This year's Nobel Prize in Physics is of great significance and can even be said to be a milestone. It confirms some of the errors in Einstein's theory, and the direction of human scientific and technological civilization is once again ushering in dawn.
This article tries to introduce the important role and significance of this physics award as easily as possible.
First, the quantum world is a world that goes against common sense everywhere
Before expanding this article, we must first have a basic understanding of the quantum world.
To be honest, quantum theory is relatively difficult to understand, why? Because in the quantum world, there are everywhere that violate people's basic common sense.
To facilitate your understanding, give an interesting example.
In the macro world, if all of us close our eyes and then a cat comes to us, and at this time we open our eyes and see the cat and find that it is a living cat, then it is obvious that it was also alive when we closed our eyes before.
But if this cat is placed under the rules of the quantum world and observe it, its life or death is not necessarily .
In the quantum world, a cat is also placed in front of us. When we close our eyes and don’t see it, its life and death are random, and it may be alive or dead. This is the famous " Schrödinger's Cat " theory - A cat can be both alive and dead at the same time.
This bizarre state of cats is described in quantum mechanics - quantum superposition state .
So the problem is, now we can't see the cat with our eyes closed, so it is "both dead and alive" . If we open our eyes and really see it, then is it dead or alive?
Answer : may be dead or alive, and the probability of life and death is half of each .
Don’t think I’m talking about metaphysics. The physical rules in the quantum world are so strange. The life and death of this cat does not depend on whether it was life or death before, but on the state of it that we saw when we opened our eyes .
In other words, this cat was not seen before its life and death was random. It was necessary to wait until we opened our eyes and looked at it before it could determine its life and death. This process from uncertainty to certainty is called in quantum mechanics "collapse of quantum superposition states" .
According to modern physics research, superposition state is one of the two major physical phenomena embodied by quantum, and the other is " entangled state " .
Second, the "ghost" in quantum entanglement
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in the quantum world that cannot be explained so far.
or use cats as an example.
If two cats are in different positions in the quantum world, and the two are 10 light years apart, now we are lucky enough to find one of them, and we will call it Cat Armor.
According to the principle of quantum superposition state described above, before we see cat armor, we only know that it is in "between life and death" , and then the moment we see it clearly, its life and death are fixed, it is a living cat.
So according to the quantum entanglement theory, we also know the state of Cat B who is in an entangled state with Cat A. Because Cat A is a living cat, then Cat B 10 light years away must be a dead cat .
On the contrary, if we observe that Cat A is a dead cat, then Cat B on the other end must be a living cat.
This is the mutual "anti-association" of in quantum entanglement.
quantum entanglement diagram
This "anti-correlation" phenomenon is beyond the distance, and it is completely unaffected by the spatial distance . Whether the two cats are 10 light years apart or 10,000 light years apart, this mutual influence is carried out simultaneously, that is, the state of one particle changes, and the state of the other particle will also change at the same time.
Interestingly, Einstein expressed different opinions on the quantum "superposition state" or "entangled state" .
For the randomness displayed by quantum superposition state, Einstein once bluntly said "I am sure no matter what, God does not roll dice" , and regarding quantum entanglement, Einstein simply described it as "ghostly super-distance effect" .
The reason why Einstein used the word "ghost" to describe the entangled state of quantum is because quantum entanglement challenges one of the basic theories that constitute relativity theory - the theory of the speed of light limit.
Einstein believes that the speed of light is the limit of speed, but the over-distance effect reflected in quantum entanglement completely breaks this perception, because the entanglement between quantums can ignore the spatial distance and occur simultaneously. In other words, , , and quantums have essentially exceeded the limit of the speed of light .
It is obvious that if Einstein admitted the fact that quantum entanglement " super-light speed " , it means that the theoretical edifice of relativity will be shaken, and what is shaken is still the underlying theoretical foundation of the theory of relativity. Therefore, Einstein could not accept the existence of quantum entanglement in any case, and even until Einstein's later years, he was resentful about it.
It is undeniable that Einstein is one of the greatest scientists in human history. Perhaps only a few people like Newton may be compared with him, but is his theory really not wrong at all?
This year's Nobel Prize physics awards finally proved that some of Einstein's theory was indeed wrong. The "ghost" he feared the most back then turned out to have always existed in !
Third, Einstein's mistake indicates that human physics has once again ushered in the dawn of breakthrough
The development of human physics generally has two major breakthrough development stages, and every major development of physics will bring unprecedented progress in the productivity of human civilization and great prosperity of human society.
17th century, scientists such as Newton and Galileo founded classic physics from the ignorance of the Middle Ages. After more than 100 years of rapid development, finally triggered the first scientific and technological revolution in the 18th century. The steam revolution and the electrical revolution occurred one after another, and the productivity of human society achieved the first leap.
The late 19th century and the early 20th century, great scientists such as Einstein and Madame Curie further revealed the secrets of the macro world and the micro world . Physics officially entered the era of atom . The second scientific and technological revolution based on atom theory as the main basis after World War II once again greatly enhanced the productivity of human society .
This scientific and technological revolution is still continuing to this day. Today's cutting-edge technologies such as biology and computer are actually deepening applications of atomic theory. But unfortunately, even though humans have now developed medium and high-level applied technologies under the framework of atomic theory such as nuclear power, primary artificial intelligence , genetic engineering, computer Internet, etc., they have not made any breakthroughs in physics.
Due to the lack of a deeper understanding of the macro and micro worlds, human society has been slow to inject "incremental productivity" brought by new revolutionary technology. Therefore, the development of human society is now forced to enter the "era era of stock competition" - countries around the world have to strengthen the allocation and competition for global resources, which is also one of the root causes of current contradictions and conflicts around the world.
And the trouble is that for a long time, we didn't know where the new breakthrough direction of physics was. Human technology seemed to be locked by a wise man, and it just circled around at the level of technological application, but the new revolutionary theories have never been seen.
But this time the Nobel Prize awards gave many people a glimmer of hope - it turns out that Einstein was not all correct!
This is very, very important. After Einstein established the Relativity Building, because his theory was too perfect, almost no one dared to question his correctness. His brilliant achievements not only improved human civilization's understanding of the rules of the universe, but in fact it also blocked the pace of future generations.
For example, Einstein said that the speed of light is the limit of all speed, but in fact it denied the existence of super light speed. Then this leads to a question: Since super light speed no longer exists, what is the point of human beings going to space?
You should know that the solar system has a radius of 1 light year. Without super-light speed flight technology, human civilization may not be able to cross the solar system until its demise.
Einstein's perfect theory is like a mountain, which has limited the pace of human development. Today, this situation has become more and more obvious. Therefore, if physics wants to develop, it is necessary to find the mistakes and omissions in Einstein's theory, and use this as a breakthrough point to propose a new theory .
This Nobel Prize in Physics has this significance. It proves that Einstein will also make mistakes. It proves that in addition to known physical theories, there may be some higher-level or lower-level rules in the universe. Moreover, this rule can be derived through deeper observation and research on the microscopic world - for example, to understand the basic principles of quantum entanglement, then it can reveal what mechanism is the "hyperspace connection" between particles, how the influence of their super-light speed is achieved, etc.
Once the principle is understood, then super-light spacecraft is probably no longer a dream. Don’t think that this is a dream talk. Looking at the development of physics, it has always been developed according to the rule of "observation-cognition-application" of humans to the objective world. When we truly understand the superluminal mechanism of quantum entanglement, then the relevant applications will come to the table sooner or later.
In fact, the application research on quantum entanglement has begun. quantum communication is the best example. Since the climbing of the skill tree of quantum communication has been enabled, will it be far away to truly realize "super-light speed communication" in the future?
Modern quantum mechanics may be the key to opening a new world. After atomic theory, the road ahead of human scientific and technological civilization will reappear!
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