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Article: Inside the quantum atom revolution.(NATURAL SCIENCE)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- May 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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One of the relatively unheralded triumphs of the quantum revolution in science was that it did away with an awkward dichotomy in the classical description of the universe. In high-concept mode, classical science described the universe as being very simple: it was made of matter in motion governed by natural law.
The problem is that matter and law are quite distinct, and classical science never really explained just how these two connected up with each other. It did not satisfactorily explain just how an abstract law described by mathematics coerced solid matter to behave in the appropriate manner. Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner famously gave a talk on this math ...