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When the uncertainty principle goes up to 11 : or how to explain quantum physics with heavy metal

Philip Moriarty

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations

Abstract

There are deep and fascinating links between heavy metal and quantum physics. No, there are. Really. While teaching at the University of Nottingham, physicist Philip Moriarty noticed something odd--a surprising number of his students were heavily into metal music. Colleagues, too: a Venn diagram of physicists and metal fans would show a shocking amount of overlap. What's more, it turns out that heavy metal music is uniquely well-suited to explaining quantum principles. In When the Uncertainty Principle Goes Up to Eleven, Moriarty explains the mysteries of the universe's inner workings via drum beats and feedback: You'll discover how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play with every chugging guitar riff, what wave interference has to do with Iron Maiden, and why metalheads in mosh pits behave just like molecules in a gas. If you're a metal fan trying to grasp the complexities of quantum physics, a quantum physicist baffled by heavy metal, or just someone who'd like to know how the fundamental science underpinning our world connects to rock music, this book will take you, in the words of a pioneering Texas thrash band, to A New Level. For those who think quantum physics is too mind-bendingly complex to grasp, or too focused on the invisibly small to be relevant to our full-sized lives, this funny, fascinating book will show you that physics is all around us . . . and it rocks.

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There are deep and fascinating links between heavy metal and quantum physics. No, there are. Really. While teaching at the University of Nottingham, physicist Philip Moriarty noticed something odd--a surprising number of his students were heavily into metal music. Colleagues, too: a Venn diagram of physicists and metal fans would show a shocking amount of overlap. What's more, it turns out that heavy metal music is uniquely well-suited to explaining quantum principles. In When the Uncertainty Principle Goes Up to Eleven, Moriarty explains the mysteries of the universe's inner workings via drum beats and feedback: You'll discover how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play with every chugging guitar riff, what wave interference has to do with Iron Maiden, and why metalheads in mosh pits behave just like molecules in a gas. If you're a metal fan trying to grasp the complexities of quantum physics, a quantum physicist baffled by heavy metal, or just someone who'd like to know how the fundamental science underpinning our world connects to rock music, this book will take you, in the words of a pioneering Texas thrash band, to A New Level. For those who think quantum physics is too mind-bendingly complex to grasp, or too focused on the invisibly small to be relevant to our full-sized lives, this funny, fascinating book will show you that physics is all around us . . . and it rocks.

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world. Rather, we can now see that everything is quantum: our everyday world is simply what quantum becomes at the human scale. But if quantum mechanics is right, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seems obvious or right—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

Since its conception 90 years ago, the quantum uncertainty principle introduced by Werner Heisenberg lies behind most important features of quantum physics, and its implications have an impact that goes far beyond the physics community. This book focuses on the quantum uncertainty principle, providing an up-to-date examination of recent developments of its applications in quantum information theory. The book brings together several renowned experts working in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. The authors provide different approaches to the study of uncertainty relations and other fundamental aspects of the quantum formalism. Topics addressed include entanglement and Bell inequalities, the application of entropic information measures to the study of uncertainty inequalities, the characterization of deep learning networks in the context of adiabatic quantum computation, and the study of general properties of the set of quantum states. The content of this book will surely benefit both experienced and new researchers specializing in quantum information theory and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

The story of quantum mechanics is a fable of wonder and bewilderment. It has elements of science, philosophy, religion, and dare I say magic. It’ll turn your mind upside down, and sometimes it’ll make you question the existence of an all-powerful creator out there. Even though I find its concepts difficult to grasp, I’ve always been fascinated by it. Some of the concepts presented in this chapter are hard to understand; however don’t be troubled. Nobody has been able to fully describe what this all means, not even the titans of physics fully understand quantum mechanics. However that doesn’t mean we can’t be fascinated by it. The great physicist Richard Feynman once said: If somebody tells you he understands quantum mechanics, it means he doesn’t understand quantum mechanics. This chapter is my take on this fascinating fable and how the struggle of two titans of science shaped its past, present, and future.