Quantum mechanics
This single particle dynamics brings life under the sway of that most strange of sciences: quantum mechanics. Many people are familiar with the peculiarities of Einstein’s theory of relativity – bending of time and space - but it is less well known that he also helped to found that other triumph of 20th century physics – quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics is so strange that even he could never accept its implications.
Quantum mechanics is built upon a series of simple observations. One of the strangest is known as the ‘double-slit experiment’.
| Single particles are fired through a pair of slits. The patterns they produce indicate that each particle passed through both slits simultaneously. As well as being in two places at once, individual particles can be shown to inhabit two different energy states, or be travelling in two different directions. Indeed, particles are not limited to being in two states, they can be a billion places at once or in billion states at the same time. However, once the system interacts with the outside world, the ghostly superposition of different states vanishes and the system ‘chooses’ to be in one state, or one place, at one time. | |
These simple observations have startling implications but physicists have never been able to agree on how to interpret them. In some interpretations, conscious beings make ‘quantum measurements’ and thereby draw out of the quantum superposition, a particular classical reality. In others, signals travel backward in time to connect every particle in the universe. Today, one of the most popular interpretations, and one that has the backing of Nobel prize-winning physicists , is that there exists a multiverse in which everything that can happen does happen. Although our conscious self inhabits only one branch of the multiverse – our own universe – fundamental particles inhabit the entire multiverse and it is this property that allows them to occupy multiple states simultaneously. Each state is in a parallel universe.
Double-slit experiments were initially performed with just simple particles, electrons, protons, or photons. However as the technology advanced, bigger and more complex systems were shown to enter quantum states.
| Profesor Anton Zeillinger's group in Vienna have recently demonstrated that the fullerene molecule, composed of 60 carbon atoms (the famous ‘buckyball’), can pass through two slits simultaneously. Few physicists doubt that as the technology advances, bigger and more complex systems will be shown to inhabit the quantum world. Fullerene molecules are spheres with a diameter similar to that of the DNA double helix. If fullerene can enter the quantum multiverse then DNA may do the same. |  |