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Quote by Philip Ball

“[T]he probabilistic nature of the Schrödinger equation, which predicts only the likelihood of different experimental outcomes, leaves it offering no reason why one specific outcome is observed instead of another. In effect, it says that quantum events (the radioactive decay of an atom, say) happen for no reason.”

Book:Beyond Weird

Work

Beyond Weird

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Author

Philip Ball

Philip Ball, born in 1962, is a distinguished science writer. His works cover a wide range of scientific topics, including chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science. Ball is known for his engaging writing style and his ability to popularize scientific knowledge. more

“When it’s said that quantum mechanics is ‘weird’, or that nobody understands it, the image tends to invite the analogy of a peculiar person whose behaviour and motives defy obvious explanation. But this is too glib. It’s not so much understanding or even intuition that quantum mechanics defies, but our sense of logic itself. Sure, it’s hard to intuit what it means for objects to travel along two paths at once, or to have their properties partly situated some place other than the object itself, and so on. But these are just attempts to express in everyday words a state of affairs that defeats the capabilities of language. Our language is designed to reflect the logic we’re familiar with, but that logic won’t work for quantum mechanics.”

Language Physics Quantum Mechanics Weirdness Quantum Behaviour

Book:Beyond Weird

Source: Beyond Weird

“Because they don't know [the anger is] there inside them. [...] They think they are sweet reasonableness, and it's you that's in the wrong, just by being, and not being like them, or looking like them, or wanting their kind of life.”

Life Different Outcast Weirdness Other

Book:The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“We could call it Herbie. And when she reaches adolescence, and goes boy-crazy, we can say "Herbie Goes Bananas" to each other over and over again, as you build the doorless turret we can lock her in." (Caitlin Moran to her husband on what to call her daughter's vagina) => :o))”

Humor Fun Weirdness Thoughtfulness

Author:Moran, Caitlin

“If, years later, I do use the slit detector to observe which way the electron went, it will mean that many years earlier the electron must have passed through one slit or the other. But if I don't use the "slit detector," then the electron must have passed through both slits. This is, of course, extremely weird. My actions at the beginning of the twenty-first century can change what happened thousands of years ago when the electron began its journey. It seems that just as there are multiple futures, there are also multiple pasts, and my acts of observation in the present can decide what happened in the past. As much as it challenges any hope of ever really knowing the future, quantum physics asks whether I can ever really know the past. It seems that the past is also in a superposition of possibilities that crystallize only once they are observed.”