Quantum, God and Religion.
In 1927, during the fifth Solvay International Conference where great scientists, 29 of them, were discussing about electrons, photons and God — or so it seemed, as it was in this conference where great physicists all around the world first sat and told Einstein and the rest of the participants, or perhaps it was just Bohr and Heisenberg (Heisenberg was Bohr’s assistant at that time) who explained to the participants on how to accept the paradoxes of quantum physics by including the aspects of probability and radical idea like superposition, (and Einstein attacked quantum paradoxes seriously and later in 1935 developed a thought experiment with Podolsky and Rosen) — Paul Dirac, who was 25 that year said in this conference;
I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination [..]
To which, Wolfgang Pauli who was a Catholic said;
Well, I’d say that also our friend Dirac has got a religion and the first commandment of this religion is ‘God does not exist and Paul Dirac is his prophet.’
As of today, October 22nd 2009, quantum physics still has no basis in the macro world. It’s a product of human imagination with fancy calculation of wave function. It does not explain the reality as we perceive it. It still says about all the possible states I can be, and I can be all at once, I can be in many worlds — I can be wave, i can be particles, — and like the Schrödinger’s cat, I can be both dead and alive at the same time.
P/s : To CERN, with love. Since LHC has reached the cryogenic temperature now, could you faster smash the damn particles and reinterpret the definition of actual reality that conforms to the space-time continuum, or whatever thing that the universe is. Thank you, i love you.
1927 Solvay International Conference.
*Picture taken from wikipedia (sadly, without permission.)
Quantum physics might not have basis in macro world, but the macro world certainly has it’s basis from quantum physics.
certainly it does. but to unify the theory of general relativity in the macro world, with quantum mechanics, is the biggest challenge ever for physicists, that for it to be accepted as a complete science, requires the creation of the universe in a lab.
because we cannot create universe yet. thus we have the string theory and so many other provisional theories that explain the world and try to unify those two.
which theory can unify those two then? perhaps, quantum mechanics itself and its offshoots are provisional theories too, that someone has too majorly rewrite them. i’m hoping that with over 10,000 scientists participating and collaborating in LHC experiments, one of them, if not all of them, will come out with a solid theory that explains the universe.