Fascinating Quantum Physics Facts

Quantum physics or quantum mechanics, in simple terms, is the part of physics that relates to things that are tiny. It explores the behavior of the photons, electrons and other particles that comprise the universe. Learn more about the fascinating and interesting side of quantum physics here in this gallery!

Our material bodies and the body of the Universe both flicker in and out of existence at the speed of light. Our nervous systems cannot process these quantum events at the speed at which they are really happening, so it decodes the energy and information soup of the Universe into the experience of solid three-dimensional material bodies.

Our material bodies

The intelligence that keeps our heart beating is part of our autonomic nervous system, which is located in the brain. The brain’s limbic system is part of the automatic nervous system. Within the brain, there are specific tissues responsible for keeping the heart beating, which are made up of cells. Those cells are made up of molecules. Molecules are made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of subatomic particles and subatomic particles are primarily composed of energy.

The Sun! Bringer of heat and life and basically just a giant glowing ball of hot gas. Unfortunately, classical physics predicts that the sun should undergo an Ultraviolet Catastrophe. This event would see the sun give off infinite amounts of energy at high frequencies of light, popping our eyeballs and chucking globs of flaming plasma at Uranus. Fortunately quantum physics saves us from Armageddon, if not from Jerry Bruckheimer. Quantum physics says that light energy is quantised. It can only be given off in packets called photons (fire the photonic torpedoes, Mr Bakula?) and the energy of a photon is proportional to the frequency of the light. This thankfully limits the amount of energy given off at higher frequencies and saves us all from really bad sunburn.

All material things are made up of atoms (which are made up of subatomic particles- protons, neutrons, electrons, etc), which are 99.99999 percent energy and .00001 percent matter. Think about it – every physical thing in our life is not solid matter but rather fields of energy or frequency patterns of information. Matter is more “no-thing” (energy) than “some-thing” (particles). Our physical bodies and the body of the physical Universe are as proportionately empty as is all of space. The essential nature of our material bodies and that of the solid-appearing Universe is that they are both non-material. They are made up of non-stuff.

non-material

This is very bizarre sounding, but experiments have shown that until a measurement is made, many particles can act as though they are in more than one place at one time. For instance an electron being fired through a board with two small slits, if it is not measured doing so, will show an interference pattern on a screen at the back that registers impacts. This illustrates that the particle, let’s say an electron, does not go through either one slit or the other, but rather it goes through both! So the particle is in a very real sense in more than one place at a time. Superpositions of particles could potentially lead to super-fast quantum computing.

Due to the item number 5, black holes emit radiation which is known as Hawking radiation, and so eventually over an insanely huge and hard to comprehend period of time, may lose their energy and disappear. Basically the idea is that when a particle and anti-particle ‘virtual’ pair pop into existence, sometimes one will be the other side of the event horizon and therefore the pair cannot annihilate. Thus the black hole effectively radiates away the actual particle.

Schrodinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment illustrating the seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum theory and how observation makes such a difference, almost forcing the universe to choose a particular path. In this a cat is put in a box and sealed in, with some radioactive matter that has a 50/50% chance of decaying and if it does it releases some poison to kill the cat. Until you open the box, you do not know if the cat is alive or dead, but in the quantum world (ignoring things such as coherence) then the cat would be in a sense both alive and dead until you open the box and force the universe to choose whether the cat is alive or dead. This gives so much power to the act of conscious observation and this may either be a profound fact about reality or a confusion of some sort on our part.

Every human being, along with every material thing in the Universe, broadcasts a distinct energy pattern, and this energy carries information. Our fluctuating states of mind, conscious or unconscious, change this pattern on a moment-to-moment basis because we are not just a physical body; we are consciousness using a body and a brain to express different levels of mind.

Quantum Entanglement Theory

Quantum Entanglement Theory states that all humans and the quantum field are interconnected. It says that once two particles can be linked in some way, they will always be bonded together beyond space and time. So anything that is done to one, will be done to the other even though they are spatially separated from one another. What this means is that since we too are made up of particles, we are all connected beyond space and time. So quite literally, what we do unto others, we do unto ourselves.

According to quantum physics, we are part of a vast, invisible field of energy, which contains all possible realities and it responds to our thoughts and our feelings.