THE
BLUE BOX (Recycled Ideas)
by Don Cox
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February 4, 2003
It's remarkable how times change. It starts with a few minor
trivia, and the first thing you know it's twenty years later
and nothing is the same. For example, a few years ago the
solar system and the galaxies were unassailable bits of
clockwork, and now people are talking about parallel universes.
Chaos used to mean everything was all mixed up, but now
there's a chaos theory that says some mixed up things aren't
entirely mixed up. It's not that the old ideas are wrong,
it's just that they need tweaking and brought up to date.
It's time somebody did that for quantum physics, and that's
what this column is about.
Chaos and the universe are things that most people discuss
around the breakfast table, but it's truly disturbing to
learn that many others have their toast and coffee without
a thought about quantum physics. This is probably because
nothing basic has happened in the field since 1928 when
Dr. Erwin Schroedinger upset the world of physics when he
brought his cat into the lab. This cat has since become
world famous because Erwin used it in a famous thought experiment.
Granted he only thought about it, but how can anyone even
think about treating a cat the way he did. He put the cat
in a box with some poison and with an exactly fifty-fifty
chance of survival. Try that today and the bureaucracy will
be on your case faster than the speed of light, and I'll
bet you thought there was nothing that fast. Schroedinger
only got away with it because there was no RSPCA in Germany
in the 1920s. If there had been, we wouldn't have quantum
physics today. It was that close.
Schroedinger claimed that there were two cat states in
the box, a live cat and a dead cat. Don't try to reason
with him and tell him the cat is either alive or dead, he
won't listen. He will get all patronizing and say, "You
don't know until you open the box, that's quantum physics."
This shows the genius of the man. If he had said, "You
don't know until you open the box, it might be chocolate
cheese cake", he would be a nobody today instead of
a towering figure in science.
It's not easy to bring Dr. Schroedinger's ideas into the
21st century because nobody does experiments with animals
nowadays. They don't even work in labs, they sit in cubicles
with computers. No one has ideas and discovers things in
today's world, that would be egotistic and antisocial, research
is done by committee in a conference room where the standard
equipment is a table, chairs, a white board, a thermos of
coffee and a box of doughnuts. We have to wonder how a genius
like Schroedinger would have handled this. I think he would
immediately have identified the only uncertainty in the
conference room, the doughnuts. He would have said, "There
are two states in the box, doughnuts, and no doughnuts,
but you don't know until you open the box, that's quantum
physics."
This new way of doing research leads to possibilities that
Schroedinger could never have foreseen. For instance, suppose
that all the doughnuts have been eaten, is there a second
box of doughnuts? Possibly, but you don't know until the
first box is completely consumed, that's quantum physics.
I won't challenge you with further quantum theory except
to say that doughnuts past the second box are governed by
a steeply declining complex parameter known as the Horton
function. This was named after Tim Horton, a famous Canadian
physicist and restaurateur.
I expect that this clarification of quantum physics for
the 21st century will result in a demand for further efforts
on my part, I'm sure there are other esoteric aspects of
science that need explaining in everyday words. I am ready
to serve the cause of science, and gladly await the call.
Bluebox ©2002-2003 Don Cox
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