AaS! 186: What is the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics? (Part 4: It’s a Quantum, Quantum, Quantum World)
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
Part 4! What are the basic lessons of quantum mechanics? What does quantum mechanics teach us about the nature of reality? How does a quantum worldview differ from a classical one? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Thanks to Cathy Rinella for editing.
Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back, folks. |
| 0:10.3 | We are now on part four of a total mumble-mumble. |
| 0:14.2 | Mumble episodes on the theory of quantum mechanics in the interpretations of that theory. |
| 0:23.5 | I'm almost done writing it. |
| 0:28.6 | I still have one more episode left to write as I am sitting here recording episode four. |
| 0:30.5 | I hope it all ties together. |
| 0:35.5 | Well, if you're a fan of jumping into the middle of things without really understanding what's going on, hello. |
| 0:38.6 | If not, I suggest you start at the beginning, |
| 0:45.6 | which is helpfully labeled Part 1. Where are we? We've seen over the past three episodes the place that quantum mechanics holds in the larger world of physics. It is a physical theory |
| 0:51.2 | of the subatomic world, of the small and the slow in the universe. |
| 0:55.4 | And that's what it does, and that's what it does really, really well. |
| 0:58.3 | We've dug into the basic postulates, the bare-bone statements that we take as assumptions |
| 1:03.9 | to get our theory started. These are very general, very broad, and very abstract statements |
| 1:09.3 | that are the totality of quantum theory. This is |
| 1:13.6 | the theory. This is how it starts. Everything else that flows from quantum mechanics, from |
| 1:19.6 | entanglement to quantum computers to everything starts with that handful of basic statements. And we've explored how the early |
| 1:31.6 | pioneers of the theory went from classical to quantum physics. They went from Mozart to death |
| 1:37.3 | metal without really wanting to and without really knowing what the heck they were doing, |
| 1:42.1 | but they were forced to by experiment. |
| 1:50.4 | They were realizing the wave particle dual duality nature of light and eventually matter. |
| 1:53.9 | They were trying to understand quantum phenomena. They were trying to understand atomic spectra and scattering experiments. |
| 1:58.6 | They were trying to see without being able to directly see the subatomic world. |
... |
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