I'm writing my English research paper on the double slit experiment in quantum physics. Not being a physicist, I figured that as long as I can understand it myself, I shouldn't have too much trouble dumbing it down enough for a lay reader in my research paper. (That's the beauty of this topic. Most research papers are supposed to be showing off just how in-depth you can go, but with a really complicated topic where you have to go in-depth just to understand the basics, you don't have to make up stuff and shove in opinions to add "substance" to your paper to get the minimum page requirement.)
I'm at work, and I've finished all the articles we have that I'm supposed to edit, and we're waiting for more people to send in their articles (even though it's well past the submission deadline), and I got permission from my boss to do homework while I'm waiting for something to do. Something occurred to me while I was researching quantum physics.
Okay, we're going to assume for a minute that quantum physics is true and accurate. Of course, I'm very amateur at this and my understanding may not be the best. Fortunately, I think Charlotte reads my blog, and she's studying physics, so she could probably correct what I've got wrong here and probably tell me a lot more in five minutes than I could learn in an hour of research. (Hey, Charlotte, if you're bored, can I get a brief overview of quantum physics, focusing specifically on the double slit experiment? Amabo te! I'll love you forever! :D My e-mail address is on Facebook, and I think you can find it on my Blogger profile too.)
Now then. As I understand it, quantum physics is the study of really really really tiny physics. Apparently, physics works differently on an atomic level than it does on what we'd consider a normal level. That's how the electrons that circle the nucleus of an atom keep going forever and ever without ever stopping. First of all, there's no air resistance because the electrons are moving in an area smaller than air. I'm not sure why gravity doesn't slow it down, though. Maybe it's because the gravity tie that holds the electron to the nucleus of the atom overrides other gravity. Or maybe it's... smaller than gravity? Is that possible? How does gravity work, anyway? I should look into that.
Anyway, you know how there are different levels of orbit that electrons can travel on? I don't recall the term for it; it's just something I vaguely remember from my high school chemistry class. Anyway, theoretically, electrons can jump from one level of orbit to another without ever crossing the space in between.
Bear with me here. Remember, we're pretending that this is true. I don't know enough about it to say whether it is or isn't, but if you firmly disbelieve it, don't start lecturing me unless you have useful and accurate information (preferably with sources so I can look it up for my paper).
Now, we're going to make a quantum leap (heh, I made a punny) from atomic science to astronomy. If you recall, planets orbit the sun like electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom. The planets too have set orbits. That's how the outer planets were found, in fact. An astronomer whose name I don't recall noticed a pattern in the distance the planets orbit the sun and so he measured where the next few planets should be and started looking for them. So if you look at a model of the solar system, it's strikingly similar to a model of an atom, right?
So what if it were possible for us to jump from orbit to orbit without ever visiting the space in between, just like the electrons? (Ha, Mom, maybe that's where all your missing sets of keys disappeared to.)
And then what if we go a few steps further? The moon orbits the Earth. The Earth orbits Sol (the sun). Sol orbits whatever's in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy presumably orbits something else, like whatever's in the center of the universe. So what if not only could we jump from Earth's orbit level to Mars's orbit level, but we could jump from Sol's orbit level to, say, Betelgeuse's? Hello, deep space travel that wouldn't take billions of years.
I'm sure that this idea isn't original to me and that there's a massive flaw in it, but wouldn't it at least make a cool premise for a science fiction story, if nothing else?
2 comments:
Good thoughts. But you're overlooking one thing, which is surprising since you actually articulated that exact one thing early in your post: quantum physics doesn't operate like normal matter. In other words, an orbit for an electron is not at all like the orbit of a planet.
In fact, there is even some question as to whether the electron actually "goes around" the nucleus, or whether the electrons form some kind of "cloud" around the nucleus.
BTW, the name of the astronomer you're looking for is Bode. Bode's law is the one that predicts where the planetary orbits should be. Google Bode's law.
All of this stuff is theoretical and you shouldn't believe anyone who tells you that any of it shas been "proven", because "proven" simply means that most of those who have learned a lot about this subject have agreed that this is what they want to believe it.
But here is what most physicists seem to believe in as of the last tiem I heard:
Electrons don't orbit in discrete distances from the center the way planets do. Their "orbits" are related to energy levels, not distance. In fact, I believe some people now refer to the orbits as "states" rather than orbital levels. If I remember correctly, the states go by names like 1s, 2p, 3d, etc.
We don't know exactly how or why, but when electrons move from one orbit to another (one energy state to another), energy is released (e.g., light, etc.), and we don't have any idea of what propagates that energy through space, either. We speak of waves, but waves are actually superimpositions on a medium (such as waves on the ocean, sound waves through air, etc.) and we don't know what medium transfers energy waves. There's still some disagreement about whether energy such as light moves in waves or some kind of particle (photon, etc.)
We know that light (and presumably other energy waves) are affected by gravity (Einstein, and the experiments of occultations of stars behind the sun, etc. provided evidence supporting this), but we don't know why.
And why doesn't gravity affect the electrons? Why don't the electrons move slower going "up" than they do coming "down", by the 32-feet-per-second-per-second rule? ... especially since the waves of their emanated energy seem to be affected by gravity?
That's the 64 dollar question. No one knows. If we knew the answer to that, we'd probably have someone able to take a crack at guessing what gravity is, and how it's related to electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and all those other hypothetical subatomic particles that no one has truly proven exist except by using math. Aw, gee, physics really is math! Imagine that...
Math has been used to "prove" a lot of this stuff, but to my mind and a lot of others, it is still subject to revision as new data is obtained. I dismiss a lot of the output of the supercolliders and other accelerators because of the way they detect their results: by watching bubbles in liquid media such as liquid helium. My skepticism comes from the fact that their conclusions are predicated on observations of physical matter, whereas most of the stuff they are supposed to be watching for is not actually physical matter, and the hypothesized results are based on math, and it is ludicrously egotistical to believe that we know everything there is to know about math. Remember, no one even suspected calculus existed until Newton. And matrix algebra? And all the other stuff we've discovered about math in the last century? Why not believe there is more out there to discover? And why not believe that some of that may affect our formulas of how the universe works?
I'm glad you are asking these questions, even if we don't have all the answers yet.
What matters is that physicists, and their cousins the engineers, can indeed apply what we think we do know, to make life better for us here and now. We'll leave time travel, warp speeds, and the like to the science fiction writers and the scientists of tomorrow.
Call your grandfather and ask about his theory of gravity being a push from everything rather than a pull by the object "shielding" the push from everything else. Fascinating.
I think you are looking for the word Orbitals.
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