I recently learned that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to a team of scientists who conducted experiments on quantum tunneling. Their experiments were conducted in the 1980s, which is typical of how the Nobel committees work—it takes around thirty years for a scientific consensus to build that a body of work was truly worthy of a Nobel Prize.
I was interested in this news because, like most sci-fi nerds, I have an unflagging fascination with quantum mechanics. Heck, I even have a passing understanding of the fundamentals. (No, not just from Star Trek; I’ve read a few actual books! With facts, and stuff!) A few years ago, I even tried to write a non-fiction book about Bell’s Theorem, which is a famous consent in Quantum Mechanics, albeit one that you’ve probably never heard of (unless you’re a physicist or a science teacher or a sci-fi nerd).
To be frank, I had never heard of it either, until I read about it in a science book and then ventured to the Wikipedia page, where I learned that the theorem was written by an Anglo-Irish physicist named John Stewart Bell in the 1960s, and it hit the scientific community like a hurricane. Later, in 1975, another physicist Henry Stapp called it “the most profound discovery of science.”
When I read this quote, I thought, “Whoa, dude! If it’s really the most ‘profound discovery of science’,” I should probably learn something about it.”
And I did. Sort of.
Obviously, I will never really understand the underlying math, or even the root concepts that the math represents (which is one reason I abandoned the aforementioned book project). But the theorem itself is pretty easy to understand….
Continue reading “The Coolest Discovery You’ve Never Heard Of”
Ash Clifton, Writer 