1.  What is the quantum theory?

XP-PX = iħ

Where the letter X indicates the position of a particle, the letter P indicates its speed multiplied by its mass (momentum), The letter i is the mathematical symbol of the square root of -1 and ħ is Planck’s constant divide by 2𝜋.

In case you are wondering, Planck’s constant is the product of energy multiplied by time, a quantity called action. Planck’s constant is often defined, therefore, as the elementary quantum of action. Its value in metre-kilogram-second units is defined as exactly 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ joule second.

And that is the mathematical representation of quantum theory.  The theory of everything.  The theory that describes the relation of every physical thing in the universe with everything else.  Understand?

No, you don’t. To quote the distinguished physicist, Richard Feynman, anyone who says that they understand the quantum theory doesn’t understand it.  Everything follows from this simple equation, from the quantum computer to the atomic bomb.  The price of this formal simplicity is the obscurity of its meaning. Quantum theory predicts granularity, quantum leaps, protons and all the rest on the basis of adding a single equation of eight characters to the rules and assumptions of classical physics.

The most advanced experimental work aimed at understanding quanta more completely is the Large Hadron Collider in Berne, Switzerland.  This is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets.  These boost particles such as protons which form all of matter to speeds close to the speed of light so that they collide with other protons.  To date, the collider has revealed 59 previously unknown hadrons (subatomic particles).  These include tetraquarks and new mesons and baryons.

In 2019, the physicists announced plans to build an even bigger collider costing 10 billion dollars.  Many scientists question the wisdom of this but it seems undoubted that crashing particles into one another is the most promising route to understanding what matter is made of and how it holds together.

• The history of understanding

In the late 13th and early 14th Century, Dante described the world as the blurred mirror of a great celestial hierarchy in which a great God and His spheres of angels carried the planets in their course across the heavens and participated in love and trepidation in the lives of a fragile humanity which oscillated, at the centre of the observable universe between adoration, rebellion and guilt.

In the centuries that followed, scientific understanding evolved, aspects of reality were understood and a complex edifice of knowledge was developed. Physics provided a foundational and unifying role, providing a clear image of reality; a vast space where particles run, pushed and pulled by forces..  Faraday and Maxwell added the electromagnetic field, an entity diffused in space through which distant bodies exercised influence upon each other.  Einstein completed the picture by showing that gravity is also carried by an influencing field that is the very geometry of space and time.

And, as others sought to understand and further define Einstein’ theory we came to the end of the age of classical physics when it was thought that everything was defined and limited by Newton’s laws. The conceptual clarity of classical physics has been swept away by quanta.  Reality is decidedly not how it was described by classical physics.  Scientists started to radically reinvent the world and its place in the universe by striving to understand quanta. The quantum theory does not describe the way in which quantum objects manifest themselves to us.  It describes how every physical object manifests itself to every other physical object.  How any physical entity acts on any other physical entity.  If there was an object that had no interactions, no effect upon any other object, emitted no light, attracted nothing and repelled nothing, was not touched and had no smell it would not exist.  From this we know that quantum theory applies to every object in the universe.

The radical consequence of this is that to attribute properties to something when it does not interact is superfluous and may be misleading.  It is talking about something that has no meaning for there are no properties outside of interactions.

• The conclusion

So what is a god other than a figment of human imagination.  A god is not discernible, it has never revealed its existence in a physical manner.  A god has no properties that interact with other entities, for example, humans.  The scientific conclusion must be that god does not exist.

Bloggers Note:  In writing this piece I have relied heavily on Carlo Rovelli’s excellent book, Helgoland, to help me give a short description of the quantum theory.  If you want to know more about quanta, this is a great source.  You still won’t understand it but you might start to get an insight into Schrodinger’s cat.