Sunday, 27 March 2011

Quantum physics, perhaps

      So, once again I have forgotten to come up with a good subject for a post in time. Also, my computer was half dead, so that didn't help. But with ten minutes on the clock, let's see if I can throw something together.
      Recently I've been watching lectures by Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. I strongly advise you to watch them, but you probably won't. Anyway, I've decided to use this space to write about my fascination with quantum physics. You see, as a child I got to the point in thinking that, despite chaos theory (in a way because of it), everything could hypothetically be predicated if you knew everything about it and had a large enough computer. If you hit a ball, you could work out exactly where it will go. So, applying this thinking to a larger scale, you would be able to find out exactly what would happen to the universe if you knew the position and movement of every atom. This is known as determinism.
      Then I discovered quantum physics. Basically, what was once a nice ordered world turns out to be completely random when you look incredibly closely. The universe is random. And no one knows why. A photon reflected off a piece of glass has about a one in twenty five chance of reflecting. For no known reason. What's more, if you put a second piece of glass beneath it the chance of that photon reflecting anywhere changes. And they're not really sure why. They are at a point where they know more from maths than science. How can anyone not be fascinated by that?
      Okay, that's my time, I'd go on more, but can't. Watch the lectures. Bye.

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