It's Okay To Be Smart

Everything is Connected - Sean Carroll on Brian Cox's Quantum Leap

Earlier this week, we were treated to rock star physicist Brian Cox explaining how everything in the universe is connected via the Pauli exclusion principle. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it so you’re up to speed.

The clip was from his “A Night With The Stars” televised lecture, which is something that would never make it on TV in the US, and that is sad.

In it, he rubbed a diamond and postulated that the PEP demanded that any changed energy states in the electrons in that chunk of carbon would be transmitted to all other electrons in the universe, so as to have no two in the same energy state. He’s a great speaker, but many people have accused him of screwing up in this demo.

Sean Carroll has the best write-up of why Cox’s take is a bit off on his blog, Cosmic Variance. It’s long, and made of words, but you’ll learn something fantastically interesting if you read it. The take-home:

In terms of explaining the mysteries of quantum mechanics to a wide audience, which is the point here, I think the bottom line is this: rubbing a diamond here in this room does not have any instantaneous effect whatsoever on experiments being done on electrons very far away. There are two very interesting and conceptually central points worth making: that the Pauli exclusion principle helps explain the stability of matter, and that quantum mechanics says there is a single state for the whole universe rather than separate states for each individual particle. But in this case these became mixed up a bit, and I suspect that this part of the lecture wasn’t the most edifying for the audience. (The rest of the lecture still remains pretty awesome.)

Physics, theoretical or otherwise, is a cruel and confusing mistress. I’m glad there’s people like Brian and Sean so that we get to have these conversations.

Previously: I translate Brian Cox’s voice and it’s funny.