The reason that Quirks and Quarks did their piece was that Hollywood hired a real, really real!, quantum physicist, Spiros Michalakis, a quantum physicist at the California Institute of Technology, to advise them on some pretty lame sounding plot devices . . . and I would like to say that "plot" merely because what's described sounds number than a stunned ant.
The "quantum realm" is a term that Michalakis came up with to describe the subatomic world that's central to the new Ant-Man film.
The main mission in this story is for Ant-Man and the crew — Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym — to bring Hope's mother, the original Wasp, back from the quantum realm. In the story she was stranded there while on a mission 30 years years ago to disable a Soviet nuclear missile.
Back in the real world, Ant-Man is discovered to be somehow mentally connected to Janet van Dyne and they use that connection to track her down and bring her back.
According to Michalakis, that mysterious connection is based on an actual quantum physics concept called quantum entanglement, which Einstein famously referred to as "spooky action at a distance."
"It's this idea that somehow particles can become entangled, connected, correlated in a way that it doesn't matter how far away they are from each other, but they will know about each other."
If something happens to one particle, the other will change its own internal state to reflect what happened to its partner. And the interesting thing is the empty space we typically think of as the vacuum in our universe is actually full of entanglement, said Michalakis.
I'll break into that, having held off the enormous urge to have done so after the phrase "real world" was used to say that, actually, quantum entanglement is something which has been demonstrated to be real experimentally, whereas so much of quantum physics and cosmology and its attached limpets of stuff like the still somewhat fashionable string-M-theory conjecture have nothing like that. That's especially true when it's something like the entanglement that is the basis of this bit of the . . . I guess I'll just have to use the word . . . "plot" though nothing like the movie stuff, not nearly, yet.
If you are going to be making recourse of quantum mechanics and the "quantum realm" for movie plots, the idea that we don't live in the "quantum realm" is a problem for things, I mean, if you're going to use it to stop Soviet nukes, this WOULD HAVE TO BE "the quantum realm".
But in this level of stuff, which, I guarantee you, hearing that a real, live scientist is involved in the production, not only many kiddies but many grown-ups, even those with PhD credentials will not make that distinction. So, I'll break in to say something that can't be said too often or even often enough .
MOVIES AREN'T REAL.
Fewer years ago than "the original Wasp" has been stuck in "the quantum realm" I would have figured only adults with serious mental illness were that prone to being sold on the nonsense that the movies present them with but I know that's not the case, anymore. They'll believe all kinds of lies and nonsense about the real world, no doubt they'll buy even more about the super-spooky "quantum realm" when it's peddled by Hollywood with the imprimatur of "a real scientist".
I was unaware of Michalakis before this, I looked him up and he seems like he's taking that well traveled trail of little known scientist to media science popularizer, only one of many who traffics on that trail every year. Maybe he'll make it, less intelligent guys have become a Science Guy, after all.
He starts out typically for such guys in this piece he wrote for Mcleans magazine.
I am a scientist whose research currently focuses on the foundations of reality itself, with forays into the realm from which space, time and the laws of physics themselves emerge. I don’t even ascend to the level of atheism—I simply don’t care whether God exists or not. My research into the foundations of physics and mathematics leads me to believe that order can come from pure chaos without any divine intervention. As I said, if I am wrong about this, I am definitely going to hell.
And, if you read the article, he continues as typically. I would wonder why anyone like him who so obviously has the most superficial view of religion would think he knows enough about it to have an important opinion or observations to make on something, presumably arising mysteriously out of his total lack of knowledge. Maybe it's a "quantum effect". Maybe it's his mind being entangled with too many atheist blog rats of the most benighted kind. His call for sympathy is more than made up for in his stereotyping, his arrogance and his dismissal. All of those are basic requirements for media sci-guys.
Presumably, growing up in Greece, he never bothered to read the long and broad tradition of Christian universalism in the Orthodox tradition going back, arguably, to the patristic if not apostolic age. So, if he's wrong about it, he might not be so certainly bound for hell. I would bet you that among sci-guys, it's the ones who don't go into media careers who might have done some reading on such things and so would know something about what they say on the topic. Only, they aren't media stars so no one ever hears them.
I could go on but I don't think he's going to pan out in his planned career. Too much competition. It's a saturated field. Though getting a movie credit, well, lots of people would say that might give him chance at making a "quantum leap" since science in pop culture has led so many people to believe that's a really big jump, instead of one of the more minuscule measurements there are. If they can't get that idea across, using Ant Man to get even more complicated things over ain't going to work.
What I said about betting that a rigorous study of the history in movies would find that almost all of it is anything from a transparent and ideological lie to some piece of crap that some idiot, ignorant movie script scribbler or, help us, the producer, director or actors made up, I'll bet that goes at least as much for the simulacrum of science in the movies.
Earth to Sparky: Atheism is a religion like OFF is a tv channel.
ReplyDeleteJust saying.
:-)
Just repeating, repeating, repeating . . . :-o
DeleteCorrected your comment.
Where in this post does it say that atheism is a religion? I'd say your comment is stupid even by your standard but that would be a lie.
You say it on a nearly daily basis, Sparkles. I was just saving you the trouble.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't read it, did you, Dopey. I'd say that you'd made an ass out of yourself this week but you made yourself more of a 20-mule-team of them. Though I can't imagine you doing any work like one would. They might be dead mules. A good analogy for Duncan's rump commenting community. A team of asses.
DeleteAnybody who actually bothers to read your turgid amateurishly incoherent scribblings risks lowering their IQ precipitously. Hell, just skimming what you "write" makes a person deserving of combat pay.
ReplyDeleteOh. You still believe in IQ.
DeleteHow quaint.
Of course my writing is, by definition, amateurish, I've never gotten paid a penny for writing anything.
How stupid do you have to get, daily going through the equivalent of combat for no purpose without getting paid. I certainly doubt that if they were paying anyone to do it that you'd get the gig. You couldn't even get them to keep you on to write ad copy for that ad flyer you worked for.
Your writing isn't amateurish because you don't get paid -- it's amateurish because it's completely incompetent incoherent impossible to take seriously or bother reading crap.
DeleteAs for the IQ joke, we already know that you think irony has something to do with your laundry.
"Your writing isn't amateurish because you don't get paid -- it's amateurish because it's completely incompetent incoherent impossible to take seriously or bother reading crap."
DeleteAs he's a retied, paid professional scribbling hack, get a load of that last clause. I've said that the difference between an amateur writer and a paid one is often the paid one has an editor.
And, Stupes, that's ironic.
As "Ant-Man" asks the "scientists" in the movie: "Do you just put 'quantum' in front of everything?"
ReplyDeleteBecause pretty much, they do.
It reminds me of the story that Jacob Bronowski told about John von Neumann, that when he was advising a student on his doctoral dissertation he said, put lots of entropy in it, lots and lots, because no one knows what entropy is but it's really popular.
DeleteOh, this is gonna be fun.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGvCt0eXnVM
From OMNIBUS, on CBS in 1954, hosted by Alistair Cooke, Lenny Bernstein does Beethoven's 5th -- tonight on Turner Classic Movies.
At 8PM. EST.
Sparky will just hate it because it's too Jewish and too emotional.
This from the guy who told me if I heard the 9th a hundred times I'd be ready to put a bullet in my brain about a week back.
DeleteOf course, before coming to any conclusion about any performance I'd have to hear it, not that a TV recording that's old enough to draw social security would be my first choice for one to listen to, especially if I had to sit through Alistair Cooke.
You know, Stupy, your habit of accusing antisemitism, directly or by implication, is getting dangerously old. If it were only someone as stupid and insignificant as you are doing it, it wouldn't be dangerous, but it's gotten to the point where that's worn dangerously thin through over extension past any point where it is in any way justified.
Steve Simels, the Midge Decter of Duncan's Den of Dowager Dimwits and their be-pearled engine of feigned, faux outrage.
I'd much rather go listen to more of that excellent young (well, relative to the old, old, old, old ones you favor) guitarist with the Jewish last name I've been looking into. He's great. And that Portuguese municipally sponsored big band is spectacular. I suspect if ol' Bernstein were still with us, he'd rather listen to the young guy than the old vid, any night. After all, I'd imagine he got everything out of it about 64 years ago and, who knows, maybe he'd have done what, I believe Leo Kraft asked if he ever would, finally grow up. I doubt anyone bothered to ask that of you, Simps. Some lost causes are obviously lost.
"As he's a retied, paid professional scribbling hack..."
ReplyDeleteRetied? In your fucking dreams, you illiterate hick. Is "retied" your safe word, BTW?
As I said, the only difference is an editor.
DeleteI could use the Brit usage which, since it's you would be more resonant, "redundant".
Why do you keep doing this, Sparkles? Seriously -- have you no friends who tell you that you're making a braying public jackass of yourself on a daily basis when you could more profitably be spending your declining years baking pies or something and saying hi other oldsters in your neighborhood as they walk past the windows of your pathetic hovel?
ReplyDeleteGeesh, Stupy, first you tell me no one reads my blog then you tell me what happens here is public.
DeleteLet me guess, you don't understand the logical contradiction in that. Only I've encountered you enough to know I don't have to guess about it. So, tell me why those wind-up monkeys aren't as brilliant as the Nairobi Trio that are your idea of high art.
Please -- if there are any friends of this putz out there, please intervene with him.
ReplyDeleteMe, I'm gonna go watch those Lenny OMNIBUS shows on TCM tonight. Haven't seen them in decades, and it will be interesting to see if they hold up. Not that Sparkles will care one way or another, because apparently he thinks black-and-white photography and mono recording are somehow illegitimate. :-)
I wonder which of us has posted more mono recordings, I would expect I might have. It's kind of funny as the only turn table I've got only plays 78s.
DeleteAs can be seen, Stupy's going to his old stand by when he's got nutthin' of lying about what other people say. As he's generally got no more than nutthin' he does a lot of that.
I almost typed that I probably have more mono recordings than Simps' has got of photos of himself but realized there probably weren't enough of those pressed to make that a true statement. I can't believe how many pictures of himself he posts. And he hasn't even gotten back to the sepia ones.
"before coming to any conclusion about any performance I'd have to hear it, not that a TV recording that's old enough to draw social security would be my first choice for one to listen to"
ReplyDeleteReally, fuck those Louis Armstrong Hot Five sides or the collected works of Robert Johnson. Mono, you know. :-)
Well, you see, Stupy, there's a difference, Those Hot Fives recordings, not to mention the only ones of Robert Johnson are unique documents of unique improvisational performances, each improvisation a chance to hear an impromptu composition by the one and only composer of it. God only knows how many tapes and discs and etc. of Lenny tearing through the Beethoven 5th there are waiting for some mid-brow cabloid entity to have on so someone like Simps can pretend they're going to listen to it. And, despite what he sometimes mistakenly seemed to believe, he didn't compose the music, Beethoven did. It's an entirely different musical process and an entirely different experience. That said, I am very careful not to listen to the Hot Fives or Sevens or the old, great blues recordings too often because I don't want them to become as insignificant an experience as hearing The Ronettes crooning out something that I heard done to death on top-40 radio right after Ernie Kovacs snuffed it and Edie went on to peddle cancer sticks.
DeleteYou're lucky I didn't add THE SUN SESSIONS to that list of mono recordings, Sparkles. Otherwise you would have come out and said that Elvis was just a dumb white cracker ripping off the black man's music.
ReplyDeleteI've corrected that lie you told about me at least three times. I never said any such thing about Elvis, I noted that he had a long practice of acknowledging his debt to the Black artists he was inspired by. I said that even as I said I didn't find his music very interesting and I hated his movie career, the extent to which I caught any of it. And the cult that arose around him after his death? It's almost as bizarre and disturbing as yours for Phil Spector in life and the one you pretend to be a member of for Lenny B. I'll bet you're going to watch some dumb popular TV show instead of that vid of Lenny doing the 5th. You'd rather watch a rerun of Family Guy. Admit it.
Delete