Mind-Blowing Facts About Our Reality [4K] | The Secrets of Quantum Physics | Spark

The opening paragraph poetically sets the stage for the need for change and a new destiny, foreshadowing the introduction of a new app called Vili that will bring this change. It mentions complexities of everyday life and a desire to download this app to usher in a new era.

This paragraph provides historical context about the light bulb becoming a symbol of progress in newly unified Germany in the late 1800s. Several companies bought rights to Edison's light bulb invention, hoping to capitalize on street lighting projects. However, the physics behind the light bulb's glowing filament based on temperature was still unknown, leading German scientist Max Planck to begin investigating.

Two mysteries are presented that challenge the accepted wave theory of light at the time - the ultraviolet catastrophe, referring to the disproportionate difficulty in producing ultraviolet light from blackbody radiators, and the photoelectric effect, referring to the puzzling ability of only ultraviolet light, not red light, to generate electricity when shone on metal.

Albert Einstein is introduced as shockingly proposing in 1905 that light must be particles (quanta) not waves to solve mysteries like the photoelectric effect. This contradicted the well-established wave theory of light that explained phenomena like shadows and bubbles. Einstein saw light quanta as carrying lumps of energy.

After Einstein's idea, a battle erupted between revolutionary physicists like Neils Bohr who embraced the new quantum mechanics where particles like electrons showed wave properties, versus voices of reason like Einstein who hated the idea that reality did not objectively exist until observed.

When electrons were fired individually through a double slit, a wave interference pattern still emerged, meaning single particles were behaving like waves. This supported Bohr's shocking Copenhagen Interpretation that particles don't have defined locations but instead probability waves until measured and forced to materialize.

Einstein objected to Bohr's ideas, believing reality existed independently. He introduced quantum entanglement in 1935 - where particles keep inverse properties when separated - calling instant communication between them "spooky action at a distance". Bohr supported the mysterious realism of entanglement.

In 1964 little-known physicist John Bell, bothered by the crisis over whether quantum reality existed, devised a brilliant thought experiment using entangled particles and adjustable measurements to finally test if Einstein or Bohr was right about reality.

In the cultural upheaval of the 1960s-70s, hippie physicists mixing quantum mechanics with mysticism realized Bell's abstract idea could actually be tested. With scavenged equipment, they enabled a practical experiment to settle the nature of reality.

With improved experimental techniques, physicist Alain Aspect in 1982 conclusively showed entangled particles did communicate instantaneously, defying Einstein. Thus reality must truly wait for observation to emerge from uncertainty, a profoundly bizarre implication.

While believing a simpler theory underlies quantum mechanics' accurate mathematical madness, Einstein admitted it continued to seem incomprehensible by saying "every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, that he is mistaken." Still the search must go on in places like the Diamond Light Source.

Quantum theory's success in physics raised hope it could solve biological mysteries too. Adventure into applying careful quantum ideas to messy living systems begins, suspecting tiny particles ghosting through cell walls, sniffing Quantum vibrations, and more fantastical phenomena.