The unusual ideas about the nature of the subatomic world, where electrons can't be located at any particular point in a nuclear orbit, undermine the determined-predicable Newtonian classical Laws of the big universe, the macrocosm as predetermined and operating like a big clockwork mechanism.

At the microcosm level, there is no way to locate the position of a subatomic particle, unless we are willing to be very uncertain about the particle's momentum And there is no way to accurately locate the particle's momentum, unless we are willing to be very uncertain about its position. We are certain of the uncertainty of quantum particles, as at any given moment, the electron itself can't know BOTH where it is and where it is going.

As we see, the quantum universe is inconsistent with the largest universe of galaxies, so the predetermined Newtonian paradigm.

One of Einstein's most famous quotes was "God does not play dice with the world!". So if Einstein was confident that the most fundamental proprieties of the universe were not based on probability but on certainty, HOW COME the uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr had been defined as the unalterable LIMITS about what could be know about a quantum object?

The quantum weirdness challenges our conception of what is reality and the most significant classical theories of the universe up until the 20th century. That bring to the question, can we provide a theory of everything at all, as Einstein tried to do so, by attempting to combine the uncertainty of the subatomic world with the certainty of the billions of galaxies throughout the universe with a Unified field Theory?

Can we combine all the forces of the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force and find ONE certain-tangible and orderly principle of the universe or like Einstein opponents' on theories on quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr believed reality is an uncertainty principle.

What could be the nature of reality? The Heisenberg-Bohr uncertainty principle, or the Einstein speculative perfect Law of a universe of certainty?

Pls feedback!

AfroMan

Afroman,

Well, nothing like asking a big question.

While it is true that quantum physics and relativistic physics do not meet--that is, they seem to have some fundamentally opposed concepts--the fact that both describe the world well on their particular scales tells us that one day we can find the joint between them.

Scientists have long known that the way that science is done in the west is to 1. Make a specific observation, 2. Jump to a generalized conclusion about that observation, and 3. Test the conclusions that we just jumped to to see if it is gernerally true.

So science is the art of jumping to the right conclusion. It doesn't always.

It also goes wrong when it tries to conclude about things outside of its observable universe, such as "If electrons cannot be detected simultaneously in their position and location, then they A. Do not "know" where they are, B. Do not exist until they are detected."

These last two are speculations that are not scientific, and thus they were the basis for the huge argument between Einstein and Bohr. Both were drawing conclusions about the world that they had seen and extending them into the world that they had not yet seen. They weren't always right.

When Einstein said what he did about God not playing dice with his universe, Bohr replied, "And who is Einstein to tell God how he is to run his universe?"

However, BOhr went beyond the mere facts of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to try to apply it to other, larger parts of the universe, without much success.

One of the reasons quantum physicis said what it did about the electron and position and momentum and whether it knows where it is is simply becuase we cannot predict what a particular elecron will do under certain circumstances.The Stern-Gerlach Experiment showed that a nonspinning electrically charged body sent through a magnetic field will not be deflected from its Newtonian course by the magnetic field. However, a spinning electrically charged body will be so deflected.

A beam of electrons emitted through a magnetic field IS deflected up or down, which shows that, since electrons are electrically charged and deflected, they therefore have spin. But since half of the electrons are deflected up (let's say), and half of them deflected down, then those electrons must have opposite spins.

The problem is, we cannot look at an electron and say, "That one will be deflected up," because we don't know what it will do until it does it.

The same holds true for emitting electrons through a parallel set of slits. If we send them through one slit, they will form a dot on the receiving screen just like a beam of particles. If they are sent through more than one slit at a time, however, they form interference patterns just like a beam of light waves does.

So are they particles or waves? How do we know?

This is still the subject of a great deal of debate among physicists. While we see the results--which have been borne out many times since Stern and Gerlach performed the first one--we're not sure what the results mean.

Superstring theory is very promising--the theory that everything is made up of energy--and seems to indicate that we live in a ten-dimensional universe but that six or seven of the dimensions are so small-scale that only subatomic particles are affected by them. That would explain why electrons are so weird to our macroscale way of thinking. We even have to borrow terms from other ways of living to try to explain what we've found, but those bhorrowings are not always helpful. How can an electron be said to "know" anything, let alone where it is and where it's going? That's a scientist trying to be poetic and not succeeding. That's why they're physicists and not poets.

But to then go on to say that the world is not as we see it when in fact it most certainly is (we just don't always know why it is), is to go beyond our knowledge and even perhaps to start saying what is not sense.

The theories of Heisenberg and Bohr--remember, sometimes they did disagree--are not the "limits" of anythng. We have learned much since their time, and people are not afraid to argue and disagree with their theories and to go beyond them.

People even disagree with Einstein sometimes, simply because he started with the assumption that it is right to use a noneuclidian geometry to describe the universe. Are there no parallel lines? Yes, on a very large scale, but the universe looks pretty parallel on a smaller scale.

People are still investigating and questioning Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg.

Can we provide a theory of everything? I think we will. We certainly have physicists hard at work on it, and in a way they are close to doing so--even if it takes them a long time to complete that task. After all, we have equations that show the relationships between the other three forces in the huniverse, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. This was all started by James Clerk Maxwell and others over a century ago when they discovered that electricity and magnetism are related. People then wondered what else is related, and when the nuclear forces were discovered in this century, investigators tried to find if they were part of the same force. They were.

The only fundamental force we wonder about now is gravity. We don't know how it works, really, nor how it is propagated over distances and whether there are gravity waves or gravitons. But we're working on it. That discovery will be the necessary step toward a GUT, a Grand Unified Theory, a "theory of everything," as some physicists optimistically call it.

Your last question has more than one question in it, for it depends on what answer you are looking for. The "nature" of the universe is this one that you know something about already--it's much, much stranger than we think, or than it looks. It's a universe of uncertainty in small specifics but certainty on a large scale. We know the speed of light in a vacuum and see gravitational lensing. We know the period/luminosity relationship of Cepheid variables and understand the proton-proton chain.

We also know that we cannot point to an electron and say "That one will go to the right," but we do know that half of all of them will. We know something about the quantum effects that make your radio antenna work, but we don't know quite yet if everything is made up only of energy. We strongly suspect it, and I think it makes a lot of sense, but we're not precisely sure yet.

We know that all chemical reactions involve only electrons, and synchrotron radiation can be caused by the very shielding we use to protect ourselves from it.

We also know that "A soft answer turns away wrath."

So a lot depends on what you mean.

I think it means that we live in quite an adventurous place.

quote:

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Originally posted by Melesi:

Well, nothing like asking a big question.

While it is true that quantum physics and relativistic physics do not meet--that is, they seem to have some fundamentally opposed concepts--the fact that both describe the world well on their particular scales tells us that one day we can find the joint between them.

---

There are places where the smallness of the quantum world meets the largeness of the cosmological relativistic world. Small meets large under conditions approached near the big bang. Perhaps once we meld our theories of the small together with our theories of the large, we will be able to peer across the big bang, to see what is on the other side. What was the world like "before" the big bang?

"La vida te da sorpresas... Sorpresas te da la vida..., ¡Ay, Dios!"    Rubén Blades---Pedro Navaja    Plowshares Actions The Nuclear Resister School of the Americas Watch

Cauca, Colombia

Quantum physics is helpful in cosmology to a point. It's greatest contribution has been investigating the subatomic world under extraodrinary circumstances, creating particles that exist for the merest fractions of a second. Applying those findings to the possible conditions of the early universe in or even several microseconds before Inflation has been helpful to our understanding of what the early universe was like, and thus the underpinnings of our own.

However, since the universe is infinite but bounded, and since it seems to be unidirectional (it expands but doesn't seem to have any possibility of contracting), and since the occurance of the Big Bang is possible, illuminating, and logical but so far a mathematical theory with some very good support, we might get to the moment of the Big Bang in our understanding, but there most likely isn't an "across" or an "other side" to see. Being on the inside of a universe tends to limit our sight to that universe.

M theory (Membrane Theory) has a possibility of a kind of explanation if it proves to be right, but it is so odd and so untestable that at present it's little more than a theorist's plaything. We'll see about that.

But so far, while the universe seems to have come into existence at a particular point, why or how it did or what was before is only the most speculative of theories. What can be said to be "before" time?

However, it will be an interesting next fifty years in cosmology.

Thank you both for your feedback as indeed this is a BIG question lol!

Seriously, do you both believe physicists and cosmologists will ever succeed in finding the 'Holy Grail' at uniting the four Fundamental Forces of the Universe? Yes, which would take us back at the FIRST MINUTES of Creation and its origin, given the fact that it's in this period the 4 forces where combined!!

Countless astute scientists and the Great Einstein himself searched for a Unified Field Theory but FAILED, which could mean that maybe we humans a mere speck in Creation are not supposed to have a FULL knowledge of the secrets of the Cosmos..not as yet.


In the meantime, the paradox arising the weirdness of the subatomic universe and the certainty of the macro-universe are incredibly important and difficult for me to understand ...

AfroMan.

[This message was edited by Afroman on September 18, 2003 at 02:48 PM.]

Afroman,

It has puzzled many a physicist, too. I remember not so many years ago a physicist describing an electron as "a negative twist of nothingness."

Quite a statement coming from a physicist.

But keep at it, Afroman, and you'll understand more and more. At least I hope that I will.

As for not being supposed to find out certain things, we can't be sure just what those things are until we don't find them out, I guess. But we have to

1. Try, and

2. Be patient when we don't immediately find the answer. We might indeed not be supposed to find that answer just yet. If that's the case, then we won't. But we have to try even if we fail for the moment. One day we'll succeed.