Quantum mechanics is universal, i.
e.
, is supposed to apply regardless of the size of the things you describe.
Why, then, do we not see the ghostly superpositions of objects - so typical of the microscopic world - even at our own level? For example, cats that simultaneously are both alive and dead?...
Schrodinger introduced precisely this "Schrodinger's Cat" - the poor creature who is forced to be both alive and dead at the same time - as an argument that quantum physics is not complete, there must be something we missed! And this problem is still not resolved.
When can something be said to have happened at all? Without additional assumptions beyond quantum physics, nothing can ever happen! This is because quantum physics mathematically is described by so-called linear equations, which state that something that has ever coexisted is going to do so forever.
Despite this, we know that specific outcomes are entirely possible, and actually happen all the time.
The legendary American physicist John Wheeler went so far as to suggest that only when enough intelligent beings have evolved will the universe move from a ghostly multi-superposed quantum state to the real universe we see today.
Eugene Wigner and the famous mathematician John von Neumann suggested that the only thing that can break the chain of increasingly large superpositions of mutually impossible outcomes is the consciousness of the human brain.
Although this so-called "measurement problem" in quantum physics even today is not resolved satisfactorily it still feels - in a selfish way - good that man has regained his place at the center of universe! Should one blindly believe Wigner, von Neumann and Wheeler the universe only emerges because we humans exist.
There are many other alternative attempts to solve the quantum measurement problem, but none of them have succeeded completely.
A very old idea has in recent years come into vogue again under the name of "decoherence", where the interaction with the environment is expected to "force" quantum objects, such as atoms, to adopt a single specific state.
But the difficulty is that one never really can ignore the equations linear behavior as the surroundings also consist of atoms.
At some part of the chain one must still say: "And then a miracle Occurs".
There seems to be an "invisible hand" in nature that makes the outcomes, statistically speaking, predictable.
But each individual outcome is completely random, even if we each time start the experiment in exactly the same way.
Only when we understand how our objective "macroscopic" world arises from the ghostly "microscopic" world, where everything that is not strictly forbidden is compulsory, can we say we know how nature really works.
Forwarding of this publication is allowed provided the following web address is included http://www.
FunPhysics.
org.
e.
, is supposed to apply regardless of the size of the things you describe.
Why, then, do we not see the ghostly superpositions of objects - so typical of the microscopic world - even at our own level? For example, cats that simultaneously are both alive and dead?...
Schrodinger introduced precisely this "Schrodinger's Cat" - the poor creature who is forced to be both alive and dead at the same time - as an argument that quantum physics is not complete, there must be something we missed! And this problem is still not resolved.
When can something be said to have happened at all? Without additional assumptions beyond quantum physics, nothing can ever happen! This is because quantum physics mathematically is described by so-called linear equations, which state that something that has ever coexisted is going to do so forever.
Despite this, we know that specific outcomes are entirely possible, and actually happen all the time.
The legendary American physicist John Wheeler went so far as to suggest that only when enough intelligent beings have evolved will the universe move from a ghostly multi-superposed quantum state to the real universe we see today.
Eugene Wigner and the famous mathematician John von Neumann suggested that the only thing that can break the chain of increasingly large superpositions of mutually impossible outcomes is the consciousness of the human brain.
Although this so-called "measurement problem" in quantum physics even today is not resolved satisfactorily it still feels - in a selfish way - good that man has regained his place at the center of universe! Should one blindly believe Wigner, von Neumann and Wheeler the universe only emerges because we humans exist.
There are many other alternative attempts to solve the quantum measurement problem, but none of them have succeeded completely.
A very old idea has in recent years come into vogue again under the name of "decoherence", where the interaction with the environment is expected to "force" quantum objects, such as atoms, to adopt a single specific state.
But the difficulty is that one never really can ignore the equations linear behavior as the surroundings also consist of atoms.
At some part of the chain one must still say: "And then a miracle Occurs".
There seems to be an "invisible hand" in nature that makes the outcomes, statistically speaking, predictable.
But each individual outcome is completely random, even if we each time start the experiment in exactly the same way.
Only when we understand how our objective "macroscopic" world arises from the ghostly "microscopic" world, where everything that is not strictly forbidden is compulsory, can we say we know how nature really works.
Forwarding of this publication is allowed provided the following web address is included http://www.
FunPhysics.
org.