Quantum Physics and You

As the child of a family of what could be justifiably called intellectual snobs, I've been watching a DVD series about quantum physics recently.

It was in the latest episode that I came to an interesting philosophical conclusion, one which has some bearing on fiction. In a smartass kind of way, true, but I thought I would share.

I'll try to explain this as simply as possible, because it's a really cool idea. One of the most basic principles of quantum physics is that there is a minimum amount of energy anything can have. This includes the humble photon, which is basically a unit of light energy. In the case of a photon, you can say with reasonable accuracy that this minimum amount depends on the colour of the light - red light has a low minimum energy, while blue light has a high minimum energy.

Now, this minimum amount is so small that in the everyday world, we don't notice it. It's unimportant. But at the subatomic scale, it's relatively quite large.

Now, say that you want to look at a very small object, like an electron. If you want to find its exact position, you need a highly focused photon, which means it has to be closer to the blue end of the spectrum. This means you know exactly where the photon is, and thus can work out exactly where the object it bounces off of is.

But because it's high energy, it'll make the object change direction. So you know where it is, but not where it's going.

On the other hand, if you want to know where it's going, you can use a low energy, red photon. This won't disturb the object, so you know where it's going. But because it's an unfocused photon, you don't know exactly where it is, so you can't say exactly where the object is!

I'm aware that I'm striking a horrible middle ground where physicists will sneer and lay people will go 'huh?', but hopefully at least some of you will understand. The bottom line is, you can't know both where something is, and where it's going with absolute certainty, because the light you use to see this will affect what you're trying to find out.

Thus, the interesting philosophical thought: certainty is only possible without knowledge. You can be certain that everything has an exact position and velocity, but only if you don't try to find them out.

Physics lesson over. That was kind of interesting, Fen, I hear you say, but what's it got to do with writing?

Science fiction is an interesting genre, because there's so many ways of doing it. At one end, you have 'The Forever War', an interesting and cynical take on the future, which is one of the few that includes relativistic effects (and even making them key plot points - the protagonist is promoted from Private to General in three missions due to the amount of 'real' time that he's been in the military). At the other, you have things like the Culture universe, of 'Consider Phlebas' and 'The Player of Games', where intergalactic travel is almost casual, people build mountains as a hobby and switch genders for a change of pace. In the middle you have the near-reality of (the reimagined) Battlestar Galactica, and the well known middle grounds of Star Wars and Star Trek.

So what's my point? My point is that when it comes to writing sci-fi, it is possible to get too hooked up on the exact details of how stuff works. The reader doesn't care. Sure it's fun to play around with principles - I've come up with half a dozen methods of FTL travel with some kind of logical basis, but you don't need to explain exactly why things work. It's science fiction.

People care about the story, and the cool spaceships, that's all. They don't need to know about screwdrivers.

Unless they're sonic.

With that thought to consider, I leave you...

Until tomorrow... he lives in my basement, I can hardly face it.