TripleOne
Posts: 111
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Ok guys so as suggested (and now that I guess the bickering is over) let's run an open discussion about theories and influences of Quantum Mechanics on The Matrix, One by One. I'll do some basic physics set-up here first.
Remember, quantum mechanics is important to the Matrix because the original concept of the Matrix (as conceived by the W's) was that it was a quantum supercomputer for the machines and NOT a power plant. It was stupided down for the general public.
Important theory number one and one of the founding ideas behind quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This theory states the following: the more certainly you know the momentum of a subatomic particle in a system, the less certainly you will know it's momentum and vice versa and the product of the two deltas will be at least on the order of Planck's constant (for clarification, Planck's constant defines the energy released in a quanta of energy from a photon = 4.135x10^-15 electronvolt-seconds)
What does that mean? It means that in a sub-atomic system, we can not know both where a lepton is and how fast it's moving at the same time. The more we know one, the less we know the other. This is related to the fact that past a certain level, we can no longer use "light" (and when I say light I mean a frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum) to "observe" the state of the universe and we depend on light to tell us what's what. Makes sense?
So am I saying Quantum Mechanics is an inexact science? Well, you bet your ass it is but the results are undeniable even though Einstein tried to deny them for years. For more information on this look up the EPR Paradox back out of Copenhagen Quantum Mechanics (Einstein and Rosen, two of the three initials there, are also the two men responsible for first creating wormhole theory, which is more formally known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge).
Einstein believed in the Christian God and he believed that God would not allow so much chance to occur in Her universe. Eintstein's late life pursuits for the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) of the universe consumed him and ultimately went unresolved. He also knew that relativity and quantum mechanics have no means we can currently explain by which to live together in one world harmoniously. Einstein ultimately failed with all probability although the debate will never truly be dead.
What is the GUT and why go after it? It's the basic hope that the once 5, now 4 and even perhaps 3 fundamental forces in phyics can be somehow explained by a single underlying force. The fundamental forces as they stand now are:
1) Gravity - The mysterious force that attracts two objects with non-zero mass towards one another. Represented in its particle form by the graviton which has never been observed in life or in a particle accelerator. (What's a particle accelerator? Look up the Large Hadron Collider to see the lastest and greatest one. It just recently confirmed the existence of black holes and will be a source of trying to marry the next two fundamental forces as one by producing what's known as a Higgs Boson. I can't explain it all to you. Some you'll have to look up on your own.  )
2) Electromagnetism - This is the force that causes electrons to enter an excited state and jump from one particle/electron orbital to another (creating what we know as electricity by releasing or absorbing a quantum of energy) and also that which creates magnetic attraction between two dipole magnets. These forces were once two different forces (electricity and magnetism seperately) and were married into one force in recent history.
3) Weak Nuclear - This is the force that keeps electrons in their orbitals around atomic nuclei and attracts particles weakly in comparison the next force. To put it more precicesly, this force affects all left-handed leptons and quarks and is the only force which can manipulate a neutrino (an almost mass-less particle, often talked about in Star Trek, which travels near the speed of light and can pass through any other energy/matter it comes into contact with save gravity). A nobel prize winning paper has asserted that this force and electromagnetism are the same force. (Again, check out CERN, the Large Hadron Collider and Higgs Bosons).
4) Strong Nuclear - This is the force that glues the nucleus of an atom together (specifically protons and neutrons indirectly) and has to do with the interaction between quarks and gluons (the particles that cause quarks to interact). This is the fundamental limit of particle physics's ability to explain the smallest pieces of the universe and our ability to observe it.
For more about what the current state of GUT theory is you need only read up on Super String Theory. I'm not gonna go into that in detail here but whenever you hear people say that the universe has 11 dimensions, it is derived from the Super String master theory known as M-Theory. Super String is slowly and gradually starting to fall out of favor but the pursuit of it has produced many new and interesting models and questions for scientists. (Sound like a parallel for looking into the "meaning" of the Matrix trilogy?  )
So back to 50,000ft view of this first principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, what does it all mean? It means that despite our best efforts to make all things one, we have to trade our knowledge of where a thing's going for knowing how fast it will get there, no exceptions. By implication though, understand that this is because once we measure one or the other, we disrupt the system from its original state making the other one unmeasureable.
If you want, think about it like this. If I rolled a tennis ball across the floor and wanted to know how fast it's rolling across the floor, I could bounce a racquet ball off it and measure how fast the racquet ball came back to me versus how fast I rolled it to find out the relative speed of the tennis ball it hit. But in so doing, I've knocked the tennis ball off its original course, so I have no idea where it was on the floor when I hit it with the racquet ball. The reason I can only measure one or the other is because "seeing" how fast the racquetball came back will not also "show" me where it hit. I'm blind to where the tennis ball is without the racquetball's help. Does that help?
Before drawing any conclusions directly though, think about a few things:
1) The uncertainty principle (in conjunction to the machine's probable ability to perceive time at a relatively faster rate due to their view of CPU instructions) could have to do with the Oracle's ability to view the world without time. This would be seen as a way to resolve the conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics. How could this be possible you think?
2) The uncertainty principle would then also be a way to resolve why the Oracle THOUGHT things were going to happen a certain way but had to wait to see them actually happen to believe them. She always knew where Neo was going but wasn't necessarily sure how fast he was going to get there. This mirror's the speech in the first movie about why he is not the one and her not knowing what he's waiting for to be THE ONE. Does this mirror up at all with you?
There are many other deeper topics to explore. The next one will probably be wave/particle duality before moving onto WHY the Heisenberg Principle is ineresting in choice making and what a matrix is as the word applies to Quantum Mechanics. You could even look ahead for yourself by looking into what is meant "collapsing the wave function" of a quantum system.
Did I lose everyone? Is this more like what you'd want to talk about Gina?
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