Umbrae
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Niels Bohr
It was Newton’s clockwork universe, following lovely laws that helped create the ‘free will’ problem of a deterministic universe.
In 1906 JJ Thompson received the Nobel Prize for proving that electrons are particles.
In 1937 his son was awarded the Nobel Price for proving that electrons are waves.
But electrons can’t be both?!? Yet both are correct. Protons, neutrons also posses the same properties.
Further…
Perhaps the way to a better understanding of the nature of the universe lies in the part of the physical world that has largely been ignored in quantum theory so far. Quantum mechanics tells us a lot about material particles; it tells us scarcely anything at all about empty space. Yet as Eddington remarked more than fifty years ago in The Nature of the Physical World, the revolution that created our picture of solid matter as very largely empty space is more fundamental than the revolution brought about by relativity theory. Even a solid object like my desk, or this book, is actually almost all empty space. The proportion of matter to space is smaller even than the proportions of a grain of sand compared with the Albert Hall. The one thing quantum theory does seem to tell us about this neglected 99.99999 ...percent of the universe is that it is seething with activity, a maelstrom of virtual particles. Unfortunately, the same quantum equations that yield infinite solutions in QED also tell us that the energy density of the vacuum is infinite, and renormalization has to be applied even to empty space. When the standard quantum equations are combined with those of general relativity to attempt a better description of reality, the situation is even worse-infinities still occur, but now they cannot even be renormalized. Clearly, we are barking up the wrong tree. But which tree should we be barking up?
John Gribbion – In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat
One does not have to go very far to find that modern physics refutes the Newtonian view, that once we begin to move to the particulate and sub-particulate world – reality as we know it, breaks down.
Sources?
Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Einstein, de Broglie, Jeans, Planck, Pauli, Eddington…all agreed without exception embraced the opinion that the mystical, transcendental view of the world as spiritual as opposed to material was valid and true. Any quantum teacher, or student - knows that.
...You can fly the starship Enterprise wherever you wish - it's not real. Just like the desk your monitor is sitting on...
Einstein described how moving clocks run slow. At the speed of light, time stands still…the clock stops. For a photon that’s been traveling through space since the big bang (let’s say 15 thousand millions years or so), the moment of the big bang and our time are the same time to the photon. Because motion through time has no meaning for the photon – it is it’s own antiparticle.The crowned one said:…but time and space still exist, …
Because of Einstein’s work, we now know that there is no ‘universal time’ that permeates the universe – it is all relative (“it depends”). If we have two events that occur at the same time in one frame of reference, they will occur at different times when seen from other frames of reference.
“Sooner”, “later”, “Simultaneous” are relative terms. Which is why I always tell folks to journal with Tarot. Your very concept of time and mine may vary in real life.
Einstein, when working with his relativity theory, stated that there is no such thing as space and time, only that there was space-time, which is a continuum (meaning that it cannot be broken down into components).
According to Newtonian physics, our three-dimensional reality is separate from, and moves forward in, a one-dimensional time.
Relativity blows this out of the water. Our reality is four-dimensional!
Newton saw space and time as a dynamic picture. Things develop with the passage of time (which is one-dimensional and moves forward). Our traditional three-card spread mirrors this paradigm (past-presnt-future).
Relativity says that it’s more practical and useful to think in terms of a static non-moving picture of space, the space-time continuum. In this model, things do not develop, they simply are. If we were able to view our personal reality in the four-dimensional model, we would see that everything that seems to unfold is actually in toto, and presents itself to us as it is.
In 1908, Minkowski said, “Henceforth space by itself and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”
Add to this the improbable and unbelievable (yet true) fact that photons can move in a direction that we perceive as backwards on the continuum, affecting particles in the past…
Buddhist literature does not speak of learning new things about reality, but about removing veils of ignorance that stand between us and what we already are.
…It does apply, however to molecules, which are quite complex compared to subatomic particles; to living cells, which are more complex than molecules; and to people, who are made of billions of cells. It is only at the subatomic, or quantum, level that the forward flow of time loses its significance.
However, there is speculation, and some evidence, that consciousness, at the most fundamental levels, is a quantum process. The dark-adapted eye, for example, can detect a single photon. If this is so then it is conceivable that by expanding our awareness to include functions which normally lie beyond its parameters (the way yogis control their body temperature and pulse rate) we can become aware of (experience) these processes themselves. If, at the quantum level, the flow of time has no meaning, and if consciousness is fundamentally a similar process, and if we can become aware of these processes within ourselves, then it also is conceivable that we can experience timelessness.
If we can experience the most fundamental functions of our psyche, and if they are quantum in nature, then it is possible that the ordinary conceptions of space and time might not apply to them at all (as they don't seem to apply in dreams). Such an experience would be difficult to describe rationally ("Infinity in a grain of sand/ And eternity in an hour"), but it would be very real, indeed. For this reason, reports of time distortion and timelessness from gurus in the East and psychotropic drug users in the West ought not, perhaps, to be discarded peremptorily.
Zukav, on de Broglie, de Wit, Feynman et al.