identified as part of an electromagnetic spectrum.

 

Although there were a few oddities sprinkled in that had not been explained, many scientists began to think everything about the heavens and the earth and man had been figured out. Lord Kelvin (echoed by American Albert Michelson) infamously stated in 1900 that "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

 

But new tools and theories would change things dramatically in early 20th-century.

 

 

Do we know Anything?

Einstein believed in Newton’s classic rules, but recognized that they needed refinement. Space is not simply three-dimensional and time is not simply a linear concrete unit. The two are interconnected, not able to be separated -- observers at different speeds will see things in a different order of time -- which gives us a four-dimensional universe. [If his special theory of relativity doesn’t make sense to you, check out the wonderful information available from Brian Greene at WorldScienceU.com. ]

 

Other “knowns” also began to topple. 

• Ernest Rutherford found that atoms are not solid, but have a dense core, empty space, and moving electrons.

• Max Planck realized excited atoms don’t leak energy continuously, like water from a tap, but radiate in “packets” (Einstein dubbed “quanta”). 

• Atoms take quantum leaps, and transform into something else -- going from A to C without passing through B -- as if by teleportation.  

• Everything behaves as a wave and a particle. In other words, both as a field and a piece of matter.  

 

With these new discoveries, all hell broke lose. Physicists were confused and quarreled about theories.

 

Today, a prevailing theory is that particles are collapsed moments of a wave, captured in experiment, which enables us to look at it, but is not necessarily what the field of the universe actually consists of.

 

Werner Heisenberg, who created the Uncertainty Principle* in an attempt to explain something, had long walks with physicist Niels Bohr (who notably clashed with his friend Einstein on what it might all mean). Heisenberg said the despair about not understanding so much about the universe led to the question: 

 

“Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?”

 

* Uncertainty Principle tells us that scientists cannot precisely know both the momentum and position of a particle. At the quantum dimension, it is simply not possible to know the exact measurement of an electron’s place if you know its speed, and vice versa.