Though the mysterious aspects of quantum mechanics are still hardly discussed in physics courses, the interest increases. A best-selling quantum mechanics text has a picture of a live cat on the front cover and a dead cat on the back–though there is very little talk of the cat inside. (Probably, the publishers, not the author, chose the cover design. But instructors choose the text, and we believe the allusion to the mystery appeals to younger faculty.)
Experimental studies of the mysterious aspects of quantum mechanics that would not have been proposed years ago, and would not have been funded if proposes, now get considerable attention. Increasingly large objects are being put into superposition states, put into two places at at the same time. Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger has done this with large molecules containing seventy carbon atoms, football shaped “buckyballs.” He’s now setting up to do the same thing with mid-sized proteins and a virus. At a recent conference he was asked: “What’s the limit?” His answer: “Only budget.”
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
References:
Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 153.
philosophy and physics 