I spent two whole months in my spare time, reading this book word for word and reluctantly. When I see the wonderful part, I will put down my mobile phone and close my eyes. Unfortunately, it is estimated that it is difficult to explain this book clearly in written language. After all, "God is a mathematician, and the only language that can describe the universe is mathematics". Let me try to make the whole "story line" clear:
Perhaps the source of all exploration comes from this question: what is light? Hertz proved by experiments that light is an electromagnetic wave, which leads to wave theory; On the other hand, Newton promoted the "particle theory" of light on the basis of his classical mechanics. For experimental phenomena, the reflection and refraction of light can be better explained by particle theory, while diffraction and interference are more in line with wave theory. The well-known experimental double-slit interference experiment shows that light has both wave-particle duality. There is an interesting description in this book: "Physicists should regard the world as a particle on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the world as a wave on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. On Sunday, they don't know what to do, so they stay at home and pray for God's blessing. " In fact, the scientific community has not yet come to a conclusion on this issue, but only put forward a series of wonderful theories:
The first one must be the founder of quantum mechanics (here is a brief explanation: photons are also a kind of quantum): Planck. As one of the two dark clouds in the physics building, "blackbody experiment" finally leads to the mountain of quantum mechanics. Planck's outstanding contribution only proves that energy is discontinuous, that is, the world is composed of discontinuous energy bodies (quanta).
Then Bohr and Bohr's partners (Copenhagen School, Heisenberg, Bonn, Pauli must be named). Bohr put forward the electron transition model, which is the planetary model we saw in our high school chemistry books. On this basis, Pauli put forward the "Pauli exclusion principle", which simply means that the number of electrons contained in each energy level is fixed and limited, and all the electrons are not equal. Before and after Heisenberg, two outstanding theories were the introduction of matrix mechanics and quantum theory, from which the uncertainty principle was obtained. The uncertainty principle secondly explains the incredible unmeasurable properties of quantum in a mathematical way. Here is the painting of Heisenberg's sworn enemy, Schrodinger. As we all know, the famous physics experiment "Schrodinger's cat" is a classic experiment connecting the macro world and the micro world. However, his greater contribution lies in the fact that the introduction of wave equation fits quantum theory perfectly from different angles of Heisenberg. The beauty is that different realistic angles (one representing particle theory and the other representing wave theory) are actually equivalent in mathematics, that is to say, matrix mechanics and wave mechanics can be deduced from each other in mathematics. So the physical world is hard to understand. No one can imagine that light is both a particle and a wave. We can only do what the book says: "We should learn to rely on mathematics, not everyday language, because only mathematics has a unique meaning and can tell us the only truth." We must realize this: we must accept what mathematics says. Since then, Bonn has become the first person to bring dice into the quantum world. Now when we talk about quantum mechanics, we can naturally think of probability, but we must know what kind of shock it brought to scientists at that time! The most basic things that make up the whole world are actually uncertain and completely random, which you can't measure and know anyway.
There are too many phenomena beyond the classical world in the quantum world to explain, but this does not prevent many excellent theories from being put forward. Before that, I want to talk about the classic experiment-the double-slit interference experiment, so that everyone can read the following theory accordingly. Simply put, the experimental phenomenon is that a beam of photons shines on two spaced gaps (the width can only pass through a single quantum). When we don't observe the path of light, light will form interference fringes with alternating light and dark on the back screen (corresponding to wave theory), and once observed, it will collapse into two spots corresponding to the gap (corresponding to particle theory). This paper focuses on "Multi-World Interpretation" (MWI), also known as "Parallel Universe Theory", because it is my favorite theory and the most beautiful interpretation of the quantum world by many people. This theory can easily be intuitively understood as having many three-dimensional worlds (which gives people a very wasteful feeling, but the universe has always given people the impression of accurate beauty). In fact, this is only the correspondence between the high-dimensional "world" and the low-dimensional "world". The projection state of the cone of the three-dimensional world in the two-dimensional world is different, but in Schrodinger's cat experiment, the cat's living state is definitely dead or alive in different low-dimensional worlds, which is a superimposed state and cannot be observed. Once observed, we will randomly enter a "world", when cats will only have a specific state. Decoherence theory is put forward on the basis of this theory, as shown in Figure 2. When two low-dimensional worlds are orthogonal to each other, the two worlds lose contact, and one world cannot get any news from the other. The whole process is called decoherence. Think about our double-slit interference experiment. Compared with our macroscopic world, microscopic particles are an ultra-low dimensional world. Observing them from the macro-world perspective will inevitably lead to the decoherence of these two originally coherent worlds. The principle is simple. The more dimensions are introduced, the greater the possibility of orthogonality. In this way, if we want to pursue the trajectory of a particle from the macro world, it will change from a superposition state to a certain state of a specific "world". Personally, I think the wonder of this theory is that it cleverly avoids introducing the subjective thing "consciousness" to explain the changes of quantum state brought about by observation, thus avoiding direct conflict with the materialism that we generally recognize. But this led to an interesting "quantum suicide" experiment. The general description is that no matter how you commit suicide, you will never die, but you will only die in your own world and continue to live in another world, but the two worlds are no longer related, and others can't prove whether this person has gone to another world. What is more worth exploring is, is "you" in the other world still not "you"? Talking about "consciousness" here will inevitably lead to idealism.
Of course, this book also has many wonderful places, such as several wars between Einstein and Bonn, the principles of electromagnetism and thermodynamics are clear at a glance, the popular explanation of Bell inequality, the development and application of quantum theory, and so on. And space reasons can't be expanded too much. Finally, I attached my first reading of this book: "I read the second five-star book after" Three-body "for two whole months, from Copenhagen->; Many worlds->; Hide variable->; Ensemble->; Decoherence history->; Superstring-> M theory, every theory, every guess, I can only think of the word' magic' to describe it, and I can only use' mystery' to describe the real world. A good science fiction writer must have a good understanding of the mystery of knowledge and readers, and finally draw, relate and project between these two States. The author's handling is so subtle that people often sigh' I see' or' it can be explained like this'. In a word, this is a good book, both in content and author.
I don't know how many people, like me, will cry with excitement when looking up at the night sky, tremble with fear when hearing theorems beyond their own cognition, and lose sleep with excitement when mathematics and theory are perfectly verified. Countless nightmares at night are that everything on the planet no longer follows the physical laws, but after waking up, they miss the amazing beauty of the dream world. Only truth and art can make people see pure beauty. I have always been insensitive to the beauty of art, but the perception of the beauty of truth seems to be innate. There are so many unknown things in this world before us, how can we always seek a little shelter and satisfaction in that small known space?
Note: Personal understanding is limited. In order to make this book review easier to understand, some loose expressions may be used. I hope readers can reasonably point out.