BingDing
Member
"The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow is a pretty readable account of why quantum physics is different from regular physics. There have been experiments performed for decades about shooting things through a wall with two holes in it. With soccer balls, they all hit the wall behind it in two groups. With electrons (and other atomic sized particles), they all hit the wall behind it in five + groups and look like interfering waves. The technology today is such that they can shoot one electron through a hole every three seconds. And they still spread out to 5 + groups. So a single particle inherently carries some wave function with it. Read the book to see how Feynman explained it.
And to Burtlancast, this is mainstream science, there is nothing mystical about it. I'd think you could do better by trying to understand it, while acknowledging almost no one can do the math and there is no final theory.
The most striking line in the book for me was that of the four forces that they are trying to round up into a single theory, on an atomic and molecular level gravity, and the weak and strong nuclear forces, are irrelevant. Which means that the electromagnetic force dominates at the level we are trying to understand things, and theories about how cells work must account for electric charges and electromagnetic forces between atoms and molecules.
And to Burtlancast, this is mainstream science, there is nothing mystical about it. I'd think you could do better by trying to understand it, while acknowledging almost no one can do the math and there is no final theory.
The most striking line in the book for me was that of the four forces that they are trying to round up into a single theory, on an atomic and molecular level gravity, and the weak and strong nuclear forces, are irrelevant. Which means that the electromagnetic force dominates at the level we are trying to understand things, and theories about how cells work must account for electric charges and electromagnetic forces between atoms and molecules.