Bohr-ing

Today I made this flier for a show at my house.  Snakes Say Hisss! is an awesome band.  They are one of my favorite all time dance bands. 

Tonight the Phillies won the World Series.  I saw the last two plays on my TV.  I had just come into my house after an engaging physics lecture. 

Mendel Sachs came campus to speak on the the direction he believes physics will ultimately take by the end of the next century.  Early in his career he saw there were fundamental differences in the way Einstein viewed the universe and the way quantum theories present it.  Einstein's theory of relativity paints the universe as a continuum.  The universe is a continuous field.  Quantum theory relies on assuming that the universe is made up of particles.  Sachs went on to explain that in science when a law is proclaimed is is to be true universally.  As in the case of relativity, the phenomenon predicted by Einsteins theory are true in every frame of reference.  However in quantum theory the "laws" do not seem to have the same universality that relativity has.  For example, depending on the experiment you design, you can either show an electron behaves as a wave or as a particle.  But it can never be both at the same time.  Mendel Sachs volunteered an allegory he created to represent the views of the universe that result from Einstein's relativistic theory and Niels Bohr's resultant quantum theory:

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Little Niels Grasshopper is sitting at the edge of a lake and sees an acorn fall into the lake.  He observes the wave that results and makes some measurements.  He finds where the wave is highest and lowest and soon postulates that there are little particles in the lake, lake quanta, that make up the lake and the wave is where the particles are displaced.  But when little Albert Grasshopper sees the acorn fall into the lake he sees the lake change continuously.  The wave is everywhere all at once.  

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Mendel went deep through scientific history digging up theories of long dead greeks: Democritus- the propser of Atoms - we could potentially call him the first quantum physicist  There was another Greek he mentioned that say the universe as a continuum and also the later Baruch Spinoza.  Then he went through the history on modern physics, most of which I had heard in my intro to quantum physics lecture last year.  But to get to the point Sachs was saying that the basis, the initial assumptions, of quantum theory is flawed and sooner or later physicists are going to look at the mess they are making with the all these new theoretical particles and see that they aren't getting anywhere.  Then they will have to use the basis of relativity to construct a field theory that can successfully explain all the results observed in "quantum" phenomena.  - Whoa.

Sachs spoke of the way some of his colleagues react to his ideas.  He says they will straight up leave the table because they won't have anything to do with it.  They don't want their fundamental beliefs under scrutiny.   Sachs says when it gets like this that, "Science has become a religion." 

After the lecture I went to see a show at Forbes.  I was hoping to see Terribles play.  They were the first band I ever saw when I moved to worcester.  Two years ago they were playing at the Ship Room which was a place that wasn't supposed to ID usually but the night I went they were.  So one of friends who was inside opened the backstage door while Terribles was playing.   The backstage door was literally on the back of the stage.  We opened it up and jumped through the band and into the crowd and started partying like animals.  It was exhilarating!!!   So I called up my new friend Tom and Mickey and said I'd pick them up soon for the show hoping to revisit the exhilaration I felt in my youth.   Tom met me outside his dorm I went to grab some earplugs, saw the Phillies win the World Series and then went to pick up Mickey.  Mickey and his friend Josh jumped in the car.  Josh was holding a beer and I told him he couldn't have a beer in my van so he chugged it and threw the bottle in a bush.  I stepped on the pedal and we accelerated towards Forbes Street.   We got there just in time to see the last two songs of Doom Hawk.  The were the best and unfortunately the only fantasy metal band I'd ever seen.  TRUE.  Then Filth Mattress played loud songs and before the last song the singer said, "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GO CRAZY."  I don't think he said that but he said "this is you last chance to... [something something]".  And everyone did [something something].  I eneded up missing the Terribles set.  :<  It was fun to get away from school and the people in school who live life boringly.  Bohr-ingly... heh... get it?