9 Things To Say About Quantum Physics That Will Make You Sound Clever At Parties
7. "If You Think You’ve Understood Quantum Physics, You Haven’t Properly Understood It"
Niels Bohr, one of the biggest names in quantum physics, once said that "If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."
Aside from being a great get-out-of-jail-free-card escape route if you end up talking yourself into a corner about quantum mechanics, it is also very true.
The world of quantum mechanics is so complex, so difficult and just so plain weird that the greatest scientific minds of the age have yet to properly understand it. Whilst it's very tempting think that, because you have understood the sideways explanations in a BBC documentary, you understand how quantum mechanics work, it's sadly not the case.
In QM, the technical terms involve the words "spookiness" and "weirdness" on a regular basis, and this is a good indicator of our problems with translating the quantum world into terms that we can understand. There's a lot of maths, a lot of deep physics and, even after all that, there's still a lot of "and then a miracle occurs" cheat codes.
This, of course, doesn't mean to say that you can't swot up on a couple of basic ideas to make you sound smart at parties....er, we mean, spark interesting and intelligent debate...