there's been a bit of a reaction to a
lecture brian gave which
i'm a little bit surprised at
i saw the lecture it was on bbc two so
many millions of people saw it and i
thought it was fantastic a night with
the stars
i was amazed that he had the courage and
then the ability to explain quantum
mechanics quite like he did to uh
to the general public and
it got quite technical at times i didn't
watch it at the time no no but since
then i've become aware that it's all
kicked off basically
it seems to me to have caused two
two reactions one amongst the physicist
that's at a more technical level
and then one amongst a group of people
who have jumped on some words that he
used some guys were posted you know
scientists were posting uh you know
blogs on blogs were saying oh you know
this this is this isn't right uh
brian cox himself was then responding to
these blogs it was all kicking off on
twitter
he was talking about
how everything in the universe when
you're dealing with quantum mechanics
how things are connected
and in particular he was talking about
electrons and the energy associated with
electrons and there's been this sort of
two in and thrown some of it quite nasty
um
you know on twitter on blogs uh
discussing the rights and wrongs of what
of what brian said he had this fantastic
diamond which he'd managed to get hold
of worth a million pounds i think it was
in this diamond there are three million
billion billion carbon atoms i don't
have diamonds to play with but he had a
diamond and he said oh if i rub this
diamond then i move the the energy
levels of the electrons within that
diamond
and he said that because of paulie's
exclusion principle that would cause the
electrons far away everywhere in the
universe to move a little bit as well of
all the electrons in the universe must
respect powerly therefore every electron
around every atom in the universe
and he he went on to say that because of
what's known as the pauli exclusion
principle which says that no two
electrons can ever be in the same
quantum state
except he didn't use the word quantum
state he used the word energy and that's
where the physicists have come in
sitting precisely the same energy level
because they can't be in the same
quantum state therefore if you move one
electron up and or a group of electrons
and change their energy then the whole
system throughout the universe will
change as well it's not quite right what
he said no um but the spirit of what he
said is okay he didn't draw
an implication in the sense of saying
anything controversial it seems to me he
just said he's just pointing out
it's other people have drawn the
implications of it
they have uh inferred from it that
that means that for example one group of
people are saying that accounts for you
know the fact that we we're all
connected in our consciousness is all
connected because when you change energy
levels in one group it immediately
affects the energy levels in another
group and that that link
is real
so everything is connected
to everything else because in quantum
mechanics you can't precisely say where
something is at any given or where it is
and what its velocity is or momentum is
there's an uncertainty so you describe
things in terms of wave functions which
give you what are known as the
probability of finding things so the
bigger the value of the wave function in
a given region the more likely it is
that object is there but these wave
functions can spread and they do spread
and the interconnectedness is simply the
fact that all of the electrons the wave
function
describing all of them is spread across
the universe that's what quantum
mechanics can do for you that classical
mechanics can't it can describe all of
the particles with one wave function
that's what the idea is and so it's not
surprising to me that if you alter the
state of an electron over here and that
it's going to have a knock-on effect
somewhere else where where all this
comes from it is the parlex cruising
principle so this is the
this is the basically the idea that no
two fermions and electrons are are
fermions can occupy the same
quantum state
okay now i said something slightly
different there to what brian said he
said energy levels because you know you
could maybe associate
an energy level with one particular
quantum number but it doesn't
necessarily describe the whole quantum
state of that electron well i i watched
the lecture i i thought it's fantastic
later as i've said i do remember that
last bit of it
thinking i've never thought about the
interconnectedness of it and they
but it didn't cross my mind that there
was anything untoward that he was he was
talking about things
uh propagating fasten the speed of light
or anything like that he wasn't but what
has happened is uh first of all there's
a group of people as i said have
interpreted it as as being
an
example of the fact that our
consciousnesses are all connected and
we're in one beautiful universal
universe and
which i think is just irrelevant here
the second group which is more relevant
is that the physicists
have picked up on on the fact that brian
was you was using the exclusion
principle that the fund a fundamental
principle in physics
and talking about it in terms of energy
levels alone whereas the exclusion
principle is a bit broader than that it
includes energy levels but it includes
other uh
unique numbers quantum numbers
associated with a with the state of of a
of a particle
and so
there's a technical
uh
argument or discussion that's been going
on and that's been going on at a really
neat level i think watching twitter the
the discussions that are going on it's a
high quality argument as they're talking
about the various physical aspects this
isn't simple stuff
but it caused the other side of it this
thing about the consciousness etc
i think so irritated brian i didn't see
this bit of it of the on the on the
twitter
twitter world i don't have a twitter
account
but um
it so irritated him that he decided he
wrote an article for the wall street
journal in which he basically pointed
out you know he was not implying
that um that this instantaneous effect
of the of the of the electrons reacting
to one another can be made use of in
terms of
sending information you can't send any
information faster than the speed of
light so you can't make use of this to
actually say i know exactly what that
person's thinking therefore every
electron around every atom in the
universe must be shifting
you know brian cox i know brian yeah
he's a good friend
has he stuffed up has he done something
wrong
uh no i don't think so i i think what's
happened here is the the physicists have
got very excited and and and and and
rightly started talking about the
physics that he was describing
but the
the language that he used we have to
bear in mind he was using in a on a
television program towards the end of a
television program being broadcast to
the general public and so rather than
talking i this is my interpretation i
haven't asked brian
rather than deciding to talk into about
the quantum state which would involve
talking about the angular momentum and
the magnetic moments and the spins
potentially you could talk about the
energy levels the angular momentum spin
uh there's a whole bunch of quantum
numbers that you could include and in
fact that's one of the key the key
features of this there are a number of
things that you could include to
describe this
this particle so none of the electrons
in the universe can sit in precisely the
same energy level
he decided to concentrate on the concept
that people are familiar with which is
energy
the idea that you can move from one
energy level to another that was
probably new enough for most of the
audience and so rather than describing
the things in terms of quantum states he
he concentrated on energies and said
that you couldn't have things having
exactly the same energy and that's not
necessarily the case with this pauly
exclusion principle which he was making
use of you can't have two fermions
indistinguishable fermions in exactly
the same quantum state so they could
have the same energy as long as some of
the other numbers in the quantum state
are different all the electrons across
the universe instantly but imperceptibly
change their energy levels so everything
is connected
to everything else
i mean
there is some interconnectedness but
this is this oversimplifies it and i
think that's what's got people's backs
up
like i said so he's talking about energy
levels there um i mean saying you can't
have two electrons in the same energy
level but that's not entirely true we
know in a helium atom
two electrons occupy the lowest energy
level that the reason they can do that
the reason that doesn't violate pauli's
occlusion principle is because they have
different angular momentum he was picked
up on that and that then led into a more
general discussion
about the implications of all of this of
the fact that
you know it is it is the case in quantum
mechanics when you
you uh when something changes maybe the
energy of a system changes or you you in
this case rubbing the the carbon and you
change what's known as the hamiltonian
which effectively is the energy of this
system and that changing in the
hamiltonian affects all the other
particles because of this property which
i mentioned that in quantum mechanics
the wave function that describes or
describes all of the particles so
changing some over in one region will
affect others in another region but it
the the key thing is that doesn't break
causality it doesn't mean that you can
send a signal over to your experimental
friend and say the andromeda galaxy
which they can make use of faster than
light could have traveled that's not
possible
guilty of some oversimplification i
think
um
that's why he's on bbc two and you're on
60 symbols yeah you know i i i you know
personally i think people should lay off
a little bit and it's good that you know
that this is sparking a debate within
science because at the end of it all um
you know we're all gonna learn learn
something right we're all gonna learn
you know okay brian brian's made this
point it's got people interested in what
he's talking about and then people are
starting to look a bit deeper and and
get to the real physics behind
i think what he was trying to say what
he would have liked to have said but
which would never have been shown on bbc
he said it
you're talking as if it's all been a
very collegiate debate and everything's
been lovely but the physicists have been
a bit snipey too haven't they yeah no i
mean because they're quite passionate
about the subject but i don't think
they have necessary i mean they're now
discussing it right
the initial i mean i think that's
probably a problem with twitter as
opposed to a problem with the physicist
twitter has become this
staggeringly powerful
forum
by but you're limited to what is it 140
characters or something so you can't
really describe paulie's exclusion
principle or what you really meant in a
lecture in that kind of
uh language in 140 characters or if you
can it's pretty impressive going yeah i
mean they do it's quite normal for
physicists to help to have fights with
one another i think that's how the
scientific method works so nothing wrong
with that uh some of it's getting a bit
snidey and i think maybe there's a
little bit of jealousy involved
but also you know it is important to get
to get things right i think it's
actually science working really well and
and it's also a manifestation of how
science itself is evolving the way it's
been communicated maybe some of his
responses to the twitter comments might
have been a little bit more
uh
considered so we say
they've now actually effectively gone
underground again in the sense of
probably going back to original email
using emails and talking about it but
the initial
discussion about this point was done in
the open for everyone to see and
it's really interesting