Transcript Quantum Mechanics - Physics at Oregon State University

QUANTUM MECHANICS
Is God in the Hamiltonian?
ZEN KOAN
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
THE GREAT MYSTERY
The possibility that the electron might have gone
through slit b interferes with the possibility that
it might have gone through slit c.
QUANTUM MECHANICS KOAN
Potentiality is reality.
SOME DEFINITIONS
Epistemology – All about explaining, describing,
and predicting things.
 Ontology – What really exists and what is its
nature?

THE WAVE FUNCTION
SCHRODINGER EQUATION
THE PLOT SO FAR
Particles can act like waves. Waves can act like
particles.
 Possibilities are “real.”
 When things happen they happen randomly and
unpredictably
 The ultimate level of reality is a mathematical
function that cannot be observed directly and
contains hidden information of uncertain
significance.

WORSE YET

We create properties by observing them.
EVEN WORSE
We create properties by observing the.
 So do we create the universe by observing it?

TWO-SLIT EXPERIMENT REVISITED
THE EPR EXPERIMENT
ULTIMATE REALITY?
Quantum fields fill all space; one field for each
kind of particle.
 Particles are just localized bunches of energy
carried by the fields.
 Particles can appear and disappear
spontaneously from the fields.
 Perhaps the universe appeared in just this way.

The Tao of Physics, Fritjof
Capra, Shambala Press,
Berkeley, 1975
JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
Nothing is more important about the quantum
principle that this, that it destroys the concept of
the world as sitting ‘out there.’ … the
measurement changes the state of the electron.
The universe will never afterwards be the same.
To describe what has happened, one has to cross
out that old word ‘observer’ and put in its place
the new word ‘participator.’ In some strange
sense the universe is a participatory universe.
WERNER HEISENBERG
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature
exposed to our method of questioning.
FROM THE UPANISHADS
Where there is duality, as it were, there one sees
another; there one smells another; there one
tastes another … But where everything has
become just one’s own self, then whereby and
whom would one see? Then whereby and whom
would one smell? Then whereby and whom would
one taste?
CHANG TSAI
When the ch’i condenses, its visibility becomes
apparent so that there are then the shapes of
individual things. When it disperses, its visibility
is no longer apparent and there are no shapes. At
the time of its condensation, can one say
otherwise than that this is but temporary? But at
the time of its dispersing, can one hastily say
that it is then non-existent.
 The Great Void cannot but consist of ch’i; this ch’i
cannot but condense to form all things; and these
things cannot but become dispersed so as to form
(once again) the Great Void.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY?
Multiple levels of reality
 Escape from determinism
 Might God act through quantum processes?
 Quantum physics and theology have similar
methodologies.

Quantum Physics and Theology:
An Unexpected Kinship,
John Polkinghorne,
Yale University Press, 2007
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THEOLOGY: AN
UNEXPECTED KINSHIP
Understanding comes from the interplay of
factual data and interpretative theory.
 Progress is made when critical questions are
explored.
 Some discoveries radically transform and
expands our horizon.
 Occasionally critical events transform their
subject immediately.

QUANTUM MECHANICS AS METAPHOR
There is an underlying level of reality to which
we have only indirect access.
 Everything in the universe is entangled in a
mysterious way.
 We live in a participatory universe.
