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Wonders

Entry 439, on 2006-12-07 at 16:32:27 (Rating 1, Science)

To extend what I blogged about yesterday I wanted to comment further on the wonders of science. The discussion of the greatest scientific discoveries also included what were the greatest wonders of the modern world, and this progressed to the greatest wonders of the Universe.

Several ideas were suggested which I agreed with in general. They included the Big Bang, black holes, relativistic effects, the aurora, nebulae, and how complex life forms from tiny DNA molecules. But in the end I agreed with the conclusion that the most amazing, mind boggling, thing about the Universe is the way its behaviour is described by quantum theory.

As you understand more about most subjects you get a better appreciation of how the subject works internally, and more of it starts making sense. Even apparently complex and counter-intuitive subjects like relativity aren't that complicated (at least as far as the basics are concerned, obviously the technical and mathematical details can be challenging) when you understand a few basic concepts. But with quantum theory, the more you know, the more unbelievably bizarre it becomes.

I watched a lecture yesterday which discussed quantum computers, and how qubits could be manipulated to perform computations. But for someone who learnt classic logic, and computer science, this was weird stuff. For example, what does an operation which does a square root of not do to a boolean value? And how can there be an operation which occurs before and after a not operation, yet still produces an unchanged output? These last two, I presume are the result of the fascinating concept of superposition, but this isn't boolean logic the way I learnt it!

But that's nothing compared with what was going on behind the scenes. The lecturer was saying things like: in one universe the photon goes this way and in another it goes the opposite way, if we block its path in the other universe the photon in this universe is affected, even though there only is or ever was one photon to start with! I just can't figure out how literally to take this concept of other universes. Do they really exist, or are they just a way to understand what is going on in the quantum world.

The whole subject is both fascinating and frustrating. I don't know how many times I have looked at the results of a quantum experiment and just found it impossible to believe that the effect was really happening. Compared to quantum theory, relativity and other esoteric theories look positively mundane!

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