Demystifying Science: Physical Reality

Jun 16, 2011
Scott Potter

Matter - Image created by Scott Potter

In this fifth article in the series Demystifying Science we will cover the historical basis underlying the Quantum age.

In this brief series of articles, I have explored some important distinctions between science and pseudoscience. In the story of Clever Hans, we saw how easy it is for for perfectly normal groups of people to get swept up into a frenzy over something as simple as a horse who loved sugar.

In the movie Being There, this fictional comedy depicted the all-too-human inclination to fill in the blanks and make assumptions concerning missing information in our day-to-day experiences.

I then narrowed the focus on the nature of scientific inquiry in the third article. In the fourth article I introduced the challenge of providing a scientific basis for the very existence of a physical universe, which is essential to a foundation in the physical sciences. In particular, I started by explaining how studies in human anatomy and physiology have demonstrated that our sense receptors provide only a medium between the internal world of the mind and the external world, and that there is no physical basis upon which to suppose any object or event is real in any way apart from our perceptions of it. Hollywood has made a mint or two demonstrating how that resonates with audiences in one sci-fi blockbuster hit after another. The question now is - do objects exist even when no one is around to observe them?

Background

In this article we will review the historical background leading to the early 20th century debates on the Principle of Quantum Uncertainty in terms anyone can understand. In the next article I will then focus specifically on those debates. Having already discussed human anatomy and physiology, here we will find further evidence that the mind actually co-creates physical reality. In other words, mind over matter. It doesn’t seem possible, does it? How can my mind create the computer in front of me? How can my mind create the chair on which I’m seated? Well, it isn’t creating things in the same way we think of stories of magicians and wizards simply willing things into existence.

Prior to the age of classical mechanics western civilization rested on a clear distinction between earthly laws and heavenly laws, as descended from the Greco-roman tradition of gods Gaea (earth) and Ouranos (sky). It was simply not thought possible to know the perfect and immutable heavens in imperfect earthly terms. To even suppose this was heresy. In a move no less stunning than Moses parting the Red Sea Isaac Newton opened the sky when he demonstrated that the orbits of the planets could be explained in the same terms of a falling apple. This made the modern pursuit of astrophysics something people began to take seriously.

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

The history of science is a history of unifying ideas, and the greatest unifying idea of all began stirring when Robert Young performed the famous double-slit experiment in 1801. This experiment was devised to resolve a debate between Isaac Newton and rival Christian Huygens. Newton supposed that light was comprised of “corpuscles” or discrete photons, while Huygens suggested that light was comprised of continuous waves. Young’s experiment was inspired by the naturalistic observation that when you throw a stone into a still pond waves radiate in all directions. When you throw two stones at the same time into a still pond their waves meet and form interference patterns. By casting a light source through two very fine and closely placed slits in a barrier the resulting interference pattern on a distant wall conclusively proved that light was indeed a continuous wave, not discontinuous particles.

However, it would not be until well towards the end of the 19th century that physicists were considering the problems of thermodynamics and paying special attention to microscopic scales of size and distance. It seemed they had unified the laws of heaven and earth, but the universe was still divided on the matter of mass and energy. How did matter interact with light? The introduction of the light bulb shattered Newton's physics, resulting in what became known as the "ultra-violet catastrophe". In other words, according to classical physics a light bulb should give off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation, but it doesn't.

The Quantum Age Begins

To resolve this problem Max Planck proposed a bizarre new concept called a quanta in 1900 suggesting that at microscopic scales energy comes in discrete quantities and is thus quantized. It was both a thing and event simultaneously, yet it was neither of these things. It was also something virtually no one was going to take seriously, until in 1905 when Albert Einstein published a paper on the photo-electric effect, which explained the process in a way that could be demonstrated. Light was now proven to be comprised of both waves and particles?

At first blush this doesn’t seem to be a problem, since we also know that the ocean is comprised of molecules of water and waves of water. But then, if light is comprised of waves of something and particles of something, then what is this something, and how does information traverse interstellar space? Well, the Michelson-Morley experiment in the late 19th century was devised to detect the presence of the aether supposed to be that very substance. To their amazement, no such aether could be detected to explain the nature of light. As bizarre as the Planck's idea was it was difficult to accept before Einstein miracle year of 1905 when he published no less than four legendary papers laying the foundations for 20th century physics.

So modern physics is now based on the notion that at sub-atomic scales of size and distance matter and energy are basically the same quantized thing/event. What will be carefully explained in the next article is how we can in fact know that nothing exists at all without the presence of an observer. In keeping with the earlier article on scientific inquiry It will also be carefully explained as to how that is possible.