The Quantum Life, the Universe and Everything

Is life, the Universe and everything a smooth as silk continuum where everything is deterministic, or are we ruled by little ultimately indivisible quantum Lego blocks of time and space and matter and energy with all is determined by the throw of a cosmic dice? Apparently it’s the latter and the realm of the quantum makes “The Twilight Zone” seem downright normal by comparison. Is the realm of the quantum really spooky? You bet it is. Welcome to more of the world of the quantum mess!

Quantum physics is a total mess, not because it doesn’t represent at least a part of reality because it has been experimentally verified to incredible degrees of precision and no experiment has disproved any of it; not because the quantum is a fundamental part of and behind much of our established technology; but because nobody really understands what it all really means. What does quantum physics actually tell us? The science of the quantum is rock solid – it’s the philosophy underlying it that’s the mess. The comprehension, the meaning behind quantum physics is difficult, not just for the public but for professionals as well. From discontinuities and uncertainties and super-positions of all possible states, to entanglement and all things left to chance and probability, and where a cat can be both dead and alive at the same time and universes split and duplicate at the drop of a hat, where the elementary bits and pieces of the micro exhibit both wave and particle properties (though at least not at the same time), and last, but certainly not least, the absolutely essential role of the observer and the observer’s measurement in all of this quantum mess.

The philosophy and meaning and reality behind quantum (micro) physics is diametrically in contrast to that of classical (macro) physics, yet classical physics (the physics of Galileo and Newton that we were all taught in high school) must ultimately be derived from micro physics a.k.a. quantum physics.

Science is often more about what happens and how it happens rather than why it happens just that way. Many physicists just get on with their experiments, get results, but don’t worry too much about any ultimate meanings – why they got the results they did – so that practical everyday interpretation of all things quantum tends to be called the ‘shut up and calculate’ interpretation. It works; just do it; don’t worry about what it means.’ Fortunately, some scientists are deeper thinkers than others and do ponder – in this case, our quantum mess.   

As to the big picture, the Universe at large may seem smooth and continuous but it’s anything but on the micro-scale. In fact, I’d suggest the Universe is akin to being constructed of Lego blocks of different colours (each reflecting basic realities like time, mass, energy, length, etc.) In other words, the entire Universe, all the bits and pieces, are really indivisible bits and pieces. That is, quantum physics underlies all of cosmology and all of physics. Now Lisa Randall (Professor of Physics, Harvard University), defines ‘Quantum’ as “A discrete unbreakable unit of a measurable quantity; the smallest unit of that quantity”.  For example, you can have one electron, or two electrons, but not one and a half electrons. An electron can orbit an atom in this orbit, or in that orbit, but not one in-between. The electron can jump from one orbit to another and absorb or give off energy, but in discrete indivisible units, such that you can have one fundamental bit of energy (or the particle responsible for that energy – a photon in the case of electromagnetism; a graviton in the case of gravity), or two bits, but again, not one and a half bits. There is such a thing as the shortest unit of length possible (hence area and volume), called the Planck length as well as the shortest most fundamental unit of time called Planck-Wheeler time. So, all these various quantum Lego blocks ultimately make up life, the Universe and everything. On the macro-scale these blocks aren’t noticeable. But when dealing with cosmological issues that involve small spaces, or large densities or tiny time frames or other physical extremes, then one needs to abandon ‘smooth and continuous’ for quantum’s Lego blocks.  

But just when you think it safe to go back into the now quantum waters, along comes one tiny little exception to the quantum rule just to make life either difficult, interesting or both; that exception is gravity, which just refuses to have it’s own little Lego block. If life, the Universe and everything can’t make up its mind to be either/or, then things are really messed up.