The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot Read Free Book Online Page A

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