Quantum Living - Part Seven - Newton Dethroned

EINSTEIN, PLANCK, BOHR AND OTHERS

Starting around 1905, Albert Einstein's theory of Relativity widened the crack in Newton's paradigm. Suddenly, the clockwork universe had a clock that kept different times for different viewpoints, and even the length of the clock hands varied depending on the speed you travelled! This by itself so rattled Isaac's cage that the scientific world basically carried on as if nothing much had happened for quite some time.

While relativity is easily understood today, and even a clever high school child can follow it, such was not always the case. To get to the very simple explanations we use today, some very heavy mathematical work was once found necessary. It was said at one time that in all the world, you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who understood the theory.

This was not because the theory itself is that difficult. Rather, it was because the primary thought paradigm of the day could not find room for such a thought process. It was not an issue of intelligence, nor of learning, but of acceptance. That is why it can be understood today with far less effort. After all, nearly a hundred years has gone by - and that is roughly what it seems to take.

The equivalency of energy and matter (E = MC²) pushed further in the direction of breaking down the old models - since now all things could be viewed as energy, and it then was logical to ask if Maxwell's model was more appropriate than Newton's. Was the world, after all, made of electro-magnetic waves? This would force a complete re-thinking of how we, and our world, are made.

Max Planck's idea of quantum energy completed the process. By relating waves and particles in an even more bizarre twist of mathematics, Planck showed that just as matter was energy, so energy was material, in a sense. From Planck's work also came a set of laws that provided the 'rule book' for what particles could exist, and when. It was as if the blueprint of creation had been found. It turn out that matter and energy are not smooth and continuous - they are lumpy - and the lumps are called quanta. A quantum is the smallest bit of energy that a particle can emit or absorb, so instead of absorbing or giving off energy continuously, it holds back till a 'quantum' of energy can be accepted or released.

What the new work was also saying was this. The particles we are made of have an existence that is governed by probability. That is, they are not exactly there - they are only probably there, and that probability only reaches 100%, or 1, when we interrupt the particle to measure if it's there. The was expressed by Physicist Ervin Schroedinger as the 'Schroedinger Wave Equation' and the 'Uncertainty Principle'.

Even Einstein rebelled. He said something like, "God does not play dice."

Well, it turns out that God does play dice - with everything we see. This brings a new perspective to the understanding of 'reality', and it is one that our society and culture has not yet adapted to. We are still Newtonians, and we get away with it most of the time, because Newton's idea of a clockwork universe is a fairly good approximation most of the time. But the world that we live in now relies on Planck and his colleagues, whether we understand it on not.

In Planck's work can be seen the basis of the modern chemical revolution. The atomic theory work of Neils Bohr and others, leaning on Planck's concepts, showed how macro-atomic structure was built up, based on the permitted electron orbits as predicted by quantum theory. Quantum energy defines the orbital structure of the atom, determining how atoms may join and combine (and break apart). We are still pursuing this into the world of bio-genetics as we unravel the magic of DNA. The rules for interlocking electron orbits determine how the molecules of all things are assembled.

Quantum rules are behind all the things that drive our modern computer and communications age- and most of us are oblivious to it.