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Physics World

Does God play dice?

Gerard ’t Hooft, Edward Witten, Fay Dowker B

Published Dec 1, 2005• 123 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, yet he disliked the randomness that lies at the heart of the theory. God does not, he famously said, play dice. However, quantum theory has survived a century of experimental tests, although it has yet to be reconciled with another of Einstein's great discoveries – the general theory of relativity. Below four theorists – Gerard 't Hooft, Edward Witten, Fay Dowker and Paul Davies– outline their views on the current status of quantum theory and the way forward

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/18/12/29

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Physics Today•Apr 1, 2006•0 citations
Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, yet he disliked the randomness that lies at the heart of the theory. God does not, he famously said, play dice. However, quantum theory has survived a century of experimental tests, although it has yet to be reconciled with another of Einstein's great discoveries – the general theory of relativity. Below four theorists – Gerard 't Hooft, Edward Witten, Fay Dowker and Paul Davies– outline their views on the current status of quantum theory and the way forward
The idea of determinism has had a powerful grip on the imagination of physicists ever since Pierre Simon Laplace evoked the idea of the clockwork universe. When Einstein uttered his famous phrase God doesn't play dice, he was expressing his unhappiness with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, believing that beneath quantum theory must lie a deeper, deterministic theory of nature. But such has been the huge success of quantum theory that most physicists now believe that the ultimate physical theory will be quantum mechanical and that nature is fundamentally random.
Einstein wrote his famous sentence "God does not play dice with the universe" in a letter to Max Born in 1920. All experiments have confirmed that quantum mechanics is neither wrong nor “incomplete”. One can says that God does play dice with the universe. Let quantum mechanics be granted as the rules generalizing all results of playing some imaginary God’s dice. If that is the case, one can ask how God’s dice should look like. God’s dice turns out to be a qubit and thus having the shape of a unit ball. Any item in the universe as well the universe itself is both infinitely many rolls and a single roll of that dice for it has infinitely many “sides”. Thus both the smooth motion of classical physics and the discrete motion introduced in addition by quantum mechanics can be described uniformly correspondingly as an infinite series converges to some limit and as a quantum jump directly into that limit. The second, imaginary dimension of God’s dice corresponds to energy, i.e. to the velocity of information change between two probabilities in both series and jump.
Einstein wrote his famous sentence "God does not play dice with the universe" in a letter to Max Born in 1920. All experiments have confirmed that quantum mechanics is neither wrong nor “incomplete”. One can says that God does play dice with the universe. Let quantum mechanics be granted as the rules generalizing all results of playing some imaginary God’s dice. If that is the case, one can ask how God’s dice should look like. God’s dice turns out to be a qubit and thus having the shape of a unit ball. Any item in the universe as well the universe itself is both infinitely many rolls and a single roll of that dice for it has infinitely many “sides”. Thus both the smooth motion of classical physics and the discrete motion introduced in addition by quantum mechanics can be described uniformly correspondingly as an infinite series converges to some limit and as a quantum jump directly into that limit. The second, imaginary dimension of God’s dice corresponds to energy, i.e. to the velocity of information change between two probabilities in both series and jump.
Now that we have defined, described, and tested random numbers, the question arises: do random numbers exist? Can true randomness occur in nature? Albert Einstein’s famous dictum “God does not play dice” – uttered about the then new-fangled theory of quantum mechanics and its inherent random nature – expressed his belief that everything is deterministic, that there is no true randomness in nature. Did the great physicist turn full circle to the early religious doctrines which claims that it is God’s finger that determines everything?
Steven Weinberg writes, “Einstein rejected the notion that the laws of physics could deal with probabilities, famously decreeing that God does not play dice with the cosmos. But history gave its verdict against Einstein—quantum mechanics went on from success to success, leaving Einstein on the sidelines.”Einstein did not reject quantum theory merely because it is probabilistic. He wrote: “There is no doubt that quantum mechanics has seized hold of a beautiful element of truth, and that it will be a test stone for any future theoretical basis.” 1 1. A. Einstein, quoted in J. Wheeler, W. Zurek, Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ (1983), p. 8. Nor was Einstein unilaterally opposed to God playing dice. He expected God to either play dice all the way or not at all. If individual events were totally undetermined, then the overall events should also be undetermined, and not display remarkable regularity. “In for the penny, in for the pound,” he wrote. Thus, a more accurate quote from Einstein about God and dice playing is the following:“That the Lord should play with dice, all right; but that He should gamble according to definite rules, that is beyond me.” 1 1. A. Einstein, quoted in J. Wheeler, W. Zurek, Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ (1983), p. 8. REFERENCESection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCE <<1. A. Einstein, quoted in J. Wheeler, W. Zurek, Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ (1983), p. 8. Google Scholar© 2006 American Institute of Physics.