The only thing about science I’ve ever found interesting is the fact that Stephen Hawking managed to cheat on his wife without being able to walk or talk. After high school, I thought I was done with science forever, until I moved to Los Angeles and was introduced to quantum physics as soon as I got off the plane. Everyone in Hollywood is obsessed with the universe because we are all dead inside.
My loss is your gain, and I shall now fill you in on my entire quantum physics education through a simple timeline:
It all began when people used to think the universe was made of dense matter and was separate in origin. Let’s take the 1700’s for example…people believed there were certain individuals: i.e. “Marie Antoinette” “peasants” “cake” and the “guillotine.” This led to a lot of problems and pain and even worse the Kristin Dunst adaptation that I still own on DVD (I hate myself).
Then at the end of the 1800’s a lot of shit happened and people started dicking around on microscopes and realized “oh shit. If you look at matter closely enough, everything turns into energy and the SAME energy is at the core of everything. Which means…everything is just one thing!!” (take a second and please process this. if I think about it hard enough I literally begin to hyperventilate.)
Then in 1905, Mark Plank became known as the “reluctant father of quantum physics” which reminds me of how my dad feels about me (heyyoooo). Atoms and photons got discovered. Everyone was like omg, MIND BLOWN, I’M DEAD, I CAN’T.
You know who else cheated on his wife like a lot? Albert Einstein. This Muppet looking man with Whitney Houston on crack hair really ramped up the quantum conversation. “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is physics.” okkkurrrrr.
After that, lots more stuff was discovered, perhaps most interestingly through brain scans. It turns out the reason humans interpret the world as separate matter is because of the left cortex. It was experienced irl by a Harvard neuroscientist named Jill Bolte who had a stroke that wiped out her left cortex (thanks for the irony universe, who better to explain this than a Harvard neuroscientist). She has an amazing book called, “My stroke of genius.” Here is a short account of the experience of living without this sensory part of our brain: “I could no longer clearly discern the physical boundaries of where I began and where I ended. I sensed the composition of my being is that of a fluid rather than that of a solid. I no longer perceived myself as a whole object separate from everything. Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me.”
Well, I guess you’re pretty much all caught up on science. I just saved you so much time, you pretty much owe me life.