Miss Buddha (40 page)

:: 90
:: (Ruth’s Paper)

What The Colombia-Borneo EPROM Experiment
Revealed

by Ruth Marten

Cal Tech Department of Particle Physics

Life

Nothing exists but life.

Before the
beginning
there was life.
Or, perhaps better put, there was a stillness, a spaceless and
timeless nothing which nonetheless held the potential of
life.

That
potential
is still here, it has gone
nowhere. It has nowhere to do. Being nothing but still potential it
cannot be killed, and existing outside of time it cannot
expire.

Everything tangible in this Universe will
one day expire. Death will one day visit everything that exists
(along with taxes, some say). Everything except this silent
potential that will forever remain in a time-less now.

One day the Universe will fold in on itself
and then withdraw into this potential of nothingness. So it will
one day return home.

The Buddha called this
home, this ever-present
potential,
Nibbana
.

Non-Locality

Over twenty-seven years ago,
on April 11, 1999, in his
Colombia-Borneo
Laser Experiment
, also known as the
Parallel Laser Project
,
or the
Polarity Change Confirmation
Experiment,
and officially named the
Cal Tech Twin-Particle Polarity
Experiment,
D
octor
Julian Lawson of the Cal Tech Department of Particle Physics
proved—to the satisfaction of even the harshest scientific critic
at the time—the existence and phenomenon of non-local communication
between twinned (bonded) subatomic particles, and so, once and for
all settled Einstein’s challenge to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen
(EPR) thought experiment and paradox.

To
fully
appreciate the significance of
both Doctor Lawson’s experiment, and the recently successful
Colombia-Borneo
EPROM
experiment (and bear with me here) you have to understand a little
about quantum physics.

Therefore, a small, or not so small,
detour.

Quantum Mechanics

Here is a fact: no one has ever seen an atom.
They are simply too small even for the most powerful microscope man
has ever made to detect.

How small is too small? Very. Consider
this:

There are 2 sextillion oxygen atoms and 4
sextillion hydrogen atoms in a single drop of water. One sextillion
is a number 1 followed by 23 zeros—thus:
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

To illustrate the minuteness of atoms and
molecules (which of course are larger than atoms, being a
combination of them), Lord Kelvin paints this amazing picture:
Suppose that you could color all the molecules in a glass of water,
say bright yellow; then pour the contents of the glass into the
ocean and stir the latter thoroughly, so thoroughly that you
distribute the yellow molecules uniformly throughout the seven
seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean,
whether on the surface or tne kilometers down, you would find in
this glass about a hundred of your marked, yellow molecules. If you
don’t believe that, try it for yourself.

For a long time, Science considered that the
atom and its three major constituents, (the proton, neutron, and
electron) were elementary particles, that they were the smallest
particles in the universe, the basic building blocks. Atom, after
all, is ancient Greek for “indivisible.”

But, if we have never seen one, how do we
know atoms exist? We study their effects. Every effect has a cause,
and specific effects were observed that could only have been cause
by an atom, constituted precisely the way we now understand them.
That is how Niels Bohr, the Danish physics genius, mapped and
discovered the workings of the hydrogen atom—a discovery that
eventually earned him the 1922 Nobel Prize.

Not so long thereafter, however, we
discovered that the Greek had it wrong and that the atom was
divisible after all, and so we surmised the existence of subatomic
particles and gave them names like quarks and photons. These are at
least a thousand times smaller than the proton, and that would
qualify as very, very small.

And what do the quarks and photons consist
of?

Some now say that the photon is an
elementary particle, meaning that it does not consist of parts,
cannot be divided. Well, that’s what we thought about the atom as
well.

We will eventually find a way to divide the
photon as well, and eventually we will find a way to divide the
particles that make up photons, too. In the very end, when we
finally cut through all this very, very, very minutenesses to the
very core, we will find that there is nothing there, nothing but
thought.

We will discover that nothing exists but
life.

But let us return to the strange (some would
go so far as to say magical) world of the subatomic particle, the
realm of photons and quarks. Let’s return to the heart of quantum
physics or quantum mechanics.

Although we have definitely
detected (or unequivocally surmised) that these particles do exist,
it is not a true statement to say that they
always
do.

To Be or Not to Be

To borrow a line from Shakespeare, we have
“To Be” and we have “Not to Be.” But in this realm we also have
that thing in-between: “Maybe To Be.”

For there is this odd, mysterious
uncertainty at the heart of quantum nature that lies at the core of
nature itself, and this uncertainty is what Albert Einstein fought
for years (if unsuccessfully) to disprove: the apparent laws of
quantum mechanics.

Most readers—if they have heard of quantum
mechanics at all—will consider it an esoteric science without
real-world applications. The truth begs to differ, for without
quantum mechanics, and without the knowledge of how to use quantum
mechanics, we would have no Mortimers, no cell phones, no mp3
players, no computers: these inventions and devices all rely on,
and perform in accordance with, the properties of quantum
mechanics.

Einstein’s objections notwithstanding,
quantum mechanics, as a mathematical description of the world, is
the most successful scientific theory ever devised. No experiments
have ever been made to disprove or contradict this theory.

And not only is the theory of quantum
mechanics productive, it also forces us to confront the deeper
issues of existence; in other words, it’s not only a matter of a
mathematical recipe for describing (and, some would say exploiting)
the world.

In fact, by now most
scientists agree that quantum mechanics was a greater scientific
evolution than the relativity theory. In fact, scientists view
Einstein’s gem as the 19
^th
century’s crowning
achievement, while they now see quantum mechanics as the
20
^th
century’s crowning achievement.

Simply stated, quantum mechanics is the
theory of how the world behaves at a subatomic level.

No Longer Certain

We have all come to regard the physical
universe, or nature, as being certain, dependable, and predictable.
After all, that’s what our physical laws—gravity and such—are all
based on.

But when we enter the tiny quantum world
this no longer holds true. Some would say that what happens inside
an atom is just plain weird.

Einstein vs. Bohr

A good way to present
quantum theory might be to tell the story of a battle. A battle
between two of the greatest physicists of the
20
^th
century: Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

I am sure that most of you
have of Albert Einstein (if not, well, shame on you). Niels Bohr,
on the other hand—who was also one of the giants of
20
^th
century physics—is not a household name (so you’re
forgiven).

They were both hugely influential figures,
Bohr and Einstein. They knew each other well, were fond of each
other, and each respected the other deeply. But when it came to
quantum mechanics, gloves would come off, for here they were at
loggerheads. Here they fundamentally disagreed.

As one of Einstein’s students would later
put it, “As soon as quantum mechanics was brought up, sparks would
fly. Einstein felt that certain aspects of quantum mechanics—the
world according to quantum mechanics—didn’t really make
philosophical sense.

“Einstein believed that the world presented
by quantum mechanics was too ugly to be true.”

Predictable Nature

As mentioned, for centuries now, scientists
have believed that the laws of nature hold firm, that knowing them
makes nature predictable. In fact, some go so far as to say that if
only we knew enough about the way the world worked, and if we could
gather sufficient data, we would be able to predict the future down
to the minutest detail.

For it seems obvious that nature is
deterministic, that one thing determines another. One thing happens
which causes another thing to happen. Hit a gong and a pleasant
sound appears. Drop a ball and it bounces.

But quantum mechanics shattered that
certainty. It upset people then and it still does now. And Einstein
spent most of his life doubting it.

That said, Albert Einstein was, of course,
himself an early pioneer of quantum theory. He was the one first to
show that light exists as tiny quantum particles—photons. This was
before he went on to become famous for his relativity theory: e=mc2
and all that.

Niels Bohr—who developed the theory of
quantum mechanics along with Einstein and others—was to become its
most prominent champion, while Einstein became its most famous
doubter. Now, Einstein didn’t out and out disagree with the
theory—after all, he had helped develop it—but he thought the
theory was incomplete, and was therefore saying the wrong things
about the true nature of reality.

So, what does quantum theory say about the
true nature of reality?

What is says is that there is a limit to
what we can know about what goes on at nature’s subatomic level. It
also says that the universe seems to be run on chance, and that
nothing is truly certain.

Which means what, exactly?

Two Gloves

To give you an idea of the difference between
the ordinary (macro) world and the quantum (micro) world, imagine
that inside a sealed box is an ordinary glove. Now, as gloves go,
this glove is either left-handed or right-handed. The obvious way
to find out which kind it is, is to have a look.

Opening the box and peaking inside we simply
reveal to our senses what nature knew all along: it’s a left-handed
(or right-handed) glove. This is the nature that scientists and the
rest of us are used to. Certainty.

But in the quantum world it’s not quite as
straightforward.

Imagine, instead, that inside the sealed box
is a quantum (micro) glove that behaves in the same way as does a
subatomic quantum particle. In this case, before we open this box
(same as with the macro glove) we know that there is an equal
chance that the glove could be left-handed or right-handed. We
don’t know which, yet, but we only have to open the sealed box to
find out.

But here’s the crux:
according to quantum theory not only do
we
not know which hand the micro
glove will fit, it also says that neither does the glove—neither
does nature.

In fact, the theory goes on to state that on
a sub-atomic level, the micro glove doesn’t really exist one way or
the other while the box is sealed; that it is in a ghostly state of
in-between left- and right-handed; that it is only once we open the
box and take a look (or measurement) that nature makes up its mind
and then manifests as one or the other.

In other words, in the quantum world—so says
the theory—things are not as simple as to be or not to be, because
until the subatomic particle (the micro glove) is observed, nature
has not made up its mind one way or the other.

I am sure that you find this odd, and
probably believe it not to be true. Well, you would be in very good
company as Albert Einstein would be on your side. He just could not
accept that nature was not certain.

And that is precisely what he was getting at
when he said “God does not play dice.”

As Einstein was wont to point out, fighting
quantum mechanics and the idea that nature was uncertain: “If I’m
not looking at the moon, does this mean the moon is not there?”

(The answer, truthfully speaking, is yes,
that is, in fact, what it does mean).

The thing that Einstein fundamentally hated
about quantum mechanics was the element of uncertainty or what he
termed indeterminism. This deeply offended his sense of an orderly
universe that is fundamentally rational, and his belief that there
should always be an ascertainable reason why things occur.

Einstein came down on the side of centuries’
worth of scientists—going all the way back to ancient Greece—who
all believed in a deterministic universe; who believed that things
happen for a reason; who believed that the secrets of the universe
were just waiting to be unlocked. You just have to have your wits
about you and take a good look.

The same holds true for most of us today. We
are used to the fact that events always occur with well-defined
causes. We may not know right away what the causes are, but if we
investigate, and gather all the relevant information, we normally
rest assured that we can then determine why something happened.