Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You_ A Guide to the Universe - Marcus Chown [9]
In the microscopic domain, it turns out, identical things do not behave in identical ways in identical circumstances. Instead, they merely have an identical chance of behaving in any particular way. Each individual photon arriving at the window has exactly the same chance of being transmitted as any of its fellows—95 per cent—and exactly the same chance of being reflected—5 per cent. There is absolutely no way to know for certain what will happen to a given photon. Whether it is transmitted or reflected is entirely down to random chance.
In the early 20th century, this unpredictability was something radically new in the world. Imagine a roulette wheel and a ball jouncing around as the wheel spins. We think of the number the ball comes to rest on when the wheel finally halts as inherently unpredictable. But it is not—not really. If it were possible to know the initial trajectory of the ball, the initial speed of the wheel, the way the air currents changed from instant to instant in the casino, and so on, the laws of physics could be used to predict with 100 per cent certainty where the ball will end up. The same is true with the tossing of a coin. If it were possible to know how much force is applied in the flipping, the exact shape of the coin, and so on, the laws of physics could predict with 100 per cent certainty whether the coin will come down heads or tails.
Nothing in the everyday world is fundamentally unpredictable; nothing is truly random. The reason we cannot predict the outcome of a game of roulette or of the toss of a coin is that there is simply too much information for us to take into account. But in principle—and this is the key point—there is nothing to prevent us from predicting both.
Contrast this with the microscopic world of photons. It matters not the slightest how much information we have in our possession. It is impossible to predict whether a given photon will be transmitted or reflected by a window—even in principle. A roulette ball does what it does for a reason—because of the interplay of myriad subtle forces. A photon does what it does for no reason whatsoever! The unpredictability of the microscopic world is fundamental. It is truly something new under the Sun.
And what is true of photons turns out to be true of all the denizens of the microscopic realm. A bomb detonates because its timer tells it to or because a vibration disturbs it or because its chemicals have suddenly become degraded. An unstable, or “radioactive,” atom simply detonates. There is absolutely no discernible difference between one that detonates at this moment and an identical atom that waits quietly for 10 million years before blowing itself to pieces. The shocking truth, which stares you in the face every time you look at a window, is that the whole Universe is founded on random chance. So upset was Einstein by this idea that he stuck out his lip and declared: “God does not play dice with the Universe!”
The trouble is He does. As British physicist Stephen Hawking has wryly pointed out: “Not only does God play dice with the Universe, he throws the dice where we cannot see them!”
When Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 it was not for his more famous theory of relativity but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. And this was no aberration on the part of the Nobel committee. Einstein himself considered his work on the “quantum” the only thing he ever did in science that was truly revolutionary. And the Nobel committee completely agreed with him.
Quantum theory, born out of the struggle to reconcile light and matter, was fundamentally at odds with all science that had gone before. Physics, pre-1900, was basically a recipe for predicting the future with absolute certainty. If a planet is in a particular place now, in a day’s time it will have moved to another place, which can be predicted with 100 per cent confidence by using Newton’s laws of motion and the law of gravity. Contrast this with an atom flying through