The Digital Civilizations Interviews

The quantum world has some characteristics that are profoundly different from those that we are used to at the microscopic level:

• The wave-particle couple: light, which we consider as a wave, also consists of particles called photons. It's not possible to have less light than one photon. An electron, which we imagine as a sort of little ball, can also behave like a wave - especially to cause interference
• The uncertainty principle: because of this couple, it is impossible to measure the position and speed of a particle at the same time. This uncertainty is not related to the measuring instruments but is a fundamental property: there are limits beyond which we can no longer use a traditional definition of space and time.
• Superposition: observing a particle can produce different results as if it exists in several states simultaneously. There are X% chances of finding it in state a, Y% chances of measuring it in state b, etc. In some ways, “nature is throwing a dice“.
• Quantum objects do not have properties that can be separated from the means used to observe them. The result of a measurement did not exist prior to its observation.
• Intrication and “teleportation“: two particles that have interacted can change their state to 'intricated' - in some ways they have become a single system. Changing the properties of one of them immediately changes that of the other irrespective of the distance between them. This property has been used in photon or photon group “teleportation“ experiments (e.g. laser rays). Theoretically, it is possible to do the same with atoms provided that you 'destroy' the state of the initial atoms to reproduce this state elsewhere. But we are far from being able to even imagine doing the same thing to macroscopic objects...

How is it that such salient characteristics can not be seen in the macroscopic world, that which we can see with our naked eye? Because the interactions between the very large numbers of particles destroy quantum effects very quickly (decoherence) except under very specific conditions.