Quantum Physics and Spirituality.

[Fyre Faery Queen]

I am absolutely fascinated with quantum physics and trying to understand how the universe works, though unfortunately I have a brain a bit like a Swiss cheese in that someone will explain it all to me, and it completely makes sense, but then when trying to describe it to someone else I am at a lot . I wrote this post in another forum section to describe my views on pantheism:

I went to an amazing lecture and slide show in which spirituality and creation were aligned with quantum physics. The focus was on the spaces inside of atoms, that fact that even at a sub atomic level the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. There is so much space between the revolving planets and so much space between the revolving electrons in the atom also. So most of our bodies and 'solid' objects are made up of space. Then when you start examining some of these sub atomic particles it gets even crazier. Sometimes electrons disappear from the atom, and then reappear. When they have disappeared all the other electrons continue to behave the same way, as if the 'gravity' or whatnot generated by the missing electron is still in place. Where do these missing electrons go? Some scientists believe forwards or backwards in time.

Anyway, if most sold things are actually empty space, with rotating planets, atoms, electrons etc inside them, what holds it all together? The principals of gravity do on operate at a sub atomic level, the force that is holding particles in orbit at this level needs a new name and new principals. And this force can also be applied to the greater universe.

So at the lecture I went to the speaker explained to me that many of the older religions already had theories about this force thousands and thousands of years ago, and had given it names, such as 'the great OM' that created the world, etc etc. The speaker labeled it 'love or conciousness'. I think it is perhaps the force of nature. But what ever it is it is in everything, holding everything together. And when we as humans can connect with it with our own consciousness we can start shaping our own world.

I really enjoyed that theory. I can see how it works. I don't know if I believe 'God' is a thinking feeling diety or rather just a universal pool of energy that holds everything together that we can shape with our own minds....


Does any one have any further information on this subject they can give me?

[thalassa]

Re: Quantum Physics and Spirituality.

I have a friend that is a physicist who studies quantum mechanics. The only thing I am qualified to say about quantum physics is that people often say things about it that are not scientifically accurate.

[Thorbjorn]

Re: Quantum Physics and Spirituality.

If you Google 'quantum physics and vedanta' you find some interesting articles from a Hindu perspective. I'v always said Hindus have the market cornered on this kind of stuff.

[Fyre Faery Queen]

Re: Quantum Physics and Spirituality.

Ooooh . Thank you I will do.

And if anything I have said is not scientifically accurate please correct me. I am so interested in this stuff.

XXX

[Unlogisch]

Re: Quantum Physics and Spirituality.

The question of whether or how gravity behaves at quantum mechanical scales is very much an open problem, which underpins the branch of theoretical physics called quantum gravity, and there are numerous theoretical approaches which attempt to deal with it: loop quantum gravity, string theory/M-theory, Hořava-Lifschitz gravity, and twistor theory, just to name a few.

Two of the major obstructions to constructing a realistic quantum theory of gravity are "mathematical consistency" and "physicality". The first of these challenges is relatively easy with sufficient background, since there is a rigorous notion of mathematical consistency*, and both major contenders, loop quantum gravity and string theory, are known to be consistent modulo a few technical details which require a bit of mathematical finesse. Physicality, on the other hand is much harder because, while a given theory might be completely consistent, mathematically speaking, it still might not actually describe the universe we live in for any one of several possible reasons.

From what little I've read, though I'm a mathematician and not a physicist so I'm not really qualified to speak with authority on the matter, loop quantum gravity doesn't scale up from quantum distance scales to macroscopic distance scales (by which I mean distances ranging from the distances you can see with a microscope to distances too large to even imagine with any accuracy) to reproduce Einsteinian gravity. This is a problem because Einsteinian gravity, by every correctly constructed experiment to date from its inception (hundreds), produces extremely accurate predictions for how gravity works at the macroscopic scale and can fairly safely be taken as gospel truth at this point so it would appear that LQG is not a successful theory in terms of physicality.

The major criticism of string theory is that it is "untestable" but this word is misleading since it doesn't actually mean "can't be tested"; instead, what this phrase means is that we, as a species, are incapable of engineering an apparatus large or sophisticated enough and with enough power to test whether or not the theory accurately predicts the observable physical behavior of the universe with the infrastructure and experimental techniques currently available to us.

*When I say "mathematical consistency", I mean that the theory in question needs to be incapable of creating a logical contradiction (fun side note: any logical contradiction is ultimately equivalent to the arithmetic statement that 1 is equal to 0. Since this really shouldn't happen if we are to have any reasonable notion of "number" for use in daily life, it's pretty safe to discard any statement equivalent to it as being false.)