The Holographic Universe (6 page)

In 1935 Einstein and his
colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published a now famous paper
entitled “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered
Complete?” In it they explained why the existence of such twin particles proved
that Bohr could not possibly be correct. As they pointed out, two such
particles, say, the photons emitted when positronium decays, could be produced
and allowed to travel a significant distance apart
^*
. Then they could be
intercepted and their angles of polarization measured. If the polarizations are
measured at precisely the same moment and are found to be identical, as quantum
physics predicts, and if Bohr was correct and properties such as polarization
do not coalesce into existence until they are observed or measured, this
suggests that somehow the two photons must be instantaneously communicating
with each other so they know which angle of polarization to agree upon. The
problem is that according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing
can travel faster than the speed of light, let alone travel instantaneously,
for that would be tantamount to breaking the time barrier and would open the
door on all kinds of unacceptable paradoxes. Einstein and his colleagues were
convinced that no “reasonable definition” of reality would permit such
faster-than-light interconnections to exist, and therefore Bohr had to be
wrong. Their argument is now known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, or
EPR paradox for short.

Bohr remained
unperturbed by Einstein's argument. Rather than believing that
some
kind
of faster-than-light communication was taking place, he offered another
explanation. If subatomic particles do not exist until they are observed, then
one could no longer think of them as independent “things.” Thus Einstein was
basing his argument on an error when he viewed twin particles as separate. They
were part of an indivisible system, and it was meaningless to think of them
otherwise.

In time most physicists
sided with Bohr and became content that his interpretation was correct. One
factor that contributed to Bohr's triumph was that quantum physics had proved
so spectacularly successful in predicting phenomena, few physicists were
willing even to consider the possibility that it might be faulty in some way.
In addition, when Einstein and his colleagues first made their proposal about
twin particles, technical and other reasons prevented such an experiment from
actually being performed. This made it even easier to put out of mind. This was
curious, for although Bohr had designed his argument to counter Einstein's
attack on quantum theory, as we will see, Bohr's view that subatomic systems
are indivisible has equally profound implications for the nature of reality.
Ironically, these implications were also ignored, and once again the potential
importance of interconnectedness was swept under the carpet

A Living Sea of
Electrons

During his early years
as a physicist Bohm also accepted Bohr's position, but he remained puzzled by
the lack of interest Bohr and his followers displayed toward
interconnectedness. After graduating from Pennsylvania State College, he
attended the University of California at Berkeley, and before receiving his
doctorate there in 1943, he worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation
Laboratory. There he encountered another striking example of quantum interconnectedness.

At the Berkeley
Radiation Laboratory Bohm began what was to become his landmark work on
plasmas. A plasma is a gas containing a high density of electrons and positive
ions, atoms that have a positive charge. To his amazement he found that once they
were in a plasma, electrons stopped behaving like individuals and started
behaving as if they were part of a larger and interconnected whole. Although
their individual movements appeared random, vast numbers of electrons were able
to produce effects that were surprisingly well-organized. Like some amoeboid
creature, the plasma constantly regenerated itself and enclosed all impurities
in a wall in the same way that a biological organism might encase a foreign
substance in a cyst. So struck was Bohm by these organic qualities that he
later remarked he'd frequently had the impression the electron sea was “alive.”

In 1947 Bohm accepted an
assistant professorship at Princeton University, an indication of how highly he
was regarded, and there he extended his Berkeley research to the study of
electrons in metals. Once again he found that the seemingly haphazard movements
of individual electrons managed to produce highly organized overall effects.
Like the plasmas he had studied at Berkeley, these were no longer situations
involving two particles, each behaving as if it knew what the other was doing,
but entire oceans of particles, each behaving as if it knew what untold
trillions of others were doing. Bohm called such collective movements of
electrons
plasmons
, and their discovery established his reputation as a
physicist.

Bohm's
Disillusionment

Both his sense of the
importance of interconnectedness as well as his growing dissatisfaction with
several of the other prevailing views in physics caused Bohm to become increasingly
troubled by Bohr's interpretation of quantum theory. After three years of
teaching the subject at Princeton he decided to improve his understanding by
writing a textbook. When he finished he found he still wasn't comfortable with
what quantum physics was saying and sent copies of the book to both Bohr and
Einstein to ask for their opinions. He got no answer from Bohr, but Einstein
contacted him and said that since they were both at Princeton they should meet
and discuss the book. In the first of what was to turn into a six-month series
of spirited conversations, Einstein enthusiastically told Bohm that he had
never seen quantum theory presented so clearly. Nonetheless, he admitted he was
still every bit as dissatisfied with the theory as was Bohm. During their
conversations the two men discovered they each had nothing but admiration for
the theory's ability to predict phenomena. What bothered them was that it
provided no real way of conceiving of the basic structure of the world. Bohr
and his followers also claimed that quantum theory was complete and it was not
possible to arrive at any clearer understanding of what was going on in the
quantum realm. This was the same as saying there was no deeper reality beyond
the subatomic landscape, no further answers to be found, and this, too, grated
on both Bohm and Einstein's philosophical sensibilities. Over the course of
their meetings they discussed many other things, but these points in particular
gained new prominence in Bohm's thoughts. Inspired by his interactions with
Einstein, he accepted the validity of his misgivings about quantum physics and
decided there .had to be an alternative view. When his textbook
Quantum
Theory
was published in 1951 it was hailed as a classic, but it was a
classic about a subject to which Bohm no longer gave his full allegiance. His
mind, ever active and always looking for deeper explanations, was already
searching for a better way of describing reality.

A New Kind of
Field and the Bullet That Killed Lincoln

After his talks with
Einstein, Bohm tried to find a workable alternative to Bohr's interpretation.
He began by assuming that particles such as electrons
do
exist in the
absence of observers. He also assumed that there was a deeper reality beneath
Bohr's inviolable wall, a subquantum level that still awaited discovery by
science. Building on these premises he discovered that simply by proposing the
existence of a new kind of field on this subquantum level he was able to
explain the findings of quantum physics as well as Bohr could. Bohm called his
proposed new field the
quantum potential
and theorized that, like
gravity, it pervaded all of space. However, unlike gravitational fields, magnetic
fields, and so on, its influence did not diminish with distance. Its effects
were subtle, but it was equally powerful everywhere. Bohm published his
alternative interpretation of quantum theory in 1952.

Reaction to his new
approach was mainly negative. Some physicists were so convinced such
alternatives were impossible that they dismissed his ideas out of hand. Others
launched passionate attacks against his reasoning. In the end virtually all
such arguments were based primarily on philosophical differences, but it did
not matter. Bohr's point of view had become so entrenched in physics that
Bohm's alternative was looked upon as little more than heresy.

Despite the harshness of
these attacks Bohm remained unswerving in his conviction that there was more to
reality than Bohr's view allowed. He also felt that science was much too
limited in its outlook when it came to assessing new ideas such as his own, and
in a 1957 book entitled
Causality and Chance in Modern Physics
, he
examined several of the philosophical suppositions responsible for this
attitude. One was the widely held assumption that it was possible for any
single theory, such as quantum theory, to
be
complete. Bohm criticized
this assumption by pointing out that nature may be infinite. Because it would
not be possible for any theory to completely explain something that is
infinite, Bohm suggested that open scientific inquiry might be better served if
researchers refrained from making this assumption.

In the book he argued
that the way science viewed causality was also much too limited. Most effects
were thought of as having only one or several causes. However, Bohm felt that
an effect could have an infinite number of causes. For example, if you asked
someone what caused Abraham Lincoln's death, they might answer that it was the
bullet in John Wilkes Booth's gun. But a complete list of all the causes that
contributed to Lincoln's death would have to include all of the events that led
to the development of the gun, all of the factors that caused Booth to want to
kill Lincoln, all of the steps in the evolution of the human race that allowed
for the development of a hand capable of holding a gun, and so on, and so on.
Bohm conceded that most of the time one could ignore the vast cascade of causes
that had led to any given effect, but he still felt it was important for
scientists to remember that no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever
really separate from the universe as a whole.

If You Want to
Know Where You Are, Ask the Nonlocals

During this same period
of his life Bohm also continued to refine his alternative approach to quantum
physics. As he looked more carefully into the meaning of the quantum potential
he discovered it had a number of features that implied an even more radical
departure from orthodox thinking. One was the importance of wholeness.
Classical science had always viewed the state of a system as a whole as merely
the result of the interaction of its parts. However, the quantum potential
stood this view on its ear and indicated that the behavior of the parts was
actually organized by the whole. This not only took Bohr's assertion that
subatomic particles are not independent “things,” but are part of an
indivisible system one step further, but even suggested that wholeness was in
some ways the more primary reality.

It also explained how
electrons in plasmas (and other specialized states such as superconductivity)
could behave like interconnected wholes. As Bohm states, such “electrons are
not scattered because, through the action of the quantum potential, the whole
system is undergoing a co-ordinated movement more like a ballet dance than like
a crowd of unorganized people.” Once again he notes that “such quantum
wholeness of activity is closer to the organized unity of functioning of the
parts of a living being than it is to the kind of unity that is obtained by
putting together the parts of a machine.”

An even more surprising
feature of the quantum potential was its implications for the nature of
location. At the level of our everyday lives things have very specific
locations, but Bohm's interpretation of quantum physics indicated that at the
subquantum level, the level in which the quantum potential operated, location
ceased to exist. All points in space became equal to all other points in space,
and it was meaningless to speak of anything as being separate from anything
else. Physicists call this property “nonlocality.”

The nonlocal aspect of
the quantum potential enabled Bohm to explain the connection between twin
particles without violating special relativity's ban against anything traveling
faster than the speed of light. To illustrate how, he offers the following
analogy: Imagine a fish swimming in an aquarium. Imagine also that you have
never seen a fish or an aquarium before and your only knowledge about them
comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the
other at its side. When you look at the two television monitors you might
mistakenly assume that the fish on the screens are separate entities. After
all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will
be slightly different. But as you continue to watch you will eventually realize
there is a relationship between the two fish. When one turns, the other makes a
slightly different but corresponding turn. When one faces the front, the other
faces the side, and so on. If you are unaware of the full scope of the
situation, you might wrongly conclude that the fish are instantaneously
communicating with one another, but this is not the case. No communication is
taking place because at a deeper level of reality, the reality of the aquarium,
the two fish are actually one and the same. This, says Bohm, is precisely what
is going on between particles such as the two photons emitted when a
positronium atom decays. Indeed, because the quantum potential permeates all of
space, all particles are nonlocally interconnected. More and more the picture
of reality Bohm was developing was not one in which subatomic particles were
separate from one another and moving through the void of space, but one in
which all things were part of an unbroken web and embedded in a space that was
as real and rich with process as the matter that moved through it