Something Deeply Hidden Quotes

“there is a wave function, and it evolves according to a deterministic rule, and that’s all there is to say. We might call this proposal “austere quantum mechanics,” or AQM for short.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Second, if the wave function usually evolves smoothly in accordance with the Schrödinger equation, let’s suppose that’s what it always does.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“This minimalist approach has two aspects. First, we take the wave function seriously as a direct representation of reality, not just a bookkeeping device to help us organize our knowledge. We treat it as ontological, not epistemic.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Participants in the 1927 Solvay Conference. Among the more well-known were: 1. Max Planck, 2. Marie Curie, 3. Paul Dirac, 4. Erwin Schrödinger, 5. Albert Einstein, 6. Louis de Broglie, 7. Wolfgang Pauli, 8. Max Born, 9. Werner Heisenberg, and 10. Niels Bohr. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Quantum mechanics, in the form in which it is currently presented in physics textbooks, represents an oracle, not a true understanding. We can set up specific problems and answer them, but we can’t honestly explain what’s happening behind the scenes.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“So far, so good—these parts of quantum mechanics exactly parallel their classical predecessors. But whereas the rules of classical mechanics stop there, the rules of quantum mechanics keep going.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Rules of Quantum Mechanics (Part One) Set up the system by fixing a specific wave function Ψ. Evolve the system using Schrödinger’s equation.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Rules of Classical Mechanics Set up the system by fixing a specific position and velocity for each part. Evolve the system using Newton’s laws of motion.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Probability of a particular outcome = |Amplitude for that outcome|2 This simple relation is called the Born rule, after physicist Max Born.* Part of our task will be to figure out where in the world such a rule came from.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“The set of all possible states that a system could have is known as the phase space of the system.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“modern workers in this field prefer to call it “foundations of quantum mechanics.” The subject of quantum foundations is part of science, not literary criticism.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“stubborn as our identity is, the concept of a single person extending from birth to death was always just a useful approximation. The person you are right now is not exactly the same as the person you were a year ago, or even a second ago. Your atoms are in slightly different locations, and some of your atoms might have been exchanged for new ones. (If you’re eating while reading, you might have more atoms now than you had a moment ago.) If we wanted to be more precise than usual, rather than talking about “you,” we should talk about “you at 5:00 p.m.,” “you at 5:01 p.m.,” and so on.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“The essence of a degree of freedom is that it doesn’t depend on anything else.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“What bugs us, or should, is our lack of understanding about what is actually happening.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“of this changed thanks to a clever chap named Isaac Newton.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“What in the world is going on with that?”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“But honest physicists admit that we don’t truly understand quantum mechanics.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Newton blew away any dusty talk of natures and purposes, revealing what lay underneath: a crisp, rigorous mathematical formalism with which teachers continue to torment students to this very day.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Space itself is not fundamental; it’s just a useful way of talking from certain points of view.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“The idea that light is emitted in discrete quanta of energy related to its frequency is puzzling,”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“Upon measurement, the wave function collapses. However spread out it may have been pre-measurement, afterward it is concentrated on the result we obtained.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“We don’t create the world by our actions, our actions are part of the world.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“treat measurements as fundamental, wave functions collapse when they are observed, don’t ask questions about what’s going on behind the scenes”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“On the other hand, in the memorable words of Richard Feynman, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
― Sean Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime