Certainty In Quantum Physics

It is absolutely impossible to read any popular account on quantum physics without running into the words “probability” or “uncertainty” if not in each and every paragraph, then at least on each and every page. Quantum physics and probability fit together like a left hand and a left handed glove! But it’s all bovine fertilizer since the concept of probability is a human concept that has no real application in Mother Nature’s realm.

It is claimed that quantum physics is based not on certainty (i.e. – causality) but on probability, and therefore Mother Nature places the cosmos ultimately under wraps, under a restriction that there just are some secrets that are Hers and Hers alone to know, and not for us mere mortals. However, truth be known, Mother Nature is just as restrictive at times even when probability doesn’t enter into the equation. Therefore, quantum physics isn’t some be-all-and-end-all of failing to come to terms with cosmic certainties. In any event, the concept of probability is a human concept, and quantum physics predates human concepts. Quantum physics maybe full of probabilities to us mortals, but not to Mother Nature.

Probability and quantum physics: the issue here is not whether quantum physics works – it’s been proven 100% accurate down to the 12^th decimal place and then some. It is ultimately responsible for over 1/3^rd of the global economy in technological gizmos and applications. The issue is rather does quantum physics play the game and operate under fixed and final rules of causality or does it play by its own on-a-whim ‘rules’ which aren’t really rules since they are meant to be broken.

Either causality operates or it doesn’t. If it does, then quantum physics does not, cannot, strut its stuff willy-nilly without any cause-and-effect in operation. If causality doesn’t operate then certainty doesn’t operate at any level since the certainty we associate with the macro is built on the uncertainty of the micro. 

Quantum uncertainty, or the opposite side of the coin, probability, is usually made explicit by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which basically states that through no fault of your own or your instrumentation, it is literally impossible to know various contrasting properties about a fundamental particle. The more you pin down and know about one property, the fuzzier another property becomes, and vice versa. You can never know both properties absolutely to a 100% certainty. In fact you can never know either property to the 100% certainty level. That’s because the very act of observing or of measuring changes the properties that you are trying to observe or measure. Mother Nature has forced or placed this not-to-be-negotiated and no-correspondence-will-be-entered-into restriction on you, the observer, or on your sidekick, your measuring gizmo. So there! Or is it really so? The key is that you, the observer, or your measuring doohickie device, is in the bloody way. You can’t know the precise state of affairs of the system you are interested in if you are part of that system. You are not part of the solution; you are the problem!

Probability is nothing more than a statement that you, the human you, don’t know something for absolute certain. That’s it. Once you find out for certain, it’s no longer probability but certainty. If you can’t find out, and the very act of observing or measuring can alter the properties of what you are trying to observe or measure (and that’s really what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is all about), what transpires or eventuates if there is no observation or measurement?

In every definition or explanation I’ve ever seen about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle it is either implied o explicitly stated that an observer and/or measurement is being attempted or considered.

Probability remains probability if you can’t ever know in practice or even in theory. However, one can postulate that an omniscient (all-knowing) deity must know all things not only in practice but in theory too. No person who believes in an all-knowing God could put any stock in quantum physics as operating in the realm of probability; ditto the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. However, I really don’t need to go down that pathway since I state with certainty that there is no God, all-knowing or otherwise.  

Even if you don’t know, but it is possible to know in theory, well that too results in at least theoretical certainty.

But what if it is not possible to know, even in theory, a.k.a. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? Well, that too, doesn’t of necessity rule in probability and rule out certainty.  

As another example of so-called quantum probability, take radioactive decay which is alleged to be lacking is causality – it happens for no reason at all. As far as an observer is concerned, a radioactive atom, or its nucleus, will decay, but exactly when and under what conditions is unpredictable, maybe in 10 seconds, maybe not for a billion years. It’s all probability.

This is an example of Mother Nature hiding skeletons in Her closet. The observer is thwarted in coming to terms with radioactive decay other than through, or by computing, probabilities. Therefore, quantum physics is probability. But that’s only if you accept the lack of causality premise. I totally reject that and suggest that radioactive decay does have a cause – we just don’t know what it is. Thanks to Mother Nature’s closet, we are restricted or prevented with absolutes or limitations to our vision of reality. There are lots of examples of skeletons in Mother Nature’s closet that don’t involve probability (see below), so why should radioactive decay be an exception to the rule?

If a human observer is present, she might say based on computing probabilities, that the radioactive atomic nucleus has a 50-50 chance of going poof in one hour. But, if there is no human observer, the radioactive nucleus will go poof (absolutely certain) – eventually. There’s no probability involved because there are no artificial time units involved – time units are a human concept or invention not part of Mother Nature’s vocabulary. So probability in quantum physics is observer dependent (or dependent on there being an observer) – no observer, no probability, just certainty.

Mother Nature has imposed lots of other absolutes or limitations on us. Jump into a Black Hole and you’re not coming out again, even if you were born on Krypton. No probability here.

You cannot travel at the speed of light – period! No probability here.

If you are inside a closed room (no windows) you have no way of telling if you are on Earth and in Earth’s 1-G gravity field or in space being accelerated at 1-G. No probability here.

Akin to the above, you have no sense of motion while you are sitting comfortably on your sofa. Yet, the Earth is spinning on its axis; the Earth is orbiting around the Sun; the Sun is orbiting around the Milky Way Galaxy; and the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course (relax, not to intersect for another five billion years). Equally, if you were in a spaceship with no windows (no fair peeking outside), and that spaceship were travelling at a constant rate of speed, you wouldn’t feel it and thus you wouldn’t be aware that you we travelling at a rapid rate of knots. No probability here.

Mother Nature doesn’t require you to be hatched; She does require you to die. No probability here.

You are on a train stopped at the railway station. On your left is another train also stopped at the railway station. That other train starts moving to your rear, or, are you moving forward leaving the other train behind. Which is it? It’s soon going to be obvious, but just for a few seconds, you didn’t know. If all that existed were just the two trains and you with no other frames of reference, you’d never know if the other train was moving, or if your train was moving, or both. No probability here.

You cannot observe any part of the Universe that resides over the horizon that marks the observable boundary that contains the observable Universe (just like you can not observe a ship that has sailed over the horizon of the spherical Earth). No probability here.

When you look out into the night sky at the distant stars and galaxies, you are looking back in time, since it takes time for the light of those objects to reach us. But you cannot observe the cosmos further back than 300,000 years post that Big Bang event. That’s because the cosmos was still too thick with stuff to allow viewing. It’s akin to the fact that you cannot view the centre of the Sun because there’s too much sun-stuff in the way. In fact it takes extremely lengthy amounts of time for a photon to struggle its way from the centre to the surface of the Sun. So, 300,000 years is the limit, which is why it’s nonsense for cosmologists to dictate with absolute certainty what the structure and substance of the Universe was like prior to that time, especially that nonsense that a nanosecond after the Big Bang the Universe was just the size of a pinhead – they are just guesstimating and bad guesstimating at that. No probability here.

You cannot change the past. No probability here.

Finally, without our modern technology, the ‘Naked Ape’ could not detect gamma rays, or X-rays, or radio waves, or microwaves, cosmic rays, neutrinos, and a host of other bits and pieces that are part and parcel of the Universe. No probability here. 

So you see that Mother Nature has imposed all manner of absolute obstacles in our way of looking up her skirt and uncovering her ‘private’ nature as it were. That doesn’t mean the anatomy doesn’t exist, only we’re not allowed to peek and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So, her anatomy is uncertain or probably is this, or that or the next thing but only to us, the wannabe observer.

Finally, consider and reconsider the quantum mantra: Anything that isn’t forbidden is compulsory; anything that can happen will happen. Does that sound like a probability statement to you?

In summary and in conclusion, references to quantum physics are full of the word “probability”. They are also filled with terms linking probability to someone like me or to someone like you – an observer. Remove or eliminate the observer and you remove or eliminate the probability in quantum probability.

It’s Your Shuffle, Dr. Quantum

The realm of the micro, quantum mechanics, is presented as a realm of probability, uncertainty, indeterminacy, indecision, and related terms. This is in contrast to the realm of the macro where events tend to be on firmer footing – you needn’t worry about the Sun rising tomorrow morning. However, such terms as probability are human terms and human interpretations and often result from natural limits on what we can learn about the micro. If you eliminate the human then you eliminate the distinction between the micro and the macro.

Go to the store and buy a fully wrapped fresh deck of standard playing cards. Have ten friends available to shuffle the new deck starting with person one through person ten, ten shuffles per person. At the end of those 100 shuffles, you’d probably agree that the deck is about as shuffled as it can be. Now place the deck on top of the table, all 52 cards face down.

Now the question is, what is the value of the top card (or the 5^th card or the 26^th card or the 51^st card) down from the top? Which card doesn’t matter; just choose one card in the one location.

Quantum physics will give you several possible scenarios.

Many Worlds Interpretation #1: You know, and I know, that the top card can be one of 52 possibilities. No one possibility is more or less likely than the next. So, since there’s nothing that favours one card over another, when the top card is turned over, all 52 possibilities eventuate. That’s accomplished because the cosmos divides into 51 further universes. In our Universe, one card will eventuate as the top card. Since there are 51 other possibilities, all equally possible, each one happens in each of the 51 new universes. There is no favouritism.

The issue of credibility comes into play when you realise that throughout our entire universe, zillions of ‘forks in the road’ decision or option branches happen each second. Thus every second zillions of new universes have to be created in order to give each and every possibility a fair go. Considering how many seconds have elapsed in our universe in the past 13.7 billion years, well that’s a tad more newly created universes than you can count on your fingers and toes! Further, each newly created universe, a branch-off of ours, in turn generates zillions more universes each second, each of which creates zillions more each second, and so on and so on.

The ‘many worlds’ tag isn’t quite ‘infinite worlds’, but the number of universes present and accounted for is several orders of magnitude larger by now than ‘many’ would suggest. The good news is that in one universe, all of those ‘forks in the road’ over all the millennia have been by chance allowed you to become Master of the Universe – well that specific universe anyway! 

Many Worlds Interpretation #2: The other side of the Many Worlds coin is that from the get-go there already exists all those other 51 universes, each with a new deck of cards shuffled 100 times. In those 51 universes plus our own, all top card possibilities are realized. Of course that means that in the beginning there were all those zillions and zillions and zillions of universes each one having its own unique cosmic history. When all are put together, everything that can happen does happen, so all possibilities get a fair go and thus their moment of glory basking in the sunshine.

Copenhagen Interpretation: In this scenario, as above, all you and I know is that the top card is one of 52 possibilities. In the Copenhagen Interpretation, not one of those 52 possibilities is really real until such time as someone peeks. Options all exist equally and simultaneously until then. That’s called the wave-function – it’s a measure of probability. It’s the very act of observation or measurement (same difference) that gives rise to a single and unique reality. That’s termed the collapse of the wave-function. No observation, therefore no reality, just a superposition or a composite of all possible realities. [Actually the entire deck is in a state of ever shifting superposition since the value of every card is undetermined.] The problem here is that how is it that the lucky card becomes the lucky card and the other 51 possibilities go ‘poof’ into the realm of unreality. One card lives; 51 cards die without rhyme or reason.

The other problem is that when it comes to ‘forks in the road’, the universe has made the reality/unreality decision zillions of times without there being anyone around to peek, make a measurement or an observation. Taken to its logical conclusion the Copenhagen Interpretation suggests that the Universe exists and has tangible reality because observers exist. Without observers (life) the entire Universe would be in just one superposition of all possible states simultaneously. So, the question is, is an observer really necessary in order for a state of probabilities to become one actual reality and hence other possibilities achieve unreality? If not, and it would appear that’s the case since the universe hasn’t always had peeping-toms, the Copenhagen Interpretation is kaput. The Universe did nicely without observers (life) for billions of years. Observers are nice but unnecessary.

Common Sense Interpretation: Forget quantum probabilities. Causality rules, OK? If you observe all the variables that went into all the shuffling of that deck of cards, each and every one was grounded in cause-and-effect. If you filmed the entire shuffling sequence in high speed motion, then played back the film frame-by-frame, by knowing the original sequence of the brand new deck, you should be able to determine what the top card was after those 100 shuffles. There is no probability involved. Okay, even if you have no idea what the top card was after 100 shuffles, it is fixed and certain. The top card is not a composite of all 52 possibilities. Whether the top card is turned over seconds after that final shuffle, or 1000 years later, the value of that top card will be the same. Unfortunately you won’t tend to find this kind of explanation in the textbooks as any association between quantum physics and causality is frowned upon.

Discussion:

Now quantum physicists will tell you that in the realm of the very, very tiny, you cannot observe or measure to the absolute last decimal place the relative values quantum sized objects have. That’s because in the micro realm the very act of observation or measurement changes the very values of what you are trying to observe or measure. How is that? Well, if you wish to observe or measure a very tiny object, say an electron, you have got to bounce a photon (light particle) off of it and have that photon enter your eyeball or measuring device and thus record what information that photon reveals. However, the energy of that photon is sufficient to alter the velocity, position and trajectory of that electron when it hits and bounces off on the way to your eyeball. So, the best you can say is that the values have a certain probability of being this or that. The electron is somewhere within this range since you know not where the photon knocked it. 

Further, the value of the electron’s velocity, position or trajectory is also uncertain (to us) because of wave-particle duality. The particle electron is actually or allegedly waving in 3-D all over the place, which adds to only being able to describe the electron’s velocity, position or trajectory in probabilistic terms. While that’s true enough, that doesn’t translate, in my book anyway, that there isn’t an absolute last decimal place to whatever value you’re interested in. Like with the deck of cards, you don’t know the value of the top card after 100 shuffles but you had no doubt there was one, and one only value. That’s a certainty. That doesn’t change the fact that the probability, as far as you are concerned, of that top card being such-and-such was 1 in 52. 

Now I have no problem with electrons waving all over the place – it’s what photons (light waves) do. It’s just that the electron has an independent reality as a tiny little ‘billiard ball’, and so despite what the textbooks say, an electron cannot be in more than one place at one point in time. Like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, there’s the position of the unknowable electron. But position it has. X marks the spot! The electron exists at time T at coordinates A, B, & C.

Put it this way, probability is just having lack of sufficient information to determine the absolute state of affairs of whatever system you are interested in. Your lack of information maybe because it is too complex or difficult to acquire to the degree required or there are too many variables to compute simultaneously or because the act of uncovering that information itself changes the system. But ultimately, there is an absolute state of affairs even if to you it is a probable state of affairs. If you want to look at it this way, Mother Nature (or God - if you are so inclined) knows, even if you don’t.

Note that what we are dealing with here is what we perceive as Mother Nature’s uncertainty or probability when it comes to Her doing this or that. When it comes to human indecision or uncertainty or probability it is just that - indecision or uncertainty or probability. IMHO, Mother Nature is a fixed and final entity; only humans don’t have sufficient data (and sufficient crunch power) or often can’t even get the data through no fault of their own. Thus our interpretation is that Mother Nature isn’t a fixed and final entity. It’s an illusion – our illusion. It is human inability to see or measure the Big Picture in the micro realm that doesn’t translate anywhere to the same degree in the macro realm which we live out our daily lives in.

Also note that so far I have thrown around terms like observers and measurements, and humans, and our, and you, and my, and us and similar sorts of words. In other words, when it comes to quantum uncertainty or probability, etc. as hinted at above, it’s humans that see things as uncertain or as probabilistic. Now, what if we eliminate the human being from the picture? In fact, let’s eliminate all living things. Let’s have a universe without any life at all. Would the concept of probability or uncertainty or indeterminacy be meaningful in a universe without life? 

In a universe without any observers, without any life, would it be meaningful to invoke the idea of quantum probability or uncertainty? It’s not that difficult to imagine a universe without life. In fact that no doubt was the state of our universe for several billion years post the Big Bang event. 

This is no doubt delving into deep philosophy, but to me the answer is clearly “NO”. For billions of years the universe ticked over just fine and everything was classically clockwork with no indecision or indeterminacy or probability or uncertainty about what-was-what and what-was-where and what-was-who and what-was-when. There was nobody around to give a damn about this or that election’s trajectory or position or velocity. It had one that was fixed and final. Of course there was no deck of 52 cards either, but if there had been, nobody would have given a damn about what the top card was or wasn’t. It too would have been fixed and final.

Of course if Planet Earth is the be-all-and-end-all of life in the Universe, and Planet Earth goes kaput, well the Universe has been lifeless before and all the physics therein won’t give a tinker’s damn. Physics, independent of life, will just keep on keeping on. As it was in the beginning so it shall ever be.

So the moral of the story is the natural worlds of the micro and the macro meshes just fine as long as there are no observers* around to artificially classify and put micro and macro concepts into quantum (micro) pigeon holes and classical (macro) pigeon holes that needn’t be put in pigeon holes at all.

There can be no fixed boundary line between the micro and the macro. The micro morphs into the macro or the macro morphs into the micro so it’s really nonsense talking about quantum physics (micro) and classical physics (macro) – there is just physics. 

*If no observers (life) existed, well that’s just an extension of what if you didn’t exist – and you didn’t for 13.7 billion years and you won’t for untold billions more.