Einstein Quantum Mechanics Quotes

Einstein said that if quantum mechanics were correct then the world would be crazy. Einstein was right - the world is crazy.

One of the brighter humans, a German-born theoretical physicist called Albert Einstein, explained relativity to dimmer members of his species by telling them, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.” What if looking at the pretty girl felt like putting your hand on a hot stove? What was that? Quantum mechanics?

I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will not only its moment to jump off but its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist.

It is the definition of the word 'object' which destroys all religions.

It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy—and that's a big “IF”—then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory.

The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core.

The [quantum] theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac.

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn’t a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that “God does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong, and it’s too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do.

It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Some day a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted.

Spinoza had argued that God, synonymous with nature, was immutable and eternal, leaving no room for chance. Agreeing with Spinoza, Einstein sought the invariant rules governing nature’s mechanisms. He was absolutely determined to prove that the world was absolutely determined.

Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect was the work for which he ultimately won the Nobel Prize. It was published in 1905, and Einstein has another paper in the very same journal where it appeared - his other paper was the one that formulated the special theory of relativity. That's what it was like to be Einstein in 1905; you publish a groundbreaking paper that helps lay the foundation of quantum mechanics, and for which you later win the Nobel Prize, but it's only the second most important paper that you publish in that issue of the journal.

As mathematicians were uncovering the connection between zero and infinity, physicists began to encounter zeros in the natural world; zero crossed over from mathematics to physics. In thermodynamics a zero became an uncrossable barrier: the coldest temperature possible. In Einstein's theory of general relativity, a zero became a black hole, a monstrous star that swallows entire suns. In quantum mechanics, a zero is responsible for a bizarre source of energy-infinite and ubiquitous, present even in the deepest vacuum-and a phantom force exerted by nothing at all.

When Einstein objected to quantum mechanics by remarking that “God does not play dice,” Bohr responded by admonishing him, “Stop telling God what to do.” Which means: Nature is richer than our metaphysical prejudices. It has more imagination than we do.

The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time. ... quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits – quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place. ... The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.

Einstein wrote, “Quantum mechanics calls for a great deal of respect. But some inner voice tells me that this is not the true Jacob. The theory offers a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the Old Man’s secret. For my part, at least, I am convinced that He doesn’t throw dice.”)

There are two foundational pillars upon which modern physics rests. One is Albert Einstein's general relativity, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the largest of scales: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and beyond to the immense expanse of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed to almost unimaginable accuracy virtually all predictions made by each of these theories. But these same theoretical tools inexorably lead to another disturbing conclusion: As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right.

A century after his great triumphs, we are still living in Einstein’s universe, one defined on the macro scale by his theory of relativity and on the micro scale by a quantum mechanics that has proven durable even as it remains disconcerting.

The full story of the invention of the matrix form of quantum mechanics is far more complex than I can tell here, as it reveals a very dynamic, collective effort of a diverse community of theorists, in close interaction. Still, diverse as they were, the matrix mechanicians were by 1927 all framing the new theory in terms of the radically anti-realist philosophy that Bohr preached. The only holdouts were those who had come to quantum mechanics through the wave-particle duality, Einstein, de Broglie, and Schrödinger, who stubbornly remained realists. But once it was proved that Schrödinger’s wave mechanics was equivalent to Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics, the realists could be dismissed as stubbornly grasping on to old metaphysical fantasies, and ignored.

Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; his feelings were summed up in his famous statement, ‘God does not play dice.’ Most other scientists, however, were willing to accept quantum mechanics because it agreed perfectly with experiment.

That’s what it was like to be Einstein in 1905: You publish a groundbreaking paper that helps lay the foundations of quantum mechanics, and for which you later win the Nobel Prize, but it’s only the second-most important paper that you publish in that issue of the journal.

From time to time, we hear physicists claim that Einstein didn’t understand Quantum Mechanics and therefore wasted his time with naive classical theories. I very much doubt that this is true. His arguments against Quantum Mechanics were extremely subtle, culminating in one of the most profound and most cited papers in all of physics.12 My guess is that Einstein was disturbed by the same thing that bothered the slow student. How could the ultimate theory of reality be about nothing more concrete than our own degree of surprise at the outcome of an experiment?

Mankind has uncovered two extremely efficient theories: one that describes our universe's structure (Einstein's gravity: the theory of general relativity), and one that describes everything our universe contains (quantum field theory), and these two theories won't talk to each other.

While others continued to develop quantum mechanics, undaunted by the uncertainties at its core, Einstein persevered in his lonelier quest for a more complete explanation of the universe—a unified field theory that would tie together electricity and magnetism and gravity and quantum mechanics.

The resulting four-page paper, published in May 1935 and known by the initials of its authors as the EPR paper, was the most important paper Einstein would write after moving to America. “Can the Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Regarded as Complete?” they asked in their title.

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century. Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity. We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology.

Thus it was that Einstein ended up deciding that quantum mechanics, though it may not be wrong, was at least incomplete. There must be a fuller explanation of how the universe operates, one that would incorporate both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. In doing so, it would not leave things to chance.

Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that “God does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong, and it’s too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do.

These last few points are key to how quantum mechanics works, so let me summarize them: The wave represents the quantum state. When we leave the system alone, it changes in time deterministically, according to Rule 1. But the quantum state is only indirectly related to what we observe when we make a measurement, and that relation is not deterministic. The relation between the quantum state

Determinism was the linchpin of classical physics, the crucial principle of causality. Born was now putting into words Einstein’s greatest fear, one he had expressed repeatedly for years. In classical physics, when anything happens, it happens for a reason, because prior events led up to it, set the conditions for it, made it inevitable. But in quantum mechanics, apparently, things just happen one way or another, and there is no saying why.

Quantum mechanics asserts that the relationship between the quantum state and the outcome of a measurement is probabilistic. Generally, there is a range of possible outcomes of a given measurement. These will each occur with some probability, and these probabilities depend on the quantum state. In the case where we measure the position of a particle, this dependence is particularly simple: The probability of finding the particle at a particular location in space is proportional to the square of the height of the

Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? How come politicians don’t ask that kids be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? After all, Darwin’s ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why? The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don’t hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless want to believe that each human possesses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and can survive even death intact.

The uncertainty principle, so simple and yet so startling, was a stake in the heart of classical physics. It asserts that there is no objective reality—not even an objective position of a particle—outside of our observations. In addition, Heisenberg’s principle and other aspects of quantum mechanics undermine the notion that the universe obeys strict causal laws. Chance, indeterminacy, and probability took the place of certainty. When Einstein wrote him a note objecting to these features, Heisenberg replied bluntly, “I believe that indeterminism, that is, the nonvalidity of rigorous causality, is necessary.

A mechanism in the box opens the small window on the right for an instant, allowing a photon to escape at some precise time. By weighing the box, it is possible to deduce the energy of the released photon. Einstein hoped that thus would create difficulties for quantum mechanics, which predicts that time and energy cannot both be precisely determined. Bohr replied, mistakenly, that the way out of the difficulty required Einstein's general relativity, and Einstein, mistakenly, accepted Bohr's reply. The correct response to Einstein, that Bohr was unable to find but is clear today, is that the position of the escaping photon and the weight of the box remain tied to each other ("correlated") even if the photon is already far away.

When he applied this approach to a gas of quantum particles, Einstein discovered an amazing property: unlike a gas of classical particles, which will remain a gas unless the particles attract one another, a gas of quantum particles can condense into some kind of liquid even without a force of attraction between them. This phenomenon, now called Bose-Einstein condensation,* was a brilliant and important discovery in quantum mechanics, and Einstein deserves most of the credit for it. Bose had not quite realized that the statistical mathematics he used represented a fundamentally new approach. As with the case of Planck’s constant, Einstein recognized the physical reality, and the significance, of a contrivance that someone else had devised.

Einstein’s own remarks, given on the last day of the conference, show that the uncertainty principle was not the only aspect of quantum mechanics that concerned him. He was also bothered—and later would become even more so—by the way quantum mechanics seemed to permit action at a distance. In other words, something that happened to one object could, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, instantly determine how an object located somewhere else would be observed. Particles separated in space are, according to relativity theory, independent. If an action involving one can immediately affect another some distance away, Einstein noted, “in my opinion it contradicts the relativity postulate.” No force, including gravity, can propagate faster than the speed of light, he insisted.

A popular feel for scientific endeavors should, if possible, be restored given the needs of the twenty-first century. This does not mean that every literature major should take a watered-down physics course or that a corporate lawyer should stay abreast of quantum mechanics. Rather, it means that an appreciation for the methods of science is a useful asset for a responsible citizenry. What science teaches us, very significantly, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein’s life. In addition, an appreciation for the glories of science is a joyful trait for a good society. It helps us remain in touch with that childlike capacity for wonder, about such ordinary things as falling apples and elevators, that characterizes Einstein and other great theoretical physicists.

Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? How come politicians don’t ask that kids be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? After all, Darwin’s ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why? The

Perhaps the main basis for the claim that quantum mechanics is weird is the existence of what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’. These effects are not only ‘spooky’ but are also absolutely impossible to achieve within the framework of classical physics. However, if the conception of the physical world is changed from one made out of tiny rock-like entities to a holistic global informational structure that represents tendencies to real events to occur, and in which the choice of which potentiality will be actualized in various places is in the hands of human agents, there is no spookiness about the occurring transfers of information. The postulated global informational structure called the quantum state of the universe is the ‘spook’ that does the job. But it does so in a completely specified and understandable way, and this renders it basically non-spooky.

Music of the Grid: A Poem in Two Equations _________________________ The masses of particles sound the frequencies with which space vibrates, when played. This Music of the Grid betters the old mystic mainstay, "Music of the Spheres," both in fantasy and in realism. LET US COMBINE Einstein's second law m=E/C^2 (1) with another fundamental equation, the Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula E = hv The Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula relates the energy E of a quantum-mechanical state to the frequency v at which its wave function vibrates. Here h is Planck's constant. Planck introduced it in his revolutionary hypothesis (1899) that launched quantum theory: that atoms emit or absorb light of frequency v only in packets of energy E = hv. Einstein went a big step further with his photon hypothesis (1905): that light of frequency v is always organized into packets with energy E = hv. Finally Schrodinger made it the basis of his basic equation for wave functions-the Schrodinger equation (1926). This gave birth to the modern, universal interpretation: the wave function of any state with energy E vibrates at a frequency v given by v = E/h. By combining Einstein with Schrodinger we arrive at a marvelous bit of poetry: (*) v = mc^2/h (*) The ancients had a concept called "Music of the Spheres" that inspired many scientists (notably Johannes Kepler) and even more mystics. Because periodic motion (vibration) of musical instruments causes their sustained tones, the idea goes, the periodic motions of the planets, as they fulfill their orbits, must be accompanied by a sort of music. Though picturesque and soundscape-esque, this inspiring anticipation of multimedia never became a very precise or fruitful scientific idea. It was never more than a vague metaphor, so it remains shrouded in equation marks: "Music of the Spheres." Our equation (*) is a more fantastic yet more realistic embodiment of the same inspiration. Rather than plucking a string, blowing through a reed, banging on a drumhead, or clanging a gong, we play the instrument that is empty space by plunking down different combinations of quarks, gluons, electrons, photons,... (that is, the Bits that represent these Its) and let them settle until they reach equilibrium with the spontaneous activity of Grid. Neither planets nor any material constructions compromise the pure ideality of our instrument. It settles into one of its possible vibratory motions, with different frequencies v, depending on how we do the plunking, and with what. These vibrations represent particles of different mass m, according to (*). The masses of particles sound the Music of the Grid.

Wheeler wasn’t the first to point out that quantum mechanics slips into paradox the minute you introduce a second observer. The Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner, for one, had emphasized it with a Schrödinger’s-cat-style thought experiment that became known as “Wigner’s friend.” It went something like this: Inside a lab, Wigner’s friend sets up an experiment in which an atom will randomly emit a photon, producing a flash of light that leaves a spot on a photographic plate. Before Wigner’s friend checks the plate for signs of a flash, quantum mechanics shows that the atom is in a superposition of having emitted a photon and not having emitted a photon. Once the friend looks at the plate, however, he sees a single outcome—the atom flashed or it didn’t. Somehow his looking collapses the atom’s wavefunction, transforming two possibilities into a single reality. Wigner, meanwhile, is standing outside the lab. From his point of view, quantum mechanics shows that until his friend tells him the outcome of the experiment, the atom remains in a superposition of having emitted a photon and not having emitted a photon. What’s more, his friend is now in a superposition of having seen a spot of light on the plate and not having seen a spot of light on the plate. Only Wigner, quantum theory says, can collapse the wavefunction by asking his friend what happened in there. The two stories are contradictory. According to Wigner’s friend, the atom’s wavefunction collapsed when he looked at the plate. According to Wigner, it didn’t. Instead, his friend entered a superposition correlated with the superposition of the atom, and it wasn’t until Wigner spoke to his friend that both superpositions collapsed. Which story is right? Who is the true creator of reality, Wigner or his friend?

time? After all, Darwin’s ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why? The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If

Authors who attempt to build a bridge between science and spirituality tend to make one of two mistakes: Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience, assuming that it must be a grandiose way of describing ordinary states of mind—parental love, artistic inspiration, awe at the beauty of the night sky. In this vein, one finds Einstein’s amazement at the intelligibility of Nature’s laws described as though it were a kind of mystical insight. New Age thinkers usually enter the ditch on the other side of the road: They idealize altered states of consciousness and draw specious connections between subjective experience and the spookier theories at the frontiers of physics. Here we are told that the Buddha and other contemplatives anticipated modern cosmology or quantum mechanics and that by transcending the sense of self, a person can realize his identity with the One Mind that gave birth to the cosmos. In the end, we are left to choose between pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-science.

Present at the first, in October 1927, were the three grand masters who had helped launch the new era of physics but were now skeptical of the weird realm of quantum mechanics it had spawned: Hendrik Lorentz, 74, just a few months from death, the winner of the Nobel for his work on electromagnetic radiation; Max Planck, 69, winner of the Nobel for his theory of the quantum; and Albert Einstein, 48, winner of the Nobel for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect. Of the remaining twenty-six attendees, more than half had won or would win Nobel Prizes as well. The boy wonders of the new quantum mechanics were all there, hoping to convert or conquer Einstein: Werner Heisenberg, 25; Paul Dirac, 25; Wolfgang Pauli, 27; Louis de Broglie, 35; and from America, Arthur Compton, 35. Also there was Erwin Schrödinger, 40, caught between the young Turks and the older skeptics. And, of course, there was the old Turk, Niels Bohr, 42, who had helped spawn quantum mechanics with his model of the atom and become the staunch defender of its counterintuitive ramifications.

Until the coming of quantum mechanics, nothing happened to modify in any degree what is the essential purport of the first two laws of motion, namely this: that the laws of dynamics are to be stated in terms of accelerations. In this respect, Copernicus and Kepler are still to be classed with the ancients; they sought laws stating the shapes of the orbits of the heavenly bodies. Newton made it clear that laws stated in this form could never be more than approximate. The planets do not move in exact ellipses, because of the perturbations caused by the attractions of other planets. Nor is the orbit of a planet ever exactly repeated, for the same reason. But the law of gravitation, which dealt with accelerations, was very simple, and was thought to be quite exact until two hundred years after Newton's time. When it was amended by Einstein, it still remained a law dealing with accelerations. It is true that the conservation of energy is a law dealing with velocities, not accelerations. But in calculations which use this law it is still accelerations that have to be employed.

Einstein and his colleagues made the perfectly reasonable assumption of locality: that the properties of a particle are localized on that particle, and what happens here can’t affect what happens there without some way of transmitting the effects across the intervening space. It seems so self-evident that it hardly appears to be an assumption at all. But this locality is just what quantum entanglement undermines – which is why ‘spooky action at a distance’ is precisely the wrong way to look at it. We can’t regard particle A and particle B in the EPR experiment as separate entities, even though they are separated in space. As far as quantum mechanics is concerned, entanglement makes them both parts of a single object. Or to put it another way, the spin of particle A is not located solely on A in the way that the redness of a cricket ball is located on the cricket ball. In quantum mechanics, properties can be non-local. Only if we accept Einstein’s assumption of locality do we need to tell the story in terms of a measurement on particle A ‘influencing’ the spin of particle B. Quantum non-locality is the alternative to that view.

Everett's approach, which he described as "objectively deterministic" with probability "reappearing at the subjective level," resonated with this strategy. And he was thrilled by the direction. As he noted in the 1956 draft of his dissertation, the framework offered to bridge the position of Einstein (who famously believed that a fundamental theory of physics should not involve probability) and the position of Bohr (who was perfectly happy with a fundamental theory that did). According to Everett, the Many Worlds approach accommodated both positions, the difference between them merely being one of perspective. Einstein's perspective is the mathematical one in which the grand probability wave of all particles relentlessly evolves by the Schrodinger equation, with chance playing absolutely no role. I like to picture Einstein soaring high above the many worlds of Many Worlds, watching as Schrodinger's equation fully dictates how the entire panorama unfolds, and happily concluding that even though quantum mechanics is correct, God doesn't play dice. Bohr's perspective is that of an inhabitant in one of the worlds, also happy, using probabilities to explain, with stupendous precision, those observations to which his limited perspective gives him access.

When he applied this approach to a gas of quantum particles, Einstein discovered an amazing property: unlike a gas of classical particles, which will remain a gas unless the particles attract one another, a gas of quantum particles can condense into some kind of liquid even without a force of attraction between them. This phenomenon, now called Bose-Einstein condensation,* was a brilliant and important discovery in quantum mechanics, and Einstein deserves most of the credit for it. Bose had not quite realized that the statistical mathematics he used represented a fundamentally new approach. As with the case of Planck’s constant, Einstein recognized the physical reality, and the significance, of a contrivance that someone else had devised.49 Einstein’s method had the effect of treating particles as if they had wavelike traits, as both he and de Broglie had suggested. Einstein even predicted that if you did Thomas Young’s old double-slit experiment (showing that light behaved like a wave by shining a beam through two slits and noting the interference pattern) by using a beam of gas molecules, they would interfere with one another as if they were waves. “A beam of gas molecules which passes through an aperture,” he wrote, “must undergo a diffraction analogous to that of a light ray.

The two hit it off well, because de Broglie was trying, like Einstein, to see if there were ways that the causality and certainty of classical physics could be saved. He had been working on what he called “the theory of the double solution,” which he hoped would provide a classical basis for wave mechanics. “The indeterminist school, whose adherents were mainly young and intransigent, met my theory with cold disapproval,” de Broglie recalled. Einstein, on the other hand, appreciated de Broglie’s efforts, and he rode the train with him to Paris on his way back to Berlin. At the Gare du Nord they had a farewell talk on the platform. Einstein told de Broglie that all scientific theories, leaving aside their mathematical expressions, ought to lend themselves to so simple a description “that even a child could understand them.” And what could be less simple, Einstein continued, than the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics! “Carry on,” he told de Broglie as they parted at the station. “You are on the right track!” But he wasn’t. By 1928, a consensus had formed that quantum mechanics was correct, and de Broglie relented and adopted that view. “Einstein, however, stuck to his guns and continued to insist that the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics could not possibly be complete,” de Broglie recalled, with some reverence, years later.

On his journey home from delivering his acceptance speech in Sweden the following summer, Einstein stopped in Copenhagen to see Bohr, who met him at the train station to take him home by streetcar. On the ride, they got into a debate. “We took the streetcar and talked so animatedly that we went much too far,” Bohr recalled. “We got off and traveled back, but again rode too far.” Neither seemed to mind, for the conversation was so engrossing. “We rode to and fro,” according to Bohr, “and I can well imagine what the people thought about us.”43 More than just a friendship, their relationship became an intellectual entanglement that began with divergent views about quantum mechanics but then expanded into related issues of science, knowledge, and philosophy. “In all the history of human thought, there is no greater dialogue than that which took place over the years between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein about the meaning of the quantum,” says the physicist John Wheeler, who studied under Bohr. The social philosopher C. P. Snow went further. “No more profound intellectual debate has ever been conducted,” he proclaimed.44 Their dispute went to the fundamental heart of the design of the cosmos: Was there an objective reality that existed whether or not we could ever observe it? Were there laws that restored strict causality to phenomena that seemed inherently random? Was everything in the universe predetermined?

Rule 1, by dictating how a quantum system changes in time, plays the same essential role in the theory that Newton’s laws of motion played in pre-quantum physics. Like Newton’s laws, Rule 1 is deterministic. It takes an input state and evolves it to a definite output state at a later time. This means it takes input states which are constructed as superpositions to output states which are similarly constructed from superpositions. Probability plays no role. But measurements, as described by Rule 2, do not evolve superpositions to other superpositions. When you measure some quantity, like pet preference or position, you get a definite value. And afterward the state is the one corresponding to that definite value. So even if the input state is a superposition of states with definite values of some observable quantity, the output state is not, as it corresponds to just one value. Rule 2 does not tell you what the definite value is; it only predicts probabilities for the different possible outcomes to occur. But these probabilities are not spurious; they are part of what quantum mechanics predicts. Rule 2 is essential, because that is how probabilities enter quantum mechanics. And probabilities are essential in many cases; they are what experimentalists measure. However, quantum mechanics requires that Rule 1 and Rule 2 never be applied to the same process, because the two rules contradict each other. This means we must always distinguish measurements from other processes in nature.

The century of Einstein and Planck was also the century of Hitler. The Gestapo and the scientific renaissance were children of the same age. How humane the nineteenth century seemed, that century of naive physics, when compared with the twentieth century, the century that had killed his [Viktor's] mother. There is a terrible similarity between the principles of Fascism and those of contemporary physics. Fascism has rejected the concept of a separate individuality, the concept of "a man," and operates only with vast aggregates. Contemporary physics speaks of the greater or lesser probability of occurrences within this or that aggregate of individual particles. And are not the terrible mechanics of Fascism founded on the principle of quantum politics, of political probability? Fascism arrived at the idea of the liquidation of entire strata of the population, of entire nations and races, on the grounds that there was a greater probability of overt or covert opposition among these groupings than among others: the mechanics of probabilities and of human aggregates. But no! No! And again no! Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones! Man and Fascism cannot co-exist. If Fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? How come politicians don't ask that kids be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? After all, Darwin's ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple - not to say humdrum - idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why? The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless want to believe that each human posseses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and can survive even death intact.

Bohr advanced a heavyhanded remedy: evolve probability waves according to Schrodinger's equation whenever you're not looking or performing any kind of measurement. But when you do look, Bohr continued, you should throw Schrodinger's equation aside and declare that your observation has caused the wave to collapse. Now, not only is this prescription ungainly, not only is it arbitrary, not only does it lack a mathematical underpinning, it's not even clear. For instance, it doesn't precisely define "looking" or "measuring." Must a human be involved? Or, as Einstein once asked, will a sidelong glance from a mouse suffice? How about a computer's probe, or even a nudge from a bacterium or virus? Do these "measurements" cause probability waves to collapse? Bohr announced that he was drawing a line in the sand separating small things, such as atoms and their constituents, to which Schrodinger's equation would apply, and big things, such as experimenters and their equipment, to which it wouldn't. But he never said where exactly that line would be. The reality is, he couldn't. With each passing year, experimenters confirm that Schrodinger's equation works, without modification, for increasingly large collections of particles, and there's every reason to believe that it works for collections as hefty as those making up you and me and everything else. Like floodwaters slowly rising from your basement, rushing into your living room, and threatening to engulf your attic, the mathematics of quantum mechanics has steadily spilled beyond the atomic domain and has succeeded on ever-larger scales.

Newton had bequeathed to Einstein a universe in which time had an absolute existence that tick-tocked along independent of objects and observers, and in which space likewise had an absolute existence. Gravity was thought to be a force that masses exerted on one another rather mysteriously across empty space. Within this framework, objects obeyed mechanical laws that had proved remarkably accurate—almost perfect—in explaining everything from the orbits of the planets, to the diffusion of gases, to the jiggling of molecules, to the propagation of sound (though not light) waves. With his special theory of relativity, Einstein had shown that space and time did not have independent existences, but instead formed a fabric of spacetime. Now, with his general version of the theory, this fabric of spacetime became not merely a container for objects and events. Instead, it had its own dynamics that were determined by, and in turn helped to determine, the motion of objects within it—just as the fabric of a trampoline will curve and ripple as a bowling ball and some billiard balls roll across it, and in turn the dynamic curving and rippling of the trampoline fabric will determine the path of the rolling balls and cause the billiard balls to move toward the bowling ball. The curving and rippling fabric of spacetime explained gravity, its equivalence to acceleration, and, Einstein asserted, the general relativity of all forms of motion.92 In the opinion of Paul Dirac, the Nobel laureate pioneer of quantum mechanics, it was “probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made.” Another of the great giants of twentieth-century physics, Max Born, called it “the greatest feat of human thinking about nature, the most amazing combination of philosophical penetration, physical intuition and mathematical skill.

Bose’s creative use of statistical analysis was reminiscent of Einstein’s youthful enthusiasm for that approach. He not only got Bose’s paper published, he also extended it with three papers of his own. In them, he applied Bose’s counting method, later called “Bose-Einstein statistics,” to actual gas molecules, thus becoming the primary inventor of quantum-statistical mechanics. Bose’s paper dealt with photons, which have no mass. Einstein extended the idea by treating quantum particles with mass as being indistinguishable from one another for statistical purposes in certain cases. “The quanta or molecules are not treated as structures statistically independent of one another,” he wrote.48 The key insight, which Einstein extracted from Bose’s initial paper, has to do with how you calculate the probabilities for each possible state of multiple quantum particles. To use an analogy suggested by the Yale physicist Douglas Stone, imagine how this calculation is done for dice. In calculating the odds that the roll of two dice (A and B) will produce a lucky 7, we treat the possibility that A comes up 4 and B comes up 3 as one outcome, and we treat the possibility that A comes up 3 and B comes up 4 as a different outcome—thus counting each of these combinations as different ways to produce a 7. Einstein realized that the new way of calculating the odds of quantum states involved treating these not as two different possibilities, but only as one. A 4-3 combination was indistinguishable from a 3-4 combination; likewise, a 5-2 combination was indistinguishable from a 2-5. That cuts in half the number of ways two dice can roll a 7. But it does not affect the number of ways they could turn up a 2 or a 12 (using either counting method, there is only one way to roll each of these totals), and it only reduces from five to three the number of ways the two dice could total 6. A few minutes of jotting down possible outcomes shows how this system changes the overall odds of rolling any particular number. The changes wrought by this new calculating method are even greater if we are applying it to dozens of dice. And if we are dealing with billions of particles, the change in probabilities becomes huge.

But so far, we have only discussed applying quantum mechanics to the matter that moves within the gravity fields of Einstein’s theory. We have not discussed a much more difficult question: applying quantum mechanics to gravity itself in the form of gravitons. And this is where we encounter the biggest question of all: finding a quantum theory of gravity, which has frustrated the world’s great physicists for decades. So let us review what we have learned so far. We recall that when we apply the quantum theory to light, we introduce the photon, a particle of light. As this photon moves, it is surrounded by electric and magnetic fields that oscillate and permeate space and obey Maxwell’s equations. This is the reason why light has both particle-like and wavelike properties. The power of Maxwell’s equations lies in their symmetries—that is, the ability to turn electric and magnetic fields into each other. When the photon bumps into electrons, the equation that describes this interaction yields results that are infinite. However, using the bag of tricks devised by Feynman, Schwinger, Tomonaga, and many others, we are able to hide all the infinities. The resulting theory is called QED. Next, we applied this method to the nuclear force. We replaced the original Maxwell field with the Yang-Mills field, and replaced the electron with a series of quarks, neutrinos, etc. Then we introduced a new bag of tricks devised by ’t Hooft and his colleagues to eliminate all the infinities once again. So three of the four forces of the universe could now be unified into a single theory, the Standard Model. The resulting theory was not very pretty, since it was created by cobbling together the symmetries of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, but it worked. But when we apply this tried-and-true method to gravity, we have problems. In theory, a particle of gravity should be called the graviton. Similar to the photon, it is a point particle, and as it moves at the speed of light, it is surrounded by waves of gravity that obey Einstein’s equations. So far, so good. The problem occurs when the graviton bumps into other gravitons and also atoms. The resulting collision creates infinite answers. When one tries to apply the bag of tricks painfully formulated over the last seventy years, we find that they all fail. The greatest minds of the century have tried to solve this problem, but no one has been successful. Clearly, an entirely new approach must be used, since all the easy ideas have been investigated and discarded. We need something truly fresh and original. And that leads us to perhaps the most controversial theory in physics, string theory, which might just be crazy enough to be the theory of everything.

Because the Nazis considered theoretical physics and quantum mechanics too abstruse and “Jewish,” they had replaced them years before with a more homegrown and homespun curriculum—the rudimentary Deutsche Physik—and as a result of the switch, half of the country’s nuclear scientists had been relieved of, or driven from, their posts. A plethora of the continent’s brightest lights had also taken flight. Not just Einstein, but Hans Bethe, Max Born, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, Otto Stern, Lise Meitner, Robert Frisch, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Goeppert-Mayer—the list went on and on.

If a force can disappear purely because the point of view of the observer changes, then this means the force does not exist: it is dependent on the observer, it has no objective reality (i.e., not all observers experience it as real). It is not a real force. Therefore, Einstein realised gravity was just a fictitious force.

Historically, the great advances in physics have occurred when scientists united two seemingly disparate entities into a coherent, logical whole. Newton connected celestial motions with terrestrial motion. Maxwell unified light and electromagnetism. Einstein did it for space and time. Quantum theory makes exactly this kind of connection, between the objective physical world and subjective experiences. It thus offers a way out of the morass that the mind brain debate has become, because it departs most profoundly from classical physics at a crucial point: on the nature of the dynamical interplay between minds and physical states, between physical states and consciousness. It ushers the observer into the dynamics of the system in a powerful way. Following quantum theory into the thicket of the mind-matter problem actually leads to a clearing, to a theory of mind and brain that accords quite well with our intuitive sense of how our mind works. In Stapp's formulation, quantum theory creates a causal opening for the mind, a point of entry by which mind can affect matter, a mechanism by which mind can shape brain. That opening arises because quantum theory allows intention, and attention, to exert real, physical effects on the brain, as we will now explore.

the concepts come from superstring theory, which we talked about in Modane: the mathematical attempt to unify quantum mechanics with the peculiarities of gravity into the elusive theory of everything. It was something Einstein was hoping to find but never did. We think that we can explain the properties of subatomic particles by thinking about them as different vibrations on a string as though they were tiny rubber bands. The string vibrates one way, it’s one particle. It vibrates another way, it’s a different one.

I like to think that the Moon is there even if I am not looking at it." Unfortunately, this frequently-repeated quote of Einstein has been partly responsible for the production of a number of pseudo-scientific books (and even movies) suggesting that quantum reality is somehow conjured into existence by human observation, or human consciousness. This is surely a complete fallacy, and is based on a lack of understanding of the principles of quantum mechanics. As the physicist Carver Mead has said: "That is probably the biggest misconception that has come out of the Copenhagen view. The idea that the (human) observation of some event makes it somehow more 'real' became entrenched in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Even the slightest reflection will show how silly it is. An observer is an assembly of atoms. What is different about the observer's atoms from those of any other object? What if the data are taken by computer? Do the events not happen until the scientist gets home from vacation and looks at the printout? It is ludicrous!

The finding that real networks are rapidly evolving dynamical systems had catapulted the study of complex networks into the arms of physicists as well. Perhaps we are in for yet another such cultural shift. Indeed, Bianconi's mapping indicated that in terms of the laws governing their behavior, networks and a Bose gas are identical. Some feature of complex networks bridges the micro- and macroworld, with consequences as intriguing as the bridge's very existence. The most important prediction resulting from this mapping is that some networks can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation. The consequences of this prediction can be understood without knowing anything about quantum mechanics: It is, simply, that in some networks the winner can take all. Just as in a Bose-Einstein condensate all particles crowd into the lowest energy level, leaving the rest of the energy levels unpopulated, in some networks the fittest node could theoretically grab all the links, leaving none for the rest of the nodes. The winner takes all.

quantum mechanics as ‘that mysterious, confusing discipline which none of us really understands

Quantum sync also explains how superconductivity works. The argument is tricky, because the herd behavior that we’ve been discussing doesn’t come easily to electrons. Being fermions, they are not naturally sociable. Instead, superconductivity relies on a subtle mechanism that prods the electrons to join in pairs, at which point they become bosons and lose all inhibition. These paired electrons spontaneously form a Bose-Einstein condensate, a synchronized ensemble that encounters no resistance as it carries electrical current through a metal.

There’s no commonsense way to understand how stimulated emission could be possible, or why the new photon should be a carbon copy of the old one. The phenomenon is a consequence of the odd logic of quantum mechanics, the physics of the atomic and subatomic world, where our intuition from everyday life breaks down. Einstein discovered the theoretical necessity of stimulated emission in 1917, but it took another 43 years before anyone figured out how to use it to create the first working laser.

It now appears that birds may visualize the earth’s magnetic field through a form of quantum entanglement, which is just as bizarre as it sounds. Quantum mechanics dictates that two particles, created at the same instant, are linked at the most profound level—that they are, in essence, one thing, and remain “entangled” with each other so that regardless of distance, what affects one instantly affects the other. No wonder the technical term in physics for this effect is “spooky action.” Even Einstein was unsettled by the implications. Theoretically, entanglement occurs even across millions of light-years of space, but what happens within the much smaller scale of a bird’s eye may produce that mysterious ability to use the planetary magnetic field. Scientists now believe that wavelengths of blue light strike a migratory bird’s eye, exciting the entangled electrons in a chemical called cryptochrome. The energy from an incoming photon splits an entangled pair of electrons, knocking one into an adjacent cryptochrome molecule—yet the two particles remain entangled. However minute, the distance between them means the electrons react to the planet’s magnetic field in subtly different ways, creating slightly different chemical reactions in the molecules. Microsecond by microsecond, this palette of varying chemical signals, spread across countless entangled pairs of electrons, apparently builds a map in the bird’s eye of the geomagnetic fields through which it is traveling.

Perhaps to be human is to struggle one’s whole life to find some solid ground to stand on and then die never coming anywhere close. And perhaps that’s not even a bad thing. To know the true meaning of life and self is to do what with it? End the mystery? End the game? What then? Perhaps one day we will find some unifying theory of everything and perhaps somehow this will make everything better, but what are the odds that we still care about the point of life after we’ve found it? Imagine a movie in which you knew exactly why and what everything was from the start. Imagine a life, if we found a theory of everything or an equation that connected the mysteries of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, and we understood the very core of how and why the universe worked, what difference would this really make in terms of the meaning of life. Would two different people still not watch the same movie and experience and interpret two different things? We would of course all agree that it’s a movie and on how the movie works, but when it comes to meaning, there will always remain a perceptual layer completely relative to the individuals observing it. Because of this, if we found the overarching ultimate truth of existence tomorrow, half the world would not believe it, and the other half would fight for it. And as a whole, we would be no different. And if somehow the whole world did agree upon one truth, what then? Utopia? What then? The truth we seek when considering the quality and meaning of our lives is not an outward truth, not a truth that resolves the questions of the universe, but a truth that glimpses inward and assembles into a stable self that can be integrated seamlessly into our perception of the whole around us, a truth we can’t ever truly have. Truth is not even the right word here, there is no right word here. That’s the point. I sit here writing, thinking about my being, about the strange relationship I have with this life and this plane of existence. I think about how alive I feel right now while writing. How potent this moment is. How insane and beautiful it is. How important it has been to me in the past. Thinking, writing, talking, and reading about earnest experiences and attempts at living. Personally, the direct confrontation with the challenges, complexities, sufferings, and plights of the human condition have provided me with some of, if not all of the profound, potent, and beautiful moments of my life. And I wonder if I would have ever experienced any of those undeniably worthy moments if life made sense. If it didn’t hurt and overwhelm me… How beautiful would the night sky be if we knew exactly where it went and how the stars got there? Would we ever be inspired to create art and form interpretations out of this life, what would I have written about? What would I have read about? How would I have ever found love or friendship or connection with others? Why would I have ever laughed or cried? What would I be doing right now? Would there be anything to say? Anything to live or die for? I don’t feel that my life would have been any better if I had known any more of what it was all about, in fact I think it would have only worsened the whole thing, we seem to so desire certainty, and immortality, a utopic end of conflict, suffering, and misunderstanding, and yet in the final elimination of all darkness exists light with no contrast. And where there is no contrast of light there is no perception of light, at all. What we think we want is rarely what we do, if we ever got what we did, we would no longer have anything. What we really want is to want. To have something to ceaselessly chase and move towards. To feel the motion and synchronicity with the universe's unending forward movement.

Everything we understand about the universe is currently built on two pillars; Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein’s theory of general relativity deals with the large, macro-level of the universe, and quantum mechanics deals with the micro-level. Currently, these two pillars work very well on their own but don’t often work very well together, and their unification is generally accepted as one of science and physics’ great contemporary issues. The accomplishment of which in the form of some unifying equation would be deemed, potentially, The Theory of Everything. Both of these pillars, however, appear to find themselves in a rather strange situation inside black holes, where neither seems to work. Based on Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, black holes create a singularity, and that’s how we are able to form the conclusion of it being there. However, according to physics, that’s impossible. You can’t have an infinite density or infinite gravitational force or infinite anything in physics. Infinity, to our knowledge, cannot be real in a physical, measurable sense, and when it appears in equations, it’s essentially a sign of an error or impossibility. And thus, Einstein’s theory breaks down. At the minute scale of the singularity, typically quantum field theory would step in. But quantum field theory can’t work here either because it can’t yet explain gravity, and the functions of black holes and the singularity are primarily based on gravity. And so, it seems that somewhere between the edge and core of black holes is either the separate collapse of both theories, destroying much of our understanding of everything, or the unification of both theories, creating a supposed ultimate theory of everything. In this sense, the primary answer needed for the complete understanding of the universe happens to potentially be contained and hidden in a place that nothing can seem to ever enter and come out of. A potential final frontier of human knowledge guarded by a mammoth-sized galactic beast. Perhaps this beast is undefeatable. Or perhaps we simply lack the mathematical weaponry to properly fight it. In the past, for many of the greatest and most confusing paradoxes in history, even greater minds and greater efforts have come along, confronted, and beat them, dissolving such paradoxes away into the falsidical realm forever. And perhaps here, inside black holes, we will do the same again. Either that or perhaps we will be dissolved by the paradox first.

As impressive as matrix mechanics was, it suffered from a severe marketing flaw. The mathematical formalism was highly abstract and difficult to understand. Einstein's reaction to the theory was typical: A veritable sorcerer's calculation. This is sufficiently ingenious and protected by its great complexity to be immune to any proof of its falsity. This from the guy who had proposed describing space-time in terms of non-Euclidian geometry.

Einstein's favorite line of criticism revolved around his claim that Quantum Mechanics, as known then (and as still known) may not constitute a "complete" theory of the subatomic realm. In ordinary language, this means that the Uncertainty and Indeterminacy of quantum equations — however useful these equations prove every day in technology — contains a possible hole through which an entirely new Quantum Theory may someday march.

Unfortunately, treatment with modern medicine is still under the suppressive dictatorship of Newton’s science. We need a SHIFT!! In the next chapter we’ll review the new physics, namely quantum field theory, and a new paradigm to consider in the health and healing of your body, mind and spirit. The dark ages of allopathic medicine are OVER! It’s time to usher in a new science of energy medicine with PEMF therapy and natural and holistic healing at the forefront. It’s also time to take action and take responsibility for your OWN health. The transition to the new physics is Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. These ideas radically changed the landscape of space/time, as well as matter being merely a form of energy. Keep in mind however that Einstein’s relativity is still a CLASSICAL model with some of the aforementioned flaws. It’s just a much more accurate one! Einstein’s ideas further paved the way for a paradigm shift in physics at the beginning of the 20th century; coupled with the advent of quantum mechanics, for which Einstein was an important contributor with his Nobel Prize winning paper on the photoelectric effect. Newton Under Fire - Special and General Relativity Theory In 1905, Albert Einstein changed the prevailing worldview of Newtonian physics for good with the introduction of his special relativity theory, followed in 1915 by general relativity. He proved Newtonian laws of physics are by no means static, but

Wheeler's brilliant student Richard Feynman had developed a unique approach to quantum mechanics, called 'sum over histories', that generalized Hamilton's least-action principle to the study of how photons transfer between electrons and other charged particles to generate the electromagnetic force. In creating a force, the photon acts as what is called an 'exchange particle'. (Its existence is required through Weyl's gauge theory of electromagnetism.) Unlike in classical mechanics, in which particles travel along unique paths, Feynman showed how in quantum interactions all possible paths are taken, weighted by their probabilities to create a net result.

When the electron vibrates, the universe shakes." Physicists now accept interconnectedness as a rule principle, along with many forms of symmetry that extend across the universe — for example, it is theorized that every black hole may be matt. Which sort of description will satisfy Bell's criteria for a fully integrated, non-local reality? It would have to be a quantum theory, because if gravity is present everywhere at the same time, if black holes know what white holes are doing, and if a difference of spin in one particle induces an equal but opposite transition immediately in its counterpart somewhere in outer space, it is clear that the information going from one location to another travels faster than the speed of light. In ordinary reality, that is not allowed either by Newton or Einstein. Contemporary theorists like the British physicist, David Bohm, who worked extensively with the implications of Bell's theorem, had to assume that there is an "invisible field" that holds together all reality, a field that has the property of knowing what is happening everywhere at once. (The invisible term here means not only invisible to the eye but undetectable to any measurement instrument.) Without going deeper into these speculations, one can see that the unseen environment sounds very much like the inherent intellect of DNA, and both behave very much like the subconscious. The mind has the property of holding all of our ideas in place, so to speak, in a silent reservoir where they are organized precisely into concepts and categories. By naming it "thought," we may be watching nature think through many different channels, one of the most fortunate of which our minds are, because the mind will construct and feel the physical truth at the same time. It may seem completely rational to observe a quantum phenomenon in the context of light waves, but what if quantum truth was just as apparent in our own feelings, impulses and desires? Eddington once expressed flatly his assumption as a scientist that "the world's stuff is mind-stuff." Thus the quantum mechanical system, as knowledge creation, has a possible position in non-local reality.

We live in a wave universe, cycling forward for all eternity, and ruled by wave mathematics: Fourier mathematics. Fourier mathematics is the basis of music theory, light theory, wave theory, quantum mechanics, and holography. It uniquely explains mind, and solves the problem of Cartesian mind-matter interaction. Einstein’s relativity theory is a spacetime misinterpretation of Fourier mathematics, deriving from Einstein’s inability to conceive of a Singularity outside space and time as the mysterious “ether” that provides the absolute framework for spacetime reality. If humanity turned its entire attention to holography, and Fourier mathematics, we would be Gods living in paradise in just one generation. What are we waiting for?

We are, I believe, in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of emotion, the mind, and the brain—a revolution that may compel us to radically rethink such central tenets of our society as our treatments for mental and physical illness, our understanding of personal relationships, our approaches to raising children, and ultimately our view of ourselves. Other scientific disciplines have seen revolutions of this kind, each one a momentous shift away from centuries of common sense. Physics moved from Isaac Newton’s intuitive ideas about time and space to Albert Einstein’s more relative ideas, and eventually to quantum mechanics. In biology, scientists carved up the natural world into fixed species, each having an ideal form, until Charles Darwin introduced the concept of natural selection.

[I can't accept quantum mechanics because] I like to think the moon is there even if I am not looking at it." ​— ​ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert Einstein further advanced the field with his groundbreaking explanation of the photoelectric effect. In 1905, Einstein proposed that light behaves not only as a wave but also as a particle, now known as a photon.

Again and again, it has been an essential feature of scientific progress to understand which problems are ripe for study and which are not. For instance, leading physicists at the turn of the twentieth century, including Hendrik Lorentz and Max Abraham, devoted themselves to understanding the structure of the recently discovered electron. It was hopeless; no one could have made progress in understanding the nature of electron before the advent of quantum mechanics two decades later. The development of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein was made possible by Einstein’s refusal to worry about what electrons are. Instead he worried about how observations of anything (including electrons) depend on the motion of the observer. Then Einstein himself in his later years addressed the problem of unification of the forces of nature, and made no progress because no one at the time knew enough about these forces.

A hallmark of classicism in art and science is a visual imagery abstracted from phenomena and objects we have experienced in the daily world. There is no such visual imagery in quantum mechanics or in highly abstract art.

A hallmark of classicism in art and science is a visual imagery abstracted from phenomena and objects we have experienced in the daily world. There is no such visual imagery in quantum mechanics or in highly abstract art. Artists and scientists had to seek it anew rather than extrapolate it from the everyday world. Just as it is pointless to stand in front of a Mondrian or Pollock, for instance, and ask what the painting is of, so it’s pointless to ask what the electron under quantum mechanics looks like. Neither question has an answer, and neither Einstein nor Picasso could accept such a radical break with classical thinking.

turned out that the proper visual imagery is generated by the mathematics of quantum mechanics, and it consists entirely of schematic representations of events, not pictures of objects.

Not so. You have been doing that quite frequently now. Rest easy. Later the whole of quantum mechanics will be placed in the context of the ten-dimensional manifold of manifolds, and there reconciled to gravity and to general relativity. Then, if you go that far, you will feel better about how it is that these equations can work, or be descriptive of a real world.” “But the results are impossible!” “Not at all. There are other dimensions folded into the ones our senses perceive, as I told you.” “How can you be sure, if we can never perceive them?” “It’s a matter of tests pursued, just as you do it in your work. We have found ways to interrogate the qualities of these dimensions as they influence our sensorium. We see then that there must be other kinds of dimensions. For instance, when very small particles decay into two photons, these photons have a quantum property we call spin. The clockwise spin of one is matched by a counterclockwise spin of the same magnitude in the other one, so that when the spin values are added, they equal zero. Spin is a conserved quantity in this universe, like energy and momentum. Experiments show that before a spin is measured, there is an equal potential for it to be clockwise or counterclockwise, but as soon as the spin is measured it becomes one or the other. At that moment of measurement, the complementary photon, no matter how far away, must have the opposite spin. The act of measurement of one thus determines the spin of both, even if the other photon is many light-years away. It changes faster than news of the measurement could have reached it moving at the speed of light, which is as fast as information moves in the dimensions we see. So how does the far photon know what to become? It only happens, and faster than light. This phenomenon was demonstrated in experiments on Earth, long ago. And yet nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Einstein was the one who called this seemingly faster-than-light effect ‘spooky action at a distance,’ but it is not that; rather, the distance we perceive is irrelevant to this quality we call spin, which is a feature of the universe that is nonlocal. Nonlocality means things happening together across distance as if the distance were not there, and we have found nonlocality to be fundamental and ubiquitous. In some dimensions, nonlocal entanglement is simply everywhere and everything, the main feature of that fabric of reality. The way space has distance and time has duration, other manifolds have entanglement.

I spoke of the 'real' mathematics of Fermat and other great mathematicians, the mathematics which has permanent aesthetic value, as for example the best Greek mathematics has, the mathematics which is eternal because the best of it may, like the best literature, continue to cause intense emotional satisfaction to thousands of people after thousands of years. These men were all primarily pure mathematicians; but I was not thinking only of pure mathematics. I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among 'real' mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are, at present at any rate, almost as 'useless' as the theory of numbers. It is the dull and elementary parts of applied mathematics, as it is the dull and elementary parts of pure mathematics, that work for good or ill.

Applying the standard U-procedures of quantum mechanics, we find that the photon's state, after it has encountered the mirror, would consist of two parts in two very different locations. One of these parts then becomes entangled with the device and finally with the lump, so we have a quantum state which involves a linear superposition of two quite different positions for the lump. Now the lump will have its gravitational field, which must also be involved in this superposition. Thus, the state involves a superposition of two different gravitational fields. According to Einstein's theory, this implies that we have two different space-time geometries superposed! The question is: is there a point at which the two geometries become sufficiently different from each other that the rules of quantum mechanics must change, and rather than forcing the different geometries into superposition, Nature chooses between one or the other of them and actually effects some kind of reduction procedure resembling R?

Although the collection of known mathematical structures is large and exotic, and even more remain to be discovered, every single mathematical structure can be analyzed to determine its symmetry properties, and many have interesting symmetry. Intriguingly, one of the most important discoveries in physics has been that our physical reality also has symmetries built into it: for example, the laws of physics have rotational symmetry, which means that there's not special direction in our Universe that you can call "up." They also appear to have translation (sideways shifting) symmetry, meaning that there's no special place that we can call the center of space. Many of these spaces just mentioned have beautiful symmetries, some of which match the observed symmetries of our physical world. For example, Euclidean space has both rotational symmetry (meaning that you can't tell the difference if the space gets rotated) and translational symmetry (meaning that you can't tell the difference if the space gets shifted sideways). The four-dimensional Minkowski space has even more symmetry: you can't even tell the difference if you do a type of generalized rotation between the space and time dimensions-and Einstein showed that this explains why time appears to slow down if you travel near the speed of light, as mentioned in the last chapter. Many more subtle symmetries of nature have been discovered in the last century, and these symmetries form the foundations of Einstein's relativity theories, quantum mechanics, and the standard model of particle physics.

The fact that space and time are intimately connected, as in figure 3.2, implies a subtle restructuring of Newton's mechanics, which Einstein rapidly completes in 1905 and 1906. A first result of this restructuring is that as space and time fuse together in a single concept of spacetime, so the electric field and the magnetic fields fuse together in the same way, merging into a single entity that today we call the "electromagnetic field." The complicated equations written by Maxwell for the two fields become simple when written in this new language.

The notions of fields and particles, separated by Faraday and Maxwell, end up merging in quantum mechanics. The way this happens in the theory is elegant: the equation of Dirac determines the values a variable can take. Applied to the energy of Faraday's lines, they tell us that this energy can take on only certain values and not others. Since the energy of the electromagnetic field can take on only certain values, the field behaves line a set of packets of energy. These are precisely the quanta of energy introduced by Planck and Einstein thirty years later. The circle closes, and the story is complete. The equations of the theory, written by Dirac, account for the granular nature of light, which Planck and Einstein had intuited.

Einstein was uncomfortable with quantum mechanics, both scientifically and philosophically. In quantum mechanics, causal determinism disappears. Scientifically, Einstein was unable to accept this theory. His problem with the theory was that quantum revolution defined reality with uncertainty, which ran against his ingrained sense that nature must operate with absolute certainty. Einstein believed, and many times said, that the goal of physics was to understand the laws that establish cause and effect. This scientific position was in full accord with his philosophical beliefs— that a divine hand had created the universe in accordance with unbending physical laws. Einstein could not reconcile that portions of creation operated by laws, and other portions by whim. “God does not play dice,” he once said in response to the theory.       Einstein’s

Einstein’s Stubbornness Contributes to Failure   Ironically, Einstein’s rejection of quantum mechanics may have been a factor which contributed to his failure to develop a unified theory. Einstein’s refusal to accept quantum mechanics and the probabilities they present caused him to turn his back on more recent developments in physics. It also served to alienate him from the rest of the physics community. Yet the harder Einstein worked on his unified theory, and with each successive failure, he found himself more isolated than before. Einstein was aware of this increasing ostracism, but was unwilling to change. Late in his life he would comment, “I must seem like an ostrich who forever buries its head in the relativistic sand in order not to face the evil quanta.”   Einstein’s

As Albert Einstein said: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

Hawking and Bekenstein had shown that the three great ideas of modern physics—general relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics—work in harmony. For these reasons, black hole entropy and radiation have come to dominate contemporary physics as scientists search for a so-called grand unified theory, the Holy Grail of a single principle that explains nature—the world, the universe, everything—at its most fundamental level.

[The double-slit experiment] has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. —Richard Feynman296 The mystery Feynman was referring to in the preceding quote is the curious fact that a quantum object behaves like a particle when it is observed, but it behaves like a wave when it’s not observed. This can be easily demonstrated in a double-slit interferometer, which is a simple device in which one sends particles of light (or electrons, or any elementary particle) through two tiny slits and then records the pattern of light that emerges onto a screen, or a camera. One might expect that if particles of light (called photons) behaved like separate hunks of stuff, like tiny marbles, then the pattern of light emerging from two slits would always be two bright bands of light. And indeed, if you track each photon as it passes through the slits, then that is what you will see on the screen. However, if you do not trace the photons’ paths, then you will see an alternating sequence of light and dark bands, called an “interference pattern.” This then is the mystery of the dual nature of light—whether you see a wavelike or particle pattern on the screen depends on how you’re looking at it. It’s as though all matter—photons, electrons, molecules, and so on297—“knows” that it is being watched. This exquisitely sensitive bashfulness, known in physics jargon as wave-particle complementarity, lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. It is also known as the quantum measurement problem, or QMP. It’s a problem because it violates the commonsense assumption that we live in an objective reality that is completely independent of observers. The founders of quantum theory, including Neils Bohr, Max Planck, Louis de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein, knew that introducing the notion of the observer into quantum theory was a radical change in how physics had been practiced, and they all wrote about the consequences of this change. A few physicists, like Wolfgang Pauli, Pascual Jordan, and Eugene Wigner, believed that consciousness was not merely important but was fundamentally responsible for the formation of reality. Jordan wrote, “Observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it.… We compel [the electron] to assume a definite position.… We ourselves produce the results of measurement

Part of what makes quantum mechanics so difficult to comprehend—and so different from the simpler models of physics that came before it—is that it’s a world where no one can tell you exactly how something is going to play out. There’s no certainty. Just probability. Einstein hated this. “Gott würfelt nicht,” he fumed. Commonly translated as: God doesn’t play dice with the universe.

The ramifications of Pythagoras' theorem have revolutionized twentieth century theoretical physics in many ways. For example, Minkowski discovered that Einstein's special theory of relativity could be represented by four-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean geometry where time is represented as the fourth dimension and a minus sign is introduced into Pythagoras' law. When gravitation is present, Einstein proposed that Minkowski's geometry must be "curved", the pseudo-Euclidean structure holding only locally at each point. A complex vector space having a natural generalization of the Pythagorean structure (defined over functions in an abstract space rather than geometrical points in the familiar Euclidean space) is known as Hilbert space and forms the basis of quantum mechanics. It is remarkable to think that the two pillars of twentieth century physics, relativity and quantum theory, both have their basis in mathematical structures based on a theorem formulated by an eccentric mathematician over two and a half thousand years ago.

Scientists have been trying to unify Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

How could the vacuum, which has nothing in it, have any energy at all? The answer comes from another equation: Einstein's famous E=mc^2. This simple formula relates mass and energy: the mass of an object is equivalent to a certain amount of energy. (In fact, particle physics don't measure the mass of the electron, say, in kilograms or pounds or any of the usual units of mass or weight. They say that the electron's rest mass is .511 MeV [million electron volts]- a lump of energy.) The fluctuation in the energy in the vacuum is the same thing as a fluctuation in the amount of mass. Particles are constantly winking in and out of existence, like tiny Cheshire cats. The vacuum is never truly empty. Instead, it is seething with these virtual particles; at every point in space, an infinite number are happily popping up and disappearing. This is the zero-point energy, an infinity in the formulas of quantum theory. Interpreted strictly, the zero-point energy is limitless. According to the equations of quantum mechanics, more power than is stored in all the coal mines, oil fields, and nuclear weapons in the world is sitting in the space inside your toaster.

Fundamental physics proceeds by paradox. It always has. It was a paradox that led Einstein to relativity: the laws of physics had to be the same for everyone and, given the relational motion of light, the laws of physics couldn’t be the same for everyone. A paradox led Polchinski to D-branes: open strings had to obey T-duality and, given their boundary conditions, open strings couldn’t obey T-duality. Another paradox led Susskind to horizon complementarity: information had to escape a black hole and, given relativity, information couldn’t escape a black hole. And yet another led the entire physics community to wonder whether each observer has his or her own quantum description of the world: entanglement had to be monogamous and, given the equivalence principle, entanglement couldn’t be monogamous. There’s only one way to resolve a paradox—you have to abandon some basic assumption, the faulty one that created the paradox in the first place. For Einstein, it was absolute space and time. For Polchinski, it was the immovability of the submanifold to which the open strings attached. For Susskind, it was the invariance of spacetime locality. For everyone involved in the firewall mess, it was the idea that quantum entanglement is observer-independent. Quantum mechanics short-circuits our neurons because it presents yet another paradox: cats have to be alive and dead at the same time, and, given our experience, cats can’t be alive and dead at the same time. Rovelli resolved the paradox by spotting the inherently flawed assumption: that there is a single reality that all observers share. That you can talk about the world from more than one perspective simultaneously. That there’s some invariant way the universe “really is.

String theory is potentially the next and final step in this progression. In a single framework, it handles the domains claimed by relativity and the quantum. Moreover, and this is worth sitting up straight to hear, string theory does so in a manner that fully embraces all the discoveries that preceded it. A theory based on vibrating filaments might not seem to have much in common with general relativity's curved spacetime picture of gravity. Nevertheless, apply string theory's mathematics to a situation where gravity matters but quantum mechanics doesn't (to a massive object, like the sun, whose size is large) and out pop Einstein's equations. Vibrating filaments and point particles are also quite different. But apply string theory's mathematics to a situation where quantum mechanics matters but gravity doesn't (to small collections of strings that are not vibrating quickly, moving fast, or stretched long; they have low energy-equivalently, low mass- so gravity plays virtually no role) and the math of string theory morphs into the math of quantum field theory.

In summary, time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is. So is change. In spacetime, the future exists and the past doesn't disappear. When we combine Einstein's classical spacetime with quantum mechanics, we get quantum parallel universes as we saw in Chapter 8. This means that there are many pasts and futures that are all real-but this in no way diminishes the unchanging mathematical nature of the full physical reality. This is how I see it. However, although this idea of an unchanging reality is venerable and dates back to Einstein, it remains controversial and subject to vibrant scientific debate, with scientists I greatly respect expressing a spectrum of views. For example, in his book The Hidden Reality, Brian Greene expresses unease toward letting go of the notions that change and creation are fundamental, writing, "I'm partial to there being a process, however tentative...that we can imagine generating the multiverse." Lee Smolin goes further in his book Time Reborn, arguing that not only is change real, but that indeed time may be the only thing that's real. At the other end of the spectrum, Julian Barbour argues in his book The End of Time not only that change is illusory, but that one can even describe physical reality without introducing the time concept at all.

The full story of the invention of the matrix form of quantum mechanics is far more complex than I can tell here, as it reveals a very dynamic, collective effort of a diverse community of theorists, in close interaction. Still, diverse as they were, the matrix mechanicians were by 1927 all framing the new theory in terms of the radically anti-realist philosophy that Bohr preached. The only holdouts were those who had come to quantum mechanics through the wave-particle duality, Einstein, de Broglie, and Schrödinger, who stubbornly remained realists.