The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world in which we live. But almost a century after their advent, most people haven’t the slightest clue what either is about. Radio astronomer, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown talks to fellow stargazer Fred Watson about his book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.
Bio
Marcus Chown
Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist.
The Magic Furnace, Marcus' second book, was chosen in Japan as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun. In the UK, the Daily Mail called it "a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter". His latest book is called Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.
Fred Watson
Fred Watson is astronomer in charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran, where his main scientific interest is gathering information on very large numbers of stars and galaxies. He is an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Southern Queensland and James Cook University.
Watson is well-known for his astronomy slots on ABC radio. His books include Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope and Why is Uranus Upside Down?, which won the 2008 Queensland Premier’s Award for Science Writing.
He worked on the ABC's new blockbuster Universe as chief consultant. In 2003 Fred received the David Allen Prize for communicating astronomy to the public, and in 2006 was the winner of the Australian Government Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science.
Theory that brings quantum mechanics and special relativity together to account for subatomic phenomena. In particular, the interactions of subatomic particles are described in terms of their interactions with fields, such as the electromagnetic field. However, the fields are quantized and represented by particles, such as photons for the electromagnetic field. Quantum electrodynamics is the quantum field theory that describes the interaction of electrically charged particles via electromagnetic fields. Quantum chromodynamics describes the action of the strong force. The electroweak theory, a unified theory of electromagnetic and weak forces, has considerable experimental support, and can likely be extended to include the strong force. Theories that include the gravitational force (seegravitation) are more speculative. See alsogrand unified theory, unified field theory.
Sadly, if you want to learn anything about quantum theory (or anything else mentioned in this video), I would suggest, you do NOT watch this insufferable piece. The people on the podium know next to nothing about how to present the subjects they like to be talking about, yet they take themselves VERY seriously.
Having said that, QM is one of those things in life that you can either learn professionally or will not understand correctly at all. There are no mental shortcuts and, unfortunately, the mathematics of QM (without which you will not learn anything useful) requires a basic understanding of, at the very least, the advanced description of classical mechanics. And by that I do not mean Newton's laws that are being taught in high school but a Hamiltonian formulation that is usually not taught below the undergraduate level.
Now, as to the question about the violation of conservation laws... that does NOT happen in quantum mechanics. One can draw a box around any physical system and measure the ingoing and outgoing energy and the net balance will be zero, even with quantum mechanics acting in the box. Same for any other classical conservation law. What quantum mechanics simply does is to make the system under observation react to the effects of the walls... in other words, boxing something in does indeed raise the energy levels of everything on the inside. If one make that box small enough, the energy levels are raised above the limits set by the relativistic equivalence of matter and energy and matter particles like electrons will occur inside the box that would not have been visible there without the walls. That doesn't mean that they were created from "nothing". What it does mean, though, is that we will have to expend some amount of energy to BUILD THE BOX in the first place! In other words... the quantum mechanical vacuum behaves similar to a classical gas: squeeze it and pressure and temperature rise! And in order to squeeze a gas, and in the same way the quantum mechanical vacuum, we have to push the walls of our box together with some finite force. The smaller we want to make the box, the harder we have to push. Te harder we push, the more the energy density in the volume rises. Eventually there is enough energy in there to create copious amounts of virtual particles.
The paradox is really just that... a problem of misunderstanding. It only occurs when we make the naive assumption that the vacuum is classical, i.e. completely empty and therefor no energy would be required to partition it. In reality, there is no such thing as a classical vacuum and the energy that it takes to box the real, physical vacuum in is exactly the energy of the virtual particles that one will find in the newly created partition.
It is soooooo annoying when the host of a science subject tries to be a comedian.
While speaking of annoying things... PLEASE FORA.tv - match the volume levels of your programs with that of your commercial introductions. You are picking up a bad habit of broadcasters. There is technical equipment to normalize audio output levels of the whole site if you would just use them.
Quantum theory is bunk. the axioms that are being presumed here such as dark energy and dark matter are known to be wrong. just google Nassim Haramein and devour the research he has made into putting together a grand unified field theory. He has tied together the sub atomic quantum world to the biological scale and the universal scale.
The theory which we call Quantum Mechanics is very strange.
Because when we are talking about mechanics it means that we can
imagine and see this process visually. But QM came with no visual
aids, no model to picture in one's mind. Now this theory is a purely
mathematical formalism, difficult to use and impossible to visualize.
It simply gives the right answers to the most complicated theoretical
question. Such situation satisfy maybe 99% of physicists.
But there are few physicists who don’t agree with this situation.
They want to understand QT without paradoxes.
I consider that these paradoxes are connected with only one reason:
" Nobody pays attention to the geometrical form of particles".
Now the physicists follow "pure" mathematicians.
"Since the mathematical physicists have taken over,
theoretical physics has gone to pot. The bizarre concepts generated
out of the over use and misinterpretation of mathematics would be
funny if it were not for the tragedy of the waste in time, manpower,
money, and the resulting misdirection." - - said Richard Feynman.
There is difference between "pure" mathematics and the mathematics
of theoretical physics.
" Pure" mathematics is infinite and the mathematics of theoretical
physics is limited by natural laws. The "pure" mathematicians have
all rights to create and use abstract models ( point, line …etc)
Physicists must use mathematical apparatus in connection with real
objects, with real particles. And they forgot about this fact.
For example.
1. In thermodynamics particles are "mathematical points",
2. In QT particles are "mathematical points",
3. In SRT, particles are points. But according SRT the
"mathematical point", cannot be a firm "mathematical point" .
It means it is a "elastic point", which can change its form. ( ??!! ).
4. When this "mathematical elastic point" flies with speed c=1
its form become a flat circle, not a " mathematical point"
flying with speed c=1.
5. In QED an electron is an elastic sphere, which can change its form. ( ??!! ).
6. The power, impulse, linear and angular momentum in physics is
also a " mathematical point".
7. Then one "mathematical point" /particle/ interacts with another
"mathematical point" / power, impulse / the physicists say:
" The micro-world is paradoxical."
8. If physicists think about a particle as a " mathematical point"
the result can be only paradoxical. And I am sure if somebody
takes into consideration the geometrical form of particle the
paradoxes of QT will disappear.
===== .
In an Italian railway station:
It was more then two hours 'till the departure of the train.
I went to the café and ordered a cup of coffee. Soon two men
and a very beautiful, slim woman took a place opposite me.
They ordered something to drink and one of the man opened
a case of violin and took out a bow. He began to explain
something about the bow, carefully and gently touching it.
Then another man took this bow and also enthusiastically
continued this conversation. For half an hour the bow was passed
from one hands to another followed with enthusiastic discussion.
And the beautiful woman looked at bow, at both these men without
saying a word. For half an hour I watched this group with admiration
and excitement. What a class! What a cultural level!
What a beauty!
And now let's imagine the bow pressed into a "mathematical point"
and the musicians speak seriously about a "mathematical point"
which must produce a sound from a violin.
Everybody will say I describe an idiotic situation.
Well, I agree.
But why doesn't anybody say it to physicists when they observe
an elementary particle as a "mathematical point" , without paying
attention to its geometrical form.
When Feynman said "I think I can safely say that nobody
understands quantum mechanics." it was only because nobody took
into consideration the geometrical form of a particle.
==========.
Best wishes.
Israel Sadovnik Socratus.
The cosmologist priesthood still fails to consider the emphatic ways in which plasma physics explains many of the phenomena available in the observable universe. The BIG BANG could well be a local phenomenon with many little bangs going off all the time, creating many of the effects we see around us in the "local universe" i.e. its tendency to follow field lines, just as in plasma cloud chambers on earth. The apparent _bubble effect_ of local galaxies is one example.
Good point Piko...I think Dave needs to get try and get a paper published with his "idea" of why so many top scientist over the past 100 years simply do not know what he does about the universe. LOL!
member. 
