Everything is Connected

Some very interesting questions raised in this New York Times article on Quantum Physics. The key paragraphs:

...Many of those who care to think about these issues (and many prefer not to), concluded that Einstein's presumption of locality - the idea that physically separated objects are really separate - is wrong.

Dr. Albert said, "The experiments show locality is false, end of story." But for others, it is the notion of realism, that things exist independent of being perceived, that must be scuttled. In fact, physicists don't even seem to agree on the definitions of things like "locality" and "realism."

"I would say we have to be careful saying what's real," Dr. Mermin said. "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an actual experiment."

Now this is fascinating, a recapitulation among physicists of the whole argument between Berkeley and Hume about whether reality exists outside the act of our perceiving it.

Are scientists suggesting the physical universe sits in reserve, waiting for the moment when we observe it to come into existence? In other words, the question isn't: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The question is: Is there a forest at all? Isn't that the meaning of "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an actual experiment."

This would answer many of the questions I never received a satisfactory answer to as a child (and later, as a college student) like: What lies beyond the Big Bang? Because if the universe is expanding, there is a limit to the expansion. What lies beyond that limit? Nothing? Are the far reaches of the universe being created as the Big Bang expands into them? Wouldn't that mean that the universe exists and doesn't exist at the same time? How can that be?

It doesn't matter, these experiments suggest, because what doesn't yet exist won't exist until we look for it. Then it will. (Is that what Jesus meant when he said "Seek and you shall find." Was Jesus more than a rabbi? Was he one of the first quantum physicists?)

There's a potential explanation for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here as well, although I can't completely grasp it, other than to picture time and space as a single sheet of matter in which we all form constituent, as opposed to discrete, parts. Make sense?

Well, it's like the tagline from the Syriana poster: Everything is connected. Literally.