If there`s one thing that should make even the most ardent atheist reconsider their position, it`s quantum physics. How can something so remarkable and inconsistent with our every day experience not be the work of a higher being? Quantum physics is not some abstract theory despite being concerned with particles so minute we can only observe them through special microscopes - quantum physics is about everything. What it says is that the very building blocks of our world, the atoms that all things are made of, are themselves constructed from particles that we are not allowed to fully understand. And there is not a scientist living or dead that really knows or knew why this is the case.
Electrons are just one particle in the structure of an atom and a comparatively small part at that. Apparently, they whizz around outside the atom`s nucleus in what is mainly empty space. I read once that in a scaled up version, an electron would be a speck of dust in the dome St Pauls while the nucleus would be a pea suspended in the middle (well, it was something like that; I`m sure you get the picture). The important thing is that with electrons, as with other sub-atomic particles, you cannot know where they are at any instant in time if you also want to know their direction and speed. You can have either one or the other, but not both. There are rules it seems about just how much we are allowed to know of our existence.
What we do know is that electrons can behave like both waves and particles but have the absolute properties of neither. Experiments have shown that they can exhibit wave behaviour but then change to that of a particle when an attempt is made to observe them. Waves create distribution patterns that show constructive and destructive lines. Imagine two small openings in a harbour breakwater. Waves crashing through them fan out in the harbour and the peaks and troughs from one set meet the peaks and troughs from the other. The peaks that come together create very high peaks and the troughs that meet peaks cancel each other out, resulting in flat water. When this `interference` pattern reaches the harbour`s inner wall the super high peaks splash violently up against it, but at intervals and spacing along the wall dictated by the wavelength and amplitude that has been formed. It would be the same with light waves passing through two slits cut in a piece of card and shining on a screen behind.
Remarkably, sub atomic particles will behave in the same way but with a surprising result when any attempt is made to look at their movement in detail. Scientists have fired electrons at the slits and found a wave pattern, but when they tried to discover through which slit each electron had passed, the behaviour reverted to what you would expect from particles – that similar to firing bullets through slits and where no interference pattern is formed. Even single electrons, fired at the slits undetected, create interference wave patterns. The totally unintuitive conclusion is that, when we are not trying to peek at them, each particle must be considered to be passing through both slits at the same time, and only predictions based on statistical information can be used to estimate their position, direction and speed. The material of the universe, it turns out, is not constructed in quite the way we once thought. There are many theories emerging from this discovery, not least the uncertainty principle and its implications for probability.
Up until the discovery of the quantum nature of matter, physical systems were considered deterministic – everything could be predicted or retrodicted. Probability was associated with error margin and precision; a normal consideration when accuracy was discussed. As we know it, any variation in precision is caused by the quality of the available data – error is often considered a manmade limiting factor. Quantum theory, though, says that probability is a natural phenomenon and that there is no alternative to its implications. With quantum physics a particle can be in more than one position until some effort is made to see it; then it becomes real, well in our interpretation of the word. A famous thought experiment put forward the notion that a cat in a box with a phial of poison could be both alive and dead until the box was opened to reveal whether the phial had broken or not.
The proposition of the multiverse has since emerged: multiple universes all existing together, each resulting from the many alternative paths suggested by quantum theory. As philosophy seeks to explain our experiences, so physics describes the world that shapes them. Looking at the past and into the future there are many alternative possibilities of reality; personal consequences following on from physical effect. In the end, only this instant, `the now`, may be true and everything else merely a range of potential states of being. Isn`t it true that our memory is never as black and white as we imagine and history is merely a collection of recollections that together produce a likely account? The image of the past may seem clear but that doesn`t mean it`s accurate. What is looming on the horizon can often be predicted with some level of certainty but it can never be guaranteed; the expected, sometimes obvious, is not always the result. In what may seem like a wave of happenings, life flowing from one second to the next, there may be a number of alternatives to our individual perceptions. Don`t be fooled by the apparent clarity of your assumptions or apply unwarranted colour to your expectations; in the mechanics of all things, certainty does not exist.
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