Part 1! Where does quantum theory fit in the larger tapestry of physics? What is the domain of quantum mechanics? And most importantly, what are the limits of quantum physics? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION (AUTO-GENERATED)

Hey, everyone. Before I dig into today's topic, I'm excited to say that this episode is sponsored by Chirp. I've started a partnership with them. The So Cool Chirp is an audio book retailer known for great deals without any commitment or subscription. And here's what I did. I started a book club with them at the start of every month, I'll announce the pick here, and Chirp will deeply discount the audio book for a limited time. We'll listen to it together, and we'll have an amazing opportunity to share our thoughts. My pick this month is the Last Star Gazers by Emily Levesque. There's a lot more to astronomy than just grabbing a telescope and staring at the night sky, even though that's a lot of fun. Astronomy has propelled major advances in technology and pushed our knowledge to the very edge of the observable universe. I believe in Levesque's book highlights just how powerful, beautiful and central astronomy is to the human inquiry into the world around us. The Last Stargazers is a great reminder of why we're here and why we're doing what we're doing to join, go to chirp books dot com slash spaceman and grab my next pick, the last stargazers on sale from $19 to 2 99 for a limited time.

And be sure to press follow to join my club to stay in the loop on future picks and other exclusive content that's chirp. Books dot com slash spaceman. It's a great way to support the show. Nobody likes quantum mechanics seriously. Nobody. Anyone who tells you that they do is lying to you. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural. It's not comfortable. It can be fun, but in a weird sort of way, it's confusing. And when you're thinking about it and you feel like you have some grip on it, like you have some sort of understanding and you're finally on top of it, you've scrambled to the top of Mount Quantum and you get it. You feel it. You you understand the subatomic world. There's always 100% of the time, this little voice in the back of your head whispering. It's all going to fall apart. It's all going to fall apart. Quantum mechanics is slippery.

It's like trying to hold on to two handfuls of jello in just one hand. Every time you think you understand it and have reckoned with it and are comfortable with it, It just jiggles a little to the side and it falls on the floor and you have to pick it back up and try again. And for some insane reason, A lot of you have asked for an episode on quantum mechanics and for some even more insane reason. I promised you one, but you're not getting one. You're getting several. I'm not sure how many episodes quite yet. Uh, in fact, I haven't finished writing the series at the time. I'm recording the beginning, and I know they always say you whenever you write a story, you should know the end before the beginning. But in a true quantum spirit, we're not exactly sure what we're gonna get until we go out and measure it. But I can guarantee it's gonna be an adventure now. In true, ask a spaceman fashion, which is a random walk or some less charitable, people might say, a drunken stumble through physics and astronomy topics.

We have it completely backwards. I've done episodes on quantum field theory on quantum gravity, on string theory on entanglement and all sorts of advanced quantum topics. I've done episodes on Plank's black Body Radiation Results, the Double Slit experiment, Einstein's explanation for the photoelectric effect of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. I've danced around the topic of quantum mechanics without starting from ground zero. So in this series you're gonna hear some of the same stuff because I want this series to be as self contained as possible. I want you to walk in to the Ask a spaceman universe and ask the question. What is quantum mechanics? What does it mean? How can I get started thinking about the subatomic world? And then there's this series. You can click on it, you can listen to it, and at the end of it, you're probably gonna be confused. And that's OK, because quantum mechanics is so confusing. I'm, I'm telling you, and I'll tell you, probably every single episode. Quantum mechanics is confusing.

It is confusing. To me, it is confusing to experts in quantum mechanics. It is confusing to the very people who invented quantum mechanics. It is a very confusing topic. As we will learn, the subatomic world does not obey the same rules that we're used to, and once you throw intuition out the window. It it just doesn't make sense. But at least you'll have this self contained series where you can listen again and again and again and hopefully get closer to, well, complete knowledge of time and space, but maybe a little bit more comfort with quantum mechanics. But I'm also using this series to correct a mistake. You see, I originally walked into this series wanting to do an episode or two on interpretations of quantum mechanics. What does it mean? But I realized that we can't talk about what it means until we talk about what it is. And there's a lot of popular science discussions, a lot of YouTube videos, a lot of popular books, a lot of podcasts that talk about the interpretations of quantum mechanics, and and they do a pretty good job.

But I feel like they're missing the point. We can't talk about the meaning and the interpretations and the subtleties of quantum mechanics and the lessons it teaches us about the fundamental nature of reality without talking about, well, the the fundamental nature of reality. And I've made that mistake too. I talked about all these advanced to super weird topics in the quantum world like string theory and entanglement. But I didn't start from one. In physics, we call first principles the simplest starting point of any physical theory. The most basic things you can say that is where you always start in physics as first principles, and then you grow from there in complexity and richness. And I didn't do that. Most treatments of quantum mechanics do not do that. And so all my old physics professors are weeping at my lack of pedagogical rigor. Although now that I think about it, they shouldn't be too quick to point fingers. You see, I think they taught me all wrong, and I'm gonna do things differently.

The typical physics education path through quantum mechanics is torturous in undergraduate beginning, You know, second year or so, you start to learn a few little tidbits like wave particle duality. You learn a few equations and it feels super cool. You're like, Whoa, I'm learning Quantum mechanics. You get some math under your belt, you get to apply to a couple different applications and and it feels super cool. And you feel like, OK, you know what? Quantum mechanics is weird, but I got it. And then later in your undergraduate career, they tell you to forget everything you ever learned. And instead, they teach you the Schroedinger equation. Shorter's equation is a major component of quantum mechanics will get to it not the most important component, but a major component. Uh, in fact, one of my classmates actually got shorter's equation tattooed on the back of their neck. And when you're at this stage advanced undergrad stage and things are a little confusing at first. But then you graduate and you feel like you finally understand, you know, quantum A. Got it. I can solve Schroedinger equation, and then you start graduate school and they tell you again to forget everything you know, including Schroedinger equation.

Seriously scrap it, because at this stage it's not important. And then they start teaching you quantum mechanics as how physicists actually use the theory. And it's nonsense. It's just a bunch of abstract, complicated math with no connection to the real world, and nothing makes sense. And you leave graduate school feeling lost and confused, even if your specialty is literally quantum mechanics. So I'm gonna try something else. I'm gonna flip the script and teach you the basics of quantum mechanics as physicists actually use it. And then from there we're gonna explore the history, what it means for the world and how we can interpret the equations. I can pretty much guarantee that no popular treatment of quantum mechanics does this. Any book you read or YouTube video you watch digs into quantum mechanics. This way, even chemists don't do this, and I'll get to that later. Uh, quantum mechanics is the backbone of modern chemistry, and probably the field outside of physics itself that uses quantum mechanics the most. And I've flipped through a lot of chemistry texts on quantum mechanics, and they don't present the theory in this way.

What I'm going to tell you. Not in this episode but the next are some of the most arcane secrets in the high priesthood of physics. But I'm used to being a heretic, so this is no big deal to me. But I have to warn you when we start digging into the guts of quantum mechanics. As physicists understand the theory, it's abstract. Yes, there are some kookie concepts, and we we'll dig into the kookie concepts. Don't worry, but I'm also going to teach you, hopefully as close to the math as I can get of pure quantum mechanics. And I can hear you whining already. No, Paul, we don't want abstract math, and neither you nor me understand. We want the fun stuff stars blowing off the end of the universe and spaceships to Mars. I'm kidding. I know you and I know why you listen to this show, and it's because you love this stuff because I love this stuff. Digging into the guts of how physics works is one of the most rewarding things about this podcast because it unlocks our understanding of the universe. But we have to do it this way, whether we want to or not.

On this show, we've encountered a lot of topics where I can't draw colorful metaphors or just have some fun descriptions. Instead, I have to talk about the math where, uh, I run into a roadblock where I'm trying to explain some cool physics concept about our universe, and then I just have to stop and say, Well, this is what the math says, and then that's it. And there aren't good words or metaphors or descriptions to wrap around that mathematics to give you an understanding we've run into it before. And when it comes to quantum mechanics, there's no other way around it. Because quantum mechanics is all math, it is an abstract mathematical representation of nature. I mean, in general, physics is literally a mathematics based approach to understanding nature. That's what physics is. And I can't ignore that or pretend it a way. Quantum mechanics is a physical theory. It's a set of math equations that tells us how to make predictions for things we see in nature. It was developed in response to experiments more on that in future episodes and has continued to survive every single experiment we've ever thrown at it for over a century.

That is right, every single experiment we have ever thrown at it, which is pretty awesome and explains why it stuck around even though it's so uncomfortable. It's like that smelly kid in high school gives you the answers to next week's quiz. You may not like it very much, but it's useful now. What is quantum mechanics a theory of well in physics, we have different regimes, different domains where different sets of equations govern or we use to understand different things. So they're like mob bosses covering their territory. Yeah, I know that. You know, I'll skip the mob boss impersonation because that would be embarrassing for all of us. For example, we have different, uh, scenarios. Like if I throw a baseball at you. That scenario is governed by a certain set of equations, say Newton's laws or, in a very extreme case, a special or general relativity.

But in a in a basic, throwing a ball to you, Uh, case that is the domain of gravity, and I would use Newton's laws. There are other physics equations, like Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, but they don't necessarily come into play. This is the wrong domain. It's the wrong turf. For Maxwell, this is Newton's town. If instead, I'm looking at electric current running down a wire. Then, yeah, then Maxwell's equations or simpler versions of them, like S Law, are gonna apply, and not necessarily Newton's equations. This is Maxwell's turf. The same is true of different scales in terms of size or energy. So throwing a ball at you that's Newton's turf, Um, but then throwing a ball in orbit around a black hole that's Einstein's turf. So even though all of our physics equations apply throughout the universe at all times, in many situations, one equation is more important than the other. Now all of these domains and turfs have to link up to each other and connect.

So so, for a example, if I'm looking at the behavior of a fluid that's Newton's laws, there's an equation called the Navia Stokes equation, which is basically Newton's laws for fluids. I'm perfectly willing to do an episode on that if you want me to, and it works. Uh, I don't really need to care about electricity and magnetism unless I heat that fluid up to incredibly high temperatures and it becomes a plasma with a bunch of free floating charges. Electric charges. Well, now I do need to include Maxwell's equations, and I need to include Newton's laws of motion. And so I need to combine them. Two. In the combination of those two is is the field known as Magneto hydrodynamics, and unfortunately, that is one of the only places where I get to sneak in mentions of magnetic fields in this entire series. Now, a word from our sponsor Better help. One of my favorite things about being a physicist is that the training I've received in physics is training to solve problems.

It's training to look at difficult, complex, mind bending problems and find a simple solutions to to take baby steps to find approximations and problem solving itself is a great skill that I found that physics has helped me with it. And you know what else can help with that? It's therapy. I. I regularly speak with a therapist I've known and trusted this the therapist for years. Who is this person has guided me through very difficult points in my life and and moments of of easy sailing and just it's there someone who is close, a confidant and who also understands people, which was not a part of my physics training. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, I want you to try better help. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, entirely online. Seriously, give it a shot. I. I can't advocate for mental health anymore.

When you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit better help dot com slash spaceman today to get 10% off your first month. That's better. HE LP dot com slash spaceman So we have our different domains and in those different domains different sets of equations, different laws of physics, different theories are in charge now. There are some very complicated scenarios where we need to include lots of different things like, say, uh, the highly charged, rapidly spinning accretion disk around a black hole. You need to combine lots of different kinds of physics in those calculations, and those calculations become very complex and rich and interesting. And so where does quantum mechanics fit into that tapestry? Well, quantum mechanics is a theory of subatomic particles. That's it. Once we discovered that subatomic particles existed in the first place, we felt pretty motivated to explain their behavior.

Starting in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, we started developing a lot of experiments that were demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that the subatomic world existed, that atoms were a thing, that electrons were a thing, that photons were a thing, and they had all sorts of weird properties that were showing up in our experiments. And then we had to address that we had to come up with a way to explain it now. In the 100 or so years since we first worked out the basics, the theory has grown and branched and been used in lots of different situations. But at its core, quantum mechanics is a theory of subatomic particles. That's its niche. That's what it does. Yes, as we'll see, the rules of quantum mechanics are weird, and I mean really weird. Super weird things that don't make sense in the normal world are just another day's work in the quantum world, things like subatomic particles acting as both particles and waves, subatomic particles talking to each other faster than the speed of light subatomic particles deciding to randomly jump over impossibly high barriers.

Subatomic particles existing in multiple states. At the same time, subatomic particles not having any measurable quantity we want, but only certain ones in everybody's favorite subatomic particles, refusing to tell us everything about themselves. As we will see throughout this series, subatomic physics is just weird. Quantum mechanics is the name we give to the set of equations our our theory, our physical theory for describing the subatomic world. But at its core, you need to keep this in mind. The subatomic world is just weird. It doesn't play by the same rules that the macroscopic world does. And we've spent centuries, if not millennia, developing an intuition about how things work. Now some of that can be bent if you go into special relativity in length and time dilation, that's a little bit weird if you go into general relativity and explore, uh, how things space and time at warp. That's pretty weird. But then you go into quantum mechanics, and it's nothing makes sense.

All the rules, all the intuition, all the groundwork we had been laying in physics for centuries simply fell apart the moment we discovered Adams. It just doesn't apply. But just because quantum mechanics is weird, it doesn't mean that all bets are off. If you ever and I mean ever see the word quantum appear in a marketing term or have a phrase with the word quantum in it, and that phrase is trademarked or have it attached to anything other than mathematical descriptions of some atomic particles run quantum mechanics is weird. The subatomic world is weird. The subatomic world plays by different rules. But that doesn't mean that the macroscopic world also plays by those same rules. This is one of the weirdest things about quantum mechanics and trust, and there are a lot of weird things about quantum mechanics in the subatomic world.

The lessons we learn in subatomic physics, the lessons we learn in quantum mechanics. You can't just carte blanche apply it to every case. In every scenario, for example, subatomic particles can become entangled, and we'll learn about what entanglement means. That doesn't mean I'm entangled with my neighbor, and maybe we exchange pleasant trees, but we're not. Quantum mechanically entangled subatomic particles can randomly decide to appear on the other side of an impossibly high barrier. I can stand next to a door, a closed door and not expect to randomly appear on the other side of that door. In fact, there's a link between the quantum world and the classical world. This link is known as the correspondence principle. You know, we talked about these mob bosses and their turf like Newton's, a mob boss and Einstein's a mob boss, and Maxwell is a mob boss, and they got their turf.

They got their domain some, and but there are places where there's there's turf warfare uh, there's like Feist and there's friction and you have to use a little bit of both. Like in certain special cases, you gotta use a little bit of Einstein and a little bit of Maxwell or a little bit of Maxwell and a little bit of Newton, or maybe a little bit of Newton and a little bit of Einstein that's called the post Newtonian approximation. In general, relativity, that's a thing. There is a quantum mechanical turf, and it is the subatomic world, specifically the subatomic world where the particles themselves are moving slow. The domain, the turf, the territory of quantum mechanics is the world of the small and slow. Contrast that with Newtonian physics, which is the world of the big and slow, me throwing baseballs at you. Trains going down tracks, uh, balls and inclined planes and even planets moving in orbits most of the time.

Big and slow Newtonian physics. Now, if you go big and fast if you got a macroscopic object and it's traveling close to the speed of light that is the domain of relativity, special relativity and if you're small and fast, if you're dealing with subatomic particles at high energies. Quantum mechanics is not gonna work anymore. It's the wrong domain. It's the wrong language. Instead, we have something else called Quantum Field Theory, which was developed after quantum mechanics. I almost decided to extend the series to bring in quantum field theory to follow the evolution of quantum mechanics all the way into quantum field theory. I think I'm gonna have to save that for another series. Feel free to ask, How did we get quantum field theory? And what does it do? Because the thought of combining an entire series on quantum mechanics and interpretations and history of quantum mechanics along with quantum field theory, which is its own can of worms of weirdness? I just got very, very tired. But the domain of quantum mechanics is important because it tells us where this weirdness stops.

Yes, when I peer inside of an atom, the behavior of the electrons and the protons and the forces between them is super weird and non intuitive. But up here, when I want to throw a baseball at you, I don't have to worry about all that stuff because it's the wrong domain. Newton takes over quantum mechanics This is the domain. The mob bosses of Of Heisenberg and Bore and Schrodinger characters will get to in this series. Don't worry in Einstein, too. Let's not forget him. But once you get up to the microscopic world, Newton takes over. It's Newton's town. It's Newton's turf. You better step back. Eisenberg. The link between quantum mechanics and the macroscopic world is called the correspondence principle, and it tells us how to go from quantum systems that are obeying quantum rules to to macroscopic systems that are obeying macroscopic rules like Newton's equations or Maxwell's equations or whatever it tells us how to make that link.

Now that link is not fully understood. I will give you that. I think I did a whole episode on the correspondence principle. We don't quite know or understand the boundary between quantum mechanics and what we call classical mechanics, the mechanics of Newton and Maxwell and all the rest. The pre 1900 physics that link that correspondence principle is fuzzy. It might be context dependent. We don't know exactly where it is or how it works. Uh, but it is there. We do know that at some point quantum mechanics stops being important and we don't have to use those equations. Then all the weirdness, all the, uh the nonsensical brain melting stuff in quantum mechanics just goes away, and we're left with our normal microscopic world. We know that we don't know exactly where that link is or exactly how that link works. But we know the link is there because all the weirdness that we're gonna dig into in quantum mechanics over this series doesn't apply in the micro microscopic world.

If it did, we would have known about it already. It would be part of our intuition. It would be part of our daily experience. It would be part of our understanding, our natural built in understanding of of the world around us. If heavy balls falling off the Tower of Pisa obeyed quantum mechanics, Galileo would have found that hundreds of years ago he didn't so be very, very careful about where the limits of quantum mechanics are. Because if you see something, especially if it's used in a marketing term, or to tell you about how macroscopic objects, uh, behave and that's just wrong. It's the wrong domain. It's like saying, Hey, I'm gonna throw the this baseball at you, but we're gonna start with the speed of light and the fact that light is made of waves of electricity and magnetism. And look at all this cool stuff. We've learned about electricity and magnetism. That's great. That's cool.

That's neat. But it doesn't tell you about me throwing the baseball at you. It's the wrong domain. I feel like this will help you throughout this series because when things get weird and they will, you can at least step back if it if it just gets too much. If it gets too heavy and too intense, at least you can just step back and say When I go to get my car's oil changed next week, I don't need to worry about quantum mechanics. When I take my kids to soccer practice, I don't need to worry about quantum mechanics. When I'm thinking about asking this person out on a date, I don't need to worry about quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics does control the subatomic world, but thankfully you don't need to think about it very much. And that's a good thing, because when you do think about it, the headaches come, the migraines come, the eye rolling inanity of some of these statements that I'm about to make in this series, they all come.

One of the biggest headaches with quantum mechanics is what the math means, and I'll definitely get to more of that later. About half this series is going to be about what quantum mechanics means, although it it will start quickly as soon as we dig into what quantum mechanics is. And in quantum mechanics, I want to be clear. We we'll see quantum mechanics is not like wave particle duality or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Those those are results of quantum mechanics. They're not what quantum mechanics is, which is a physical theory of the subatomic world, and we'll get into that. But usually, usually we get to skip the math. And don't worry. I'm not gonna read math equations to you, and that's don't worry. But usually we can skip the math and go right to the colorful words that we use to describe the math. But we have to be very, very careful with quantum mechanics, especially to separate. What does the physical theory actually say? And then what are the words we are using to describe the physical theory as a side note.

This is what trips up a lot of cranks and wanna be. Physicists not wanna be physicists. You know, people who are in high school or college and want a career in physics. But people who do something else and then have written a a 20 page essay that they email to me. Um, that is by far the lamest email I get in one of the most common ones, which is, Will you read my theory of everything? I I don't I never do. I just delete the email without even reading it as soon as it says. Dear Paul, Dear doctor, stutter, I I've come up with a theory. I I've stopped reading. That's as far as I get. I'm sorry, but I just don't have time. And if you want to do science, you can do what every other scientist does and submit it to a journal for publication. And if they're not returning their calls, there's a reason for that. But this is what trips up a lot of cranks and wanna be physicists is they confuse the description for the math. We use these colorful words in interesting jargon to describe the actual physical theory, which is a set of math equations.

That doesn't mean you can then take the words and scramble them around and create a new theory. No, you have to create the new theory in the mathematics. Usually we get to skip the math. Usually we get to skip the the guts of a theory and and go on to the description. But that's not gonna be an option for quantum mechanics, because quantum mechanics is so dang weird and confusing. And quantum mechanics has no universally agreed upon interpretation and all the existing interpretations are flawed. To put it mildly, every single one and we'll get into that. So we've got a challenge here. We're gonna talk about quantum mechanics without saying a single word of math, but I want you to start off by understanding the actual math. And talking about physics, especially Quantum and Hanks, without discussing the math, is like trying to describe the French language without using any French words. If you wanna try that bong with that. And that's why in this series, the next episode, we are going to talk about the math of quantum kinks now, I'm not gonna read math equations like I said, But I am gonna talk about what the theory is, the basic building blocks of this theory.

As physicists understand it, if you want to skip that episode, you can no hard feelings because it's it. It's gonna be an abstract episode for sure. Although quantum mechanics is abstract, there's no no two ways around it. And this can make quantum mechanics intimidating. I get it. This can make quantum mechanics scary. This can make you learn a couple of things and say, Never mind. I'm never gonna get quantum mechanics. This is just too weird and too abstract and too heavy. And you know what? Honestly, I. A long time ago, I stopped caring about electrons. I want if, if you're tempted, I don't blame you to just bail on this. But instead of thinking of all this abstractness and weirdness and non intuitiveness as a barrier, think of it as a playground. Think of it as an opportunity to think some new thoughts, maybe some thoughts you've never had before, maybe some concepts that you've never experienced before, maybe some insights into the way the world works that you've never touched it before.

That's one of the reasons quantum mechanics is so dang abstract and difficult. But it's also fun because the subatomic world itself is incredibly weird and non intuitive. And talking about quantum mechanics is like talking through your favorite science fiction novel. It's just a whole new set of rules, and we get to explore that we need to start with the math or the description of what the this physical theory that we call quantum mechanics is. But it's from that math that everything flows. If that's not your cup of tea, you can leave now, but not without going to patreon dot com slash PM Sutter. That's P MS U TT ER patreon dot com slash PM Sutter is how you can contribute to this show, and I truly do appreciate it. But seriously, folks, this is gonna be fun. I had a lot of fun writing the series. I am continuing. I've not finished it yet. Uh, having a lot of fun, grappling with these concepts myself, figuring out how to best explain it to you diving into the mystery and the weirdness and the gory guts of this turf.

We're about to enter the mob boss territory of quantum mechanics. And the moment we take that step, our whole world is going to be turned upside down and it's gonna be beautiful, and I think you'll enjoy it. OK, now you can go. I have a lot of people to thank tons. Over the years, I've gotten so many questions about quantum mechanics, and I owe it all to you. So thanks to Mihail E on email at Sharman on Twitter. Massimiliano S on Facebook. Isaac P on email at At Twitter. Chris F on Facebook Akansha B on email at SMTR on Twitter Albert R on email Julius M on email. Martin E on email. John T at Facebook Rice C on email Nick on email Jordie R on Twitter at pizza Larger at Twitter Rosa email HP Arian and email Scott M on email. Graeme Dion email Martin N on email at Sample SAPIENS on Twitter. Peter W on email at Mark Group on Twitter.

Sean on email Susan S on email. Daniel Jan email. Campbell Dion email Timothy B on YouTube, Fernando Gian email and James W on email. I think that's the most amount of thanks for questions we've ever done. I think that beat string theory. I think we have a new record here, and I hope this series is deserving of it. Of course, you can keep contributing to the show. Patreon dot com slash PM Sutter. I really do appreciate it, and I have some people to think I'm patreon as well. Whoops. My top Patreon contributors. Justin G, Chris L, Barbara Kay, Duncan M, Coy D, Justin Z, Nate H, Andrew FN, Scott M, Rob H, Justin Lewis M, Paul G, John W, Alexis Aaron J, Jennifer M, Gilbert M, Joshua BH, John S, Thomas D, Michael R and Simon G Send questions all the way here all the time. Ask us spaceman at gmail dot com. The website is Ask the spaceman dot com. You can find me on all social channels. I'm at Paul Mats Sutter, and I will see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.

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