Conventional quantum field theories work well in describing the results of experiments at high-energy particle smashers such as CERNâs Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was discovered, which probe matter at its smallest scales. But if you want to understand how things work in many less esoteric situations â how electrons move or donât move through a solid material and so make a material a metal, an insulator or a semiconductor, for example â things get even more complex.
The billions upon billions of interactions in these crowded environments require the development of âeffective field theoriesâ that gloss over some of the gory details. The difficulty in constructing such theories is why many important questions in solid-state physics remain unresolved â for instance why at low temperatures some materials are superconductors that allow current without electrical resistance, and why we canât get this trick to work at room temperature.
But beneath all these practical problems lies a huge quantum mystery. At a basic level, quantum physics predicts very strange things about how matter works that are completely at odds with how things seem to work in the real world. Quantum particles can behave like particles, located in a single place; or they can act like waves, distributed all over space or in several places at once. How they appear seems to depend on how we choose to measure them, and before we measure they seem to have no definite properties at all â leading us to a fundamental conundrum about the nature of basic reality.
This fuzziness leads to apparent paradoxes such as SchrĂśdingerâs cat, in which thanks to an uncertain quantum process a cat is left dead and alive at the same time. But thatâs not all. Quantum particles also seem to be able to affect each other instantaneously even when they are far away from each other. This truly bamboozling phenomenon is known as entanglement, or, in a phrase coined by Einstein (a great critic of quantum theory), âspooky action at a distanceâ. Such quantum powers are completely foreign to us, yet are the basis of emerging technologies such as ultra-secure quantum cryptography and ultra-powerful quantum computing.
But as to what it all means, no one knows. Some people think we must just accept that quantum physics explains the material world in terms we find impossible to square with our experience in the larger, âclassicalâ world. Others think there must be some better, more intuitive theory out there that weâve yet to discover.
In all this, there are several elephants in the room. For a start, thereâs a fourth fundamental force of nature that so far quantum theory has been unable to explain. Gravity remains the territory of Einsteinâs general theory of relativity, a firmly non-quantum theory that doesnât even involve particles. Intensive efforts over decades to bring gravity under the quantum umbrella and so explain all of fundamental physics within one âtheory of everythingâ have come to nothing.
Meanwhile cosmological measurements indicate that over 95 per cent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, stuffs for which we currently have no explanation within the standard model, and conundrums such as the extent of the role of quantum physics in the messy workings of life remain unexplained. The world is at some level quantum â but whether quantum physics is the last word about the world remains an open question.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/definition/quantum-physics/#ixzz6v8lQ13km
Explanation:
