Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Quanta, shadows and Newton's apple

I was driving at work this morning, and I was stacked in traffic (as usual). I was waiting for a traffic light to go green and I was looking at a side of the bridge that was a few meters above my head.

The side has small pillars, I couldn't see the traffic on it, but the sun was sending traffic's shadow to fall on the pillars. And then it happened... :-)

I must have seen the same (more or less) thing a million times before. But it was so clear now! Crystal clear.

The shadow of a track was moving along the pillars, I wasn't looking at it, just had it in peripheral vision. But it felt wrong, something felt wrong. Instantly, my eyes started following that shadow. It was so weird. The motion...well it was not a motion...it was little jumps, little hops, from one pillar to another.

"Like quanta" I thought. "Quanta? Holy crap" my next thought. Just because we perceive some motions in the microcosm as not as in the classical world, that does not mean they happen like that. We just see the pillars cause we simply can't see the traffic!

It is not an original idea, I am sure I read it somewhere...probably in a superstring theory context, that what we see (in our 3-D world is actually shadows of a N-D world), yet I've never read an example, I've never related it with a physical observation.

And it felt good! :-) You know the story with Newton, that he was (allegedly) hit by an falling apple and then he thought about gravity...well, that was my apple.

Delicious!