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August 21, 2008 10:26 PM

I think this video comes from the movie What the Bleep do we Know? It’s really the best introduction to quantum weirdness for the uninitiated that I’ve seen. It will be old news to many of you, but for some of you it might be quite a revelation. Have a look:

It’s important to understand that there isn’t anything in that video that is not well known to science. Certain physicists might take issue with the final statement that your observations are actually creating the reality shown by the experiment (although there have been many more experiments done, including what’s called a “delayed choice” version, and it still works out the same — ie, even if you wait until after the mark has been made on the plate to check, the fact that you checked will force the particles to behave a certain way in the past). Those scientists either don’t want to think about the implications at all, or they suppose that new information in the future will wipe away whatever weirdness appears evident to us now. I’m no physicist, but one of my obsessions is reading about this stuff, and I’m betting it’s true the world is just as weird as it seems in this video.

NOW WE COULD stop there, or we could press on! Another video taken from the same movie shows the classic “Flatlanders” analogy. This analogy helps us to understand what it would be like if there actually was another dimension, ordimensions, in our universe. The interesting thing is it could be the case that we wouldn’t be able see creatures in these other dimensions if they didn’t want us to, but if anyone lived in them, they could see and interact with us, obeying all the ordinary laws of physics, but it would seem like magic to us.

Of course, scientists have not come to any agreement about extra dimensions. Most believe that they are there, but that they are curled up into tiny balls so small we could never actually interact with them. (I can’t remember whether physicists now believe there are a total of ten or eleven dimensions, but it’s something like that.) But some are beginning to suspect that at least some extra dimensions are large enough for us to interact with them (if we could perceive them).

What do these ideas have to do with bigfoot? Nothing at all, or maybe something. Hope you enjoyed the videos in any case.

LATE EDIT: These videos are not in the theatrical release version of the film, which I have just seen. It appears they are in the extended version, What the Bleep Do We Know, Down the Rabbit Hole.

I also wanted to ad, having seen the movie in its theatrical release, that it’s a fine diversion, but what I wanted to see were more of the snippets like these I’ve posted, and I didn’t get any at all. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. I think I’ll trawl YouTube looking for more of Dr. Quantum’s short videos..

Looking further I find that they are based on the work of Fred Allen Wolf, a notedscience author. He’s best known for his 1981 book Taking the Quantum Leap: TheNew Physics for Non Scientists. He has a few books that seem to be comic bookswith Dr. Quantum as the star, and this must be where these videos come from.

EVEN LATER: Here’s a great link from Sue London to Cracked Magazine’s 5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode. Cracked Magazine is of course a comedy mag, but they are reporting the theories straight and finding the humor in the reaction to the weirdness. I’m sure there are grounds for quibbling somewhere in the piece, but let’s not go overboard. We’re just trying to get familiar with how weird the world seems to be. We don’t need to pass an oral exam in physics.

STILL MORE LATER: If you are the kind who would prefer to take your “double slit experiment” straight with no chaser, here’s an actual Fermilab physicist breaking it down for you. It’s a bit longer, and shot by an amateur, but it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.

SO LATE NO ONE WILL SEE IT: And now here’s something new from a pair of Princeton mathematicians. They say they have proved that either subatomic particles have free will, or nobody does.

 

 

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