Quantum physics is a world where we’re told that probability and uncertainty rule and causality is thrown to the winds. However, I think it’s the observer that’s the real fly in the quantum physics ointment. Left to its own devices, the micro (quantum physics) would (certainly should) mirror the macro (classic physics) and thus causality rules both realms. Whatever applies to the micro must apply to the macro since the macro is made up of the micro (and thus I feel free to sometimes use more familiar macro examples in the following text). It’s the observer who is interpreting, albeit through no fault of her own, things as being in a state of uncertainty or as just probability.
An electron has mass. An electron can collide with other particles. Electrons travel along your copper wires, impact the insides of your TV/computer monitors giving you your pictures, and of course are the backbone of your nervous system and brain activity. That makes an electron to my way of thinking a little billiard ball. Just like a real billiard ball can be bounced around by other objects, and end up predictably in another place (the side pocket?), so too can an electron be bounced around by interactions with other bits and pieces. It’s those bits and pieces, the photons that our senses can detect, all bouncing off and thus bouncing around electrons, photons that ultimately bounce into our eyes, and thus tell us where the electron is and how it is moving. Alas, that same photon that conveys to us that information has also bounced the electron off on some other path at some other velocity, so we’re still none the wiser about where the electron is. It’s uncertain, but it’s probably somewhere close by; and even more probably somewhere reasonably near by, but it could be far, far away. You just don’t know. And a further observation will just repeat the process - Endlessly. The question really is, is our elusive electron only probably somewhere, or is it actually somewhere? At any given nanosecond, does it have coordinates in space and a specific velocity or is it fuzzy? If you are an observer, it is fuzzy. But, if there is no observer, then I suggest that electron is as fixed in space as our billiard ball heading towards the side pocket. The electron ‘knows’ where it is and where it is heading and how fast, even if you don’t.
Okay, that’s the electron as particle. When you wish to interpret an electron as a wave (all particles – for that matter all matter – has wave-particle duality), say doing the double slit experiment but with electrons instead of light photons, and thus getting classic wave interference patterns, then it is logical to consider the electron as more defuse or spread out – but not infinitely so. If the experiment is being carried out in New York , no part of the electron wave will appear in L.A.
Of course a wave can be in two or more places at the same time, but there are limits, as suggested above. You could have an ocean wave hundreds even thousands of kilometres long, but what is the probability any of that wave activity is detectable in Kansas
A seismic wave may rock the Earth and clang it like a bell, but it’s a non-event to an inhabitant on an extra-solar planet. It won’t feel a thing. No shake; no rattle; no roll.
You can scream your head off and be heard vast distances away (and all points in between), but on Mars no one can hear that scream (the vacuum of space sorts of cramps sound wave activity).
Wiggle a string – that’s wave action, but it stops at the ends of the string.
Shine a flashlight at the ground. Does the light wave, wave its way through the planet and exit on the other side?
Waves, no matter what’s waving, can ultimately be blocked, even those ghostly neutrinos which, as particles, can also be interpreted under the right conditions as wave phenomena. Anyway, once blocked, the probability of the wave being on the other side is zero. In other words, wave activity is confined and isn’t infinite in scope.
An electron, as particle, can not be in two places at the same time, any more than you (as ‘particle’) can be (unless you allow for time travel of course). An electron could probably be in any one of a zillion locations for all the observer knows, but the operative word here is ‘one’. An electron wave can be in two (or more) places at the same time, but, I suggest those locations are in pretty close proximity. Say your TV set emits an electron (as particle) and your TV screen receives that electron (as particle). However, one can imagine that in-between the electron is exhibiting wave properties. However, if that in-between wave waved all over creation, instead of following the shortest distance between two points – a straight line – your TV picture would be an unholy mess!
I suggest that this example makes nonsense of the idea that all things quantum revolves around uncertainty and probability. That’s only the case from the point of view of the observer. Things are certain and fixed when the observer is removed from the picture as far as Mother Nature* is concerned.
Even if just one quantum phenomenon is based on probability without any underlying causality, even when no observer is present, then – well I’m not prepared for the world to end quite yet!
There is one very interesting quantum uncertainty/probability phenomenon we’re all familiar with via watching television shows. We’ve all seen those half-way mirrors where you can be observed but you can’t observe in return (so that the powers-that-be can monitor you from another adjacent room but all the while you can’t see them). Another example is from your own home (or office) window where some of an internal light will go though the window but some will be reflected back at you. In either case, how does any individual photon ‘know’ whether to reflect or pass through since the entire surface of the one-way mirror or the window glass is identical? Actually in the case of the glass, it is actually surfaces – one on the inside; one on the outside. It should be a 100% either pass/or reflect situation. Tis a puzzlement! One would assume that eliminating the observer wouldn’t alter the physics any.
I don’t think there’s a great mystery here. When a photon hits the surface, it actually will be interacting with the electrons in ‘orbit’ around the molecules of glass. The electrons will absorb the photon increasing their energy state and jumping up to a higher ‘orbit’. That situation doesn’t last, and in quick-smart time, the electron jumps back to a lower energy state and gives off a photon in the process. That photon may be then facing further on into the glass, or it might be facing away (i.e. – reflected back). That process is repeated again and again until some of the photons escape the glass to the outside (pass through the glass), or escape from the glass by ‘reflecting ‘back inside. No mystery. There’s probability involved, but also causality.
Anyway, as suggested above, it’s not entirely true that quantum physics is all about probability and uncertainty. Not everything quantum has or is measured as probability or uncertainty. In the world of the quantum, all things come in packets or quanta of discrete and individual units. An electron has a charge of negative one unit. An electron never has a charge of negative one-half unit, or at one and a half units. An electron can ‘orbit’ a nucleus at this energy level one, or that energy level two, or the next energy level three, but not just at any old energy level, like one corresponding to level 2.739. An electron can jump between energy levels like you can travel between floors in a building, but just like you can’t occupy the 11 7/8ths floor, neither can an electron jump to the 11 7/8ths energy level. An electron might be spin-up or spin-down, but not somewhere in-between. In all things quantum, there is such a thing as a fundamental lowest possible unit of time, of length and of energy.
There are other ways all things quantum are 100% certain and predictable. An electron, as noted above, has a fixed rest mass. Unlike humans, that mass doesn’t alter. Humans can be 50 kg or 100 kg, even more or even less, and of course in-between. An electron has a mass of one unit, not one half unit or ten units, just one and one only unit. Ditto the proton and the neutron. There’s no probability here. It’s fixed; absolute; quantified. Every fundamental particle is an absolute clone of every other fundamental particle of its kind (i.e. – all positrons are absolutely identical).
Now while any particular radioactive atom has just a probable value of decaying and going poof in any given time frame (though I suspect there are hidden variables which we’re as yet unawares and which will govern the decay process from one of probability to one of causality and predictable certainty), when that decay happens, it happens in a fixed and unalterable way, one step at a time (assuming several intermediary steps that do occur in some decay processes). Regardless, the upshot is that radioactive A always yields B which always yields C which in turn yields stable D. One uranium atom doesn’t decay ultimately to lead, while another becomes gold, and a third mutates to oxygen. That doesn’t happen - ever.
The vacuum energy (quantum fluctuations) will produce virtual particle matter - antimatter pairs, like an electron – positron. It will not produce a positron – proton pair or a neutron – neutrino pair. There’s no probability here – well actually there is – it’s zero percent.
Four hydrogen atoms (or two hydrogen molecules) can fuse together to form a helium atom plus neutrinos and energy. Not five hydrogen atoms or three – it’s four all the time, every time. There are no quarks emitted instead of neutrinos, and not just any old energy amount is given off but a predetermined and fixed amount, every time, all the time, full stop.
Your compass doesn’t statistically or probably point towards the magnetic north, it points towards magnetic north, yet the entirety of electromagnetic phenomena is quantum based.
To be continued…
*No, I’m not equating natural Mother Nature with a supernatural God or gods. They are two entirely different concepts.
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