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Transcript
Quantum Mechanics Quantum mechanics is the basis of all of modern physics, and has been so since the 1920s And it’s weirder than we can possible imagine But it’s NOT science fiction Some ideas from “classical” (pre-1900) physics: Light is composed of waves Matter is composed of particles The laws of physics are deterministic Reality is independent of the observer Quantum mechanics overturns all of these The Rutherford atom (pre-quantum mechanics): The atom of quantum mechanics: 1. The electron behaves like a wave. 2. We can only specify the PROBABILITY of observing it in a definite location 3. It has no definite location until you go looking for it. Einstein: God does not play dice.... Maybe quantum mechanics is really just very complicated, and only apparently random: “hidden variables theory” But all our experiments seem to refute this The Copenhagen Interpretation The electron is really in a superposition of all possible locations; observing it causes the wave to “collapse” to a single location. Schrodinger’s Cat The Many Worlds Hypothesis Many interesting implications.... How has science fiction utilized quantum mechanics? Variations on Schrodinger’s Cat: Greg Bear: “Schrodinger’s Plague” Greg Egan: “Quarantine” The Many-Worlds Hypothesis Larry Niven: “All the Myriad Ways” Paul Melko: “Ten Sigmas” The Quantum Immortality Hypothesis Robert Charles Wilson: “Divided by Infinity” Time Travel In physics, time acts as a forth dimension. Can we have a path that is closed in space AND in time? A closed timelike curve Closed Time-like curves Frank Tipler: infinitely long rotating Cylindrical black hole Kip Thorne: wormholes J. Richard Gott: cosmic strings All require something “exotic” Stephen Hawking: Chronology Protection Conjecture You can never build a time machine Igor Novikov: Self-consistency Conjecture You can build a time machine, but you cannot change the past In Science fiction: 1. Let’s change the past! 2. The past cannot be changed What if we could change the past... Ray Bradbury: “A sound of Thunder” William Tenn: “The Brooklyn Project” Fun, but leads to logical paradoxes THE GRANDFATHER PARADOX What if we cannot change the past? Robert Heinlein: “By his bootstraps” Robert Heinlein: “All you Zombies” John Varley: “Air Raid” Millennium Still leads to “issues” even when paradoxes are avoided Much SF in this vein is thinly-veiled historical fiction (the Ben Hur effect) Another way to do time travel Gregory Benford: Timescape Next Week Cosmology Steven Baxter: “Last Contact” Robert Scherrer: “Extra Innings” Genetics Nancy Kress: “Beggars in Spain”
