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About 100 years ago, here on Spaceship Earth, our conception of the world was turned completely upside down. The physics that had been refined for the previous 300 years proved useful in the normal world, but beneath our everyday experience there is a world seemingly made of Dream Logic, Magic and Paradox.
A world outside time and space.
A primordial ocean of possibility that we each emerge from.
The World of the Atom
Things existed in multiple places at once, time and possibility seemed blurred, objects placed over here appeared over there, and solid walls no longer seemed solid.
It was hallucinatory but somehow it was real.
This wasn't the latest sci-fi novel, it was much stranger. Devices picked up the signatures of these strange forces of nature but understanding what exactly was going on was elusive.
Like trying to remember a dream as it floats on downstream.
From about 1900 to 1930 scientists were able, for the first time, to explore and study the world of the atom. This was a new territory, a new mind bending frontier where new laws and theories had to be created. New maps were needed.
Before they had to face this quantum frontier, physicists had a firm grasp on cause and effect. The Laws of Motion produced results that could easily always be verified and reproduced. The world was mechanical.
A Clockwork Universe.
Actions, reactions, friction and force.
The physics of the world were so refined that some thought it would be possible to calculate the future simply by knowing the current location of all things. Determinism was Law, but as useful and practical that these laws were, they still only focused on large scale phenomenon.
Like watching a swarm of birds moving simultaneously through the sky, the world seemed beautifully ordered.
But like a house of cards, the order came crashing down.
Newton's equations had to be replaced with formulas of uncertainty, relativity and indeterminism. The macro world has exactitude, this new micro world had probability.
In the clockwork universe, airplanes fly, buildings are stable, physical projections are mostly accurate. We can even track the movement of planets and comets and the notes played on a cello can be perfectly cataloged.
In the sub atomic world, objects exist only as probability waves. There isn't 1 path from point A to point B, it's all paths simultaneously.
As if all notes were playing at the same time in some sort of cosmic experimental orchestra.
How can this be? How can both worlds exist at the same time? How can the dizzying world of multiple possibilities coexist with the stable mechanical world?
Simple, it's statistical.
When huge numbers of atoms move together, they create large objects and these large objects move in classical ways because the strange qualities of the individual atoms are averaged out. Kind of like how economic reports say each household in America has 2.58 people living in it, but in real life, no household has 2.58 people in it.
The mechanical world is statistical emergence.
This eerie subatomic world is the foundation of everything. Our bodies and really, ALL matter are made up of atoms. Look at your hand right now. It is made of infinity. We're floating along on a river of possibility and determinism is an illusion.
Whether this scares you or excites you, it's true.
What you do with your life from now on is totally up to you.
'til next time steemos, I love you all
