Saturday, August 1, 2009

Is Anything Really REAL ?



It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Quantum Physics. At home these days on leave and getting time to read. Deciding to take a book from reading spirituality or trash blockbusters, I went back to my college reading days. In mid 80s it all started with a new age book titled “ The Dancing Wu Li Masters” by Gary Zukav. I wasn’t sure but when prompted by the book store seller that this is a very thought provoking book, I brought it home and entered the mind boggling world of quantum physics. Strange, (just like the quantum world), my journey into this “new” physics started when I gave up science and became a student of commerce and accountancy.

Quantum theory is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it is the fundamental foundation of all modern sciences. Without it, we would have no computers, no rockets, no DNA engineering, nothing. But some history to begin with.

At the end of 19th century, it was proposed that all research grant to Physics stop as there was nothing new to be discovered or theorized and all phenomenon had been almost satisfactorily explained. How far this was away from the truth, nobody realized it then. Just six years later in 1906 a school drop out working as a patent registration clerk published 3 papers in one year and changed Physics completely. The clerk was Albert Einstein and the papers were on Special Relativity, General Relativity and the Photoelectric effect. Though Einstein is famous for his theory of relativity, he never won the Nobel prize for it. He won the Nobel prize for his paper on the photo electric (PE) effect in 1921 after 15 years. Without going into the details of the PE effect, it threw up a question on the nature of light and the Quantum physics was born.

Over the next 40 years and through two world wars, some of the finest brains in Physics the world has ever known debated the Quantum theory Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Heisenberg. Pauli, Rutherford, Planck and Einstein himself. These were no ordinary professors, they were all Nobel laureate winners but they could come to a unanimous conclusion on the Quantum theory. At the heart of the matter was the nature of the atomic particle and the wave – particle dual nature of light which led to the nature of reality and the Quantum theory prescribes that nothing really exists in real but is probabilistic in nature. Thus everything exists simultaneously with varying probabilities but there is no REAL state !! This sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland. The real state which we see is what we observe. So whichever probabilistic state we observe becomes real and the other probabilistic states vanish into other worlds (parallel universes). So it means nothing comes into existence unless we actually observe it. Since observation involves a “measurement’ of the probability we are observing (wither by chance or by choice), even the “real” we see is an altered reality !! So we never see the real REAL (if it exists, that is).

The book I recently read that tok me back into the Quantum world is Manjit Kumar’s “Qauntum” which took me through what went on in the minds of these great physicists over the debate that lasted half a century. I couldn’t help wondering how these people spread across Europe without any computers, internet, air travel. photocopiers, Fax machines, modern day telephones and of course the cell phone continued the debate by writing the ideas and theories themselves on paper and making carbon copies and sending them by surface mail. Then waiting for the response and arranging for annual meetings to discuss theories. Just couldn’t help wondering that if all the modern day communication equipment and internet search engines were made available probably the development of theory that took half a century would have taken less than 10 years !!.


Anyway, the unreal nature of reality, prompted its own proponents mainly, Bohr and Schrodinger the following quotes in frustration:

Niels Bohr :- “Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum theory has not understood it."

Erwin Schrodinger : - “I don’t like it, and I am sorry I had anything to do with it.”


Going through the book, I marveled at the spirit of these theorists who went through endless debate to arrive at that perfect theory that would explain everything. The book ended with a lovely quote on our quest for truth by Gotthold Lessing:


The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession.

Reading on Quantum Theory:

“The Dancing Wu Li Masters” by Gary Zukav. Possibly the best introduction to Quantum physics written by a non physicist for the non physicists.

“The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra.

“In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat” by John Gribbin. Written just after Quantum theory was adopted as proven (that nothing exists until it is observed in the subatomic world) this one is by a physicists and concept wise better than Gary Zukav’s.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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