Quantam Mechanics as a Metaphor for the Search for Meaning by Gary Schnell.

  
 I was so sorry to miss these discussions of this particular topic. This blog author has been reading (or attempting to read) various physicist authors writing about quantam applications to spirituality and the cosmos. Some of these readable authors such as Amit Gaswami PhD, physicist, have captured my scientific mind and have provided a way for me to get my mind around the idea of life after death, and transcendence. Some of Gaswami's books are: The Quantum Doctor, The Visionary Window, The Self-Aware Universe, The Physics of the Soul, and Science and Spirituality, a Quantum Integration.
Amit Goswami, PhD is professor emeritus in the physics department of the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon where he has taught since 1968. He is a pioneer of the new paradigm of science called science within consciousness.
     I understand that the group spent several weeks discussing the following presentation by Gary Schnell. I have included his notes for your records and your perusal if you did not get them at the meeting.

     He is using the book, Quantum Theology by Diarmuid O'Murcha. Read on for more information about this author's ideas.


Quantum Mechanics as a Metaphor for the Search for Meaning
     as presented by Dr. Gary Schnell.

Part 1: A Brief Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

At the outset, I would like to emphasize that Quantum Mechanics is counter intuitive. Our understanding and ability to communicate it are limited by the boundaries imposed by our perception of space-time. Even if we could adequately perceive quantum reality, we may lack the ability to understand or communicate many of the concepts and details of the quantum. For example, we currently believe there is a graviton that is the particle that transmits the force of gravity, but haven’t found it. It remains impossible to reconcile relativity and gravity with the quantum. String theory is a speculative attempt to do just that, but there is currently no way to confirm anything about this theory. Further, we have invoked concepts like “dark energy” and “dark matter” to explain what we now observe in the universe. While these concepts are fairly certain, we have no ideas what constitutes “dark energy” and “dark matter.” I think it is fair to say that there is at least as much uncertainty regarding notions of consciousness, not to mention ideas about God, two other issues raised in these discussions.

     What is to be put forward here has largely been gleaned from my readings and understanding over the past few years. It is loosely based on a recently read book, Quantam Theology by O’Murcha. There are a few original ideas, but they are minor.

(Note from the blog author: Diarmuid O'Murchu is a Catholic friar who has rejected much of mainstream Christian theology. He states that quantum physics proposes an entirely different world view, more flexible, dynamic and open-ended; humans are integral to this creation, but not masters of it. He asks: What would theology begin to look like if it took seriously the cosmology emergin from quantum physics? He seeks to explore that question in his book.

     Please do not be daunted by the following brief review of quantum physics that precedes the metaphor discussion. The mathematics and equations presented are meant only as illustrations to connect different ideas and do not have to be comprehended. If you do not have some familiarity with the terms, it may be difficult to follow. If so, you may skip ahead to the final paragraph of this review, where the main elements of the review are summarized. You will then be ready to go on to the metaphor discussion to follow.

Please enjoy.

The universe is made of either “things,” that are discrete particles and digital in nature, or “stuff,” that is continuous, wavelike and analogue in nature. This is an age-old debate.

Newton believed light to be a thing, a corpuscle, while Huygens believed it to be a continuous wave. Waves are characterized by speed (v), wavelength (), and frequency (f) and related by the equation, v= f.

Matter was said to be made of atoms. Dalton realized this was how chemistry worked. Maxwell and Boltzmann showed this would explain the properties of gases.

Light was said to be made of waves. Young’s 2-slit experiment revealed light to have constructive and destructive interference patterns, consistent with the properties of a wave. Light was later found to be a wave made up of a magnetic field and an electric field perpendicular to each other.

However, if light was a wave, what was it traveling through? Michelson and Morley were unable to find any medium, or ether, through which light traveled.

Further, if light was a wave, there was no apparent way to account for what was known as ”black body radiation.” Black bodies are the most efficient absorbers of light (that is why they are black) and, therefore, emitters of light energy in the form of radiation. An ideal black body, in classical physics at thermal equilibrium, should emit radiation with infinite power, because radiation should be given off in a continuous flow of energy. Fortunately, energy is not emitted beyond the infrared or visible light range; if UV, gamma or x-rays were emitted, we would die when we open our oven. Einstein pointed out that Max Planck had postulated that electromagnetic energy did not follow the classical description, but could only be emitted in discrete packets of energy proportional to it’s frequency, ie. Planck’s law of black body radiation. Planck was also able to determine the value of its parameter, now called Planck’s constant (h). The packets of energy later came to be known as photons.

E=hf (where h=6.6 x 10-34 Joules/sec). Because h is so small (10-34), quanta are very small. Since higher frequencies mean higher energy quanta, groups of atoms can’t emit high frequency light as readily, because it takes more energy.

Einstein investigated this further in what is know as the “photoelectric effect”. When light is shined on polished metal surface in a vacuum, electrons are emitted from the metal, which is most difficult to explain if light is a wave. The energy of the electrons does not depend on the intensity (amplitude squared) of the light. A brighter light leads to an increased number of electrons, but they have the same amount of energy as before, not more. Instead the energy of the electrons depends on the frequency of the light. Thus, light comes in the form of discrete particles called photons, but Young had already shown it acts like a wave, with constructive and destructive interference. (More about this later.)

Then there was the problem of heat capacities of pure solids made up of one atom. Heat capacity is the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of a solid by 1 C. Classical theory predicted that all pure solids would have the same heat capacity, because less massive atoms should vibrate faster, and more massive atoms should vibrate slower, therefore having the same energy. Experiment did not bear this out. As the temperature is lowered, the lighter elements, and then the heavier elements, have unexpectedly low heat capacities.

This led Einstein to propose that quantum ideas apply to matter, as well as light. Atomic vibrational energy also comes in discrete quanta. Again E=hf, and at high temperature there is enough heat energy for all atoms to vibrate as expected, but, at lower temperatures, there is not enough heat energy for all atoms to vibrate. Therefore, the heat capacity is less than expected. If not quantized, lower heat would just lead to all atoms vibrating less.

Therefore, light propagates as a wave but exchanges energy as a particle. This also applies to matter theoretically. And in 1924, de Broglie proposed that electrons also have wave properties and exhibit wave phenomenon, like interference. It was found that electrons could be passed through the lattice of a crystal (much like passing light through Young’s two slits). Constructive and destructive interference were also found. This has subsequently been found to be the case for even larger pieces of matter, from neutrons to pieces of matter made up of up to 60 carbon atoms, that look like a soccer ball.

Lets look further at the connection between wave and particle properties for light and matter. A particle of mass, m, is moving with a speed, v, and has a momentum, p (p = m v), and an energy (E = ½ mv2)

Waves are characterized by wavelength () and frequency (f). Particle properties are connected to wave properties by Planck’s constant (h)

E=hf and p=h/v

so E=hf=1/2mv2

and p=h/v =mv

the  of electrons is less than 10-9 meter.

The Born rule is another connection between wave and particle properties. Particles have point position but waves are spread out. Born rule states the intensity of a wave, given by the amplitude squared, tells us the probability of finding a particle at any position. This is illustrated by the interference pattern created by thousands of electrons going through the 2 slits of Young’s experiment one at a time, ie. such that constructive interference enhances the probability of a particle being found in a given location, while destructive interference suppresses it.

So light and matter are made of things and stuff, not either/or.

In 1909, Ernst Rutherford performed experiments involving shooting fast moving particles at gold foil, expensive aluminum foil. A pattern was found whereby some of the particles were deflected at different angles and some exactly bounced back, while most went straight through. The pattern was suggestive of a dense, positively charged nucleus, where most of the mass is found, surrounded by a much less dense negatively charged area of orbiting electrons, pictured something like this: (Sorry no picture comes through even from the original Word document).


However, there was a problem with this. The negatively charged electron orbiting the positively charged nucleus should emit electromagnetic radiation as it uses energy to try to maintain its orbit. The electron should lose energy and fall into the nucleus. The atom should implode. This led to Niels Bohr proposal that electrons orbit in discrete shells around the nucleus. The inner shell has one energy state that holds two electrons. All other shells have subshells, that hold an increasing number of electrons the further away from the nucleus you go. The electrons in the outermost shell have the most energy and determine the chemical and electrical properties of the atom. Electrons can jump orbits by absorbing energy or fall to lower orbits by giving off energy in the form of a photon. Atoms them absorb light energy at certain frequencies as electrons go to higher orbits (emit light as electrons go to lower orbits) that are characteristic for that atom, it’s number of electrons and it’s number of shells. Each atom has a signature absorption or emission spectrum in the form of quanta, with the density of the absorption or emission corresponding to the electron probabilities found in that shell.

Bohr’s orbits correspond to “standing wave patterns” of electrons moving around the nucleus. Bohr’s orbits are explained by de Broglie’s electron waves. A wave system enclosed in space allows only certain wave patterns, like a piano wire that allows only certain wavelengths to “fit” between it’s two ends. As an electron orbits, only certain wave patterns fit that shell or subshell.

Erwin Schrodinger subsequently provided a detailed and very complicated (and, therefore, is not shown) mathematical description of de Broglie’s waves that is made up of the wave function of the electron and gives the probability of finding an electron at any given point in space. Solving the equation gives a 3-dimensional standing wave pattern for an electron in an atom. Each wave pattern corresponds to a different energy level (shell), which is changed by the emission or absorption of photons.

Planck’s constant (h) is a significant part of this equation. Recall it is extremely small, so this equation and what we are talking about applies to small particles but is negligible for larger scale objects of everyday life. This is why larger scale objects behave like classical particles governed by classical rules, with no evidence of vibrating waves, because classical rules give an exact location in space and a definite velocity, or momentum, at the same time.

The small scale is another matter and is exemplified by the rules of diffraction. Diffraction effects depend on the ratio /w (wavelength divided by the width of the slit or opening). For a narrow slit then, the ratio is large, yielding a wide wave pattern, while a wide slit yields a smaller ratio and narrower wave pattern. Thus, when a friend is on the other side of a wall with a door off to the side, we can hear him but not see him because the wavelength (the numerator in /w) for light is so much smaller, giving a narrower wave pattern than for the larger wavelength of sound, which can seem to bend around the corner.

Diffraction and wave particle duality set a limit on how well a particle’s properties can be defined. An electron with wavelength () goes through a slit with (w) width allowing us to approximate the lateral position (x ) . The uncertainty in particle position is expressed as the change in width approximating the change in x (or w  x). A smaller slit (w) gives a narrower lateral position (x) in a more defined space, but a smaller (w) gives a larger /w ratio and, therefore a wider wave pattern, yielding a more uncertain value for momentum. The more we know about position (x), the less we know about momentum and vice versa. This trade off in what we can know about a particle became known as Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle.”
Again to scale, there is no uncertainty for large objects because h is so small. Heisenberg argued the uncertainty principle is actually an “indeterminacy principle”. We cannot know the exact value of x and p for an electron. In fact, we cannot have an exact value because it is not a discrete particle but a wave-particle, a particle probability.

As an aside, the uncertainty principle applies to other values, including time and energy, as expressed by the eq. E (energy) x t(time)  h. Therefore, there is no place in the universe where energy can be zero, because the eq. would result in an answer of zero that would be less than h, not  h. This means space cannot be a void, which we now know is true because it is filled with a number of forces and, therefore, force carrying particles, at least. All these particles have their own uncertainty. Further, even in the vacuum state with no photons at all, the state of lowest energy, there remains an irreducible quantum vibration of the fields. This is known as the zero point energy field and may be a partial explanation for what is now known as “dark energy,” the cause of our ever expanding universe.

Now back to quantities like momentum and position, they are said to be complimentary, because the more we know about one, the less we know of the other, because particles behave as both wave and particle.

This can be explored experimentally using a device known as a Mach-Zelinder interferometer. See figure1 on the following page. This consists of a light source that generates a beam of light, a half silvered mirror that splits the light into 2 beams of equal intensity, fully silvered mirrors that are used to guide the light beams to another half silvered mirror in front of two photon detectors. Keep in mind that we can send one photon at a time through the first beam splitter. Also realize that light waves that reflect from the silver side of the mirror are inverted because there is a phase shift of the light secondary to the higher refractive index of glass than air. Therefore, the two beams at the second beam splitter are out of phase and cancel when they meet. In a typical set up (fig 1), with one photon at a time going through the system, there is a phase difference of 0.5 wavelength yielding complete destructive interference at detector 2 and only receptor 1 receives the light.

We can then block beam one with our hand. The photon then hits our hand (fig 2) in beam one. Otherwise, it travels along the other beam to the second half silvered mirror and is measured by each detector 25% of the time, 50% total, after hitting our hand the other 50% of the time.

We can also introduce a non absorbing detector into beam 1, which tells us through which beam the photon traveled, but in so doing we completely lose the interference effect because the photon through the detector is no longer a wave that can interfere with another wave. Each detector registers the photon 50% of the time. (fig 3)

These “both ways” and “which way “ experiments illustrate the principle of complimentarity of particle and wave. They also reveal the importance of choice of the observer and, essentially, the role of consciousness. We get what we choose to measure. The separation between observer and observed is no longer real.

There is one last counter intuitive aspect of quantum physics I wish to identify for this discussion. Common sense suggests that each particle should carry its own local instructions about how to behave in an experiment, called “locality.” This is, after all, what we observe in our every day lives. However, this is not the case. When 2 particles are out of the same quantum system they become what is known as “entangled.” This means that the states of the particles are somehow connected. This can be shown using the quantum principle of “spin.”

It turns out all subatomic particles have their own intrinsic rotation, or spin. One group of particles, known as fermions, the particles that make up matter, of which the electron is one, have a spin of one half. (The other group of particles have a whole integer of spins, are known as bosons, and are the particles that carry force. The photon is one such example.)

A very useful example of entanglement is a pair of spin ½ particles in a total spin 0 state, which means the two spins are opposite each other and cancel each other out. We can arrange for two spins to be in a spin 0 state. For example, the spins in the two electrons of a helium atom in its ground state are in a total spin 0 state. If the spin along the z or x axis of the internal rotation of one electron are known, the spin along the z or x axis of the other electron is known, because it is in a spin 0 and, therefore, one is the opposite of the other. However, the x and z axis together of the individual electron are complimentary and cannot both be known simultaneously. Thus, we can know the spin along the x or z-axis of electron two without touching it by measuring the spin along the x or z axis of electron one, but both x and z can’t be known at the same time. Thus, because of entanglement there is a kind of “complimentarity at a distance.” Bohr suggested electron one and two cooperate in their behavior, regardless of distance, because they really are not separate, but rather possess an ongoing connection.

In 1965, John Bell considered this issue of a two particle quantum system and generated a mathematical theorem, Bell’s theorem. He was able to construct a strict limit on the possible degree of correlation that would result from two particle measurements made simultaneously, which was known as Bell’s inequality principle. Using this, quantum mechanics requires a degree of cooperation between objects that exceeds any locality, requiring a non-locality signal that is faster that the speed of light. As soon as you know x of electron one, you know x of electron two, for example. Alain Aspect later confirmed this experimentally in the 1990’s.

Thus, all objects possess interconnectedness. This can be expanded further by what is called phase entanglement. When quantum system A meets quantum system B, their phases are mixed with each other, and information is shared that thereafter instantly connects any two particles that had once interacted. If this is real, then consider that all systems have interacted with each other at one time or another, much like if we all know six people who know six people etc., then we all have some kind of connection with everyone else. This would result in a single waveform whose most remote parts are joined in an essential oneness throughout the universe.

To summarize, light and matter consist of particle waves acting in a complimentary fashion. This results in a degree of uncertainty and sets limits on how well a particle’s properties can be defined. This applies to other values in our universe, like energy and time. As a result of these uncertainties, our conscious choices play a key role in the outcomes of our experiments, suggesting, the observed/observer duality is not truly a reality in our universe. The notion of non-locality suggests there is a connection between everything in the universe. Finally, the ultimate logical inference is there is an interconnectedness, or relationship, between our consciousness and everything in the universe.

Above is the end of Gary's printed discussion. And it very well summarizes what I love about quantum theory applies to consciousness and the oneness of the cosmos and its interconnectedness. This is not easy to understand, but more and more physicists are writing books that explain all these theories and apply them to the formerly non scientific disciplines of spirituality, religion, consciousness, and life after death. This summary is an excellent starting point for your further reading in this area. I strongly feel that these principles will eventually be responsible for the resolution of all major differences between religious and spiritual disciplines and science. I love it!