Quantum is hard
I'm told that philosophers have entire journals devoted to quantum mechanics. This worries me since I'm also told these journals have no math in them, a strange situation. I suppose I should look at an issue some time. Although quantum is 'just a theory' , I haven't heard anybody complain about it or file lawsuits, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time (or is it space-time? And what does matter have to do with space-time anyway?). The thing is this : everybody out there has an opinion on quantum mechanics. While med students have a deathly fear of thermodynamics (a gorgeous theory) and the far right is cooking up ID primordial soup (blechhh), everybody loves quantum mechanics and takes joy in waxing on about its many unfathomable implications.
Thermodynamics gave us the industrial revolution. Quantum gave us the electronics/tech boom. Any decent explanation of any teenager's igadget du jour demands quantum. And quantum is just plain fun :
-->there is actually a chance that I could walk through a brick wall unharmed thanks to quantum mechanics. The probability is so infinitesimally small that all I would succeed in doing is smashing my nose against the wall an infinite number of times, but TECHNICALLY it can happen.
-->quantum mechanics puts some limits on human knowledge. I am not allowed to know both the position and velocity of an electron with high precision at a given instant in time. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Quantum mechanics makes a living out of telling us all the things we aren't allowed to know.
But this is the popular stuff. The real meat and potatoes of quantum, the rigorous physics and math, is tough and I'm in the throes of writing a difficult article in which I'm taking on somewhat deeper quantum than usual and it's a little hard on the noodle. Why am I suddenly hungry? I'm realizing that the 50's and 60's were high times for quantum. Every scientist lived, ate and breathed it and discussed it in the halls with others. It dominated all the papers, and the understanding of quantum in the 50's and 60's was perhaps the best it's ever been. I think our understanding of quantum -in the rigorous physics and chemistry sense- is fading.
We've all had to spread ourselves out thin to learn molecular biology, nanotechnology, proteomics, metabonomics, name-your-favorite-omics, etc. And it shows. Our math is suffering, our hard science backgrounds are suffering. I'm feeling a need for us all to get back to our roots a little bit, geek out and make pure quantum mechanics hip again. I think we need it.