Know Bible Facts From Fiction, Science and Prophecy for today!

Science not for Christians?

God said let there be light!


By B. Walker

At the smallest, subatomic level, quantum mechanics has made remarkable discoveries about the behavior of elementary particles. It would seem logical to assume that by studying these fundamental building blocks of our universe we might gain some of our best insights into the true nature of reality.

The predictions of quantum mechanics are very much driven by experimental results. Quantum mechanics does not have much to say about "why" things happen, it can just be used to predict "how" things behave, that behavior being based on the well-established results of experiments. And the most famous of those experiments is the double-slit experiment. I love this stuff because for all those in the Christian and secular community who choose to turn a blinded eye on God’s word become as fools, as the word proclaims; thinking themselves wise they become as fools!

In the double-slit experiment an electron gun is aimed at a screen with two slits, and the positions of the electrons is recorded after they pass through one of the two slits, making little dots on the screen. It is found that an interference pattern is produced on the screen just like the one produced by diffraction of a light or water wave passing through the two

slits. There are bright bands ("constructive interference") and dark bands ("destructive interference").

This is quite strange: electron particles are interfering with each other as if they were waves. However, things turn much weirder if we only emit one electron at a time. We wait until an electron makes a dot on the screen before emitting another electron, so there is only ever one electron in the system at a time. A pattern slowly builds on the screen, dot-by-dot, as each individual electron hits the screen. What we see is quite incredible: the accumulation of dots on the screen eventually produces a pattern of light and dark bands - an interference pattern emerges even though there is only one electron in the system at any one time! The electron appears to be interfering with itself. So in some strange way it is as if the electron goes through both slits at once!!

How can this be? Maybe half the electron is going through one slit and half through the other slit? But if we put a small detector screen on the other side of one slit we only detect whole electrons sometimes passing through (sometimes passing through the other slit). It's as if the electron does indeed pass through both slits at once, but when we make an attempt to detect it, it suddenly decides to act like a single particle which has gone through just one slit!

It is only in the last ten years or so that quantum mechanics has at last been able to shed some light on what is happening in the double-slit experiment but before we get to that stage there is a fair bit of theory to be covered. And it's best to start at the beginning.

Quantum mechanics could be said to have started in 1900 when Max Planck made the discovery that light, which was considered to be purely wave-like, was in fact composed of energy which came in discrete packets (called "quanta"). In the Planck formula, the energy of the packets, e, is proportional to the light frequency, f, the constant of proportionality being Planck's constant, h: E=hf

This result suggested that waves (light) were in fact composed of particles. The converse of this result came in 1923 when Louis de Broglie (pronounced to rhyme with "destroy") suggested that matter (particles) behaves as a wave (as is evident in the double-slit experiment), the wavelength, , being inversely proportional to the particle's momentum, p.

We now know that absolutely everything in the known universe is made out of these strange particle/wave entities which obey these two formulae for quantum behavior,

How can we make sense of this strange wave/particle duality? Would it be possible to combine these two results in a single equation, and in the process reveal more insights into the true nature of reality at the quantum level?

Yes, Erwin Schrödinger did it in 1926. The Quantum Casino.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Now let us imagine that we want to measure the position a particular particle. In order to do this, we must "see" the particle, so we have to shine some light of wavelength, , on it. This means there is an inevitable uncertainty about the position of the particle (due to the resolving power of the light used), the uncertainty in the particle's position.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us that the more accurately we determine a particle's position, , the less accurately we can know its momentum, . This Uncertainty Principle equation has been used to generate the animation.

The animation shows the relevant spreads in the uncertainty for position and momentum (for a light wave, and the light wave's corresponding photon particle). From the result of de Broglie we know that if we have a precise value for a particle's momentum, p, then we have a precise value for the wavelength of the wave, , and hence a precise color of our light wave. A precise value for particle momentum when the momentum value becomes a single vertical point. You will see that when that occurs, the corresponding uncertainty in the particle's position spreads out to infinity, i.e., when we have light behaving as a normal light wave (with a color) we can have no idea where the corresponding particle is. In the wave/particle the case when the light is acting like a wave, not a particle.

Conversely, the situation when we have a precise position for the particle, e.g., when we shine the light wave onto a screen and detect the proton, when the position value becomes a single vertical point. You will see that occurs, the corresponding uncertainty in the particle's momentum spreads out to infinity, i.e., we can now no longer determine the wavelength or the color of the light wave. In the wave/particle duality when the light is acting like a particle, not a wave.

Now I ask you one thing here; does God believe in science? I say yes, he created it!

Genesis 1 (King James Version)Genesis 1



3.   And God said (Sound waves as stated above), Let there be light: and there was light. 

4.  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness(Don’t quite understand? reread what is said above), I further state you notice when we speak of wave in the above article you may substitute that word for sound as in sound waves God said let there be light!