While I sat looking at the lecture on quantum mechanics which preceded the lecture about Einsteins theory about gravitation, I realised the inevitable. It was high time for me to dig into the uber nerd stuff and research quantum mechanics. What started as a random idea to fulfil curiosity ended up in me questioning reality.
Obviously I didnt go into the hardcore mathematics stuff as that would have been like gibberish to me but I did get the gust of the whole idea. So heres the thing. Heisenberg wanted to define atom and quite literally had a crazy fit one night. That night the quantum mechanics was born. For quantum mechanics to work, however, two of the one thing had to be considered wrong:
1) Distant events do not effect each other
2) Properties we wish to observe exist before measurement.
It was a question to choose between locality and reality. The former meant that everything was interconnected in a space-time continuum which would have fit snugly with Einsteins 4th dimension idea. The latter meant that lets say if your shirt’s color is blue then its because you see it blue and everybody else sees it as blue. Its weird I know but thats what the maths pointed out. One of them had to go.
Enters Schrodinger, with his infamous cat. In an attempt to describe an orbital, Schrodinger came up with a wave equation. It is used to identify characters of a particle in the space time continuum. According to the wave equation, every object is in a state of quantum superposition. Putting it in layman words, every object’s fate is branched and at any given moment of time it can adopt any of the next branch. Its like calculating probabilities. To help understand his own equation, Schrodinger invented a thought process. The cat. Lets say the cat is inside a box with a lethal radioactive substance which is emitted once the box is closed. As soon as the box is closed the radioactive material is released. The question is, whether the cat is dead or alive OR is the cat dead and alive right now…and the true value can only be known when we open the box.
All of this lead to Heisenberg coming up with his Uncertainty Principle in which he says that measuring the momentum and position of an electron at the same time is impossible. Fair enough. Anyway, right about this time, the scientists started ganging up. Heisenberg and Niels Bohr endorsed the quantum mechanics and firmly believed that reality had to be abandoned. They said that everything is in superposition and appears the way we want it to be.
You might be saying “What the hell?” How can the whole world see the world in a way it actually is not…The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe. Human body is just an adequate measuring device. We all create a classical world around us. There could be other classical worlds different from ours.
Did I hear you say the world Multiverse? Well somebody else that time thought so too. It was Mr Everett who came up with the Many World Interpretation, generally called the MWI. Everett added nothing new to the quantum mechanics, rather he removed the restriction of abandoning locality or reality. It tells us that the universes are both determined and undetermined. It is in a superposition and the universe itself is a wave function. It means that all possible outcomes of an event are being played in different copies of our universe in a determined fashion. It happens by our universe going through decoherence and forming a new universe. Decoherence is the fastest process ever in the universe. It means the instantaneous splitting of some superposition elements to form altogether a new reality. This is basically the concept of multi-verse idea. However this theory has been easily proved false many times. I would just state two basic reasons. One is that according to the de cloning theory, no matter or wave can be cloned this way and hence the cloning of a wave function viz a universe to form a reality is impossible. Similarly, the idea of one universe somehow giving brith to new universes pulverises the law of conservation of energy, without which almost all of present day physics is rendered useless.
Moving back to our topic of reality and locality. Einstein, being a classical scientist openly refuted the idea that reality had to be abandoned for quantum mechanics to work. I would like to quote him here:
“Do you really think the moon only exists when you look at it?”
“God does not play dice.”
This is where things get interesting. Since the physical background is now clear, let us move to the bigger and higher question. The philosophical question.
Research has clearly shown one thing. Reality has to be abandoned for quantum mechanics to work. It wont work any other way. Experiments like the teleportation of charges on photons and teleporting of light to name a few have patronised this point. So lets come to the philosophy.
Does this mean that everything that exists has a value? It means that the universe is determined. Everything already had a value. Every variable has a solution and it is written. I mean its comforting and discomforting at the same time. This also means that distant objects do not influence each other’s end result.
Lets put it more err lamely. Our destiny is written. It’s fixed. Whatever has to be done will be done. And two contrary and unrelated objects/sprites cannot alter each others fate by their own mere actions. But then again, isnt that what Islam says. Islam says that whatever has to happen at any time in future is already written and fixed. It says that the fate of every being on earth is determined. What does this mean? Clearly, it is an open proof that Allah is All Knower and that any claim that Holy Quran is false is baseless. How can a book revealed in 610AD say what was proved more than 1300 years later? Oh! It can say it after all its the Scripture of the Most Knowledgeable and the All Knower.
However even some Muslims wonder that if everything is fixed, what use is praying and restraining from sins if the end is inevitable. I am no scholar. Not even close. But I quote Paulo Coelho here: “If you desire truly, the whole universe conspires for you to get it.” Point being, who says you cant re-write destiny? Work hard, pray intensely and maybe you can do the impossible. Lastly in regards to this, Allah knows the best. Whatever He does, there is some reason behind it. Maybe the deeper secrets and the ultimate truth about universe and reality are secrets that Allah has kept covert from humans for the right time is not nigh.
We deviated a lot didnt we? I wrote all of this to prove one big fat point. The reality we know might not just exist. We might be holograms. We might be a virtual simulation. We might be viewing the world from a very narrow point of view causing us all humans to see the typical world we live in. Truth be spoken, I dont think we are going to find the answers to these questions anytime. Some questions are better left unanswered.
