(At Least) Three Cheers for Cause and Effect

34's semi-regular (depending on your views on time) feature, The Times hyperbolic quantum mechanical rhetoric of the day, is back in full effect, courtesy of yesterday's Science Times article on "quantum trickery":

These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across the galaxy.


The full extent of its silliness came in the 1920's when quantum theory became quantum mechanics.


Most physicists agreed with Bohr, and they went off to use quantum mechanics to build atomic bombs and reinvent the world.


Every article the Times publishes about quantum theory is written in this OMG, this is totally the weirdest thing ever! tone. Or maybe it's just that's the way every Science Times article is written; I only end up reading the ones about quantum theory.

My old professor, David Z. ("The Z stands for Zeno's Paradox") Albert, gets another bunch of quotes in this article.

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