Continuing my discussion of the book, “Punk Science”.
It seems that everything in our world is separate, but quantum physics tells a different story. Everything is composed of particles and particles can be a wave or a particle. The qualities of a particle are unknown. This is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Particles only have a probability until we measure them.
Until we measure a particle, it can have multiple states. This is called superposition. Erwin Schrodinger did a famous thought experiment about this. A cat could be placed in a box that contained a substance that could kill it. The release of the substance is random, like radioactive decay. If it is released the cat dies; otherwise the cat lives. Until the box is opened, and the cat is observed, it is in multiple states, alive and dead.
Einstein didn’t like this uncertainty and tried to disprove it. He linked two particles in a way that is called entanglement. In this case, the particles have equal and opposite spin. The state of either is not known until one of them is measured (superposition). Observing one of them causes it have a definite state, and the other one will then also have a definite opposite state. No matter how far apart they are, it seems like they have instant communication. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”
Mystics believe that this shows that separation of objects is just an illusion, and everything in the universe is connected and one.
The famous physicist, David Bohm, believed that everything in the universe is one unified whole. He called this “implicate order”. He named the seeming separateness, “explicate order”. To Bohm, the entangled particles don’t have instant communication. They are just one and the same.
Jim
jimdun9241@aol.com
http://cli.gs/EaZj29 (my twitter with a url shortener)
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Tags: consciousness and cosmos, enlightenment, entanglement, punk-science, quantum-physics, uncertainty-principle
