Tag Archives: Albert Einstein

Quantum Mechanics for Dummies: Review of “Quantum Enigma” by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

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Since I have a bachelor’s degree in physics, I’m reasonably familiar with quantum theory and the mystery it presents with regard to the influence of an observer. I’ve even written a few blogs on the subject you can find here. I keep reading about quantum theory hoping for a deeper understanding but all I seem to discover is that no one really knows what’s going on, even several decades after its first discovery. However, this well-written book did explain numerous other things that helped my understanding of the various interpretations and the differences between them.

albertAnyone who’s studied quantum mechanics in the slightest has probably read about Albert Einstein’s comment that he believed the Moon was there whether he was looking at it or not. This has never made sense to me since my understanding of “collapsing the wave function” is that if any conscious entity observes a quantum event it collapses into reality for everyone. Einstein’s primary objection was that a physical reality separate from observation had to exist, yet this was never proven to be the case. Think about that for a moment.

This book does an excellent job of explaining the different interpretations, e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation, Schrodinger’s cat, Einstein’s view, Niels Bohr’s opinion and various others, in a way that anyone interested in the subject can understand. What stands out the most is that even today the experts don’t agree. In other words, they simply do not know. I loved it when the authors noted “Eight decades after the Schrodinger equation, the meaning of physics’ encounter with consciousness is increasingly in contention. When experts can’t agree, you can choose your expert. Or speculate on your own.” (page 220)

Which is exactly what I’ve done.

Since I’m not a PhD worried about tenure, funding or the future of my career, I can tread the line between physics and metaphysics and enjoy every step. The authors made it clear that the realm of physics deals only with the physical world. They are even annoyed when people introduce such things as human consciousness into their supposed realm. Yet the authors admit that the two remaining great mysteries today are quantum mechanics and what constitutes consciousness.

How ironic.

heisenbergquoteWerner Heisenberg summed it up nicely when he said “It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet.”

The fact they don’t is the problem.

deanw-bookSpeaking of other disciplines, scientist Dean Radin has done numerous statistical studies on psi phenomena. While proving it exists in a physical sense cannot be done (yet), statistically he’s shown experimentally that its incidence exceeds probability. Another scientist, Roger Nelson, has shown the influence that can only be explained as the Universal Consciousness with his network of random number generators.

I continue to marvel that physicists can propose the existence of parallel universes, multiverses, and thirteen or more dimensions while dismissing and even disparaging anything that relates to consciousness. Give me a break. Without consciousness they couldn’t even consider the meaning of the physical world.

Just because they purposely exclude it from the material world doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that they should dismiss it. To do so is the height of arrogance. I encounter this all the time since I’m also a professional astrologer. Of course I was indoctrinated against astrology while in college but my own study and experience taught me that it works. Those who dismiss it without personal study have been sucked into the mentality for which the only remedy is the admonition to “Question Everything.”

10101220_mlIt doesn’t matter whether or not we know how it works, only that it does. However, physicists and scientists in general dismiss astrology as myth and superstition, even though early scientists such as Kepler, Galileo and Newton were astrologers seeking knowledge about the heavens to increase the accuracy of their astrological work. My own opinion is that quantum entanglement plays a role in these cosmic influences. As stated by the authors:

“Any two objects that interact become entangled. After that, whatever happens to one instantaneously influences the other no matter how far apart they are. This has been extensively demonstrated with pairs of microscopic particles, and even with almost macroscopic devices. As entangled objects entangle with yet other objects, the entanglement becomes complex.” (p. 199-200)

Note the use of the word “instantaneously.” Supposedly no information can travel faster than the speed of light, yet this is the case with entanglement. Radin has shown psi to be instantaneous as well. My personal opinion is that when a person is born, the configuration of the cosmos is imprinted upon them in the form of entanglement which is represented in their birth horoscope or natal chart. They then respond as changes, i.e., movement of the stars and planets, affect their psyche. Truly this is a stretch, but there’s nothing in quantum theory that can prove this is not the case. Nonetheless, scientists are typically offended when someone such as myself even speculates on such possibilities. Fortunately, as a science fiction writer, I can have all sorts of fun with such things there as do various other scientists to avoid compromising their position in their highfalutin community.

78px-Single_and_double_slit_4I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that there was nothing in this book that negated my opinion. If anything, I obtained even more scientific theory to support it. I understand more thoroughly as well that physicists fear to tread outside their domain of the material world and to touch on anything that borders on parapsychology because it can result in professional suicide. How sad that science has become so specialized and compartmentalized that professional tunnel vision precludes solving some of life’s greatest mysteries while those of us who think outside the box are ostracized by their peers and even looked upon as ignorant fools.

Which side best fits that description only time will tell.

You can pick up a copy on Amazon using this link.

What’s Behind the Science in Science Fiction – Part 4: Light Behaving Badly

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Last time covered how sometimes light behaves like a particle and others like a wave along with how the double-slit experiment was used to demonstrate these properties. For example, if a steady light comprised of numerous individual photons hit a plate with one tiny slit to allow them through, rather than getting a line that matched the slit on the opposing wall it would be spread out in a pattern that was concentrated toward the center and fuzzy around the edges. (See picture below.)

78px-Single_and_double_slit_4

When they used a plate that had two slits a single photon would leave a dot, as expected, but by continuing to release them one at a time they would eventually form an interference pattern, the same as what resulted from a steady light source. It was as if each photon had a mind of its own yet collectively they would arrange themselves in a certain pattern. While exactly where each photon would arrive couldn’t be predicted, the pattern itself could be, based on the wavelength of the light. Thus there was a certain probability that a photon would arrive in a certain place, some more than others, but which exact one would go where was unknown.

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It was apparent they couldn’t predict exactly where a single photon would land but if it was a discrete particle of light then it followed that it would go through one slit or the other. (Remember that the interference pattern resulted because there were two slits so the waves could overlap.) Thus, scientists, the first of whom was Thomas Young (1773-1829), decided to find out which slit of the two choices each photon went through. To do so they polarized the light going through each slit in a different way with the detector on the other side capable of telling the difference. The photon could still theoretically “choose” which slit (or both) it would go through, but they would be able to tell which one by its polarization when it arrived on the detector.

Sneaky. But outsmarting Mother Nature is not an easy task.

Much to their surprise, when they sent one photon at a time toward the slits where it was polarized the interference pattern did not emerge!

Whoa!

Instead, they got random spots of light which indicated individual particles. Polarizing the light did not destroy its ability to build interference patterns so this didn’t make sense. The results implied that when they set things up so that they’d know whether the photon went through one slit or the other that the individual photons lost their right to choose and behaved like a particle. In other words, the probability wave function had collapsed when the final result would be determined.

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In other words, the photon can change from a wave to a particle when someone is trying to figure out exactly what it’s going to do. When someone is watching, it behaves like a particle that not only goes through one opening or the other but loses its wave properties as well.

Say what?

Back then the expression WTF? didn’t exist yet, but something along those lines was definitely what was going through numerous scientific minds. By all appearances, if someone was watching, i.e. measuring the outcome, then the probability wave collapsed and the photons acted like particles.

Thinking perhaps this was because they were polarizing the photons before they went through one slit or the other, even though they knew that didn’t stop the light from forming an interference pattern, they rigged things up to determine which slit it had gone through afterwards. Much to their surprise they got the same result as before, a rain of itinerant particles, as if each photon had either known in advance or perhaps even went back in time, deciding how to behave.

This introduced the concept of an observer affecting the outcome. Suddenly consciousness was part of the mix, or at least seemed to be since there was no other explanation. Of course physicists who deal exclusively with the physical world were less than enchanted by all this woo-woo stuff. Thus began the philosophical notion of whether or not a tree that fell in the forest made a sound if no one was there to hear it. May I remind you that these are very intelligent people we’re dealing with here and while some of them may not be wrapped to tight as they walk the genius-insanity interface; nonetheless, they are a whole lot smarter than the rest of us.

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Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance” and didn’t believe it, even though he was the one who theorized that energy and matter were essentially the same as expressed by his famous equation E=mc2. To this day people are still arguing about this aspect of quantum theory with different conclusions. Is it possible that an observer or some form of consciousness can influence physical matter? Do we, indeed, create our own reality?

What do you think?

(Diagrams courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

What’s Behind the Science in Science Fiction? Part 3: The Mystery of Light

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You would think if you shine a light through a barrier with two slits in it that the wall on the other side would show two slices of light. This is not what happens, however, as Thomas Young discovered in the early 1800s. Rather than two distinct lines it created an interference pattern, indicating light behaved like a wave.

Single_slit_and_double_slit2
You can get a better understanding of interference as it relates to wave behavior by dropping a pebble into a puddle and watching how the waves expand in a circle from the center point. Then drop two pebbles at the same time a few inches apart and watch how the waves interact. What results is called constructive and destructive interference as some waves get bigger and others cancel out. This is similar to the interference pattern of light which leaves dark spaces alternating with light bands which create a striped effect.

But as scientists continued messing around with the properties of photons, inconsistencies appeared. In 1887 Heinrich Hertz discovered that light could stimulate electrons on a metallic surface and thus create electrical current but the effect was related to the frequency of the light. In 1905 Albert Einstein explained that this was because light energy was carried in discrete, quantized packets and eventually won the Nobel Prize for it in 1921, which was the beginning of the quantum revolution.

As theorized by Isaac Newton and believed throughout the 1700 – 1800s, this supported the theory that light consisted of particles which were called photons. The particle theory made sense since it had been discovered that a photon absorbed by an atom increased its energy level and when it dropped its energy state then a photon was emitted, showing a release of energy. When photons interact with matter they act like tiny particles.

So what was going on? Was light a particle or a wave? It was in pursuing the answer that quantum theory was further established as scientists continued to study the results of the double-slit experiment. When laser light is passed through two tiny slits it forms what is called a diffraction pattern on the other side, similar to what Thomas Young saw back in the early 1800s and is shown in Figure 2. This behavior supports the idea that light is a wave since particles would not arrange themselves in such a way.

When a single photon is released it behaves like a particle and leaves a single dot of light on the other side. If you continue releasing single photon from the same source and location, however, they eventually form a diffraction pattern. Say what? How could light know how to arrange itself in a pattern? They weren’t interfering with one another when they were released one at a time so how could this occur? (See the figure below that includes 5 views of electron buildup into a diffraction pattern.)
200px-Double-slit_experiment_results_Tanamura_2
This led to the idea of a probability wave meaning that the photons would land somewhere within a given area with some places more likely than others. But this completely blew the idea of prediction out of the water which was the premise of classical physics and presumed if you knew all the conditions involved you could predict the outcome. Suddenly science was having to deal with probabilities, or the likelihood of subatomic particles behaving in a certain way, as opposed to being able to calculate the precise answer when they knew all the parameters.

Ooops! With that revelation, classical, i.e. Newtonian, physics went out the proverbial window. It obviously couldn’t solve any problem and most certainly couldn’t predict future events. This, in turn, eventually influenced the philosophy of the day regarding life and the concept of free will. The implications suggested that while some outcomes were more likely than others, exactly which one it would be was no longer possible to determine.

As if the dual nature of light wasn’t mysterious enough, it soon became even stranger when someone was watching.

(Insert Twilight Zone music here….)

Stay tuned.

(Figures courtesy of Wikipedia.org)

What’s Behind the Science in Science Fiction? Part Two – Atomic Theory

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I know you’re anxious to get to the good stuff like other dimensions and time travel, but you need to be patient just a little longer. After all, this blog is about what’s behind the science in science fiction, not the final result. Think of it as similar to those documentaries you see on TV which explain how they do the special effects in your favorite movies. I don’t know about you, but knowing how they do that makes me appreciate the movie even more. If you couldn’t care less, then you’re probably reading the wrong blog and need to just go back to reading sci-fi novels. Those who are left need to just bear with me a little longer as I explain the basics of atomic theory which is more relevant than you may think. Ready? Okay, here we go.

As far back as 400 BC or so early Greek philosophers pondered what constituted matter and decided that it could only be divided down so far, from which atomic theory was born. The term “atom” even originated with their adjective atomos, which means indivisible. Back then the elements were believed to be water, air, earth and fire. Clearly they are all important, particularly to life, but not a one of them is an actual element in the chemical sense.

However, proving it was another story and it wasn’t until the 18th – 19th century that scientists gradually discovered that water was comprised of hydrogen and oxygen; air is mostly nitrogen with hydrogen, oxygen and various others in the mix; earth is made up of too many elements to count; and fire is a process that involves oxygen and thus called oxidation but isn’t an element in and of itself. As they confirmed that certain chemicals could only be broken down so far the Periodic Table of the Elements was born. Periodically more are added (pun intended) though in most cases they are manmade.

periodic_table

By the early 20th century experiments involving electromagnetism and radioactivity revealed that, would the truth be known, the atom was not indivisible after all, but consisted of other particles which were identified as protons, neutrons and electrons. These were suitably dubbed subatomic or elementary particles and scientists conveniently ignored the fact that the etymology of the word “atom” no longer applied, figuring most people didn’t know Greek, anyway.

How these subatomic particles were arranged was a matter of debate that went through numerous speculations. J. J. Thomson’s idea was sometimes referred to the “plum pudding” model where protons and electrons were lumped together in a glob of positively charged fluid. After that, Ernest Rutherford decided that the positive charge as well as most of the mass were concentrated in the center with the electrons surrounding it in some unknown way.

In 1913 Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, proposed his version of the hydrogen atom which remains the mental image many retain today, i.e., a nucleus in the center with electrons revolving around it much as the planets orbit the Sun as shown at the beginning of this blog. Bohr still believed that electrons orbited the nucleus but he placed restrictions on them to certain discrete distances or allowed orbits so that it would agree with what experiments thus far had revealed. At this point they considered the electrons to be itty-bitty particles that orbited the nucleus according to the laws of classical mechanics, in other words like the planets orbit the Sun.

The electrons would change orbits based on either emitting or absorbing a photon, as shown in the animation. This was getting closer, but still had problems.

Nonetheless, the idea of specific orbits was a definite step toward quantum theory and the fact that only specific energy states were allowed. The real problem was thinking of electrons as tiny specks of matter which behaved according to Newton’s Laws pertaining to gravitation. WRONG!

Bohr_atom_animation_2

In 1924 a scientist named Louis de Broglie (pronounced de-broy) proposed that all moving particles could exhibit wave-like behavior. Erwin Schrodinger liked this idea and developed it further, into a probability wave. This theory helped explain behaviors that previous ones couldn’t but still didn’t cover everything. This was ultimately solved by Max Born (no relation to Jason Bourne) who theorized that Schrodinger’s equation represented all possible positions where the electron might possibly be. This conveniently reconciled the two ideas and the wave/particle duality of electrons was born (pun intended).

However, trying to figure out the atom was not taking place in the proverbial vacuum (though admittedly some experiments were). During this same time numerous other scientists were hard at work investigating what interested them most and ultimately led to so many different scientific disciplines. Things were getting too complicated for any one person to have a firm grip on everything anymore.

Light was also under scrutiny since it was apparent that atoms and electromagnetic radiation (a.k.a. light) were related. If you’re scratching your head on where that came from, it derived from having established that atoms emit a photon when they change states, like that cute little animation shows. And in case you’re wondering, yes, even the Sun, our greatest source of energy and light, is no more than a giant glob comprised mostly of hydrogen atoms which bond with each other under pressure to become helium at which time a photon is emitted. Lots of them, true, but that’s the process. Simple.

Most people think of light as what we can see which is conveniently broken down into its various colors by a prism or in some cases a rainstorm that occurs when the Sun is out and thus produces a rainbow. Visible light, however, is but one small portion of what is known as the “Electromagnetic Spectrum.” It also includes various other wavelengths that span a vast variety of wavelengths and energies ranging from radio waves and infrared (heat) on one side to ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma radiation on the other. In the picture you can see the rather small portion of visible light in the middle where it looks like a rainbow.

emspectrum

Albert Einstein theorized that similar to matter, light could also only be broken down so far, the smallest unit of which was ultimately called a photon. He even proved it and received the Nobel Prize for his paper on the photoelectric effect, which stated that a photon could change an atom’s energy state and that principle is used widely today with all those automatic doors you encounter everywhere from the grocery store to Wal*Mart.

Physicists conducted numerous experiments with light which revealed that it, too, had both wave and particle characteristics. Since photons originate with atoms the fact that they share some of the same characteristics shouldn’t be any more surprising than the fact your have your father’s nose or your mother’s smile. True, photons are massless, but electrons aren’t. Nonetheless, they also show wave and particle traits.

This is a good place to ponder Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2, which states energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. If you rearrange it algebraically you have energy divided by the square of the speed of light is equal to mass, which essentially declares that mass and energy are the same thing.

Now we’re getting into the good stuff. So give that some thought until next time when I introduce you to the true beginnings of weird science which originated with something called the double-slit experiment.

See you then.

© Copyright 2014 by Marcha Fox

All Rights Reserved

What Exactly IS Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?

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Is time travel possible? Why can’t we travel faster than the speed of light? Do clocks really run at different speeds depending on how fast you’re moving? Does gravity really warp space and time as well as bend light?

These possibilities have been used in science fiction for decades. H.G. Wells’ classic, “The Time Machine,” was published in 1895, before Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was even published in 1905. This goes to show that man’s imagination was exploring the possibility of such things long before it was proven scientifically. In fact, Einstein stated himself that “Imagination is more important than knowledge” and it was his own propensity for what he called “thought experiments” that brought him to the concept of relativity in the first place. Supposedly, he was staring at a gas light one foggy night wondering what it would be like to travel on a light beam and shortly after that the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) was born.

The main point of the STR is that the only thing that’s constant is the speed of light; time is not, space is not. The speed of light, 186,000 miles per hour, is often referred to simply as c. In fact, the term “miles per hour” which you hear every day contains the basis of a physics equation related to time and distance. In other words, if you only know simple algebra you can understand how the distance you travel (length or L) depends on how fast you’re going (velocity or v) and for how much time (t), or L = vt. Simple.

But there’s a catch. That only applies to what is known as an inertial reference frame, or one that is not moving. Now I’m sure you know that the Earth is moving, through space as well as around the Sun, but as far as you’re concerned when you’re riding in a car the Earth is standing still. However, when you get into what are known as relativistic speeds or those closer to the speed of light, that equation changes.

For L = vt, any of those values is considered a variable, meaning it can change. However, the speed of light is constant. Therefore, the only things that can change are the distance (L) or time (t). And that’s where things start to get weird. The scientific terms are length contraction and time dilation. Length contraction means that distances get shorter when traveling near the speed of light and time stretches, meaning that time passes more slowly for someone traveling at the speed of light even though to them clocks would appear to move at the same rate as they do to you.   This is why they say that someone who traveled to a distant planet may only think they’ve been gone for a few years while a century or more will have passed on Earth. Time and distance are both relative and thus the term “relativity.”

As far as a time machine is concerned, going forward in time seems more feasible than going back but that’s not to say it’s impossible. However, the STR really doesn’t postulate going back in time, only that clocks run at different rates. This has been proven at the atomic level by observing atoms that have a known rate of decay (or lifetime) traveling at relativistic speeds where they last longer as measured by Earth clocks.

So why can’t we travel faster than the speed of light? This comes back to the speed of light being a constant. Energy of movement, or what is required to move something, is defined by the mass of the object times its velocity squared, or E = mv2. Starting to sound familiar, like the infamous E=mc2? Here we go again, velocity can’t change so the others must and what this boils down to is that the energy required far exceeds what can be achieved as the mass increases, which also occurs at the speed of light. So, according to Einstein, the reason we can’t travel at the speed of light is because at those speeds the mass of the vehicle will exceed its ability to carry the fuel necessary.

Of course if you’re a UFO fan like myself, you may wonder how they could possibly get here and move erratically like they do. And that brings us to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity which relates to gravity. Gravity is a force that creates acceleration, or a change in velocity. Drop something and it accelerates to the floor or ground. According to Einstein, the gravity of large objects like the Earth or Sun will also warp space and time. When you see those pictures depicting a blackhole they usually show a funnel-shaped grid, indicating how the force field around it warps space.

Gravity can even change the path of light, which was proven by Sir Arthur Eddington during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919. When you look up at the sky the stars are in predictable locations, which is why they have been used for navigation, even by the “star tracker” on the Space Shuttle until the advent of the Global Positioning System, a.k.a. GPS. However, during a solar eclipse, there is a massive gravitational object available in the sky (the Sun) that when darkened by the passage of the Moon, allows the stars to be visible during the day. Knowing where the stars should be versus where they appeared showed a difference that proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. This has been proven repeatedly since then by observing distant stars, an effect known as gravitational lensing, which will sometimes even cause an object to appear to exist in two places.

As far as UFOs are concerned, it appears that they utilize extremely high magnetic fields combined with certain radioactive elements to create a gravity field around the craft itself. This, in turn, provides the vehicle with its own gravitational field, essentially creating its own reference frame so that it no longer is subjected to Earth’s gravity and can thus move in ways that defy what our known technologies can currently achieve as far as hovering and drastic changes in direction.

Einstein wanted to discover a Grand Unified Theory that explained how all the forces in the Universe related to one another. He was never able to do that and scientists today continue his quest. The evidence today, however, suggests that they are getting close! Various new theories continue to evolve such as String Theory, which relates to subatomic particles (or those smaller than an atom) and M-Theory which suggests there are multiple universes. Quantum Theory is another fascinating subject that’s been around for a while with significant potential for science fiction such as telepathy. More on that next time.

Marcha Fox is the author of the Star Trails Tetralogy which includes the novels “Beyond the Hidden Sky,” “A Dark of Endless Days,” and “A Psilent Place Below.” The final volume, “Refractions of Frozen Time” was released in March 2015. With a physics degree from Utah State University and over 20 years working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, she is never at a loss for something new to incorporate into her stories. Her Facebook Page is https://www.facebook.com/marchafoxauthor and her book website is http://www.startrailssaga.com. Follow her on Twitter @startrailsIV.