The stunning nature of reality as revealed by quantum physics & relativity

[Clancy]

Did you know that you age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor? Or that every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Marilyn Monroe? Or that, if all the empty space were squeezed out of matter, the human race could easily fit in the volume of a sugar cube?

The truth is that science is far stranger than science fiction - and the universe we find ourselves in is weirder than anything we could possibly have invented.

Nothing underscores this more than quantum theory and relativity, the twin pillars of 21st-century science. Relativity has revealed the bizarre world of black holes and told us that the universe had a beginning.

Quantum theory has made the modern world possible, giving us lasers and computers and iPod nanos, not to mention explaining how the sun shines and why the ground is solid.

Take the fact that you are constantly inhaling fragments of Marilyn Monroe. It is stretching it a bit to say that this is a direct consequence of quantum theory.

Nevertheless, it is connected to the properties of atoms, the Lego bricks from which we are all assembled, and quantum theory is essentially a description of this microscopic world.

The important thing to realise is that atoms are small. It would take about 10 million of them laid end to end to span the full stop at the end of this sentence. It means that every time you breathe out, uncountable trillions of the little blighters spread out into the air.

Eventually the wind will spread them evenly throughout the Earth's atmosphere. When this happens, every lungful of the atmosphere will contain one or two atoms you breathed out.

So, each time someone inhales, they will breathe in an atom breathed out by you - or Marilyn Monroe, or Alexander the Great, or the last Tyrannosaurus rex that stalked the Earth.

But it is not just the smallness of atoms that has mind-blowing consequences. There is their appalling emptiness, too.

Tom Stoppard put it best when he described an electron orbiting the nucleus at the centre of an atom: "Make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of an atom, then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom, then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in an empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar." It is hard to think of a more striking illustration of just how tenuous - how ghostly - we all are.

So, why are atoms so empty? Or, to put it another way, why are atoms so big compared to their tiny, tiny nucleus?

Well, that's all down to the defining characteristic of the quantum world - its denizens have a bizarre, schizophrenic nature. They can behave both as localised, bullet-like "particles" and as spread-out "waves", much like ripples on a pond. Trying to imagine how this is possible will give you a migraine.

Physicists have simply had to accept that electrons and their like are profoundly different from anything in the everyday world.

The point is that a wave takes up a lot of space. That's why an electron, also being a wave, cannot be contained in a small volume, and why atoms are so much bigger than you might expect - and made up of 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space.

This dual character of nature's ultimate building block has other consequences. It leads - for reasons it would take a lot more space to understand - to a bizarre Alice in Wonderland situation in which a single atom can be in two places at once, and where atoms can communicate with each other instantaneously, even when on opposite sides of the universe.

Quantum theory is strange indeed. But the other pillar of modern physics - relativity - also has its quirks.

For example, it holds out the possibility of a diet plan that really works. Why? Because the faster you travel, the thinner you get.

This is a consequence of the "special" theory of relativity, which Einstein published in 1905. It's not at all obvious, because it's noticeable only at speeds close to that of light - about a million times faster than a passenger jet.

Nevertheless, if someone were to pass you at close to the speed of light, special relativity predicts that they would appear to be flattened in the direction they were travelling.

That isn't the only effect of special relativity. That person flying past you would also have their time slowed down. The second hand of their watch would hardly appear to be moving: if they waved at you, it would seem as if their arm were ploughing through treacle.

Einstein extended his theory, publishing the general theory of relativity in 1915. Fortuitously, this turned out to be theory of gravity as well. And it revealed that the slowing of time does not happen just for bodies that are moving very quickly, but also for bodies in strong gravity.

A consequence of this is that you age faster on the top floor of your house than on the ground floor. Why? Because on the ground floor, you are closer to the centre of the Earth, and therefore in slightly stronger gravity than higher up.

Of course, in normal life this is an extremely tiny effect. However, near bodies with very strong gravity, such as black holes, it becomes very significant. If you could hang near the edge of a black hole, time would slow so much for you that you would be able to see the entire future of the universe flash by.

Weird as this effect is, arguably the most amazing prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that the universe had a beginning.

According to current estimates, it burst into being 13.7 billion years ago in a titanic explosion called the Big Bang, with the galaxies congealing out of the cooling debris.

The proof is nearer than you may think. Just switch on your TV and tune it between the stations. About one per cent of the static on your screen is the residual heat of that almighty fireball.

The heat of the Big Bang was bottled up in the universe, which, by definition, is all there is. It therefore had nowhere to go and, consequently, must be all around us today. Of course, it has been greatly cooled by the expansion of the universe, so it no longer appears as visible light but as microwaves, which can be picked up by your TV.

Microwaves are a form of light, and are made up of particles called "photons". Ninety-nine per cent of photons in the universe are not the result of starlight, but are tied up in the heat of the Big Bang.

If you could see microwaves, the whole night sky would be glowing like the inside of a light bulb. Which makes it all the more amazing that this heat was not discovered until 1965 - and then by complete accident. The two astronomers who found it - and carried off the Nobel Prize - thought that what their instruments had picked up was the microwave glow of pigeon droppings.

Rarely in the history of science can so profound a discovery have been mistaken for something so mundane.

Now that really is stranger than science fiction.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ma...quantum120.xml

[decterlove]

Or that every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Marilyn Monroe?

I knew that! Dick Cheney, too, I suppose.

Or that, if all the empty space were squeezed out of matter, the human race could easily fit in the volume of a sugar cube?

No wonder I feel so spaaacccceey today!

The truth is that science is far stranger than science fiction - and the universe we find ourselves in is weirder than anything we could possibly have invented.

Thanks for the post, Clancy...that stuff is always pretty interesting to me. It's amazing how the brain translates all this information somehow (percepts-hidden or not hidden) into our mundane 'up and down" "every thing is solid and permanent" conceptual framework which always lag behind about 200 years from what science has discovered, letting us go about our business as if we are are all just "solid stuff" and buying a loaf of bread is the most important thing in the Universe.

One of my pet personal observations is that there's probably some water in the Delta right now or maybe even evaporating in India that will become "us" in a week or two. Plus even our ideas, values and "personal" opinions are all derived 99.99 from the vast network of other minds and is constantly co-evolving. Nuff said...I really do need to pull my atoms together and get some "serious" work done!


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ma...quantum120.xml[/quote]

[Zeno Swijtink]

Did you know that you age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor?

But you are in better shape on the top floor, since the apartment there is slightly larger due to the earth's curvature so you get more exercise moving around

[JuliaB]

Thanks for your post Clancy! Really great to remind us all of how connected we all are --literally!

one comment: I think "bundles of energy" is a more appropriate description than "lego bricks".

julia

[BlueFireFairy]

Wow!

Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?

Did you know that you age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor? ...

[Sara S]

I'm sure that he meant other stuff, too, but it's always been interesting to me that one of the Buddha's main messages, a couple thousand years before Einstein, was the emptiness of all phenomena.

Sara

Did you know that you age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor? Or that every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Marilyn Monroe? Or that, if all the empty space were squeezed out of matter, the human race could easily fit in the volume of a sugar cube?

The truth is that science is far stranger than science fiction - and the universe we find ourselves in is weirder than anything we could possibly have invented.

Nothing underscores this more than quantum theory and relativity, the twin pillars of 21st-century science. Relativity has revealed the bizarre world of black holes and told us that the universe had a beginning.

Quantum theory has made the modern world possible, giving us lasers and computers and iPod nanos, not to mention explaining how the sun shines and why the ground is solid.

Take the fact that you are constantly inhaling fragments of Marilyn Monroe. It is stretching it a bit to say that this is a direct consequence of quantum theory.

Nevertheless, it is connected to the properties of atoms, the Lego bricks from which we are all assembled, and quantum theory is essentially a description of this microscopic world.

The important thing to realise is that atoms are small. It would take about 10 million of them laid end to end to span the full stop at the end of this sentence. It means that every time you breathe out, uncountable trillions of the little blighters spread out into the air.

Eventually the wind will spread them evenly throughout the Earth's atmosphere. When this happens, every lungful of the atmosphere will contain one or two atoms you breathed out.

So, each time someone inhales, they will breathe in an atom breathed out by you - or Marilyn Monroe, or Alexander the Great, or the last Tyrannosaurus rex that stalked the Earth.

But it is not just the smallness of atoms that has mind-blowing consequences. There is their appalling emptiness, too.

Tom Stoppard put it best when he described an electron orbiting the nucleus at the centre of an atom: "Make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of an atom, then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom, then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in an empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar." It is hard to think of a more striking illustration of just how tenuous - how ghostly - we all are.

So, why are atoms so empty? Or, to put it another way, why are atoms so big compared to their tiny, tiny nucleus?

Well, that's all down to the defining characteristic of the quantum world - its denizens have a bizarre, schizophrenic nature. They can behave both as localised, bullet-like "particles" and as spread-out "waves", much like ripples on a pond. Trying to imagine how this is possible will give you a migraine.

Physicists have simply had to accept that electrons and their like are profoundly different from anything in the everyday world.

The point is that a wave takes up a lot of space. That's why an electron, also being a wave, cannot be contained in a small volume, and why atoms are so much bigger than you might expect - and made up of 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space.

This dual character of nature's ultimate building block has other consequences. It leads - for reasons it would take a lot more space to understand - to a bizarre Alice in Wonderland situation in which a single atom can be in two places at once, and where atoms can communicate with each other instantaneously, even when on opposite sides of the universe.

Quantum theory is strange indeed. But the other pillar of modern physics - relativity - also has its quirks.

For example, it holds out the possibility of a diet plan that really works. Why? Because the faster you travel, the thinner you get.

This is a consequence of the "special" theory of relativity, which Einstein published in 1905. It's not at all obvious, because it's noticeable only at speeds close to that of light - about a million times faster than a passenger jet.

Nevertheless, if someone were to pass you at close to the speed of light, special relativity predicts that they would appear to be flattened in the direction they were travelling.

That isn't the only effect of special relativity. That person flying past you would also have their time slowed down. The second hand of their watch would hardly appear to be moving: if they waved at you, it would seem as if their arm were ploughing through treacle.

Einstein extended his theory, publishing the general theory of relativity in 1915. Fortuitously, this turned out to be theory of gravity as well. And it revealed that the slowing of time does not happen just for bodies that are moving very quickly, but also for bodies in strong gravity.

A consequence of this is that you age faster on the top floor of your house than on the ground floor. Why? Because on the ground floor, you are closer to the centre of the Earth, and therefore in slightly stronger gravity than higher up.

Of course, in normal life this is an extremely tiny effect. However, near bodies with very strong gravity, such as black holes, it becomes very significant. If you could hang near the edge of a black hole, time would slow so much for you that you would be able to see the entire future of the universe flash by.

Weird as this effect is, arguably the most amazing prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that the universe had a beginning.

According to current estimates, it burst into being 13.7 billion years ago in a titanic explosion called the Big Bang, with the galaxies congealing out of the cooling debris.

The proof is nearer than you may think. Just switch on your TV and tune it between the stations. About one per cent of the static on your screen is the residual heat of that almighty fireball.

The heat of the Big Bang was bottled up in the universe, which, by definition, is all there is. It therefore had nowhere to go and, consequently, must be all around us today. Of course, it has been greatly cooled by the expansion of the universe, so it no longer appears as visible light but as microwaves, which can be picked up by your TV.

Microwaves are a form of light, and are made up of particles called "photons". Ninety-nine per cent of photons in the universe are not the result of starlight, but are tied up in the heat of the Big Bang.

If you could see microwaves, the whole night sky would be glowing like the inside of a light bulb. Which makes it all the more amazing that this heat was not discovered until 1965 - and then by complete accident. The two astronomers who found it - and carried off the Nobel Prize - thought that what their instruments had picked up was the microwave glow of pigeon droppings.

Rarely in the history of science can so profound a discovery have been mistaken for something so mundane.

Now that really is stranger than science fiction.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ma...quantum120.xml

[Barry]

Wow!

Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?

Well, Clancy?

[Braggi]

Well, Clancy?

Barry, that could have already been handled in a private reply.

Man, you're as nosy as ... well, the rest of us.

-Jeff

[Barry]

Barry, that could have already been handled in a private reply.

Man, you're as nosy as ... well, the rest of us.

True! But since there was public offer, seems like a public reply is warranted!

Barry, the yenta.

[decterlove]

Wow, the brain really is the most important sex organ....look for a guy with a big hat, I guess! I'm gonna go look for my pencil pocket!

handled in private

[shellebelle]

Hmmm So many plays so little time!!!

handled in a private

-Jeff