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Quantum physics describes the behaviour of the smallest parts of matter

• Quantum theory describes the behaviour of the smallest parts of matter. It was developed by a cluster of European physicists in the early 20th century – notably Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger – and it completely changed our understanding of how the physical world operates. Quantum theory reveals the strangeness at the heart of ordinary things – light, for example, can be seen both as particles and as waves; and particles only interact with other things with a certain probability, not with any certainty. Tim Crane
• Quantum mechanics: The branch of mechanics that deals with the mathematical description of the motion and interaction of subatomic particles, incorporating the concepts of quantization of energy, wave–particle duality, the uncertainty principle, and the correspondence principle. Oxford Dictionary

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Quantum physics and relativity represent the true birth of physics

• The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Paul Davies

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Quantum physics is the ultimate basis by which we understand the world

• Quantum mechanics fascinates me. It describes a wide variety of phenomena based on very few assumptions. It starts with a framework so unlike the differential equations of classical physics, yet it contains classical physics within it. It provides quantitative predictions for many physical situations, and these predictions agree with experiments. In short, quantum mechanics is the ultimate basis, today, by which we understand the physical world. Jim Napolitano

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Quantum physics has radical implications for understanding the world and how it works

• Quantum mechanics is clearly superior to classical mechanics for the description of microscopic phenomena, and in principle works equally well for macroscopic phenomena. Hence it is at least plausible that the mathematical and logical structure of quantum mechanics better reflect physical reality than do their classical counter parts. If this reasoning is accepted, quantum theory requires various changes in our view of physical reality relative to what was widely accepted before the quantum era, among them the following: 1. Physical objects never possess a completely precise position or momentum. 2. The fundamental dynamical laws of physics are stochastic and not deterministic, so from the present state of the world one cannot infer a unique future (or past) course of events. 3. The principle of unicity does not hold: there is not a unique exhaustive description of a physical system or a physical process. Instead, reality is such that it can be described in various alternative, incompatible ways, using descriptions which cannot be combined or compared. Robert B. Griffiths
• Quantum physics has presented us with a puzzling picture of the nature of reality. Physicists have demonstrated that quanta can manifest themselves as either particles or waves. When scientists are not looking at electrons, they always exist as a wave, and whenever they design an experiment to observe the elections, they always appear as particles. Danish physicist Niels Bohr pointed out that it is meaningless to talk about the properties and characteristics of a particle that is not being observed. Einstein did not accept Bohr’s argument. He believed that Bohr had to be wrong because the implications of quantum theory were simply too astounding. David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• Quantum physics has shown that the tiniest particles of matter break all of the rules that operate in our everyday macrocosmic world. Steve Taylor
• Quantum theory smashed our intuitions about objects, by denying that they have definite values of physical properties that are independent of whether, or how, they are observed. Donald Hoffman
• Quantum physics has led to a radically different understanding of our Universe: a universe where energy and matter are complementary expressions of each other and where dynamic fields of influence replace the notion of apparently separate objects and hitherto unexplained “action at a distance.” And furthermore, space and time are each relative to the position of an observer, and we can only consider them as invariant in their combination as a four-dimensional concept of space-time. Jude Currivan
• The influence of modern physics goes beyond technology. It extends to the realm of thought and culture where it has led to a deep revision in man’s conception of the universe and his relation to it. Fritjof Capra
• There is too much quantum weirdness around, too many experiments showing that the objective world—one that is running forward in time like a clock, one that says action at a distance, particularly instantaneous action at a distance, is not possible, one that says a thing cannot be in two or more places at the same time—is an illusion of our thinking. Amit Goswami
• We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’. Arthur Eddington

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Quantum physics raises profound questions

• What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter? There are today no definitive answers to these questions. There is not even a consensus about what the answers should look like. Adam Frank

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Quantum physics questions the paradigm of materialism

• Materialism: The theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications. Oxford Dictionary
• Materialism is an attractive philosophy – at least, it was before quantum mechanics altered our thinking about matter. Adam Frank
• Materialism is an attractive philosophy – at least, it was before quantum mechanics altered our thinking about matter. ‘I refute it thus,’ said the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson kicking a large rock as refutation to arguments against materialism he’d just endured. Johnson’s stony drop-kick is the essence of a hard-headed (and broken-footed) materialist vision of the world. It provides an account of exactly what the world is made of: bits of stuff called matter. And since matter has properties that are independent and external to anything having to do with us, we can use that stuff to build a fully objective account of a fully objective world. This ball-and-stick vision of reality seems to inspire much of materialism’s public confidence about cracking the mystery of the human mind.  Today, though, it is hard to reconcile that confidence with the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics. Newtonian mechanics might be fine for explaining the activity of the brain. It can handle things such as blood flow through capillaries and chemical diffusion across synapses, but the ground of materialism becomes far more shaky when we attempt to grapple with the more profound mystery of the mind, meaning the weirdness of being an experiencing subject. In this domain, there is no avoiding the scientific and philosophical complications that come with quantum mechanics.  Adam Frank
• Although a new scientific discipline called quantum physics has formally replaced classical physics in this century, the old philosophy of classical physics—that of material realism—is still widely accepted.  Amit Goswami
• Putting the perceiving subject back into physics seems to undermine the whole materialist perspective. A theory of mind that depends on matter that depends on mind could not yield the solid ground so many materialists yearn for. Adam Frank
• Many in the scientific field despise any kind of mystical insinuation and try to get around it by insinuating there is something missing from Quantum Mechanics, a missing piece that will one day prove materialism beyond doubt. Martin E Moore
• The high ground of materialism deflates when followed to its quantum mechanical roots, because it then demands the acceptance of metaphysical possibilities that seem no more ‘reasonable’ than other alternatives. Some consciousness researchers might think that they are being hard-nosed and concrete when they appeal to the authority of physics. When pressed on this issue, though, we physicists are often left looking at our feet, smiling sheepishly and mumbling something about ‘it’s complicated’. We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained. Adam Frank
• In the early 20th century, physicists witnessed the emergence of numerous paradoxical discoveries that challenged, and still challenge, the core assumption of scientific materialism. Physicists discovered a hole in their understanding of matter—a gaping hole that came to be known as quantum physics—through which they fell to join Alice in Wonderland. Joseph Selbie
• There is, however, a significant weakness hiding in the imposing-looking materialist redoubt. It is as simple as it is undeniable: after more than a century of profound explorations into the subatomic world, our best theory for how matter behaves still tells us very little about what matter is. Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself. Adam Frank

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Quantum physics constitutes the final rejection of the mechanistic world view

• The essence of quantum mechanics is that nature is not mechanistic. Nature is an ensemble of potential states brought to reality by observation. Michael Egnor
• The bootstrap philosophy constitutes the final rejection of the mechanistic world view in modern physics. Newton’s universe was constructed from a set of basic entities with certain fundamental properties, which had been created by God and thus were not amenable to further analysis. In one way or another, this notion was implicit in all theories of natural science until the bootstrap hypothesis stated explicitly that the world cannot be understood as an assemblage of entities which cannot be analysed further. In the new world view, the universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web. Fritjof Capra
• Then came our Quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton’s deterministic machine was replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and particles, governed by the laws of chance, rather than the rigid rules of causality. An extension of the quantum theory goes beyond even this; it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy. Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less “substance” than we might believe. But another development goes even further by demolishing Newton’s image of matter as inert lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently gained widespread attention.  Paul Davies and John Gribbin

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Quantum physics represents the end of the Newtonian view of the universe of matter as hard, movable particles

• God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them. Isaac Newton
• It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which He formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them, even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God had made one in the first creation. Isaac Newton
• Quantum physics gives us a powerful yet seemly paradoxical calculus. With its emphasis on probability waves, essential uncertainties and experimenters disturbing the reality they seek to measure, quantum mechanics made imagining the stuff of the world as classical bits of matter (or miniature billiard balls) all but impossible. Adam Frank
• A world teeming with fields and forces, vacuum fluctuations, and the other gossamer spawn of modern physics is not the physical world of common sense. In fact, our common sense seems to be stuck somewhere in the sixteenth century. Sam Harris
• Newtonian mechanics might be fine for explaining the activity of the brain. It can handle things such as blood flow through capillaries and chemical diffusion across synapses, but the ground of materialism becomes far more shaky when we attempt to grapple with the more profound mystery of the mind, meaning the weirdness of being an experiencing subject. In this domain, there is no avoiding the scientific and philosophical complications that come with quantum mechanics. Adam Frank
• Quantum mechanics is a more general model than classical mechanics, in the same way that Einsteinian relativity is a more general model than Galilean relativity. One picture subsumes the other. Quantum mechanics, pushed to the limit of the large, goes over smoothly into classical mechanics, whereas classical mechanics remains resolutely classical even when pushed to the limit of the small. …Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac, and the other early quantum mechanicians …needed to peek at the classical equations in order to set the quantum equations on the right track. They needed… an idea of where the broader theory must eventually lead. Michael Munowitz
• When calculations are done with the Schrödinger equation, what’s left is not the Newtonian state of exact position and velocity. Instead, you get what is called the wave function (physicists refer to it as psi after the Greek symbol Ψ used to denote it). Unlike the Newtonian state, which can be clearly imagined in a commonsense way, the wave function is an epistemological and ontological mess. The wave function does not give you a specific measurement of location and velocity for a particle; it gives you only probabilities at the root level of reality. Psi appears to tell you that, at any moment, the particle has many positions and many velocities. In effect, the bits of matter from Newtonian physics are smeared out into sets of potentials or possibilities.  It’s not just position and velocity that get smeared out. The wave function treats all properties of the particle (electric charge, energy, spin, etc) the same way. They all become probabilities holding many possible values at the same time. Taken at face value, it’s as if the particle doesn’t have definite properties at all. This is what the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, meant when he advised people not to think of atoms as ‘things’. Even at this basic level, the quantum perspective adds a lot of blur to any materialist convictions of what the world is built from. Adam Frank
• When I was a young physics student I once asked a professor: ‘What’s an electron?’ His answer stunned me. ‘An electron,’ he said, ‘is that to which we attribute the properties of the electron.’ That vague, circular response was a long way from the dream that drove me into physics, a dream of theories that perfectly described reality. Like almost every student over the past 100 years, I was shocked by quantum mechanics, the physics of the micro-world. In place of a clear vision of little bits of matter that explain all the big things around us, quantum physics gives us a powerful yet seemly paradoxical calculus. With its emphasis on probability waves, essential uncertainties and experimenters disturbing the reality they seek to measure, quantum mechanics made imagining the stuff of the world as classical bits of matter (or miniature billiard balls) all but impossible. Adam Frank

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Quantum physics questions the paradigm of the universe as being deterministic…

• Particles behave randomly in principle. Deepak Chopra
• Quantum physics tells us that determinism isn’t true after all. John Perry
• Quantum objects defy common-sense rules of cause and effect. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset. Arthur Eddington
• The world is not determined by initial conditions, once and for all. Every event of measurement is potentially creative and may open new possibilities. Amit Goswami
• The development of quantum theory showed physics at a micro level is far from mechanistic, and the effects of unpredictability flow into the macro universe in which we live and move. Alan H. Dawe
• Assuming that an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, one may still object that such indeterminism is for all practical purposes confined to microscopic phenomena. Hondericn
• Quantum physics presents a new and exciting worldview that challenges old concepts, such as deterministic trajectories of motion and causal continuity. If initial conditions do not forever determine an object’s motion, if instead, every time we observe, there is a new beginning, then the world is creative at the base level. Amit Goswami
• Is determinism true? is another frequent question. The answer, at least in the physical world, is now well known. Determinism is not “true.” The physical world contains quantum randomness – absolute chance. Bob Doyle
• Quantum mechanics predicts events only in terms of probabilities, casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic at all, although evolution of the universal state vector is completely deterministic. Current physical theories cannot resolve the question of whether determinism is true of the world, being very far from a potential Theory of Everything, and open to many different interpretations. Carl Hoefer
• Some even argue that the notion of scientific determinism is being challenged by the rise of quantum mechanics, which governs the micro world of atoms and particles. According to quantum mechanics, you cannot predict with certainty what route a particle will take to reach a target – even if you know all its initial conditions. All you can do is to calculate a probability, which implies that nature is a lot less predictable than we thought. Peter Gooding
• Determinism is the theory that the state of the universe at any moment completely determines the state of the universe a moment later. Researchers using Bell’s theoretical insight into quantum entanglement have shown that there are no deterministic local hidden variables. This means that the final state of entangled quantum particles is not determined by any variables in the initial state. Nature at its most fundamental level is indeterminate. Michael Egnor
• During the 1920s and 1930s, Albert Einstein fiercely resisted the emerging field of quantum mechanics because it clashed with his firm belief that the universe is deterministic—that is, physical actions always have predictable effects. Einstein famously criticized the indeterminacy of quantum theory by saying, God “does not play dice” with the universe. (Niels Bohr, the father of quantum mechanics, is said to have remarked, “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”) Peter Evans
• There is now the idea that, although classical systems are ultimately deterministic, displaying a basically deterministic behavior, we can also have chaos: On occasion, very slight changes in initial conditions can produce very large differences in the final outcome for a system. This generates uncertainty (the uncertainty of weather systems is an example of this chaotic behavior), and uncertainty of prediction can be interpreted as free will. Because chaos is ultimately determined chaos, so the argument goes, this is an illusion of free will. Amit Goswami
• Some scientists suggest that certain parts of physics give us reason to doubt the truth of determinism. For example, the standard interpretation of Quantum Theory, the Copenhagen Interpretation, holds that the laws governing nature are indeterministic and probabilistic. According to this interpretation, whether or not a small particle such as a quark swerves in a particular direction at a particular time is described properly only by probabilistic equations. Although the equations may predict the likelihood that a quark swerves to the left at a certain time, whether or not it actually swerves is indeterministic or random. Kevin Timpe

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…which has implications on the notion of free will

• Many educators, and even politicians, have been firmly convinced that “free will” is not compatible with Newtonian physics, but very much so with quantum theory. They have been convinced also that it is desirable that the citizen should believe in free will, and they have exerted a certain influence in favor of the indeterministic formulation of subatomic physics. What they have in mind is certainly a sociological purpose of science, whatever the technological purposes may be. Philipp Frank
• Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will. Matt Ridley
• Chance is important for free will. It breaks the causal chain of determinism. Bob Doyle
• From the ancient Epicureans to modern quantum mechanical indeterminists, some thinkers have suggested that chance or randomness was an explanation for freedom, an explanation for the unpredictability of a free and creative act. A truly random event would break the causal chain and nullify determinism, providing room for human freedom. Bob Doyle
• Most compatibilist philosophers simply deny the reality of chance. They hope that something will be found to be wrong with quantum mechanical indeterminism. Chance is unintelligible, they say, and thus there is no intelligible account of libertarian free will. Bob Doyle

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According to quantum physics, God really does play dice with the universe

• All the evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino, where dice are thrown, and roulette wheels spin on every occasion. Stephen Hawking
• It’s not whether God plays dice; it’s how God plays dice.  David Gilmour
• Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled.  Stanislaw Lem
• If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.  Max Born

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According to quantum physics, the world is not made of objects

• One startling discovery made by quantum physicists was that if you break matter into smaller and smaller pieces you eventually reach a point where those pieces — electrons, protons, and so on — no longer possess the traits of objects. For example, most of us tend to think of an electron as a tiny sphere or a EB whizzing around, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although an electron can sometimes behave as if it were a compact little partiele, physicists have found that it literally possesses no dimension. This is difficult for most of us to imagine because everything at our own level of existence possesses dimension. And yet if you try to measure the width of an electron, you will discover it’s an impossible task. An electron is simply not an object as we know it. Michael Talbot
• You may have heard these words before, but have you ever thought about what that actually means? It means that the electron isn’t a particle at all. It’s not something you can put your finger on and declare, “the electron is here, moving with this particular speed in this particular direction.” You can only state what the overall properties are, on average, of the space in which the electron exists. Ethan Siegel
• Matter is not made of matter. Hans-Peter Dürr
• The particle world cannot be decomposed into elementary components. Fritjof Capra
• Rutherford’s experiments had shown that atoms, instead of being hard and indestructible, consisted of vast regions of space in which extremely small particles moved, and now quantum theory made it clear that even these particles were nothing like the solid objects of classical physics. The subatomic units of matter are very abstract entities which have a dual aspect. Depending on how we look at them, they appear sometimes as particles, sometimes as waves; and this dual nature is also exhibited by light which can take the form of electromagnetic waves or of particles. Fritjof Capra
• An atom cannot be pictured as a small planetary system. Rather than particles circling around the nucleus, we have to imagine probability waves arranged in different orbits. Whenever we make a measurement, we will find the electrons somewhere in these orbits, but we cannot say that they are ‘going around the nucleus’ in the sense of classical mechanics. Fritjof Capra
• Atoms or elementary particles are themselves not real. Werner Heisenberg
• The age-old tradition of explaining complex structures by breaking them down into simpler constituents is so deeply ingrained in Western thought that the search for these basic components is still going on. Fritjof Capra

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Matter has no inherent substance

• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein
• Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. Niels Bohr
• Moreover, that sensation of pressure is caused not by any contact with a solid, but by the fact that every atom has negatively charged electrons in its outer shells. As we all know, charges of the same type repel each other, so the bark’s electrons repel yours, and you feel this electrical repulsive force stopping your fingers from penetrating any further. Robert Lanza
• With the development of quantum theory, physicists have found that even subatomic particles are far from solid. In fact, they are nothing like matter as we know it. They cannot be pinned down and measured precisely. Much of the time they seem more like waves than particles. They are like fuzzy clouds of potential existence, with no definite location. Whatever matter is, it has little, if any, substance. Peter Russell
• Physicists are still looking for the nature and cause of this stuff called ‘matter’. They’ve been looking for it for two and a half thousand years; they’ve never found it it, and they never will. It’s not there. Rupert Spira

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Matter is inherently empty

• In quantum physics, the study of material at the subatomic level, you get down to the tiniest levels. When they take these subatomic particles, put them in particle accelerators and collide them, quantum physicists discover there’s nothing there. There’s no one home – no ghost in the machine.  Wayne Dyer
• In the 18th century, Leibniz first maintained that space, time, matter, and energy were merely intellectual constructs.  Modern quantum theory supports this proposition, where matter exists only as a probability on a continuum. For example, when we attempt to observe an electron, it becomes impossible to pinpoint its exact location. Bohm remarked that “what appears to be a stable, tangible, visible, audible world is an illusion. It is dynamic and kaleidoscopic–not really there. Bentov describes reality as a vast empty space filled with oscillating fields.  David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• In the Eastern view, the reality underlying all phenomena is beyond all forms and defies all description and specification. It is therefore often said to be formless, empty or void. But this emptiness is not to be taken for mere nothingness. It is, on the contrary, the essence of all forms and the source of all life. Fritjof Capra
• Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:  But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones. Richard Wilbur
• Physicists have appreciated from the beginning of the 20th century that matter is not at all what it appears to be. Atoms are 99.9999 percent empty space. Further, the orbiting electrons that define the empty space of the atom and the tiny subatomic particles that make up the nucleus of the atom are, themselves, restless energy. Matter is not the fixed immutable substance that it appears to the senses. Matter is intelligently organized invisible energy moving in infinitesimally small patterns at the speed of light. Joseph Selbie
• Now owing chiefly to two German physicists, Heisenburg and Schrodinger, the last vestiges of the old solid atom have melted away, matter has become as ghostly as anything in a spiritualist seance. Bertrand Russell
• The physical world has been proved to be 99.999% space and the rest is a mystery. Anthony Lambert
• For nearly one hundred years we have known that the material world is an illusion. Everything that seems solid – a rock, a tree, your body – is actually 99.999% empty space.  Deepak Chopra
• The physical world we live in isn’t there. The solid objects we manipulate with our solid hands are mostly nothing. Seemingly concrete things are made up of infinitesimally small atoms swirling around in an immense void. And these atoms are made up of unimaginably small subatomic particles dancing in vast emptiness. Time Freke
• An atom may be small, a mere billionth of an inch across, but subatomic particles are a hundred thousand times smaller still. Imagine the nucleus of an atom magnified to the size of a grain of rice. The whole atom would then be the size of a football stadium, and the electrons would be other grains of rice flying round the stands. As the early twentieth-century British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington put it, “Matter is mostly ghostly empty space.” Peter Russell
• If we could take away the empty space then all the subatomic particles in every one of the seven billion people on our planet would be about the size of a grain of rice. Tim Freke

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It is the repelling of electrons that gives matter its appearance of solidity…

• When two atoms come close together, their electron clouds repel each other so that the nuclei never actually touch. But you, holding that rock in your hand, feel that it’s very solid, as if you’re touching it. What’s actually happening is that you are feeling the sensation of electrostatic repulsion as your hand’s atoms come into one 100-millionth of a centimeter of that of the rock’s. That apparent solidity of touch is all coming from the sensation of the electrostatic repulsion between the atoms.  Ziad Masri
• You’re not even touching the chair you’re sitting on; instead, you’re hovering one 100-millionth of a centimeter above it, feeling it so solidly under you due to the atomic repulsion between its atoms and yours. Ziad Masri

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…and the existence of sub-atomic forces…

• During the 1960s and ’70s particle physicists discovered that matter is composed of two types of basic building block—the fundamental particles known as quarks and leptons. The quarks are always bound together within larger observable particles, such as protons and neutrons. They are bound by the short-range strong force, which overwhelms electromagnetism at subnuclear distances. The leptons, which include the electron, do not “feel” the strong force. However, quarks and leptons both experience a second nuclear force, the weak force. This force, which is responsible for certain types of radioactivity classed together as beta decay, is feeble in comparison with electromagnetism. Christine Sutton
• The strong and weak forces operate only over distances shorter than the size of an atomic nucleus. Christine Sutton

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…which along with several other constants discovered by science appear to have been finetuned for life to exist

• Quantum theory cannot explain the value used for the mass of the electron, nor field theory the magnitude of the electron’s charge, or relativity theory that of the speed of light. In the classical view, these quantities were regarded as fundamental constants of nature which did not require any further explanation. Fritjof Capra

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Atoms cannot be spoken of in ordinary language

• The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms . . . But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language. Heisenberg
• We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. Niels Bohr
• Heisenberg, when asked how one could envision an atom, replied: ‘Don’t try.’
• The world view suggested by modern physics has repeatedly shown that the idea of ‘basic building blocks’ of matter is no longer tenable. Fritjof Capra
• What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as “self-existent”. The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely “empirical reality”. Bernard d’Espagnat
• What we call ‘reality,’ consists of an elaborate papier-mâché construction of imagination and theory filled in between a few iron posts of observation. John Wheeler

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Particles are processes

• The theories of atomic and subatomic physics made the existence of elementary particles increasingly unlikely. They revealed a basic interconnection of matter, showing that energy of motion can be transformed into mass, and suggesting that particles are processes rather than objects. Fritjof Capra
• Science knows that matter is not, as we fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other. Anne Gilchrist
• Particles are seen as dynamic patterns, or processes, which involve a certain amount of energy appearing to us as their mass. Fritjof Capra

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Particles are dynamic patterns in a constant state of rhythm and change

• The exploration of the subatomic world in the twentieth century has revealed the intrinsically dynamic nature of matter. It has shown that the constituents of atoms, the subatomic particles, are dynamic patterns which do not exist as isolated entities, but as integral parts of an inseparable network of interactions. These interactions involve a ceaseless flow of energy manifesting itself as the exchange of particles; a dynamic interplay in which particles are created and destroyed without end in a continual variation of energy patterns. The particle interactions give rise to the stable structures which build up the material world, which again do not remain static, but oscillate in rhythmic movements. The whole universe is thus engaged in endless motion and activity; in a continual cosmic dance of energy. Fritjof Capra
• The subatomic world is one of rhythm, movement and continual change. It is not, however, arbitrary and chaotic, but follows very definite and clear patterns. Fritjof Capra
• Kenneth Ford is not the only physicist to have used phrases like ‘dance of creation and destruction’ and ‘energy dance’. The ideas of rhythm and dance naturally come into mind when one tries to imagine the flow of energy going through the patterns that make up the particle world. Modern physics has shown us that movement and rhythm are essential properties of matter; that all matter, whether here on Earth or in outer space, is involved in a continual cosmic dance. Fritjof Capra

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Atoms behave like active agents rather than inert substances

• Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension. Freeman Dyson
• The movement of a single atom from one known position to another known position changes an experience from nothing to overwhelming. This means that mind and matter at the quantum mechanical level are all spun together.  Terence McKenna
• Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our understanding. Freeman Dyson
• I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will not only its moment to jump off but its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist. Albert Einstein

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According to quantum physics, subatomic matter can exist as both particles and waves at the same time

• At the subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather shows ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show ‘tendencies to occur’. In the formalism of quantum theory, these tendencies are expressed as probabilities and are associated with mathematical quantities which take the form of waves. This is why particles can be waves at the same time. They are not ‘real’ three-dimensional waves like sound or water waves. They are ‘probability waves’, abstract mathematical quantities with all the characteristic properties of waves which are related to the probabilities of finding the particles at particular points in space and at particular times. All the laws of atomic physics are expressed in terms of these probabilities. We can never predict an atomic event with certainty; we can only say how likely it is to happen. Fritjof Capra
• Particles exist at a specific point in the universe, while waves propagate and can’t be specifically pinned down. Kate Bernier
• In the 1920s, physicists discovered that light can behave as either a particle or a wave. Later research revealed that not just light exhibits this dual behavior—matter can behave as a particle or a wave. And here is what especially makes the “gaping hole” gape: It became increasingly clear that light or matter only behave like particles in the presence of an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• How else can we explain how an electron would change its behavior, one time acting as a seemingly solid particle and another time acting as a wave of energy depending on whether it is being observed? Ziad Masri
• Energy can behave like matter and matter can behave like energy. Light can behave like waves or like particles. Atoms can behave like particles or like waves. Joseph Selbie
• Electromagnetic energy, which includes visible light, can behave as a wave or as a stream of particles, a phenomenon known as wave-particle duality. Counterintuitively, matter exhibits wave-particle duality as well. What we think of as matter, and therefore as being made up of particles, nonetheless can also behave as a wave. Thus physicists tend to use the term matter-wave. Joseph Selbie
• At the atomic level, matter has a dual aspect: it appears as particles and as waves. Which aspect it shows depends on the situation. In some situations the particle aspect is dominant, in others the particles behave more like waves; and this dual nature is also exhibited by light and all other electromagnetic radiation. Light, for example, is emitted and absorbed in the form of ‘quanta’, or photons, but when these particles of light travel through space they appear as vibrating electric and magnetic fields which show all the characteristic behaviour of waves. Fritjof Capra
• Actually, quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago ‘To be is to be perceived.’” Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• This dual aspect of matter and radiation is indeed most startling. The picture of a wave which is always spread out in space is fundamentally different from the particle picture which implies a sharp location. It has taken physicists a long time to accept the fact that matter manifests itself in ways which seem to be mutually exclusive; that particles are also waves, waves also particles. Fritjof Capra
• Quantum physics has presented us with a puzzling picture of the nature of reality. Physicists have demonstrated that quanta can manifest themselves as either particles or waves. When scientists are not looking at electrons, they always exist as a wave, and whenever they design an experiment to observe the elections, they always appear as particles. Danish physicist Niels Bohr pointed out that it is meaningless to talk about the properties and characteristics of a particle that is not being observed. Einstein did not accept Bohr’s argument. He believed that Bohr had to be wrong because the implications of quantum theory were simply too astounding. David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• Depending on what we wish to measure, a photon can be either a wave or a particle. We may call it one thing or the other, but that does not change what it “really” is: something that is neither a wave nor a particle, but apparently both at once. Dean I. Radin
• It does not make sense to decide whether a particle can be described by its wave or particle behaviour until a measurement has been made. Tim Wogan
• Another discovery physicists made is that an electron can manifest as either a particle or a wave. If you shoot an electron at the screen of a television that’s been turned off, a tiny point of light will appear when it strikes the phosphorescent chemicals that coat the glass. The single point of impact the electron leaves on the screen clearly reveals the particlelike side of its nature. Michael Talbot
• In one koan, Zen aspirant Daibai asked Baso, the Zen master, “What is Buddha?” Baso answered, “This mind is Buddha.” Another monk asked the same question, “What is Buddha?” Baso replied, “This mind is not Buddha.” Now compare this with Bohr’s complementarity. Ask Bohr, “Is the electron a particle?” Sometimes Bohr will reply, “It is.” When you look at the cloud chamber track of an electron, it makes sense to say that an electron is a particle. Looking at the diffraction pattern of electrons, however, Bohr will say, mischievously smoking his pipe: “You must agree that an electron is a wave.” It seems that, like the Zen master Baso, Bohr is of two minds regarding the nature of electrons. Amit Goswami
• Take, for example, a simple particle, the electron. Is it a little speck of matter? It turns out that to assume that it is such, consistently behaving itself as such, is clearly wrong. For at times it appears to be a cloud made up of an infinite number of possible electrons that “appear” as a single particle when and only when we observe one. Furthermore, when it is not a single particle it appears to be an undulating wavelike cloud that is capable of moving at speeds in excess of light speed, totally contradicting the Einstein concern that nothing material can move faster than light. Amit Goswami

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Thus, quantum physics represents the ultimate paradox

• Quantum mechanics gives us a wider perspective, a new context that extends our perception into a new domain. We can see nature as separate forms—either waves or particles—or we can discover complementarity: the idea that waves and particles both are inherent in the same thing. Amit Goswami
• Quantum mechanics is the ultimate koan of our times.” Koans are the Zen Buddhists’ tool for breaking through apparent paradoxes to transcendent solutions. Amit Goswami

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As a wave, a particle can be in two places at same time

• It is the central question in quantum mechanics, and no one knows the answer: What really happens in a superposition—the peculiar circumstance in which particles seem to be in two or more places or states at once? By Philip Bal
• Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren’t observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment by Alessandro Fedrizzi
• A quantum object (for example, an electron) can be at more than one place at the same time (the wave property).  Amit Goswami
• Science had actually verified the potential for matter to have two distinct natures. Superposition, a principle in quantum theory, suggests that an object can be in two places at one time. A photon could be a particle, and it could also be a wave. It could have two natures. Meghan O’Gieblyn

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Quantum objects can also move between orbits disappearing and reappearing in a phenomenon known as quantum jumping

• A quantum object ceases to exist here and simultaneously appears in existence over there; we cannot say it went through the intervening space (the quantum jump). Amit Goswami
• ‘On the Constitutions of Atoms and Molecules’, the paper explained how electrons could keep from falling into the nucleus by suggesting that they could occupy only certain well-defined orbits. According to the new theory, an electron moving between orbits would disappear from one and reappear instantaneously in another without visiting the space between. This idea – the famous ‘quantum leap’ – is of course utterly strange, but it was too good not to be true. It not only kept electrons from spiralling catastrophically into the nucleus, it also explained hydrogen’s bewildering wavelengths. Bill Bryson

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As a wave, subatomic particles don’t exist in a definite place

• Before it is observed, a subatomic particle doesn’t really exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular.  Robert Lanza
• We cannot even define the position of the electron in ordinary space and time. Obviously, quantum objects exist very differently from the familiar macro objects of everyday life. Amit Goswami
• The quantum uncertainty principle, however, says that we can never determine both an object’s velocity and its position simultaneously with absolute accuracy. Amit Goswami
• It is not possible, for example, to say with certainty where an electron will be in an atom at a certain time. Its position visual models of probability patterns depends on the attractive force binding it to the atomic nucleus and on the influence of the other electrons in the atom. These conditions determine a probability pattern which represents the electron’s tendencies to be in various regions of the atom. Fritjof Capra
• We can never say that an atomic particle exists at a certain place, nor can we say that it does not exist. Being a probability pattern, the particle has tendencies to exist in various places and thus manifests a strange kind of physical reality between existence and non-existence. We cannot, therefore, describe the state of the particle in terms of fixed opposite concepts. The particle is not present at a definite place, nor is it absent. Fritjof Capra
• Photons, in particular, cannot be point particles because relativistic and quantum principles imply that a photon cannot “be found” at a specific location even in principle. Art Hobson
• Particles” cannot ever be localized. To call a thing a “particle” when it cannot ever be localized is surely a gross misuse of that word. Art Hobson
• Anyway, that’s really all there is to it. The more confident you are about a particle’s position, the more uncertain you become about its momentum. The more certain you are about a particle’s momentum, the less positive you can be about its position. Kate Bernier
• Measuring the position or the momentum of a particle is impossible without interacting with it. Kate Bernier
• A photon, when unobserved, has no definite value of polarization. An electron, when unobserved, has no definite value of spin, position, or momentum. Donald Hoffman
• Any attempt to take a snapshot of a submicroscopic object results only in giving us its position, but we lose information about its state of motion. And vice versa. Amit Goswami
• Physicists found that a measurement of an atom could successfully reveal only one of two complementary properties with certainty; for example, you could know with certainty where an atom was (position), or you could learn where it was going and how fast it was going there (momentum). But you could never accurately know both position and momentum at the same moment. The more you know one, the less you know the other. This dilemma is referred to as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Joseph Selbie
• The Kochen-Specker (KS) Theorem says that no property, such as position or spin, has a definite value that is independent of how it is measured. Donald Hoffman

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One cannot specify a particle’s position and momentum at the same time

• In classical physics you can specify an object’s position and momentum at the same time. But not in quantum physics. If you fire an electron out of an electron gun, you can precisely measure its position or its momentum, but not both at the same time. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the more you know about position the less you can know about momentum, and vice versa. The Kochen-Specker (KS) Theorem tells us, as we discussed earlier, that the position and momentum of the electron in fact have no real values independent of the kind of measurement—position or momentum—that you perform. Donald Hoffman
• When observing a subatomic particle, one may choose to measure-among other quantities-the particle’s position and its momentum (a quantity defined as the particle’s mass times its velocity). We shall see in the next chapter that an important law of quantum theory-Heisenberg’s uncertainty principlesays that these two quantities can never be measured simultaneously with precision- We can either obtain a precise knowledge about the particle’s position and remain completely ignorant about its momentum (and thus about its velocity), or vice versa; or we can have a rough and imprecise knowledge about both quantities. The important point now is that this limitation has nothing to do with the imperfection of our measuring techniques. It is a principle limitation which is inherent in the atomic reality. If we decide to measure the particle’s position precisely, the particle simply does not have a well-defined momentum, and if we decide to measure the momentum, it does not have a well-defined position.  Fritjof Capra
• Realism is the claim that physical objects have definite values of physical properties—such as position, momentum, spin, charge, and polarization—even when unobserved. Locality is the claim that physical objects cannot influence each other faster than the speed of light. Local realism asserts that both realism and locality are true. Donald Hoffman

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Instead, the wave-function describes the probability distribution of the particle

• A quantity like an electron no longer has a well-defined position or momentum, but rather a wavefunction that describes the probability distribution of all possible positions and momentum. Ethan SIegel

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Variables can be determined simultaneously only with a characteristic uncertainty

• Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle puts a limit on the certainty with which we can find the values of two complementary variables (variables that inherently go together, like energy and time, or position and momentum). Kate Bernier
• Canonically conjugated variables can be determined simultaneously only with a characteristic uncertainty. W. Heisenberg
• The Uncertainty Principle showed we can never know all the properties of a particle at the same time. Anthony Lambert
• We cannot assign an electron a trajectory. To do that we would need to know both the electron’s position and its velocity at some initial time, and that would violate the uncertainty principle. Can we assign the electron any manifest reality in space and time between observations? According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the answer is no. Amit Goswami
• You can measure the position or momentum of a particle but, for certain reasons related to quantum theory, you cannot know both at the same time with complete accuracy. (This is known as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.) Mauro Vallati
• Acording to Heisenberg, who developed the uncertainty principle in 1927, it is impossible to know all the properties of a particle, such as its position and its momentum, at the same time because of what seem to be fluctuations inherent in nature. The energy level of any known particle can’t be pinpointed because it is always changing. Part of this principle also stipulates that no subatomic particle can be brought completely to rest, but will always possess a tiny residual movement. Scientists have long known that these fluctuations account for the random noise of microwave receivers or electronic circuits, limiting the level to which signals can be amplified. Even fluorescent strip lighting relies on vacuum fluctuations to operate. Lynne McTaggart
• Although subatomic “particles” bear certain resemblances to macroscopic ones, there are marked differences as well. As demonstrated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, a subatomic particle can have precise position (so long as it has indefinite momentum) – or it can have precise momentum (so long as it has indefinite position). Unlike a macroscopic particle, however, it cannot simultaneously have precise position and precise momentum. Even more mind-boggling, for many of my students, it does not have either in the absence of a measurement. By performing precise position measurements, we create precisely positioned subatomic particles. By performing precise momentum measurements, we create ones with precise momentum. Because behavioral patterns of these enigmatic subatomic “particles” are orderly and predictable, philosophers and scientists accept – and to a certain extent even get used to – the mismatch between Quantum logic and the principles that govern macroscopic entities. Douglas W. Shrader

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Particles thus exist as a hot mess of possibility until observed

• Before it’s observed, an electron is a hot mess of possibility. Just like the metaphorical Schrödinger’s cat, it’s only once we lift the lid from its metaphorical box and take a good, close look that an electron settles on a clear position around an atom. Mike Mcrae
• Between observations, the electron spreads out in accordance with the Schrödinger equation, but probabilistically, in potentia, said Heisenberg, who adopted the word potentia from Aristotle. Where do these potentia exist? Since the electron’s wave collapses immediately upon our observation, potentia could not be within the material domain of space-time; in space-time all objects have to obey the Einsteinian speed limit, remember? Thus the domain of potentia must be outside space-time. Potentia exist in a transcendent domain of reality. Between observations, the electron exists as a possibility form, like a Platonic archetype, in the transcendent domain of potentia. Amit Goswami
• In quantum physics, objects are waves of possibility that reside in a domain of reality called “the domain of potentiality” where communication is instantaneous, without signal, nonlocal. Joseph Selbie
• The picture that emerges isn’t a cosmos full of “stuff” but a cosmos full of possibilities mysteriously turning into “stuff”—the transformation is more real than the physical appearance we take for granted. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos

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Quantum systems are thus described in terms of probability

At the atomic level, then, the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve into patterns of probabilities, and these patterns do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. Quantum theory forces us to see the universe not as a collection of physical objects, but rather as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole. This, however, is the way in which Eastern mystics have experienced the world, and some of them have expressed their experience in words which are almost identical with those used by atomic physicists.   Fritjof Capra

• The observed systems are described in quantum theory in terms of probabilities. This means that we can never predict with certainty where a subatomic particle will be at a certain time, or how an atomic process will occur. Fritjof Capra
• Subatomic particles do not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather show ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show ‘tendencies to occur’. Fritjof Capra
• Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show ‘tendencies to occur’. Fritjof Capra
• By 1927, therefore, classical innocence had been lost. Gone were the days of a clockwork universe whose individual constituents were set in motion at some moment in the past and obediently fulfilled their inescapable, uniquely determined destiny. According to quantum mechanics, the universe evolves according to a rigorous and precise mathematical formalism, but this framework determines only the probability that any particular function will happen—not which future actually ensues. Brian Greene
• Form and substance are manifestations of dynamic patterns of energy and electromagnetic radiation that have no material reality. Form and substance, that is, the “particles” they are comprised of, exist only as probabilities. Rhawn Joseph
• In Einstein’s theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve. Arthur Eddington
• Matter at its most fundamental level could not be divided into independently existing units or even be fully described. Subatomic particles weren’t solid little objects like billiard balls, but vibrating and indeterminate packets of energy that could not be precisely quantified or understood in themselves. Instead, they were schizophrenic, sometimes behaving as particles – a set thing confined to a small space – and sometimes like a wave – a vibrating and more diffuse thing spread out over a large region of space and time – and sometimes like both a wave and a particle at the same time. Quantum particles were also omnipresent. For instance, when transiting from one energy state to another, electrons seemed to be testing out all possible new orbits at once, like a property buyer attempting to live in every house on the block at the same instant before choosing which one to finally settle in. And nothing was certain. There were no definite locations, but only a likelihood that an electron, say, might be at a certain place, no set occurrence but only a probability that it might happen. At this level of reality, nothing was guaranteed; scientists had to be content with only being able to bet on the odds. The best that ever could be calculated was probability – the likelihood, when you take a certain measurement, that you will get a certain result a certain percentage of the time. Cause-and-effect relationships no longer held at the subatomic level. Stable-looking atoms might suddenly, without apparent cause, experience some internal disruption; electrons, for no reason, elect to transit from one energy state to another. Once you peered closer and closer at matter, it wasn’t even matter, not a single solid thing you could touch or describe, but a host of tentative selves, all being paraded around at the same time. Rather than a universe of static certainty, at the most fundamental level of matter, the world and its relationships were uncertain and unpredictable, a state of pure potential, of infinite possibility. Lynne McTaggart
• One extraordinary consequence of the strangeness at the heart of physics is objects can only be described using sets of probabilities called superpositions – up until we poke them with probes and bombard them with light to determine for certain their size and nature. Mike Mcrae

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Particles are waves when not observed

• When calculations are done with the Schrödinger equation, what’s left is not the Newtonian state of exact position and velocity. Instead, you get what is called the wave function (physicists refer to it as psi after the Greek symbol Ψ used to denote it). Unlike the Newtonian state, which can be clearly imagined in a commonsense way, the wave function is an epistemological and ontological mess. The wave function does not give you a specific measurement of location and velocity for a particle; it gives you only probabilities at the root level of reality. Psi appears to tell you that, at any moment, the particle has many positions and many velocities. In effect, the bits of matter from Newtonian physics are smeared out into sets of potentials or possibilities. Corey S Powell
• When a quantum is behaving like a wave, it retains its ability to be everywhere at once. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• According to quantum theory, as long as a photon or electron isn’t being observed, it acts like a wave. One feature of waves is that they spread out in all directions; there is no pinpoint location for a photon when it is in its wave-like state. Yet, as soon as the photon or electron is observed, it behaves like a particle, displaying a specific location along with other features like charge and momentum. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• According to the results of countless experiments, matter—if unmeasured, or unobserved by an intelligent observer—will remain in a wave state. Only when measured by an intelligent observer will it behave as particles. Measurement by an intelligent observer always causes the matter-wave to behave like matter—and in the absence of such a measurement, the matter-wave behaves like a wave. We are left with the fact that an intelligent observer is—somehow— integral to the formation of matter. Joseph Selbie
• To know the mechanics of the wave, is to know the entire secret of Nature. Walter Russell

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The simple act of observation seems to cause the wave function to collapse, bringing particles “into existence”

• The electron’s wave collapses immediately upon our observation. Amit Goswami
• Until you measure it, a particle is never in a specific place or a specific state. Steve Taylor
• The simple act of observation causes the wave function to collapse. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. John Wheeler (Nobel physicist)
• No one has ever seen the wave function collapse—it’s not an observable event. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• All objects remain in an indeterminate wave state until they are measured by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Our observation collapses the quantum wave packet to a localized particle. Subjects and objects are inextricably blended together. Amit Goswami
• A quantum object cannot be said to manifest in ordinary space-time reality until we observe it as a particle (collapse of the wave). Amit Goswami
• All physicists today acknowledge the fact that matter needs to be observed by consciousness before it collapses into any kind of tangible existence
• In the quantum world, the observer always interacts, changing the behaviour of particles through the acts of observation and measurement. Steve Taylor
• Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state. Robert Lanza
• A wave of probability isn’t an event or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually observed. Robert Lanza 
• A physical particle or bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wave-function collapses at the time of observation, and only then actually assumes a definite existence. Robert Lanza
• Before it is observed, a subatomic particle doesn’t really exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular. Robert Lanza
• Observation isn’t passive. It causes waves to collapse into particles. Something that is invisible, all-pervasive, and subject to the laws of probability turns into something else that is local, physical, and certain. Deepak Chopra
• With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—either duration or a position in space. It cannot be thought of as being either here or there.  Robert Lanza
• Every time when we measure the orbit of the electron, the answer of the measurement will be that the electron was either in a lower or higher orbit, never something in between,” says Stockholm University physicist Fabian Pokorny. “The measurement in a sense forces the electron to decide in which of the two states it is.” Mike Mcrae
• According to the ‘uncertainty principle’ of quantum physics, on an elementary level the physical universe is a collection of possibilities. Scientists have discovered that there has to be a conscious observer to ‘collapse’ the quantum possibilities, which stops particles being in two places at once and creates a world we can examine and measure. Tim Freke
• Then things get weirder still. According to the standard way of treating the quantum calculus, the act of making a measurement on the particle kills off all pieces of the wave function, except the one your instruments register. The wave function is said to collapse as all the smeared-out, potential positions or velocities vanish in the act of measurement. Adam Frank
• When the quantum physicists looked deeply into the nature of matter, they discovered something astonishing. The quantum possibilities only come into a definite form when observed by consciousness. They concluded that consciousness ‘collapses’ the quantum possibilities into a seemingly solid universe. So, without the conscious observer the world as we know it doesn’t exist. Tim Freke
• What makes the observer problem unique in quantum physics is that the act of observation can be enough to bring particles into existence in time and space. This is technically known as the collapse of the wave function, meaning that a probability wave, which is invisible and extends infinitely in all directions, changes state, and suddenly a particle is visible. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Sights, tactile experiences, odours—all these sensations are experienced inside the mind alone. None are “out there” except by the convention of language. Everything we observe is the direct interaction of energy and mind. Anything that we do not observe directly exists only as potential—or more mathematically speaking—as a haze of probability. “Nothing,” said Wheeler, “exists until it is observed.” Robert Lanza
• As demonstrated in quantum physics, the act of observation, measurement, and registration of an event, can effect that event, causing a collapse of a the wave function, thereby registering form, length, shape which emerges like a blemish on the face of the quantum continuum. Thus, it can be said, at the moment the quantum continuum became conscious, achieved consciousness, this triggered a collapse of the wave function, and the universe came into being. Rhawn Joseph
• Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren’t observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment by Alessandro Fedrizzi
• As summed up the Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics: “the transition from the possible to the actual takes place during the act of observation… and the interaction of the object with the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world…Since through the observation our knowledge of the system has changed discontinuously, its mathematical representation has also undergone the discontinuous change and we speak of a quantum jump” (Heisenberg, 1958). In other words, something comes into existence, by becoming conscious of it. Rhawn Joseph
• Most physicists believe that before a measurement is made at the quantum level, a particle exists in all its theoretically possible states. There are no real entities at this stage, only an ensemble of potentials that coexist in an all-at-once “superposition.” When a measurement or observation occurs, these potentials undergo a “collapse of the wave function,” which is a mathematical description, and manifest as only one of many possible configurations, like the famous cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment. Measurement or observation makes the ghostly potentials real. Larry Dossey
• Perhaps the most essential ingredient of this interconnected universe was the living consciousness that observed it. In classical physics, the experimenter was considered a separate entity, a silent observer behind glass, attempting to understand a universe that carried on, whether he or she was observing it or not. In quantum physics, however, it was discovered, the state of all possibilities of any quantum particle collapsed into a set entity as soon as it was observed or a measurement taken. To explain these strange events, quantum physicists had postulated that a participatory relationship existed between observer and observed – these particles could only be considered as ‘probably’ existing in space and time until they were ‘perturbed’, and the act of observing and measuring them forced them into a set state – an act akin to solidifying Jell-O. This astounding observation also had shattering implications about the nature of reality. It suggested that the consciousness of the observer brought the observed object into being. Nothing in the universe existed as an actual ‘thing’ independently of our perception of it. Every minute of every day we were creating our world. Lynne McTaggart

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The observer effect is evident in the double-split experiment

• When electrons pass through a double-slit experiment, the results imply that each electron comes through both slits, implying it is a spatially extended object (a wave), and it then “collapses” to atomic dimensions upon impacting a viewing screen. Quantum physics was invented during the 1920s to make sense of such phenomena. Electrons, as well as protons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules, are not particles. Electrons and photons are spatially extended bundles of field energy. Art Hobson
• To demonstrate how much we take for granted, even with our basic assumptions about straightforward, rational logic, imagine the following scenario: We are passing farm animals through a gate that only lets horses through and rejects all cows. Now we take the horses that made it through the first gate and pass them through a second gate that only lets through black animals and rejects all white animals. Logic tells us that only animals that are both horses and black can pass through both gates. To our surprise, about half of the animals that make it through both gates turn out to be white cows! This seems completely ridiculous, and would be instantly dismissed as a mistake, except that the world at the quantum level actually does operate this way. If we assumed that elementary particles were like tiny versions of black and white horses and cows, we would be wrong! Dean I Radin
• Quantum physics’ double-slit experiments indicate that an intelligent observer must be present for energy to change from its wave state to its particle state. Joseph Selbie
• If just one slit is open, then the photons land, as expected, on a portion of the photographic plate just behind that slit. But if both slits are open, then the photons land, contrary to expectations, in a sequence of bands reminiscent of the interference patterns one gets when two water waves collide—each photon somehow went through both A and B at the same time. That is no problem for a wave. How does a particle do this trick? Does it split itself in half? If we try to observe the slits closely, we always see a photon go through just one slit, never both. Moreover, if we observe which slit it goes through then the interference pattern disappears. Donald Hoffman
• We choose to examine a phenomenon [Double-slit experiment] which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by “explaining” how it works. We will just tell you how it works. In telling you how it works we will have told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman
• A photon can’t be seen in flight and is known only at the moment of detection. If a detector is placed right at the slit, it shows in real time that each photon passes through one slit, the way a pellet would. What if we place the detector after the slit? Wheeler asked. It turns out that the photon can delay its decision to behave like a wave or a particle until after it passes through the slit, which is very peculiar. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• An actual experiment, involves firing a single electron at a barrier that contains two narrow slits in it, separated by only a short distance, with a screen behind them. Common sense tells you that the electron should go through either the left slit or the right slit, and that if you fire many such electrons in a row, you should get two bunches: one corresponding to electrons that went through the left slit, the other corresponding to those that went through the right slit. But that’s not what happens at all. Instead, what you see on the screen looks like an interference pattern. These individual electrons are behaving like waves, and the patterns looks like what you’d get if you fired continuous light waves through a double slit, or even sent water waves through a tank with two gaps where the slits are. But these are single electrons! Where are they, at any given point in time, and which slit did they go through?  You might think to set up a detector at each slit, to measure which one each electron goes through. And you can do this: electron #1 goes through the right slit; #2 goes left; #3 goes left; #4 goes right; #5 goes left, and so on. But now, when you look at the pattern of electrons on the screen, you don’t get the interference pattern you had before. You only get the two bunches. Somehow, the act of observing, measuring, or forcing an interaction has changed the outcome.   Ethan Siegel
• In the famous double-slit experiment, single particles, such as photons, pass one at a time through a screen containing two slits. If either path is monitored, a photon seemingly passes through one slit or the other, and no interference will be seen. Conversely, if neither is checked, a photon will appear to have passed through both slits simultaneously before interfering with itself, acting like a wave. Tim Wogan
• The classic example of a superposition involves firing photons at two parallel slits in a barrier. One fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics is that tiny particles can behave like waves, so that those passing through one slit “interfere” with those going through the other, their wavy ripples either boosting or canceling one another to create a characteristic pattern on a detector screen. The odd thing, though, is this interference occurs even if only one particle is fired at a time. The particle seems somehow to pass through both slits at once, interfering with itself. That’s a superposition. And it gets weirder: Measuring which slit such a particle goes through will invariably indicate it only goes through one—but then the wavelike interference (the “quantumness,” if you will) vanishes. The very act of measurement seems to “collapse” the superposition. “We know something fishy is going on in a superposition,” says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. “But you’re not allowed to measure it. This is what makes quantum mechanics so diabolical.” For decades researchers have stalled at this apparent impasse. They cannot say exactly what a superposition is without looking at it; but if they try to look at it, it disappears. By Philip Bal

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The double-split experiment can even be done after the fact

• Wheeler’s delayed-choice variation on this experiment is clever: wait until after the photon passes the metal screen, and only then decide what to measure—path A, path B, or a superposition. In his words, “Let us wait until the quantum has already gone through the screen before we—at our free choice—decide whether it shall have gone ‘through both slits’ or ‘through one.’” Wheeler’s experiment has been performed with photons (and helium atoms!) and it works.  What we choose to measure after the photon has passed the screen determines what the photon did, or at least what we can say about what it did, before we measured. “In the delayed-choice experiment we, by a decision in the here and now, have an irretrievable influence on what we will want to say about the past—a strange inversion of the normal order of time.” The past depends on our choice in the present. Donald Hoffman

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Observation is performed by a process termed “quantum measurement”

• In this connection the “classical object” is usually called apparatus, and its interaction with the electron is spoken of as measurement. However, it must be emphasized that we are here not discussing a process of measurement in which the physicist-observer takes part. By measurement, in quantum mechanics, we understand any process of interaction between classical and quantum objects, occurring apart from and independently of any observer. The importance of the concept of measurement in quantum mechanics was elucidated by N. Bohr. Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz
• In the words of Heisenberg, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Fritjof Capra
• Observers do not need to be conscious, they must merely be able to establish facts in the form of a measurement outcome. Alessandro Fedrizz

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The observer effect gives rise to the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat

• Consider the case of Schrödinger’s cat. Place a cat in a box with a single radioactive atom in there. If the atom decays, poison is released; the cat eats it and dies. If the atom doesn’t decay, the poison isn’t released; the cat lives. This analogy bothered Schrödinger tremendously, because under the cause-and-effect rules, either the cat must either be alive or not alive. The atom decayed or it didn’t, the poison was released or it wasn’t, and the cat died or didn’t die. But if you don’t make a measurement, observation, or cause an interaction that tells you the outcome, the atom — and hence, the cat — must be in a superposition of states, meaning the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. The failure to know whether a (theoretically quantum) animal is alive or dead, and insisting it must be a mix of both, is a classic example of quantum weirdness. Ethan Siegel
• One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is locked up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of an hour only one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. Erwin Schrödinger
• When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun. Hermann Goering
• It takes an observer to cause a superposition to collapse into a specific state. What about the cat? It would be dead and alive at the same time, suspended 50/50 between the two states, until an observer opens the box! Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• What about the cat? It would be dead and alive at the same time, suspended 50/50 between the two states, until an observer opens the box! There is both an observer seeing a dead cat and an observer seeing a live cat. These two equally real scenarios split off from each other with no communication between them. The many-worlds theory is nifty in the way it turns head-scratching problems into no problem at all. You can have your cat and kill it, too. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• In his standoff with Dr. Ramsay of Harvard last fall, Dr. Leggett suggested that his colleagues should consider the merits of the latter theory. “Why should we think of an electron as being in two states at once but not a cat, when the theory is ostensibly the same in both cases?” Dr. Leggett asked. Dr. Ramsay said that Dr. Leggett had missed the point. How the wave function mutates is not what you calculate. “What you calculate is the prediction of a measurement,” he said. If it’s a cat, I can guarantee you will get that it’s alive or dead, Dr. Ramsay said. Dennis Overbye

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…which gives rise to interesting and profound implications

• The resolution of the Schrödinger’s cat paradox tells us a great deal about the nature of consciousness. It chooses among alternatives when it manifests the material reality; it is transcendent and unitive; and its doings elude our normal mundane perception. Admittedly, none of these aspects of consciousness is self-evident to common sense. Try to suspend your disbelief and remember what Robert Oppenheimer once said: “Science is uncommon sense.” Quantum collapse is a process of choosing and recognizing by a conscious observer; there is ultimately only one observer. Amit Goswami

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Reality would seem to be inseparable from the observer

• In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.  Fritjof Capra
• First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists. Rupert Sheldrake
• The observer is woven into the very fabric of reality. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The universe and the observer exist as a pair. Andrei Linde
• The observer cannot be separated from the observed. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Fritjof Capra
• The most widely accepted version of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation (so named after the work done at the Copenhagen Institute by Danish physicist Niels Bohr), places the observer at the crossroads between wave and particle. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Talking about a quantum object without talking about how we observe it is ambiguous because the two are inseparable. Amit Goswami
• Quantum theory has abolished the notion of fundamentally separated objects, has introduced the concept of the participator to replace that of the observer, and may even find it necessary to include the human consciousness in its description of the world. It has come to see the universe as an interconnected web of physical and mental relations whose parts are only defined through their connections to the whole. Fritjof Capra
• In atomic physics, we cannot talk about the properties of an object as such. They are only meaningful in the context of the object’s interaction with the observer. In the words of Heisenberg, ‘What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Fritjof Capra
• The 2014 findings confirm the evidence of all past experiments that point to wave-particle complementarity being an intrinsic attribute of space-time. The progressive understanding though of how information underlies and pervades the appearance of such complementarity is crucial to realizing how the environment and observer are integrally interconnected with any and all experiments. In other words, there’s no separate “objective” reality, and the entirety of our Universe is an integrated, coherent, and in-formational entity. There is literally no “environment” apart from the consciousness of the “observer.” Jude Currivan and Ervin Laszlo
• Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as ‘sitting out there’, with the observer safely separated from it by a 20 centimeter slab of plateglass. Even to observe so miniscule an object as an electron, he must shatter the glass. He must reach in. He must install his chosen measuring equipment. It is up to him to decide whether he shall measure position or momentum. To install the equipment to measure the one prevents and excludes his installing the equipment to measure the other. Moreover, the measurement changes the state of the electron. The universe will never afterwards be the same. To describe what has happened, one has to cross out that old word ‘observer’ and put in its place the new word ‘participator’. In some strange sense the universe is a participatory universe. John Wheeler

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The act of observing would seem to change reality

• The act of observing something can apparently alter its reality.  Mark Alpert
• In physics, the observer effect is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. … An especially unusual version of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Alessandro Fedrizz
• Then things get weirder still. According to the standard way of treating the quantum calculus, the act of making a measurement on the particle kills off all pieces of the wave function, except the one your instruments register. The wave function is said to collapse as all the smeared-out, potential positions or velocities vanish in the act of measurement. It’s like the Schrödinger equation, which does such a great job of describing the smeared-out particle before the measurement is made, suddenly gets a pink slip. You can see how this throws a monkey wrench into a simple, physics-based view of an objective materialist world. How can there be one mathematical rule for the external objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement occurs? For a hundred years now, physicists and philosophers have been beating the crap out of each other (and themselves) trying to figure out how to interpret the wave function and its associated measurement problem. What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter?  Adam Frank
• In the words of Heisenberg, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Fritjof Capra
• How can there be one rule for the objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement? Adam Frank
• In physics, the inescapable fact that the simple act of observation changes the nature of a physical system caused virtually all the founders of modern physics, including Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein, to think deeply about the strangely privileged role of human consciousness. Dean I. Radin
• Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes. Marianne Williamson
• The observer is only a problem if the very act of looking creates a change in the thing you are looking at. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos

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Matter would seem to manifest as particles (reality) only when we are observing it

• Observers are necessary to bring the universe into being. Amit Goswami
• Nothing is real to us until we perceive it. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist. Arthur Eddington
• The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe. Amit Goswami
• No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. John Wheeler
• There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it. Amit Goswami
• Instead of discovering particles, physicists may actually be creating them. Jahn and Dunne
• There is no single underlying reality that is independent of our observations. Anthony Lambert
• It takes an observer to cause a superposition to collapse into a specific state. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. John Wheeler
• If there were no intelligent observers in the physical universe, the physical universe would cease to exist. Joseph Selbie
• Measurement by an intelligent observer collapses the waveform. No observer, no collapse; no observer, no matter. Amit Goswami,
• It does not make sense to decide whether a particle can be described by its wave or particle behaviour until a measurement has been made. Tim Wogan
• The intelligent-observer paradox: a matter wave takes on the behavior of matter only when it is measured by an intelligent observer.  Joseph Selbie
• Things exist because they are perceived. The observer is woven into the very fabric of reality. Nothing is real to us until we perceive it. Anthony Lambert
• Quantum physicists such as Bernard d’Espagnat talk about a ‘veiled reality’ that we can hardly even imagine, which appears as solid physical objects only when observed. Keith Ward
• Observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of measurements. Pascual Jordan
• Quantum waves are like Platonic archetypes in the transcendent domain of consciousness, and the particles that manifest upon our observation are the immanent shadows on the cave wall. Amit Goswami
• If subatomic particles only come into existence in the presence of an observer, then it is meaningless to speak of a particle’s properties and characteristics as existing before they are observed. Niels Bohr
• Like Platonic archetypes, coherent superpositions exist in the never-never land of a transcendent order until we collapse them, bringing them into the world of manifestation with an act of observation. Amit Goswami
• Perhaps the most important, and the most insidious, assumption that we absorb in our childhoods is that of the material world of objects existing out there—independent of subjects, who are the observers. Amit Goswami
• Niels Bohr was among the first to conclude that physical objects do not have an independent, objective reality. He stated categorically that physical objects only appear when we observe them—and his assertion has never been disproven. Joseph Selbie
• Most of us believe deeply in a physical reality, consisting of objects in spacetime that existed prior to life and observers; no observer is needed, we believe, to endow any object with a position, spin, or any other physical property. Donald Hoffman
• Werner Heisenberg , a titan of early 20th-century physics, suggested that underlying all matter is an indivisible and unseen realm, for which he coined the term Potentia, and from which objects spring into existence when observed by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Actually, quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago ‘To be is to be perceived.’” Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The late physicist John Wheeler concluded that the apparent oddity of quantum mechanics was built on an even grander and odder truth: that the universe as a whole festers in a state of uncertainty and snaps into clear, actual being when observed by a conscious being — that is, us. Corey S. Powell
• It was easy to think that the mathematical objects involved with Newtonian mechanics referred to real things out there in some intuitive way. But those ascribing to psi-ontology – sometimes called wave function realism – must now navigate a labyrinth of challenges in holding their views. Adam Frank
• All of the above paradoxes are explainable, are understandable, if we are to give up that precious assumption that there is an objective reality “out there” independent of consciousness. It says even more, that the universe is “self-aware” and that it is consciousness itself that creates the physical world. Amit Goswami
• Ever since the 1920s, physicists have puzzled over the strangely privileged role of the observer in quantum theory. A particle exists in a fuzzy state of uncertainty…but only until it is observed. As soon as someone looks at it and takes its measurements, the particle seems to collapse into a definite location. Corey S. Powell
• Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once — this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren’t observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state — breaking the superposition. Alessandro Fedrizzi
• Physicists have gone on to prove, thousands of times, that until measured by an intelligent observer, everything—whether energy such as light, or matter such as atoms—behaves in a wavelike manner until measured by an intelligent observer. The inescapable conclusion: An intelligent observer plays an essential role in the formation of matter. Joseph Selbie
• Physicists have found compelling evidence that the only time electrons and other “quanta” manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. At all other times they behave as waves. This is as strange as owning a bowling ball that  traces a single line down the lane while you are watching it, but leaves a wave pattern every time you blink your eyes.  Michael Talbot
• Electrons are too remote from ordinary personal reality. Suppose we ask, Is the moon there when we are not looking at it? To the extent that the moon is ultimately a quantum object (being composed entirely of quantum objects), we must say no—so says physicist David Mermin. Between observations, the moon also exists as a possibility form in transcendent potentia. Amit Goswami
• The only way to be 100% sure of where a particle is, is to observe it. Up until the point that you observe it, the Copenhagen Interpretation says that the particle is there and is not there. It is only when you observe the particle that you know if it’s there or not there. While this makes sense in quantum physics, it does not make sense in classical (real world) physics. Wikipaedia
• The KS Theorem shatters another belief that Einstein had about reality. In 1935, in a famous paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he claimed that “If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity.” Donald Hoffman
• There is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them . For instance, when an electron isn’t being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a wave. Physicists are able to draw this conclusion because they have devised clever strategies for deducing how an electron behaves when it is not being observed. Michael Talbot
• Albert Einstein once said “I like to believe that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.” But according to the double-slit experiments, the moon isn’t there unless one is looking at it.  The old puzzler, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it make a sound?” had a new answer: If no one is there, there is no sound, there is no tree, there is no forest, there is no earth, there is no thing.  Joseph Selbie
• The act of knowing, of observing, or measuring, that is, interacting with the environment in any way, creates an entangled state and a knot in the quantum continuum described as a “collapse of the wave function;” a knot of energy that is a kind of blemish in the continuum of the quantum field. This quantum knot bunches up at the point of observation, at the assigned value of measurement and can be entangled. Consciousness perceives a blemish in the continuum, but which is still part of the continuum, even though it is perceived as distinct. Rhawn Joseph
• Physicist Kick Herbert, a supporter of this interpretation, says this has sometimes caused him to imagine that behind his back the world is always “a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.” But whenever he turns around and tries to see the soup, his glance instantly freezes it and turns it back into ordinary reality. He believes this makes us all a little like Midas, the legendary king who never knew the feel of silk or the caress of a human hand because everything he touched turned to gold, “Likewise humans can never experience the true texture of quantum reality,” says Herbert, “because everything we touch turns to matter.  Michael Talbot
• What about the big bang? Didn’t it happen 13 billion 799 million years ago, before any observers? Isn’t it a fact of objective reality, not merely an interface description of an observer? At least one physicist has argued that the universe has no history apart from observers, that “histories of the universe … depend on what is being observed, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has a unique, observer independent history.” That physicist was Stephen Hawking who, in collaboration with the physicist Thomas Hertog, favored a “top-down” cosmology that starts with the observer, rather than a “bottom-up” cosmology that assumes a god’s-eye view. Donald Hoffman

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We live in a participatory universe that must take minds into account

• This is a participatory universe. John Archibald Wheeler
• We don’t, according to Wheeler, passively observe a preexisting objective reality, we actively participate in constructing reality by our acts of observation. Donald Hoffman
• Quantum physics makes it undeniable that we live in a participatory universe. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists. Rupert Sheldrake
• The most radical shift wrought by quantum mechanics was the explicit introduction of mind into the basic conceptual structure. Human experience was elevated from the role of ‘a detached observer’ to that of ‘the fundamental element of interest. Henry P. Stapp, Ph.D.
• It is not we are discovering reality, but participating in its creation. Michael Talbot
• “Observership” is a prerequisite for any useful version of “reality.” John Archibald Wheeler
• In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it. Martin Rees
• Rather than trying to sweep away the mystery of mind by attributing it to the mechanisms of matter, we must grapple with the intertwined nature of the two. Adam Frank
• Quantum physics, which has shown that perception does in some cases appear to have real causal power. Particles have no properties independent of how you measure them—in other words, they require a conscious observer. Ziad Masri
• The Copenhagen interpretation tells us that the formation of matter is random and indeterminate and relies solely on the presence of an intelligent observer to determine its final form. Bohm’s math, however, established that while form-determining hidden properties cannot exist in our three-dimensional universe, they could exist in nonlocal two-dimensional pre-space. Joseph Selbie

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Perception of reality can differ from one agent to another

• A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such that all observers can agree with it. But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective. measurements in quantum mechanics are subjective to observers. Alessandro Fedrizz
• Each observer’s experiments admit a consistent description, but a simultaneous description of both observers is inconsistent. Raphael Bousso
• Reality differs from one agent to another. This is not as strange as it may sound. What is real for an agent rests entirely on what that agent experiences, and different agents have different experiences. Fuchs, Mermin, and Schack
• Quantum states vary from observer to observer. So does spacetime itself. Donald Hoffman
• Some physicists conclude that quantum theory counsels a profoundly new view of the world. As the physicist Carlo Rovelli puts it, “My effort here is not to modify quantum mechanics to make it consistent with my view of the world, but to modify my view of the world to make it consistent with quantum mechanics.” The way that Rovelli updates his worldview is to reject “the notion of an absolute, or observer-independent, state of a system; equivalently, the notion of observer-independent values of physical quantities.” Donald Hoffman
• If different observers give different accounts of the same sequence of events, then each quantum mechanical description has to be understood as relative to a particular observer. Thus, a quantum mechanical description of a certain system … cannot be taken as an ‘absolute’ (observer-independent) description of reality, but rather as a formalization, or codification, of properties of a system relative to a given observer…. In quantum mechanics, ‘state’ as well as ‘value of a variable’—or ‘outcome of a measurement’—are relational notions. Carlo Rovelli

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Some even point to it as meaning life has a cosmic purpose after all

• The pivotal role of observers in quantum theory is very curious. Is it possible that the human race has a cosmic purpose after all? Did the universe blossom into an untold number of realities, each containing billions of galaxies and vast oceans of emptiness between them, just to produce a few scattered communities of observers? Is the ultimate goal of the universe to observe its own splendor? Mark Alpert
• Our essential role in the existence of the physical universe has been confirmed over and over by science’s intelligent-observer experiments— a matter wave only behaves like matter when observed by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our understanding. Freeman Dyson
• The experimentally confirmed and confounding need for the presence of an intelligent observer in order for the matter-wave to behave like matter is a profound hint, provided by science, that we are far more than physical bodies, far more than biological machines, far more, even, than holographic projections of our energy bodies. We are one with the infinite intelligent consciousness that creates Reality.  Joseph Selbie
• And what of us? Suddenly, we had grown central to every physical process, but no one had fully acknowledged this. The quantum pioneers had discovered that our involvement with matter was crucial. Subatomic particles existed in all possible states until disturbed by us – by observing or measuring – at which point, they’d settle down, at long last, into something real. Our observation – our human consciousness – was utterly central to this process of subatomic flux actually becoming some set thing, but we weren’t in any of the mathematics of Heisenberg or Schrödinger. They realized that we were somehow key, but they didn’t know how to include us. As far as science was concerned, we were still on the outside looking in. Lynne McTaggart

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Consciousness (as the observing mind) would seem to play a central role in manifesting reality

• Unlike Bohm, Jahn and Dunne believe subatomic particles do not possess a distinct reality until consciousness enters the picture. “I think we have long since passed the place in high energy physics where we’re examining the structure of a passive universe,” Jahn states. “I think we’re into the domain where the interplay of consciousness in the environment is taking place on such a primary scale that we are indeed creating reality by any reasonable definition of the term.”  Michael Talbot
• Consciousness is the agency that collapses the wave of a quantum object, which exists in potentia, making it an immanent particle in the world of manifestation. Amit Goswami
• The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is proof that consciousness plays a central role in determining the character of the physical world. If nothing is real until it is observed, consciousness cannot arise from electrochemical events in the brains of animals like ourselves; rather, it must be part of the very fabric of reality. Sam Harris
• In the early to mid-twentieth century, many physicists came to the conclusion that consciousness was the underlying foundation of reality. One of the most compelling reasons for this conclusion was the discovery of the intelligent-observer paradox. It can be argued that the paradox of the intelligent observer is to scientific materialism what the paradox of the constancy of the speed of light is to Newtonian physics. Joseph Selbie
• Chalmers pointed to the vividness – the intrinsic presence – of the perceiving subject’s experience as a problem no explanatory account of consciousness seems capable of embracing. Chalmers’s position struck a nerve with many philosophers, articulating the sense that there was fundamentally something more occurring in consciousness than just computing with meat. But what is that ‘more’? Adam Frank
• Consciousness is the crux of the physics of God: It is in consciousness that science and religion come together, and it is through an understanding of consciousness that we can reconcile the apparent conflicts between them. Acceptance of consciousness as the foundation of the cosmos, however, does not come easily. Joseph Selbie
• Energy is entwined with consciousness on both a personal and a cosmic scale. Dawson Church
• Suppose we define consciousness as the agency that affects quantum objects to make their behavior sensible. Amit Goswami
• The virtually inescapable conclusion now is that consciousness does create reality. If that is the case, it makes it far less plausible to view consciousness as merely an epiphenomenon of the brain. Consciousness needs to be something greater than a mental illusion created by brain chemistry. Consciousness is the primary stuff. Bernard Haisch
• It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness. Eugene Wigner
• To cut to the chase, quantum mechanics is telling us that consciousness creates reality. Bernard Haisch
• Both of the two great revolutions in twentieth-century physics—Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and Quantum Theory—revealed that observation played an important role. They also challenged the assumption that there is a material reality. Previously it was thought that the physical reality existed independent of our observation it. Shroedinger’s wave function and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle revealed this was not the case. As a result, several physicists of the time—Einstein, Bohr, Shroedinger, Eddington, Pauli—became interested in the role that mind and consciousness played in the cosmos, but this interest faded over time and few contemporary physicists seek to include consciousness in their model of reality. Peter Russell

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How can consciousness be created as an epiphenomenon oy matter if it manifests matter?

• How can matter give rise to consciousness when quantum mechanics indicates that consciousness affects and even creates matter? Amit Goswami
• It seems absurd that an epiphenomenon of matter can affect matter: If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, how can it collapse the spread-out wave of a quantum object to a localized particle when it takes a quantum measurement? Amit Goswami
• The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment. Bernard d’Espagnat
• If nothing is real until it is observed, consciousness cannot arise from electrochemical events in the brains of animals like ourselves; rather, it must be part of the very fabric of reality. Sam Harris
• Other interpretations embrace the possibility that the intelligent-observer effect indicates that there is more to reality than scientific materialism’s matter-energy interactions. They embrace the idea that thought and consciousness have an existence independent of matter and energy. It rests on the premise that thought and consciousness are not just fleeting artifacts of the biochemical processes of the brain; rather, thought and consciousness are the fundamental causative elements of the cosmos. It posits not only that thought and consciousness exist beyond matter, but that thought and consciousness create matter. Joseph Selbie
• It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call “observation” in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call “chance” when they are made by electrons. Freeman Dyson

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The world of matter does not and cannot exist independently of consciousness

• Without perception, there can be no reality. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. Erwin Schrödinger (Physicist)
• As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as the result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter. Max Planck (Physicist)
• If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there, does it make a sound? An observer, an ear, and a brain are every bit as necessary for the experience of sound as are the air pulses.  Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• In truth, there can be no break between the observer and the observed. If the two are split, the reality is gone. Robert Lanza
• Once one fully understands that there is no independent external universe outside of biological existence, the rest more or less falls into place. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• The behaviour of subatomic particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• The universe and the observer exist as a pair. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of the universe that ignores consciousness. I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. Andrei Linde (Physicist)
• Ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. Take care of the power that projects all this and your problems will come to an end. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture.’ Erwin Schröedinger (Physicist)
• Without any organism, what if anything is really there? Existence must begin with life and perception.  Indeed, what could existence mean, absent consciousness of any kind?  Robert Lanza (Biologist)

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Is it possible consciousness is a non-local phenomenon?

• My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present. Nonlocal events are immediate; they require no travel time. They are unmediated; they require no energetic signal to “carry” them. They are unmitigated; they do not become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once. This means there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal. Larry Dossey
• Intelligent consciousness also exists non-locally in the same way as do the energies of the energy-verse. Joseph Selbie

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The observer effect points to the mental nature of universe…

• The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual. Sir James Jeans
• There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds . . . In truth there is only one mind. Erwin Schrödinger

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… to idealism (a mental universe) as opposed to materialism (a physical universe)

• Quantum Mechanics seems to favor idealism over realism to such an extent that physicists with strong physics backgrounds are promoting idealism (among these are John Wheeler, Frijtof Capra, and Fred Alan Wolf).  Martin E Moore
• According to Bohm, what happens in space-time is nevertheless determined by what happens in a nonlocal reality beyond space-time. If this were the case, then our free will and creativity would ultimately be illusions, and there would be no real meaning in the human drama. The idealist interpretation promises just the opposite: life is saturated with meaning. It’s a bit like the difference between a movie and a stage improvisation. The action and the dialog in the movie are fixed and determined, but in the live improvisation, variations are possible. Amit Goswami
• Democritus, some 2,500 years ago, propounded the philosophy of materialism, but shortly thereafter Plato gave us one of the first clear statements of the philosophy of monistic idealism. As Werner Heisenberg noted, quantum mechanics indicates that, of the two minds, Plato and Democritus, that have most influenced Western civilization, Plato may be the ultimate winner. The success that Democritus’s materialism has enjoyed in science for the past three hundred years may be only an aberration. Quantum theory interpreted according to an idealist metaphysics is paving the road for an idealist science in which consciousness comes first and matter pales to secondary importance.  Amit Goswami
• Quantum mechanics evidences that there is no such thing as a mere ‘observer (or register) of reality.’ The observing equipment, the registering device, ‘participates in the defining of reality.’ In this sense the universe does not sit ‘out there.’ John Wheeler
• I trust my intuition that the idealist interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one. Of all the interpretations, this is the only one that promises to take physics into a new arena: the arena of the brain-mind-consciousness problem. Amit Goswami
• In view of the way that quantum physics has demolished material realism, monistic idealism may be the only viable monistic philosophy of reality. Amit Goswami
• Monistic idealism is the correct philosophy for science in view of quantum physics. Amit Goswami
• Note that Heisenberg himself almost came up with the idealist metaphysic when he introduced the concept of potentia. The important new element is that the domain of potentia also exists in consciousness. Nothing is outside consciousness. This monistic view of the world is crucial. Amit Goswami
• Our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case. Adam Frank
• The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe. Amit Goswami

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Quantum physics describes particles as a vibration of a quantum field

• Since photons are also electromagnetic waves, and since these waves are vibrating fields, the photons must be manifestations of electromagnetic fields. Hence the concept of a ‘quantum field’, that is, of a field which can take the form of quanta, or particles. This is indeed an entirely new concept which has been extended to describe all subatomic particles and their interactions, each type of particle corresponding to a different field. Fritjof Capra
• The quantum fields themselves encode all the information for everything. Have a particle and antiparticle annihilating? That’s described by equal-and-opposite excitations of a quantum field. Want to describe the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of particles? That’s also due to excitations of a quantum field. Ethan SIegel

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Quantum fields exist throughout all of space

• Quantum fields operate not in some vacuum of empty space, but amidst a background of not-so-empty-space, which plays by the rules of QFT, too. Ethan Siegel
• In physics, a field, in general, describes what some property of the Universe is everywhere in space. It has to have a magnitude: an amount that the field is present. It may or may not have a direction associated with it; some fields do, like electric fields, some don’t, like voltage fields. Ethan Siegel
• Both theory and experiment demonstrate that the quantized EM field can never be sharply (with probability one) zero, but rather that there must exist, at every spatial point, at least a randomly fluctuating vacuum field” having no quanta. Art Hobson

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Particles exist as an excitation of the quantum field

• We may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense . . . There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality. Albert Einstein
• The only thing that changes is the rate at which it vibrates—that is, its frequency.  Ziad Masri
• Electrons, are just excited states of a quantum field. Every particle in the Universe, as we understand it, is a ripple, or excitation, or bundle-of-energy, of the underlying quantum field. This is true for the quarks, the gluons, the Higgs boson, and for all the other particles of the Standard Model. Ethan Siegel
• All particles are regarded as disturbances of their own quantized fields. Christine Sutton
• Each quantum is called an “excitation” of the field. Art Hobson
• Particles are epiphenomena arising from fields. Art Hobson
• Quanta of a given field must be identical because they are all excitations of the same field, somewhat as two ripples on the same pond are in many ways identical. Ethan Siegel
• Quanta are unified bundles of field that carry energy and momentum and thus “hit like particles;” quanta are discrete and thus countable. But quanta are not particles; they are excitations of spatially unbounded fields. Photons and electrons, along with atoms, molecules, and apples, are ultimately disturbances in a few universal fields. Art Hobson

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Current models point to there being 24 unique fields

• There are 24 unique, fundamental excitations of quantum fields possible. Ethan Siegel
• Every particle has a corresponding field that permeates all of space in the same way the Higgs has a field that does so. Ethan Siegel
• The central notion of quantum physics is that the universe is made of about 20 fundamental types of “quantized fields,” Each fills the entire universe, and each is packaged into “quanta”: highly unified spatially extended bundles of field energy. There are also six types of quark fields, three kinds of neutrino fields, two other kinds of electron-like fields, and other fundamental fields including the recently-discovered Higgs field whose quantum is the Higgs boson. It’s thought that a “theory of everything” will eventually emerge that will unite all these fields in a single unified quantum field theory analogously to the way the EM field unites the electric and magnetic fields. Art Hobson

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Some argue that all these fields could be seen as one field

• In quantum mechanics, if we have two fields, we can consider them to be merely components of the same field. John Selbie

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Quantum fields, not particles, are all that can be described to be actually real

• Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not. Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me immediately do the same for quantum mechanics: Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not. N. David Mermin
• The Universe we perceive and view, all around us, isn’t representative of what actually exists at a fundamental level. Instead of continuous, solid objects, matter is composed of indivisible quantum particles, held together through invisible forces that act across empty space. Both the particles themselves and the forces can be described by an underlying structure: quantum fields, which describe everything we know about all the particles and antiparticles. Ziad Masri
• In these ‘quantum field theories’, the classical contrast between the solid particles and the space surrounding them is completely overcome. The quantum field is seen as the fundamental physical entity; a continuous medium which is present everywhere in space. Particles are merely local condensations of the field; concentrations of energy which come and go, thereby losing their individual character and dissolving into the underlying field. Fritjof Capra
• Experiment and theory imply unbounded fields, not bounded particles, are fundamental. Art Hobson
• It’s a general principal of all QFTs that fields are all there is. Art Hobson
• Fields are all there is should be understood literally. For example, it’s a common misconception to imagine a tiny particle imbedded somewhere in the Schroedinger field. There is no particle. An electron is its field. Art Hobson
• There are no particles, there are only fields. Art Hobson
• All the fundamental constituents of quantum physics are fields rather than particles. Art Hobson
• Fields, not particles, form our most fundamental description of nature. Art Hobson
• There are no particles but only particle-like phenomena caused by field quantization. Art Hobson

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The quantum field is the source of all physical reality

• The quantum field is the source of all things in material reality. It’s all One thing—an ocean of energy that collapses into seemingly separate forms that we call stars and planets and animals and trees and human beings, giving them the temporary illusion of solidity and separation from their purely energetic source. Ziad Masri
• It’s more accurate to view the entire Universe as a complicated quantum field that, itself, contains all of physics. Quantum fields can describe an arbitrarily large number of particles that interact in all ways our theories can conceivably allow. And they do this not in some vacuum of empty space, but amidst a background of not-so-empty-space. Ethan Siegel
• The central message of our most fundamental physical theory, namely quantum physics, is that everything is made of quantized fields. Art Hobson

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Quantum fields allow matter to wink into and out of existence…

• The quantum energy field is theorized to be quite active. Quantum physicists think that pairs of oppositely charged virtual particles constantly wink into being in the midst of space and then annihilate each other in a time span too short to be measured. Joseph Selbie
• Pulling a rabbit out of a hat is an illusion; pulling a photon out of the field is real. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Quantum fields have one particle-like property that classical fields don’t have: They are made of countable quanta. Thus quanta cannot partly vanish but must (like particles) be entirely and instantly created or destroyed. Quanta carry energy and momenta and can thus “hit like a particle.” Art Hobson
• Quantizing fields doesn’t change their field nature. Art Hobson

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…through a phenomenon known as quantum fluctuations

• Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the time. It’s whole universes coming into and out of existence.  Neil deGrasse Tyson
• According to quantum field theory, the vacuum is not just a big nothing. It is seething with pairs of virtual particles. Each member of an evanescent pair is entangled with its partner and has opposite properties. A pair appears and immediately their opposing properties annihilate each other, leaving a vacuum devoid of real particles. Donald Hoffman
• All that we do see and touch is not as it seems, having no solidity whatsoever when examined at the smallest levels. Instead, matter seems to act simultaneously as waves of energy and as seemingly solid particles that are continuously popping into and out of material existence at a rate too fast for us to detect. Ziad Masri
• Peter Atkins’ ‘nothing’ ceaselessly produces scintillations of particles and energy, as universes flash in and out of existence. And these scintillations are all governed by quantum laws of an amazingly complex and elegant sort. That is, it must be said, a very busy and complex and active sort of nothing. Keith Ward

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The quantum field could be seen as a wave of energy

• Our eyes deceive us. What we see as solid and separate is not actually so, but rather seemingly separate waves of energy within the ocean of universal energy known as the “quantum field.” Ziad Masri

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Quantum fields can be said to be non-local

• Quantum fields do not exist physically in space-time like the classically inferred gravitational and electromagnetic fields. Instead, quantum fields specify only probabilities for strange, ghostlike particles as they manifest in space-time. Although quantum fields are mathematically similar to classical fields, they are more difficult to understand because, unlike classical fields, they exist outside the usual boundaries of space-time. This gives the quantum field a peculiar nonlocal character, meaning the field is not located in a given region of space and time. Dean I Radin

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Quantum field theory leads to extremely accurate predictions

• Although it’s true that these quantum fields began as a mathematical construct, they describe our physical, observable reality more accurately than any other theory we’ve concocted. They allow us to make incredibly precise predictions about what the results of any experiment involving the quanta of the Standard Model will yield: predictions that have been borne out by every experiment sensitive enough to test them. Ethan Siegel

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Dark matter itself may be a quantized field

• Dark matter is probably a quantized field whose quanta have not yet been discovered because they don’t emit or interact with light or with most normal matter. Art Hobson

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Empty space is the quantum field vibrating at the lowest possible level of energy

• In quantum field theory, the vacuum state is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy; it contains no physical particles, and is the energy of the ground state. This is also called the zero point energy; the energy of a system at a temperature of zero. But quantum mechanics says that, even in their ground state, all systems still maintain fluctuations and have an associated zero-point energy as a consequence of their wave-like nature. Thus, even a particle cooled down to absolute zero will still exhibit some vibrations. Peter Baksa

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Thus even empty space (known as the zero-point field) contains seething energy

• Because it has energy and non-vanishing expectation values, the QFT vacuum is embarrassing for particle interpretations. If one believes particles to be the basic reality, then what is it that has this energy and these values in the state that has no particles? Art Hobson
• Empty space is actually a cauldron of seething energies – the Zero Point Field . . . HR & P suggest that both inertia and gravitation are electromagnetic phenomena resulting from interaction with this field. Arthur C. Clarke
• Much like the undulations of the sea or ripples on a pond, the waves on the subatomic level are represented by periodic oscillations moving through a medium – in this instance the Zero Point Field. Lynne McTaggart

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This means empty space is far from empty

• Quantum mechanics had demonstrated that there is no such thing as a vacuum, or nothingness. What we tend to think of as a sheer void if all of space were emptied of matter and energy and you examined even the space between the stars is, in subatomic terms, a hive of activity. The uncertainty principle developed by Werner Heisenberg, one of the chief architects of quantum theory, implies that no particle ever stays completely at rest but is constantly in motion due to a ground state field of energy constantly interacting with all subatomic matter. It means that the basic substructure of the universe is a sea of quantum fields that cannot be eliminated by any known laws of physics.  Lynne McTaggart
• Quantum physics also suggests that there’s no such thing as empty space, because every point in the universe is full of ‘zero-point energy’ (also referred to as the ‘electromagnetic quantum background’). Physicists have called this the ‘ground’ reality of the universe, an underlying sea of energy pervading everything, which we can’t directly sense because it’s present in everything. Steve Taylor
• Quantum theory and its derivatives state that the vacuum is not empty at all. It is filled with quantum “stuff.” In fact, the quantum vacuum is as full as it can be, containing vast amounts of energy not manifesting in the observable universe. There is therefore no problem having the universe come out of the quantum vacuum, at least in terms of sufficient potential energies being available. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• As we’ve learned from quantum theory, even empty space has energy, and nothingness is unstable. Mark Alpert

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Quantum fields may explain the weird effects of particles colliding

• When two particles collide with high energies, they generally break into pieces, but these pieces are not smaller than the original particles. They are again particles of the same kind and are created out of the energy of motion (‘kinetic energy’) involved in the collision process. Fritjof Capra

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Quantum physics views the world as a dynamic web of energy

• All particles can be transmuted into other particles; they can be created from energy and can vanish into energy. In this world, classical concepts like ‘elementary particle’, ‘material substance’ or ‘isolated object’, have lost their meaning; the whole universe appears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns. Fritjof Capra
• Relativity theory shows that mass has nothing to do with any substance, but is a form of energy. The fact that the mass of a particle is equivalent to a certain amount of energy means that the particle can no longer be seen as a static object, but has to be conceived as a dynamic pattern, a process involving the energy which manifests itself as the particle’s mass. Fritjof Capra
• Energy is a dynamic quantity associated with activity, or with processes. Fritjof Capra
• All matter is energy. Not that matter has energy. But that it is energy. And if it’s all energy, then it can’t be separate.  Energy doesn’t have a cutoff point where it ends and another separate energy begins. Just like the waves of the ocean, it’s all connected. It’s all One.  Ziad Masri
• Every seemingly separate thing is actually one energy vibrating at an infinite number of different frequencies. Ziad Masri
• If we were able to alter the way the brain decodes information, then instead of seeing separate people and buildings and mountains, we would simply see interconnected waves of energy vibrating at different frequencies. Ziad Masri
• If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Nikola Tesla
• Quantum physics has found that there is no empty space in the human cell, but it is a teeming, electric-magnetic field of possibility or potential. Deepak Chopra
• The elements of life are dynamic patterns of mass and energy, events rather than objects. Fritjof Capra
• We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves; whirlpools of water in an ever-flowing river. Norbert Wiener, physicist

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Matter is energy

• Matter Is the intelligent organization of energy. Joseph Selbie
• Modern physics has… revealed that every sub-atomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. Fritjof Capra
• Modern science has discovered that the various material elements are nothing more than differently vibrating atoms. The universe is a cosmic motion picture of dancing atoms, which in turn are energy-sparks—not matter at all but vibratory waves.
• Paramahansa Yogananda
• We have sought for firm ground and found none. The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance. Max Born
• Quantum mechanics is the idea that, if you go down to a small enough scale, everything that contains energy, whether it’s massive (like an electron) or massless (like a photon), can be broken down into individual quanta. You can think of these quanta as energy packets, which sometimes behave as particles and other times behave as waves, depending on what they interact with. Ethan Siegel
• E=mc2. Most people have heard of this equation, but what does it really mean? Very simply, matter and energy are actually one and the same. Ziad Masri

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The universe is sustained by an energy verse

• As you can appreciate by dark energy’s outsized role at 68.3 percent of the gravitational effect found in the universe, and string theory’s assertion that everything is the result of unseen vibrating rings and strings of energy, these theories suggest that energy is far more significant in the creation and continuous presence of the universe than is matter. The physical universe, and all the matter it contains, is increasingly understood to be a small byproduct of the interactions of the far more vast energy-verse. String theory’s conception of the energy-verse is so vast that it has room for millions upon millions of more three-dimensional energy-bubble universes! Our universe could be one of many others. Joseph Selbie
• Although we cannot measure the high-frequency energies of the energy-verse because their wavelengths are too small for us to detect, quantum physicists and string theorists are certain that, if these high- frequency energies were not present, the universe would simply vanish. Every atom in the universe—even space itself—depends on the high- frequency energy-verse to exist.  Joseph Selbie
• Space curves; the universe has no edge. No matter where one is in the universe, one will appear to be the center; and the most distant objects will always be moving away from one the fastest. Relativity’s implications will make your head hurt if you try to visualize them. This is because our three-dimensional, energy-bubble, D-brane universe is a light-show illusion, profoundly and confoundingly shaped by the underlying, two-dimensional energy-verse that creates and sustains it. Joseph Selbie
• The energy-verse continuously creates the physical universe. Without the holographic mechanism of creation, the universe would wink out of existence. Joseph Selbie
• The energy-verse is an ocean of energy out of which our bubble- universe forms. The energy-verse contains the information, the hidden properties, the holographic template that makes our physical universe form as it does. Joseph Selbie
• The most likely candidate for dark energy is energy that’s intrinsic to the inherent fabric of space and is often referred to as a cosmological constant. As gravity pulls inward on matter, dark energy essentially pushes outward on space itself. Jude Currivan
• The universe emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only twelve billion years ago but in every moment. Brian Swimme
• The very high frequency at which the energies of the energy-verse vibrate—far higher even than that of gamma rays (the highest measurable frequency in three-dimensional space)—means that these high-frequency energies cannot be detected by our most finely calibrated measuring devices. Yet they are present everywhere. Until observed, potential matter exists as energy waves in this inter-penetrating, nonlocal, high-frequency two-dimensional realm. Joseph Selbie
• The visible world is the invisible organization of energy. Heinz Pagels

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Particles can become entangled (connected) to each other with equal but opposite charges

• There is an antiparticle for every particle, with equal mass but opposite charge. Fritjof Capra
• The universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles that remain in contact with one another over any distance in no time in the absence of the transfer of energy or information. Robert Nadeau
• That’s because they are “entangled”—spookily connected so that if you manipulate one you also manipulate the other. Alessandro Fedrizz
• Particles are not discrete entities which can only affect each other through physical contact. Once they have interacted with each other they are forever connected, no matter how far apart they might be. They will always be affected collectively by what happens to any of them individually. If a particle is split in two, the resulting particles always behave as if they’re still one, spinning together in perfect harmony and balancing each other’s random fluctuations. Steve Taylor
• Entangled particles: Some subatomic processes result in the creation of a pair of particles with identical or closely related properties. Consider an extremely unstable atom physicists call positronium. The positronium atom is composed of an electron and a positron {a positron is an electron with a positive charge). Because a positron is the electron’s antiparticle opposite, the two eventually annihilate each other and decay into two quanta of light or “photons” traveling in opposite directions (the capacity to shapeshift from one kind of particle to another is just another of a quantum’s abilities). According to quantum physics no matter how far apart the photons travel, when they are measured they will always be found to have identical angles of polarization. (Polarization is the spatial orientation of the photon’s wavelike aspect as it travels away from its point of origin.)  If the polarizations are measured at precisely the same moment and are found to be identical, as quantum physics predicts, and if Bohr was correct and properties such as polarization do not coalesce into existence until they are observed or measured, this suggests that somehow the two photons must be instantaneously communicating with each other so they know which angle of polarization to agree upon. The problem is that according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, let alone travel instantaneously, for that would be tantamount to breaking the time barrier and would open the door on all kinds of unacceptable paradoxes.  Michael Talbot

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Many experiments have been done with entangled particles

• A pair of two subatomic particles is simultaneously generated at a source and then sent out in opposite directions. The source can be, for instance, a light emitter, so that the pair of particles consists of two photons: one emitted towards the right, the other towards the left of the source. On either side, and at a sufficiently long distance from the source, a detector is placed that can measure a certain property of the incoming photon once it arrives. Each detector can measure a different property of the respective incoming photon.  It takes some time for each photon to arrive at its respective detector. The distance between the source – in the middle – and each detector is to ensure that the measurement performed on one side cannot influence the measurement performed on the other side. In other words, we wait until the photons are far enough away from one another that they can be considered completely separated. Once this condition is fulfilled, we make a separate measurement of each photon, using the respective detector. Bernard Kastrup

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Quantum entanglement occurs in living organisms too

• Evidence suggests that the tissues of all living organisms are frequently found in coherent entangled states. Joseph Selbie

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The collapse of a particle causes its entangled particle to instantaneously collapse with an opposite polarisation, no matter how far apart

• A manifestation of one quantum object, caused by our observation, simultaneously influences its correlated twin object—no matter how far apart they are (quantum action-at-a-distance). Amit Goswami
• Distance (space) has no reality whatsoever for entangled particles, no matter how great their apparent separation. Robert Lanza
• Two particles on completely opposite sides of the universe can affect each other instantaneously. Anthony Lambert
• In the early 1980s, Alain Aspect, a French physicist, showed that when two particles are created with correlated quantum states (for example, both having the same spin) and are then separated by a long distance, their quantum states remain correlated. When Aspect measured the spin of one particle, causing its wave function to collapse into one particular state, he found that the wave function of the second particle collapsed into the same state, although there was no way the two particles could now affect each other. Peter Russell
• When entangled particles are created, the pair share a wave-function. When one member’s wave-function collapses, so will the other’s—even if they are separated by the width of the universe. This means that if one particle is observed to have an “up spin,” the other instantly goes from being a mere probability wave to an actual particle with the opposite spin. They are intimately linked, and in a way that acts as if there’s no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior.  Robert Lanza
• Alain Aspect used the singlet kind of correlation between two photons to verify that there is signal-less influence operating between two correlated quantum objects. He verified that a measurement of one photon affects its polarization-correlated partner without any exchange of local signals between them. Amit Goswami
• The logic of the Copenhagen interpretation is that until one twin is measured, both twins could have either right polarization or left polarization. But once one twin is measured by an intelligent observer, when the other twin is subsequently measured it will always have the opposite property. Even if the twins were across the universe from each other, when one was measured the other would instantly take on the opposite properties—apparently communicating information at a speed vastly greater than the speed of light. Joseph Selbie
• In 1982, Alain Aspect and a team of physicists were able to actually carry-out the polarization experiment that Einstein had proposed nearly fifty years before. Photon pairs were created by heating calcium atoms with a laser, and then allowed to travel in opposite directions. Aspect discovered that the polarization of one photon immediately polarized the other–just as quantum theory had predicted. The photons were somehow communicating with each other at speeds exceeding the speed of light, or nonlocal connections existed between the electrons, or the separateness of the particles themselves was an illusion.  David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• With entanglement, two particles are born together, as when a light is shined into certain crystals. Out pop the two photons, which fly off in different directions, but which secretly share a wave-function. If one is observed, its wave-function and that of its twin simultaneously collapse—regardless of the distance between them.  Even if the twins are separated by half the diameter of the universe, observing one twin will cause both to become actual entities. Moreover, they must exhibit complementary characteristics. One photon or electron will have one aspect (e.g., it can spin upward or downward, or be polarized horizontally or vertically), while its twin always exhibits the other property—the complementary attribute. When either is observed, the real shocker is that its twin “knows” what happened to its doppelgänger (i.e., that it came into an actual physical existence as a photon or electron) and instantly assumes the complementary guise—even if its twin is in a different galaxy. During this process no time will elapse, no matter their distance apart. It’s as if there’s no space between them. They’re essentially two sides of the same coin, and distance between them is nonexistent, even if, to us, it’s half the width of the cosmos. It doesn’t matter how far apart they are. It’s as if neither time nor space exist.  Robert Lanza
• A physicist can entangle the spins of two electrons so that if the spin of one electron along some axis is up, then the spin of the other electron along that axis is always down Two entangled electrons have to be described as though they were one indivisible object, no matter how distant they are from each other. It also holds no matter how far apart the electrons are. They could be a billion light-years apart. Still, if you measure the spin of the electron near you, then you instantly know what you would find if you measured the spin of the other electron a billion light-years away. If realism is true, and if your measurement of spin here instantly affects the spin of an electron a billion light-years away, then this effect violates the claim of locality—that no influence can propagate faster than the speed of light. Donald Hoffman

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How can particles “communicate” at speeds faster than the speed of light if nothing is supposed to be able to travel faster than the speed of light?

• Even if the twins were across the universe from each other, when one was measured the other would instantly take on the opposite properties—apparently communicating information at a speed vastly greater than the speed of light. Joseph Selbie
• The equations of quantum theory suggest, in fact, that the information is actually exchanged between the twinned photons instantaneously. Possibilities: (1.)  Information can travel through the universe faster than the speed of light. If this were the case, physicists would have to say goodbye to the theory of relativity, whose very foundation is the speed of light. (2.) The counterintuitive concept that the physical universe is interpenetrated by a nonlocal realm must be accepted.  Joseph Selbie
• Light always travels through three-dimensional space at a fixed and inviolate speed; but until the entangled twins emerge into three-dimensional space, with its fixed speed of light, they exist where there is no space and no distance, rendering the concept of speed meaningless. Joseph Selbie

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In this way, quantum entanglement seems to disagree with Einstein’s theory of relativity

• Einstein ridiculed nonlocal connections as “spooky action at a distance.” Larry Dossey
• Einstein was basing his argument on an error when he viewed twin particles as separate. They were part of an indivisible system, and it was meaningless to think of them otherwise. Michael Talbot
• At the heart of the controversy was the idea of instantaneous communication between particles. When two complimentary particles were allowed to travel apart, their polarizations could be simultaneously measured. Quantum theory predicted that regardless of the distance between the particles, their polarizations would always be the same. The act of measuring one would force the polarization of the other. Einstein (1935) interpreted this to mean that quantum theory was incorrect because nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Bohr argued that Einstein was incorrect in thinking of the particles as separate. He maintained that they were part of an indivisible system. Quantum theory proved to be incredible successful and became the accepted theory even though the technology did not exist to actually perform the experiment. David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• Einstein proved that all connections and interactions in the material world must be mediated by signals traveling through space (the locality principle) and thus must be limited by the speed of light. Where, then, exists the instantaneous connection between correlated quantum objects that is responsible for their signal-less action at a distance? The succinct answer is: in the transcendent domain of reality.  The technical name for signal-less, instantaneous action at a distance is nonlocality.   Amit Goswami
• Physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance. Albert Einstein

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The implications of entangled particles and their instantaneous “communication” are profound

• In the Delft experiment, two electrons separated by 1,280 meters had their spins entangled. It takes light just over four millionths of a second to travel this distance. The spins of the two electrons were measured along randomly chosen axes. Critically, the two spins were measured at the same time. The spin measurements of the two electrons were correlated in a way that Bell showed would be impossible if local realism were true. Either realism is false, and the electrons had no definite values of spin before they were measured, or locality is false, and the electrons influenced each other at speeds faster than light. Or realism and locality are both false. Donald Hoffman
• Quantum physicists had discovered a strange property in the subatomic world called ‘nonlocality’. This refers to the ability of a quantum entity such as an individual electron to influence another quantum particle instantaneously over any distance despite there being no exchange of force or energy. It suggested that quantum particles once in contact retain a connection even when separated, so that the actions of one will always influence the other, no matter how far they get separated. Albert Einstein disparaged this ‘spooky action at a distance’, and it was one of the major reasons he so distrusted quantum mechanics, but it has been decisively verified by a number of physicists since 1982. Nonlocality shattered the very foundations of physics. Matter could no longer be considered separate. Actions did not have to have an observable cause over an observable space. Einstein’s most fundamental axiom wasn’t correct: at a certain level of matter, things could travel faster than the speed of light. Subatomic particles had no meaning in isolation but could only be understood in their relationships. The world, at its most basic, existed as a complex web of interdependent relationships, forever indivisible. Lynne McTaggart

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Quantum entangled particles seem to point to the non-local nature of the universe where in some ways, distance does not seem to exist

• Nonlocal is an awkward term physicists use to describe a realm in which distance does not exist. Obects or events in a nonlocal realm are unaffected by distance. Joseph Selbie
• Nonlocality is pervasive, arguably the characteristic quantum phenomenon. Art Hobson
• An object is said to be entangled if it cannot be fully described without considering one or more additional objects; it is as if the separate, distant entities comprise a single system. Entanglement has been experimentally verified many times over the past three decades and is accepted by the majority of physicists as a fundamental feature of nature. Nonlocality is considered to be the mechanism for the effects of entanglement. According to physicist Nick Herbert, “A non-local connection links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay.”  Larry Dossey
• Nonlocality normally involves two entangled quantum entities. With just one photon, what was there to entangle with? If photons are field mode excitations, the answer is natural: the entanglement was between two quantized field modes, with one of the modes happening to be in the vacuum state. Art Hobson
• A quantum is a unified entity even though its energy might be spread out over light years–a feature that raises issues of nonlocality intrinsic to the quantum puzzle. Art Hobson
• There is another paradoxical way to think of the nonlocal reality—as being both everywhere and nowhere, everywhen and nowhen. This is still paradoxical, but it is suggestive, isn’t it? Amit Goswami

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Quantum entanglement seems to weave together space-time

• The theory has revealed aspects of nature that seem supernatural: the act of observing something can apparently alter its reality, and quantum entanglement can weave together distant pieces of spacetime. (Einstein derisively called it “spooky action at a distance.”)  Mark Alpert
• In quantum field theory, spacetime is the continuous stage on which the dance of the quanta takes place. Ethan Siegel

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Quantum entangled particles seem to exist as one unified object

• Connectedness between two objects is so intimate that they behave as one, instantaneously and forever, even if they are separated by the width of galaxies. Robert Lanza
• Subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Fritjof Capra

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Quantum systems exhibit an unexpected degree of togetherness and connectedness

• Quantum systems exhibit an unexpected degree of togetherness. Mere spatial separation does not divide them from each other. It is a particularly surprising conclusion for so reductionist a subject as physics. After all, elementary particle physics is always trying to split things up into smaller and smaller constituents with a view to treating them independently of each other. I do not think we have yet succeeded in taking in fully what quantum mechanical nonlocality implies about the nature of the world. J. C. Polkinghorne
• [In modern physicsl, one has now divided the world not into different groups of objects but into different groups of connections . . . What can be distinguished is the kind of connection which is primarily important in a certain phenomenon . . . The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.’ Heisenberg

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Quantum entanglement, some argue, points to the interconnected wholeness of the universe…

• The universe is undivided wholeness in flowing movement. David Bohm
• When the electron vibrates, the universe shakes. Sir Arthur Eddington
• The universal interconnectedness of things and events, however, seems to be a fundamental feature of the atomic reality. Fritjof Capra
• In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way. Fritjof Capra
• In modern physics, the universe is thus experienced as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way. Fritjof Capra
• Bohm argued that space itself was an illusion, and that it was meaningless to discuss the separateness of things at the quantum level. David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• Every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality. John Muir
• We say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole. David Bohm
• The material object becomes . . . something different from what we now see, not a separate object on the background or in the environment of the rest of nature but an indivisible part and even in a subtle way an expression of the unity of all that we see.’ Aurobindo
• The properties of a particle can only be understood in terms of its activity—of its interaction with the surrounding environment—and that the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole. Fritjof Capra
• The properties of a particle can only be understood in terms of its activity-of its interaction with the surrounding environment-and that the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity, but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole. Fritjof Capra
• Bells theorem dealt a shattering blow to Einsteins position by showing that the conception of reality as consisting of separate parts, joined by local connections, is incompatible with quantum theory… Bells theorem demonstrates that the universe is fundamentally interconnected, interdependent, and inseparable. Fritjof Capra
• An elementary particle is not an independently existing unanalyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reach outward to other things? The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole. Heisenberg
• David Bohm came to the conclusion—startling but inescapable mathematically—that the entire cosmos is one continuous interconnected whole. Appearances aside, he discovered mathematically that nothing can be separate from anything else, because the universe and everything in it is invisibly connected to a two-dimensional, nonlocal realm. Joseph Selbie
• Gradually, physicists began to realise that nature, at the atomic level, does not appear as a mechanical universe composed of fundamental building blocks, but rather as a network of relations, and that, ultimately, there are no parts at all in this interconnected web. Whatever we call a part is merely a pattern that has some stability and therefore captures our attention. Fritjof Capra
• David Bohm (1917–1992), another well-regarded and highly influential physicist who was a scientist on the Manhattan Project and a pioneer in the study of quantum physics, came to believe that all reality is inseparably interconnected. In his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm convincingly—and mathematically—proves that no object can exist separately from any other. Joseph Selbie
• Bohm discovered that the seemingly haphazard movements of individual electrons managed to produce highly organized overall effects. Like the plasmas he had studied at Berkeley, these were no longer situations involving two particles, each behaving as if it knew what the other was doing, but entire oceans of particles, each behaving as if it knew what untold trillions of others were doing. Bohm called such collective movements of electrons plasmons, and their discovery established his reputation as a physicist. Michael Talbot
• The entire universe must, on a very accurate level, be regarded as a single indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as idealisations permissible only on a classical level of accuracy of description. This means that the view of the world being analogous to a huge machine, the predominant view from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, is now shown to be only approximately correct. The underlying structure of matter, however, is not mechanical. This means that the term “quantum mechanics” is very much a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called “quantum nonmechanics”. David Bohm
• Quantum theory reveals an essential interconnectedness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, we find that it is made of particles, but these are not the ‘basic building blocks’ in the sense of Democritus and Newton. They are merely idealizations which are useful from a practical point of view, but have no fundamental significance. In the words of Niels Bohr, ‘Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.’ Fritjof Capra
• One is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and independently existing parts . . . We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent ‘elementary parts’ of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independently behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole. David Bohm
• When we consider that all quanta have interacted at some point in the history of the cosmos in the manner that quanta interact at the origins in these experiments and that there is no limit to the number of correlations that can exist between these quanta, this leads to another dramatic conclusion: that non-locality is a fundamental principle of the entire universe. The daunting realisation here is that the reality whose existence is inferred between the two points in the Aspect and Gisin experiments in the reality that underlies and informs all physical events in the universe. Yet all we can say about this reality is that it manifests as an indivisible or undivided whole whose existence is inferred where there is an interaction with an observer or with instruments of observation. Menas Kafatos
• The realization that systems are integrated wholes that cannot be understood by analysis was even more shocking in physics than in biology. Ever since Newton, physicists had believed that all physical phenomena could be reduced to the properties of hard and solid material particles. In the 1920s, however, quantum theory forced them to accept the fact that the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve at the subatomic level into wavelike patterns of probabilities. These patterns, moreover, do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only as interconnections, or correlations, among various processes of observation and measurement. In other words, subatomic particles are not “things” but interconnections among things, and these, in turn, are interconnections among other things, and so on. In quantum theory we never end up with any “things”; we always deal with interconnections. Fritjof Capra
• This world of the separate should have been laid waste once and for all by the discovery of quantum physics in the early part of the twentieth century. As the pioneers of quantum physics peered into the very heart of matter, they were astounded by what they saw. The tiniest bits of matter weren’t even matter, as we know it, not even a set something, but sometimes one thing, sometimes something quite different. And even stranger, they were often many possible things all at the same time. But most significantly, these subatomic particles had no meaning in isolation, but only in relationship with everything else. At its most elemental, matter couldn’t be chopped up into self-contained little units, but was completely indivisible. You could only understand the universe as a dynamic web of interconnection. Things once in contact remained always in contact through all space and all time. Indeed, time and space themselves appeared to be arbitrary constructs, no longer applicable at this level of the world. Time and space as we know them did not, in fact, exist. All that appeared, as far as the eye could see, was one long landscape of the here and now. Lynne McTaggart

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…even to the inherent “oneness” of the universe…

• A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘basic building blocks’, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitutes the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can only be understood in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer. This means that the classical ideal of an objective description of nature is no longer valid. The Cartesian partition between the I and the world, between the observer and the observed, cannot be made when dealing with atomic matter. In atomic physics, we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves. Fritjof Capra
• All matter is energy. Not that matter has energy. But that it is energy. And if it’s all energy, then it can’t be separate.  Energy doesn’t have a cutoff point where it ends and another separate energy begins. Just like the waves of the ocean, it’s all connected. It’s all One.  Ziad Masri
• In a quantum universe all of existence consists of a frenzy of subatomic energetic activity which can be characterized as possessing pure potentiality, and all of which are linked and entangled as a basic oneness which extends in all directions and encompasses all dimensions including time. Rhawn Joseph
• Everything is unified energy, appearing to be many different and separate things, but in fact remaining One beneath the surface of the illusion. Ziad Masri
• Everything is unified. Everything is One. Separation is the true illusion. Ziad Masri
• In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of the universe as a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrödinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on the superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This view would be entirely consistent with the vedantic concept of the All in One. Moore
• Our eyes deceive us. What we see as solid and separate is not actually so, but rather seemingly separate waves of energy within the ocean of universal energy known as the “quantum field.” Ziad Masri
• Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated “building blocks,” but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer. Fritjof Capra

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…thus agreeing with what mystics have been saying for thousands of years…

• Mystics, contrary to religionists, are always saying that reality is not two things — God and the world — but one thing, consciousness. It is a monistic view of reality based on consciousness that mystics claim to directly intuit. The problem with science has always been that most scientists believe that science must be done within a different monistic framework, one based on the primacy of matter. And then, quantum physics showed us that we must change that myopic prejudice of scientists, otherwise we cannot comprehend quantum physics. So now we have science within consciousness, a new paradigm of science based on the primacy of consciousness that is gradually replacing the old materialist science. Why? Not only because you can’t understand quantum physics without this new metaphysics but also because the new paradigm resolves many other paradoxes of the old paradigm and explains much anomalous data. Amit Goswami
• In Eastern mysticism, this universal interwovenness always includes the human observer and his or her consciousness, and this is also true in atomic physics. Fritjof Capra
• Without embracing consciousness as the nonlocal foundation of the cosmos, the transcendent revelations of the saints and sages are impossible to explain. Joseph Selbie
• Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves. Nagarjuna
• In the Eastern view then, as in the view of modern physics, everything in the universe is connected to everything else and no part of it is fundamental. The properties of any part are determined, not by some fundamental law, but by the properties of all the other parts. Both physicists and mystics realize the resulting impossibility of fully explaining any phenomenon. Fritjof Capra
• The great scientific contributions in theoretical physics… has.. a relationship between the philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory. Werner Heisenberg
• The quantum continuum (field) is the ultimate reality, an all inclusive oneness which is all things, and which becomes all things at the moment of consciousness–and the same has been said of the Tao, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish god. Shawn Joseph

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…that reality is inherently non-dual

• Most branches of science remain today thoroughly and solidly dualistic, hotly pursuing as they are the “objective facts,” but some of the “purer” forms of science, such as physics and mathematics, and some of the emergent sciences, such as systems theory and ecology, have dealt lethal blows to several long-cherished dualisms. … Nevertheless, all of these forms of science are relatively recent inventions, being hardly 300 years old, and thus it is only in recent history that we have started to see the elimination of the dualisms that have plagued Western thought for 25 centuries. There is no doubt that all sciences began as pure dualisms—some, however … pursued their dualisms to the “annihilating edge,” and for those scientists involved, there awaited the shock of their lives. Ken Wilber

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Some argue quantum physics points to a non-local transcendent dimension

• Once we accept quantum nonlocality as an established physical aspect of the world in which we live, it becomes easier within science to conceive of a transcendent domain outside the manifest physical domain of space-time. Amit Goswami

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Quantum physics and the theory of relativity disagree…

• Quantum mechanics works pretty well on small scales and general relativity works pretty well on large scales, but so far we were not able to reconcile the two theories in a unified framework. This is known as the problem of quantum gravity. Victor Tangermann
• In the public mind, physics is on its way to giving us a complete account of the nature of space, time and matter. We are not there yet of course; for one thing, our best theory of the very big – general relativity – is inconsistent with our best theory of the very small – quantum mechanics. But it is standardly assumed that one day these challenges will be overcome and physicists will proudly present an eager public with the Grand Unified Theory of everything: a complete story of the fundamental nature of the Universe. Philip Goff
• Einstein’s breakthrough with relativity was headed for a collision with quantum theory, whose equations are not compatible with General Relativity. Deepak Chopra
• Mathematics is the universal language of physics. Two of the most important mathematical systems in physics—general relativity and quantum theory—are, mathematically, deeply incompatible. When quantum physicists try to use their system of equations to explain gravity, for example, their equations tell them that gravity should be many times stronger than the observed reality. Similarly, when the equations of general relativity are applied to subatomic phenomena, the equations give impossible answers that do not even remotely conform to any observed reality.  Joseph Selbie
• The upshot of all this is that physics ended up with two bodies of laws – one for the world of the very small, one for the universe at large – leading quite separate lives. Bill Bryson
• We must let go of thinking we can describe spacetime and objects outside the horizon and, at the same time, inside the horizon. The assumption that we can see both, the assumption of a god’s-eye view, which no observer can in fact take, is the problem. If we relinquish the divine view from nowhere, then quantum theory and general relativity can peacefully coexist. Donald Hoffman

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…as to the nature of time…

• For years, physicists have attempted to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. The first posits that time is universal and absolute, while the latter argues that time is relative, linked to the fabric of space-time. Victor Tangermann

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…as to whether information can be destroyed or not…

• Quantum theory says that information is never destroyed. General relativity says that it can cross an event horizon and be erased. This is a serious paradox.  Donald Hoffman

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…as to the existence of non-locality

• A quantum is a unified entity even though its energy might be spread out over light years–a feature that raises issues of nonlocality intrinsic to the quantum puzzle. Art Hobson

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Physicists have been trying to unify quantum theory and relativity for years

• A successful unification of quantum theory and relativity would necessarily be a theory of the universe as a whole. It would tell us, as Aristotle and Newton did before, what space and time are, what the cosmos is, what things are made of, and what kind of laws those things obey. Such a theory will bring about a radical shift – a revolution – in our understanding of what nature is. It must also have wide repercussions, and will likely bring about, or contribute to, a shift in our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the rest of the universe. Lee Smolin
• Four fundamental forces that underpin the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. Of these, the strong and weak forces only operate at subatomic scales. At a larger scale, the rest of the universe is a never-ending battle between gravity and electromagnetism. Gravity is described by Einstein’s beautiful mathematics of curved space and time. But the other three forces are written in the language of quantum mechanics. And these two methods are completely incompatible. So, physicists have searched for one set of mathematics to describe all of the forces, a Grand Unified Theory.  Amit Goswami
• Research continues to develop a single unified field theory that encompasses all the forces. In such a unified theory, all the forces would have a common origin and would be related by mathematical symmetries. The simplest result would be that all the forces would have identical properties and that a mechanism called spontaneous symmetry breaking would account for the observed differences. Christine Sutton
• Subsequent to the emergence of the field concept, physicists have attempted to unify the various fields into a single fundamental field which would incorporate all physical phenomena. Fritjof Capra
• If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed, I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination. Freeman Dyson

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The attempt to reconcile quantum physics and the theory of relativity has brought about string theory

• Added to these other arguments for the presence of more energy in the universe than can be measured is string theory. String theory, which made its debut in the mid-20th century, posits that there is a vast, unseen, all-pervading realm that interpenetrates the physical universe at every point. This unseen realm is thought to be filled with tiny, vibrating two-dimensional rings and strings of pure energy that vibrate at wavelengths far, far smaller than those measurable with our physical instruments; these rings and strings are thought to be as much smaller than the nucleus of an atom as the nucleus of an atom is smaller than the human body! String theory posits that everything in the universe arises from this two-dimensional ocean of infinitesimally small rings and strings of vibrating energy—forming all matter, all measurable energy, all gravity—even space itself. Joseph Selbie
• String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space. Brian Greene
• Physicists started to find similarities in the particles, representing them as one-dimensional loops of stringy-stuff. Different vibrations of this stringy stuff correspond to each of the fundamental particles; one note played on a fundamental string is an electron, another note is a quark, another is a photon, the particle of light.  The strings themselves are not made of anything smaller —they are the true fundamental pieces of the universe.  Geraint Lewis
• Atoms are made of electrons and nuclei, nuclei are agglomerations of protons and neutrons, and those in turn are composed of quarks. Many physicists today consider electrons and quarks to be excitations of superstrings, which they hypothesize to be the most fundamental entities. But the vicissitudes of a century of revelations in physics warn us not to be dogmatic. There could be more levels of structure in our universe than are dreamt of in today’s physics.   Jacob D. Bekenstein
• Superstring theory states that, as we go to smaller and smaller levels of matter, the smallest elements are not particles of matter, but instead they are vibrations of extremely small strings of energy. Jocelyn Mercado
• Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that’s what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism – all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see. Brian Greene
• Everyone in string theory is convinced … that spacetime is doomed. But we don’t know what it’s replaced by. Nobel Laureate David Gross
• Almost all of us believe that spacetime doesn’t exist, that spacetime is doomed, and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks. Donald D. Hoffman
• In the past few years the emergence of M-theory, the successor to multiple string theories of the 1980s, aims to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity, replacing the zero-dimensional point-like particles of the standard model with vibrating one-dimensional strings (which in M-theory are associated with holographic boundaries called branes). These too, however, are deemed to have no internal structure. Although M-theory (first conjectured and its name coined by Edward Witten in 1995) and other competing theories are offering progressively deeper insights, all of them merely replace one ephemeral basis of fundamental physicality with other similarly ghostly alternatives. Jude Currivan
• String theory is a way of mathematically uniting gravity with quantum mechanics. It’s the most well-known contender for the “Theory of Everything” that physicists have long searched for. But there’s no evidence (so far) that it’s true, and critics say a big failing is that it does not make testable predictions – making it impossible to prove either way. Kelly Oakes
• String theory suggests that there are vast two-dimensional nonlocal realms of high-frequency energies in which our three-dimensional local physical universe exists: saturated, created, and sustained by those energies. Pioneering physicists Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, John von Neumann, John Wheeler, Eugene Wigner, and David Bohm, as well as modern physicists Fritjof Capra, Gary Zukav, Amit Goswami, Michio Kaku, and many others, suggest that these subtler, nonmaterial realms of energy are in turn saturated, created, and sustained by infinite intelligent consciousness. Joseph Selbie
• The world of quantum physics is so strange that it confounds our conventional experience of space and time. String theory posits that what we perceive as physical matter is actually composed of strings of energy. What we measure as heavy molecules are fast-moving energy strings, while what we experience as light molecules are energy strings that are vibrating more slowly. The closer science looks at matter, the more it looks like pure energy. Dawson Church

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Quantum physics can be used to make highly accurate predictions in the real world

• Although it’s true that these quantum fields began as a mathematical construct, they describe our physical, observable reality more accurately than any other theory we’ve concocted. They allow us to make incredibly precise predictions: predictions that have been borne out by every experiment sensitive enough to test them.   Ethan Siegel
• Quantum mechanics is extremely accurate; it became, and remains, one of the most important scientific tools of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Joseph Selbie
• For me, the important thing about quantum mechanics is the equations, the mathematics. If you want to understand quantum mechanics, just do the math. All the words that are spun around it don’t mean very much. It’s like playing the violin. If violinists were judged on how they spoke, it wouldn’t make much sense. Freeman Dyson
• The extraordinary feature of quantum theory is that although we do not understand it, we can apply the rules of calculation it inspires, and compute properties of matter to unparalleled accuracy, in some cases with a precision that exceeds that currently obtained from experiment. Peter Atkins
• Quantum physics had proved so spectacularly successful in predicting phenomena, few physicists were willing even to consider the possibility that it might be faulty in some way. Michael Talbot
• Like most physicists, I learned how to ignore the weirdness of quantum physics. ‘Shut up and calculate!’ (the dictum of the American physicist David Mermin) works fine if you are trying to get 100 per cent on your Advanced Quantum Theory homework or building a laser. Anthony Peake
• Physicists do not believe quantum mechanics because it explains the world, but because it predicts the outcome of experiments with almost miraculous accuracy. Theorists kept predicting new particles and other phenomena, and experiments kept bearing out those predictions. John Horgan
• The Universe may not be an intuitive place, but as far as any physical theory can call itself reflective of reality, QFT has no equal in terms of its power. As long as physics remains an experimental science, this will be the standard that any candidate theory will have to supersede. Ethan Siegel
• This theoretical failure to find a plausible alternative to quantum mechanics, even more than the precise experimental verification of linearity, suggests to me that quantum mechanics is the way it is because any small change in quantum mechanics would lead to logical absurdities. If this is true, quantum mechanics may be a permanent part of physics. Indeed, quantum mechanics may survive not merely as an approximation to a deeper truth, in the way that Newton’s theory of gravitation survives as an approximation to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but as a precisely valid feature of the final theory. Steven Weinberg

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Quantum physics has highly practical uses in the real world

• Without this theory, we would have no transistors, no fibre-optic cables (and therefore no high-speed internet) and no lasers (so no CD or DVD players). But the theory was invented because of the pure inquisitiveness of scientists. Quantum theory is perhaps the perfect example of how pure research can come to have huge effects on our whole world. Tim Crane
• Quantum mechanics is a hugely successful tool for accomplishing things in the “real world” and, if this is one’s goal, then for all practical purposes, nonlocality doesn’t matter. You don’t need to debate questions of randomness versus order, locality versus nonlocality—just shut up and calculate! Joseph Selbie

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Quantum physics can be used to explain many phenomena in the real world

• Quantum physics, as our new subject is called, answers such questions as: Why do the stars shine? Why do the elements exhibit the order that is so apparent in the periodic table? How do transistors and other microelectronic devices work? Why does copper conduct electricity but glass does not? In fact, scientists and engineers have applied quantum physics in almost every aspect of everyday life, from medical instrumentation to transportation systems to entertainment industries. Indeed, because quantum physics accounts for all of chemistry, including biochemistry, we need to understand it if we are to understand life itself. Jearl Walker

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Quantum physics is evident not just on the micro-level but the macro-level too

• Over the past several years experimentalists have seen quantum effects in a growing number of macroscopic systems. The quintessential quantum effect, entanglement, can occur in large systems as well as warm ones—including living organisms—even though molecular jiggling might be expected to disrupt entanglement…. Until the past decade, experimentalists had not confirmed that quantum behavior persists on a macroscopic scale. Today, however, they routinely do. These effects are more pervasive than anyone ever suspected. They may operate in the cells of our body…. We can’t simply write [quantum effects] off as mere details that matter only on the very smallest scales…. The entanglements are primary. Vlatko Vedral
• Only recently, scientists believed entanglement was limited to the microworld of atoms and subatomic particles. Today, however, entanglement has been proven to be a feature of the biology of living creatures, apparently including ourselves. Larry Dossey
• According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age. Brian Greene

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Quantum physics really shakes up our preconceptions…

• Some of the predictions of quantum physics seem strange even to the physicists and philosophers who study its foundations. Still, experiment after experiment has proved the theory correct, and many have exposed even stranger aspects of the theory.The quantum world is an amusement park full of wonderful rides that are guaranteed to shake up the commonsense world view you have developed since childhood. Jearl Walker, David Halliday and Robert Resnick

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…pointing an inherent strangeness and “illogical” weirdness in the universe

• Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense. Roger Penrose
• I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman
• I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it. Erwin Schrodinger
• If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Niels Bohr
• If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it. John Wheeler
• The ‘paradox’ is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ‘ought to be’ Richard Feynman
• Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. Niels Bohr
• If we think we can picture what is going on in the quantum domain, that is one indication that we’ve got it wrong. Erwin Schrödinger
• The world is not as real as we think.… My personal opinion is that the world is even weirder than what quantum physics tells us. Anton Zeilinger
• To get to grips with quantum physics, you need to retrain your intuition, or possibly just give up any sense of reality at all. Anil Ananthaswamy
• For the better part of a century it’s been fairly clear that the Universe we experience in our daily lives isn’t quite like the one we see when we try to look at it up close. Mike Mcrae
• It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct. Michio Kaku
• As mystery makes a comeback in the quantum reality, reality is weirder than we thought. It is more inconclusive and uncertain than we thought. In this world, it no longer works to reduce things to the reasonable or the expected. Doug Hammack
• Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?” because you will get “down the drain,” into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that. Richard Feynman
• ‘Because atomic behaviour is so unlike ordinary experience,’ Richard Feynman once observed, ‘it is very difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist.’ Bill Bryson
• I do not understand modern physics at all, but my colleagues who know a lot about the physics of very small things, like the particles in atoms, or very large things, like the universe, seem to be running into one queerness after another, from puzzle to puzzle. Lewis Thomas
• The inner mysteries of quantum mechanics require a willingness to extend one’s mental processes into a strange world of phantom possibilities, endlessly branching into more and more abstruse chains of coupled logical networks, endlessly extending themselves forward and even backwards in time. J. C. Ward
• The natural world, on the other hand, is one of infinite varieties and complexities, a multidimensional world which contains no straight lines or completely regular shapes, where things do not happen in sequences, but all together; a world where—as modern physics tells us—even empty space is curved. Fritjof Capra
• Quantum Mechanics as a whole is so totally weird in its findings that it was in danger of being totally thrown out by the scientific community – except for one problem! What it suggests may be weird but it has never been found at fault.  It represents our best understanding yet on the workings of our universe.  Martin E Moore
• Physicists shook their heads at the counter-intuitiveness of it all. How could electrons be in touch with everything at once? How could an electron not be a set single thing until it is examined or measured? How, in fact, could anything be concrete in the world, if it was a will o’ the wisp once you started looking closer at it?  Lynne McTaggart
• The strange new land that physicists had found lurking in the heart of the atom contained things more wondrous than anything Cortes or Marco Polo ever encountered. What made this new world so intriguing was that everything about it appeared to be so contrary to common sense. It seemed more like a land ruled by sorcery than an extension of the natural world, an Alice-in- Wonderland realm in which mystifying forces were the norm and everything logical had been turned on its ear. Michael Talbot
• I should begin by expressing my general attitude to present-day quantum theory, by which I mean standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The theory has, indeed, two powerful bodies of fact in its favour, and only one thing against it. First, in its favour are all the marvellous agreements that the theory has had with every experimental result to date. Second, and to me almost as important, it is a theory of astonishing and profound mathematical beauty. The one thing that can be said against it is that it makes absolutely no sense! Roger Penrose
• Do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?” because you will get “down the drain,” into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that. Richard Feynman
• I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that. Richard Feynman
• The path that led Bohm to the conviction that the universe is structured like a hologram began at the very edge of matter, in the world of subatomic particles. It is an easy fascination to understand. The strange new land that physicists had found lurking in the heart of the atom contained things more wondrous than anything Cortes or Marco Polo ever encountered. What made this new world so intriguing was that everything about it appeared to be so contrary to common sense. It seemed more like a land ruled by sorcery than an extension of the natural world, an Alice-in-Wonderland realm in which mystifying forces were the norm and everything logical had been turned on its ear. Michael Talbot
• The weirdness of entanglement and of other experimentally verified aspects of quantum mechanics has led to a proliferation of hypotheses about the nature of reality that rival the most outrageous science fiction novels: parallel worlds, hyper-dimensional multiverses, simulated realities, time travel, and many other ideas that are beyond the realm of empirical verification. The people proposing these fantastic ideas are impossible to ignore: they include some of our best scientists. In a way – and I run the risk of being unfair in my judgment here – these proposals represent a psychological trade-off: one knows that some weirdness is unavoidable, so one carefully cherry-picks which weirdness to let in, so as to preserve the aspect of one’s personal worldview that is psychologically most difficult to abandon. For some, realism must be preserved at all costs; for others, determinism; for yet others, locality. Bernard Kastrup

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Quantum physics even seems to allow for the rewriting of the long-distant past

• Using a telescope to capture photons from the Twin Quasar, we can choose to measure which path through the gravitational lens a photon takes—the upper or lower path in the Hubble image—or we can choose to measure a superposition. If we choose to measure its path and we discover, say, that it’s on the upper path, then for almost 14 billion years that photon has been on that path because of a choice we made today. If we had chosen instead to measure a superposition, then that photon would have a different history for the last 14 billion years. Our choice today determines billions of years of history. Most of us can’t bench-press a hundred kilos. But we can reach back billions of years and trillions of kilometers to rewrite the past—a Herculean feat. Donald Hoffman

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Those scientists who were born with quantum physics quickly adapt to its strangeness and use it in many ways

• I have observed in teaching quantum mechanics, and also in learning it, that students go through an experience similar to the one that Pupin describes. The student begins by learning the tricks of the trade. He learns how to make calculations in quantum mechanics and get the right answers, how to calculate the scattering of neutrons by protons and so forth. To learn the mathematics of the subject and to learn how to use it takes about six months. This is the first stage in learning quantum mechanics, and it is comparatively painless. The second stage comes when the student begins to worry because he does not understand what he has been doing. He worries because he has no clear physical picture in his head. He gets confused in trying to arrive at a physical explanation for each of the mathematical tricks he has been taught. He works very hard and gets discouraged because he does not seem to be able to think clearly. This second stage often lasts six months or longer. It is strenuous and unpleasant. Then, unexpectedly, the third stage begins. The student suddenly says to himself, “I understand quantum mechanics,” or rather he says, “I understand now that there isn’t anything to be understood.” The difficulties which seemed so formidable have mysteriously vanished. What has happened is that he has learned to think directly and unconsciously in quantum-mechanical language. He is no longer trying to explain everything in terms of prequantum conceptions. The duration and severity of the second stage are decreasing as the years go by. Each new generation of students learns quantum mechanics more easily than their teachers learned it. The students are growing more detached from prequantum pictures. There is less resistance to be broken down before they feel at home with quantum ideas. Ultimately, the second stage will disappear entirely. Quantum mechanics will be accepted by students from the beginning as a simple and natural way of thinking, because we shall all have grown used to it. By that time, if science progresses as we hope, we shall be ready for the next big jump into the unknown.  Freeman Dyson
• David Gross, a recent Nobel winner and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, leapt into the free-for-all, saying that 80 years had not been enough time for the new concepts to sink in. “We’re just too young. We should wait until 2200 when quantum mechanics is taught in kindergarten.” Dennis Overbye

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The public has also bought into quantum physics in many ways without really understanding its profound implications

• Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny. Simone Weil

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However, despite its accuracy and practical usefulness, we are far from being able to explain the actual nature of underlying reality through quantum physics

• The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand-i.e. the metaphysics of quantum theory-is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model. Fritjof Capra
• Albert Einstein and Max Planck introduced the idea of the quantum at the beginning of the 20th century, sweeping away the old classical view of reality. We have never managed to come up with a definitive new reality to take its place. The interpretation of quantum physics remains as up for grabs as ever. Adam Frank
• Ask anyone today working on foundational questions in quantum theory and you are likely to hear that there is still no consensus on many of these questions—all the while, of course, everybody seems to be in perfect agreement on how to apply the quantum formalism when it comes to making experimental predictions. Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, Anton Zeilinger
• Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger. Tim Folger
• Quantum [physics] is based on a clear mathematical apparatus, has enormous significance for the natural sciences, enjoys phenomenal predictive success. . . . Yet, nearly 90 years after the theory’s development, there is still no consensus in the scientific community regarding the interpretation of the theory’s foundational building blocks. Zeilinger and co.
• Quantum mechanics is extremely accurate; it became, and remains, one of the most important scientific tools of the 20th and 21st centuries. But don’t misunderstand: Despite its undeniable success, the development of the equations of quantum mechanics only made it unnecessary to answer the deeper questions about the nature of reality raised by quantum physics; it didn’t answer them. The vast majority of physicists—with a sigh of relief—moved on to the business of inventing things and quite happily left behind the mysteries surrounding the nature of reality raised by quantum physics.  Joseph Selbie
• The Copenhagen interpretation, touched on earlier, can be thought of as the pragmatic shut-up-and- calculate interpretation. “Don’t worry about a deeper reality. It’s not necessary. This is just the way things work. Matter becomes weird at quantum size. Get used to it. Joseph Selbie

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Subatomic reality exists beyond our senses and all we have to work with are conceptual models…

• Our concept of particles such as electrons, protons, neutrons, and quarks are literally models of what may occur at the subatomic level. Scientists’ observations and measurements have determined the best way of explaining how matter behaves is through the use of such a model, but one cannot say that is objective reality. Alan H. Dawe
• What we see, or hear, are never the investigated phenomena themselves but always their consequences. The atomic and subatomic world itself lies beyond our sensory perception. Fritjof Capra
• We see the atoms with their girdles of circulating electrons darting hither and thither, colliding and rebounding. Free electrons torn from the girdles hurry away a hundred times faster, curving sharply round the atoms with side-slips and hairbreadth escapes… . The spectacle is so fascinating that we have perhaps forgotten that there was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered… . Something unknown is doing we don’t know what—that is what our theory amounts to. Sir Arthur Eddington
• Asking questions about the underlying nature of reality assumes that a true reality conforms to certain rules that fit our intuition, while the exact opposite may turn out to be true. Our perception of reality is determined by our limited senses and capabilities, and whatever rules truly govern the Universe may be more foreign to us than our minds have ever conceived of. Ethan Siegel
• Niels Bohr hung a sign on his door saying ‘Philosophers keep out. Work in progress.’
• One of the best-kept secrets of science is that physicists have lost their grip on reality. Nick Herbert
• Quantum theory does not trouble me at all. It is just the way the world works. What eats me, gets me, drives me, pushes me, is to understand how it got that way. What is the deeper foundation underneath it? Where does it come from? So that we won’t see it as something that is unwelcome by friends that we admire—John Bell and many others—it will be something that will make you say, ‘It couldn’t have been otherwise.’ We haven’t gotten to that stage yet, and until we do, we have not met the challenge that is right there. I continue to say that the quantum is the crack in the armor that covers the secret of existence. To me it’s a marvelous stimulus, hope, and driving force. And yet I am afraid that just the word—‘hope’—is what does not eat, or possess, or drive so many of our colleagues in the field. They’re content to take the theory for granted, rather than to find out where it comes from. But you would hardly feel the drive to find out where from if you don’t feel that the theory is utterly right. I have been brought up from ‘childhood’ to feel that it is utterly right. Here I was, reading that book of Weyl’s at the age of eighteen and just crazy about it. John Wheeler

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…and instruments

• The delicate and complicated instruments of modern experimental physics penetrate deep into the submicroscopic world, into realms of nature far removed from our macroscopic environment, and make this world accessible to our senses. However, they can do so only through a chain of processes ending, for example, in the audible click of a Geiger counter, or in a dark spot on a photographic plate. What we see, or hear, are never the investigated phenomena themselves but always their consequences. The atomic and subatomic world itself lies beyond our sensory perception. Frifjof Capra

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Quantum physics raises profound questions about the nature of reality

• Like most physicists, I learned how to ignore the weirdness of quantum physics. ‘Shut up and calculate!’ (the dictum of the American physicist David Mermin) works fine if you are trying to get 100 per cent on your Advanced Quantum Theory homework or building a laser. But behind quantum mechanics’ unequaled calculational precision lie profound, stubbornly persistent questions about what those quantum rules imply about the nature of reality — including our place in it. Those questions are well-known in the physics community, but perhaps our habit of shutting up has been a little too successful. Dr. Adam Frank
• Most physicists develop a somewhat schizophrenic view. On the one hand they accept the standard interpretation of quantum theory. On the other they insist on the reality of quantum systems even when these are not observed. Fritz Eohrlich
• Physicists are still unable to reach consensus on the principles or meaning of science’s most fundamental and accurate theory, namely quantum physics. An embarrassment of enigmas abounds concerning wave-particle duality, measurement, non-locality, superpositions, uncertainty, and the meaning of quantum states. Alan Hobson
• No other theory of the physical world has caused such consternation as quantum theory, for no other theory has so completely overthrown the previously cherished concepts of classical physics and our everyday apprehension of reality. For philosophers, it has been a romping ground of epistemological adventure of pessimism about science’s ability to expose ultimate truth. For physicists, it has required a confrontation with the nature of physical reality and a heady inhalation of new attitudes. For all scientists and technologists, it has been the key to advances in all fields of endeavor, from genetics to superconductivity. Peter Atkins
• If it is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science. Albert Einstein

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There are several different interpretations of quantum physics

• There are a great many examples of ways people have tried to make sense out of what’s happening here. They include: 1. the Copenhagen Interpretation, asserting that the quantum wavefunction is physically meaningless until a defining measurement is made, and only assigns probabilities for what would occur if you made such a measurement, which “collapses” the wavefunction,   the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which holds that quantum states interact with the environment, producing entanglement and an ever-growing number of possible outcomes, where an exponentially large number of parallel Universes exists to house each possible outcome,  3.  the Ensemble Interpretation, where you imagine an infinite number of identical systems prepared in the same way, and making a measurement simply chooses one outcome to be “the real one,”and 4.  the Pilot Wave/de Broglie-Bohm interpretation, where particles always exist and have positions, are guided by wavefunctions, implying that the “wave guides” (known as pilot waves) are deterministic and governed by hidden variables, which must be non-local (affecting disconnected spacetime points simultaneously) in nature.  Ethan Siegel
• My own conclusion is that today there is no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not have serious flaws. This view is not universally shared. Indeed, many physicists are satisfied with their own interpretation of quantum mechanics. But different physicists are satisfied with different interpretations. In my view, we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which quantum mechanics is only a good approximation. Steven Weinberg

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For example, there is the “many worlds” view

• Others took a more extreme view. In the many-worlds interpretation espoused by the American physicist Hugh Everett, the authority of the wave function and its governing Schrödinger equation was taken as absolute. Measurements didn’t suspend the equation or collapse the wave function, they merely made the Universe split off into many (perhaps infinite) parallel versions of itself. Thus, for every experimentalist who measures an electron over here, a parallel universe is created in which her parallel copy finds the electron over there. The many-worlds Interpretation is one that many materialists favor, but it comes with a steep price.  Adam Frank
• The attraction of the many-worlds interpretation, for instance, is its ability to keep the reality in the mathematical physics. In this view, yes, the wave function is real and, yes, it describes a world of matter that obeys mathematical rules, whether someone is watching or not. The price you pay for this position is an infinite number of parallel universes that are infinitely splitting off into an infinity of other parallel universes that then split off into … well, you get the picture. Adam Frank
• The many-worlds theory is nifty in the way it turns head-scratching problems into no problem at all. You can have your cat and kill it, too. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Why does the infinity of parallel universes in the many-worlds interpretation get associated with the sober, hard-nosed position, while including the perceiving subject gets condemned as crossing over to the shores of anti-science at best, or mysticism at worst? Adam Frank

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It is also true to say quantum physics has been misused by some

• Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans—and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas—than quantum mechanics. Sean Carroll

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Some believe quantum physics points to the holographic nature of the universe

• Bohm showed mathematically that the universe, and everything in it, emerges into physical being in conformance with a hidden order that exists in pre-space. Joseph Selbie
• There is no reality above and beyond that created by the integration of all consciousnesses, and the holographic universe can potentially be sculpted in virtually limitless ways by the mind.  Michael Talbot
• To understand the holographic principle, the pioneering science of the twenty-first century is also beginning to comprehend the fact that information is indeed more fundamental than matter, energy, space, and time. Jude Currivan
• Bohm’s work with the math behind holography has become known in physics as the holographic principle. It is not a fringe theory. Bohm’s equations have become widely used in many branches of physics. After Bohm’s passing, the holographic principle became a major feature of string theory. Joseph Selbie
• Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind and Nobel Prize winner Gerard Hooft combined quantum and relativistic descriptions of space-time. Mathematically speaking, the fabric should be a 2D surface, and the grains should act like the dots in a vast cosmic image, defining the “resolution” of our 3D universe. Victoria Jaggard
• In 1997, Juan Maldecena, professor of physics at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Studies, published a paper in which the holographic principle took center stage. By 2010, Maldecena’s paper had been cited in papers by other physicists more than 7,000 times, and thus it became the most frequently cited paper in the field of high energy physics. Joseph Selbie
• We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self-referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time. Ervin Laszlo
• The most significant implication of the holographic principle is that the universe is being continuously created. It suggests that if the energy that is interacting with the two-dimensional hologram in pre-space were withdrawn, the three-dimensional holographic projection of the universe would cease to exist—instantly. Furthermore, it suggests that the physical universe has no independent and enduring reality, that it is wholly dependent, moment by moment, on the information and energy originating from the nonlocal, two-dimensional energy-verse.  Joseph Selbie
• Einstein had the conviction that God does not play dice. The holographic principle strongly suggest that the order Einstein sought not only exists but is nonlocal. Ervin Laszlo, author of Cosmos: A Co-creator’s Guide to the Whole-World, stated on the matter: We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self-referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time. Joseph Selbie
• Bohm also discovered that the mathematics governing how a hologram works provided an exceptionally useful mathematical model for how the implicate order, enfolded in nonlocal two-dimensional pre-space, allows the explicate order to unfold in local three-dimensional space. Holograms are two-dimensional. Holographic projections are three-dimensional. Holographic images are stored in flat, two-dimensional, media. When light interacts with the flat, two-dimensional media, however, a three-dimensional holographic projection appears. A holographic projection does not simply appear to be be three-dimensional, it is: If one walks around a holographic projection one sees different sides of a three-dimensional object—all generated from two-dimensional media. Joseph Selbie
• No atom has inherent, enduring, independent properties. It is simply energy; energy that can take any form. String theorists add that the apparently independent objects that make up our sensory experience are super-high resolution, three-dimensional images in a holographic projection. Just as the images on our TV screen appear to be separate and independently existing three-dimensional objects, they are in fact interconnected, two-dimensional light images. So, too, the world around us, and indeed our bodies, are holographic projections of energy—not separate, independently existing three-dimensional objects. Neither the tiniest bit of matter nor the largest star has an independent reality. All matter is projected from, interconnected with, and dependent on, the interpenetrating, nonlocal, two-dimensional energy-verse. Joseph Selbie
• The holographic principle, as it is used in string theory, states that the information determining the behavior of the three-dimensional volume of space we call the universe is “pasted on” the “boundary” between our three-dimensional universe and a two-dimensional brane. Put another way, the way the universe works—from the Big Bang to the present—is the result of information existing outside the universe itself. Put yet another way, light energy, interacting with a two-dimensional brane. Put another way, the way the universe works—from the Big Bang to the present—is the result of information existing outside the universe itself. Put yet another way, light energy, interacting with a two-dimensional hologram in a two-dimensional brane, results in the colossal three-dimensional holographic projection we call the universe.  Joseph Selbie

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Some believe quantum physics points to a hidden order…

• By the 1960’s Bohm began to view chaos as a misnomer. He believed that “randomness” contains a hidden order, and that we perceive disorder only because of our limited understanding of the complexity of the processes involved. David S. Walonick, Ph.D.
• David Bohm called this nonlocal realm that connects everything pre-space. Pre-space, as the name implies, is space-less. In nonlocal pre-space, there is no distance as we understand the concept. According to Bohm, entangled photon twins, when measured by an intelligent observer, instantaneously enter our space-full three-dimensional world from this space-less pre-space. Joseph Selbie
• He called this hidden order the implicate order and compared matter’s process of emergence into physical being to that of something initially folded (flat, so to speak, in just two dimensions) then unfolding into three dimensions—the explicate order. The implicate part of the order exists in nonlocal pre-space. It serves as the template for (it provides the missing hidden properties for) the explicate order, which unfolds in our local three-dimensional universe according to the information in the enfolded order in pre-space. Joseph Selbie
• If “outside space” makes you think of another “box” outside the spatial “box” we are in, forget it. The other box can be made as much a part of the universe of space as ours, by definition. With nonlocal connection, we are forced to conceptualize a domain of reality outside space-time because a nonlocal connection cannot happen in space-time. Amit Goswami
• In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the “explicate” or “unfolded” order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders. Joseph Selbie
• It occurred to David Bohm that maybe things that we perceive as disordered aren’t disordered at all. Perhaps their order is of such an “indefinitely high degree” that they only appear to us as random. Michael Talbot
• M-theory, string theory’s most accepted version, attempts to reconcile the difference between the two calculations by positing that the higher energy predicted by quantum theory does indeed exist somewhere else: It exists in extra dimensions beyond the four dimensions with which general relativity concerns itself (three dimensions of space and one of time) and beyond our senses’ and our finest instruments’ ability to detect. Joseph Selbie
• M-theory’s holographic principle states that all the information that organizes the energies that form the physical universe—including the natural laws that govern all matter-energy interactions and the entire history of matter-energy interactions going back to the Big Bang—resides in the interpenetrating, nonlocal energy-verse, not in the physical universe itself. This information exists in a hologram-like, dynamically evolving two-dimensional energy template that continuously projects the entire physical universe into being. Joseph Selbie
• Quantum physicists such as Bernard d’Espagnat talk about a ‘veiled reality’ that we can hardly even imagine, which appears as solid physical objects only when observed. Keith Ward

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…a kind of spiritual realm as talked about by mystics

• In a word, absolutely everything in nature, from the smallest to the greatest, is a correspondence. The reason correspondences occur is that the natural world, including everything in it, arises and is sustained from the spiritual world, and both worlds come from the Divine. Emanuel Swedenborg

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• A physicist is the atoms’ way of thinking about atoms.
• God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. William Lawrence Bragg

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