10 Quantum Truths About Our Universe
Even most of the pros don’t know all 10.
This post was contributed to Starts With A Bang by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized in quantum gravity and high energy physics. She also freelance writes about science.
“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.” -Terry Pratchett
From the moment that it was discovered that the macroscopic, classical rules that governed electricity, magnetism and light didn’t necessarily apply to the smallest, subatomic scales, a whole new view of the Universe became accessible to humanity. This quantum picture is much larger and all-encompassing than most people realize, including many professionals. Here are ten essentials of quantum mechanics that may cause you to re-examine how you picture our Universe, on the smallest scales and beyond.
1.) Everything is quantum.
It’s not like some things are quantum mechanical and others are not. Everything obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics — it’s just that quantum effects of large objects are very hard to notice. This is why quantum mechanics was a latecomer to the development of theoretical physics: it wasn’t until…
