It is time for the Nomad to admit his shameful secret. Yes, even though I have a normal job during the day, I am a physics geek by night. Well, not a *REAL* physics geek. Those types debate things in numbers and integrals without every using an English word. I am one of those faker physics geeks who enjoys reading Discover magazine, gets the Physics Newsletter in e-mail, and grabs at least one Scientific American per year, just to remind myself that I don't know nearly enough about the subject.
The reason I raise this issue is that there is a new term floating around for quantum machanics these days which bears notice: "quantum darwinism." It gives additional credibility to those who believe quantum mechanics is the "Crazy Uncle in the attic" of the scientific world. For those who don't know, quantum mechanics is the theory that governs how things work when they are very small. "How small?" You ask. We're talking molecules, atoms, quarks, electrons, and below. At that size, things begin to happen which are… well... counterintuitive. For example, at quantum levels, a thing can literally be in two places at once or move from point A to point B without every occupying the space between them. And any observer on an experiment fundamentally changes the experiment merely by observing it. That's right, if you glance at your pet fish through the aquarium walls, you have somehow altered it. Yeah, I know. If you are thinking about quantum mechanics and your head does not hurt, you don't really understand it yet. But the effects have actually been observed in reality. Ask your physics teacher about the "dual slit experiment" if you want a good example of this.
"Quantum Darwininsm" is a new attempt to explain why though these effects exist at the quantum level, we don't see them in everyday life. Everyone looking at a painting sees the same one, and what they see will match what was written about it years before in an art critic's book. (Setting aside the matter of taste, of course.) This new theory essentially says that the mass of observers that exist in our reality (observers = anything that senses and understands, including a person, an animal, a video camera, etc.) force the things we observe into a single common state, because only one of them will satisfy all observers and maintain a coherent universe. If you doubt a non-coherent universe is a bad thing, consider any Nicolas Cage movie. Nuff said.
This post is already too long, so I'll stop it here. But you must admit this is a weird and fascinating idea. Well, at least the weird part.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder