Quantum Physics
is NOT weird
Quantum Physics
is NOT weird
On the Contrary
It is how we create the world
Paul J. van Leeuwen
First English edition - ISBN: 978-94-6342-719-7
Text and coverphoto: Ir. Paul J. van Leeuwen MSc
Coverphoto: De Nollen 2013 - Project W. van de Wint.
ISBN: 978-94-6367-560-4 (Paperback - 1e edition - Dutch)
ISBN: 978-94-6342-703-6 (E-book - dutch)
ISBN: 978-94-6342-719-7 (Paperback - 2e edition - Dutch)
Copyright © 2021, Paul J. van Leeuwen
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author's rights.
All pictures in this book are made by the author or found at Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated. In that case the source - when known - will be mentioned.
Preface
This book may present a challenge for you. If you grew up in the Western world where you were told at home, at school, at university and through the media, that the world exists independently of you being there or not being there. Where you were taught that your consciousness is a product of your brain. That life is a matter of the survival of the fittest and that death is the absolute end of every individual. If you are still comfortable in that interpretation of reality, quantum physics could turn out to be a rather uncomfortable branch of science the moment you start to consider its implications. Indeed, a lot of physicists become visibly uneasy when they have to explain quantum physics to lay persons, especially when it comes to the interpretation.
This book may take effort. Working through each chapter seriously, you will have the uneasy experience of encountering some utterly strange ideas about the world in which you thought to exist. Uneasy, not so much because quantum physics is a weird tricky mind-bending subject, but mainly because you are asked to temporarily abandon your firm certainty that the universe is always outside over there, objective and independent of you. Quantum physics seems to imply that you, yes you, are the creator of your world just by observing it. It contradicts the common western idea of consciousness as a product of the brain. Such a message could give you the feeling of losing the solid ground under your feet. Some little voice in you may insist, 'No, no, that cannot be true'.
Given this uneasy feeling of losing ground, it's not surprising that the outcome of the quantum physics experiment in Delft in 2015 with entangled electrons caused the media to report in large headlines 'Quantum physics is definitely weird'.
That is why it is natural and expected that you put the book occasionally aside a while to ponder its ideas, or even just to put it out of your mind for a while. Let that happen. Let the book rest for a while on a place where it invites you to be picked up again in due time. Paper, real or virtual, is patient. For those readers who act in such a way, after such a rest, you are likely to find the material more digestible on re-reading. Re-reading is a good strategy for this book. I hope you will, upon review of the evidence I will present, become convinced that the world exists thanks to us, not the other way around.
We will start with the dawn of Western science in Greece and man's idea of his place in the cosmos and of the earth on which he walks. The roots of our western image of the world around us start there.
We will look at the Ptolemaic model of perfectly circular planetary and solar movements around a stationary earth that lasted a good 14 centuries, despite its erroneous and complex model. We will look at the famous foursome Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei and Newton, that positioned the sun in the middle amidst the planets, in stark opposition to the belief of their contemporaries in the god(s)-driven circular revolutions of the planets.
By them came the birth and first impressive successes of classical physics about. Its fundamental assumption was that everything in the universe consisted of little hard balls of various sizes moving under the influence of a mysterious force called gravity. We follow the growing confidence of scientists in their assumption that classical physics will be able to explain all the phenomena in the universe. Their confidence is severely undercut at the end of the 19th century by the unexpected discovery of the Planck quantum. The subsequent heated discussions about the interpretation of quantum physics continue until this day. We will examine in detail the most intriguing quantum experiments, performed first as thought experiments and later in practice. These experiments confirm the vision of an observer manifested reality of the universe.
I will describe the role of quantum phenomena in living nature that were not recognized before the beginning of the 21st century. I will address the role that information, when it reaches our minds, has on the world. However, I do not support the idea of a non-material mind having an effect on physical matter, that would be plain magic. Finally, I shall introduce, on the basis of the above-mentioned quantum physics experiments the hypothesis of a cosmic consciousness. That will answer a lot of the mind-bending questions evoked by quantum physics ... and many more.
This book is the product of my personal journey of discovery in the world of quantum physics and the astonishing role of our consciousness in it. It is also a tale of the journey of discovery of mankind in the search for what the universe really is and what we are doing in it. The reader with an open mind will discover that the universe is not the objective, material and indifferent stage in which man accidentally happened to be caught up. It is an environment that we ourselves continuously create and that invites us in turn to use our greatest possible creativity.
Ir. Paul J. van Leeuwen MSc. The Hague, 2021
Reading guide
Browsing the Internet, I find awkward titles like 'Quantum mechanics for beginners', 'Quantum physics for beginners' and even 'Quantum physics for dummies'. Well, I assure you, quantum physics is definitely not a subject for dummies. If you really want to understand the message of the quantum world then you will have to think and ponder long and deep. When you hear or read something like 'A quantum object is at the same time a particle and a wave' and you don't feel the slightest urge to tackle that paradox, I doubt you will ever master the real message of quantum physics. I recommend that, when you really want to make the contents of this book part of your intellectual property, read, re-read, and re-read again. Save the parts that do not really seem to land safely on first reading just for later and move on to the chapter conclusion. You can always pick up later. Take your time.
Newly introduced concepts will be explained in detail when introduced for the first time. Further on in the book, when a concept comes up again, it will be highlighted with a link to the glossary. You will find there a concise explanation as well as a link back to the page where the concept was introduced first. This can be of great help when you encounter the concept somewhere and you would like to refresh your memory anew.
Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the beginning and development of classical Newtonian physics until the moment that quantum physics made its ground-breaking entry at the start of the 20th century.
Chapter 4 and 5 are about how the quantum phenomena confronted the physicists with baffling problems and how they tried to deal with that.
Chapter 6 deals with eight of the most common quantum hypotheses and seven important experiments. Each experiment is carefully weighted concerning the significance of its results