A Space-time Approach to Quantum Mechanics and the Problems it Causes on TV

When?

Wednesday 27 February 2013, 19:00 to 20:00

Where?

3MS01 School of Management

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Professor Brian Cox, University of Manchester

Admission price:

Free

Admission information:

Ticket access only and available to Physics Staff and Students only from mid-January 2013

In 2011, Brian Cox published a popular science book with his long-term collaborator, Jeff Forshaw, entitled “The Quantum Universe: Everything that can happen does happen”, in which they describe the bizarre behaviour of the subatomic world. Quantum physics has for many years led to some very woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of everything in the Universe and the controversy surrounding how this should be interpreted rages on to this day. Professor Cox favours the version of quantum mechanics elucidated by the great American physicist, Richard Feynman, in which a subatomic particle can follow all possible paths through space and time at once. A year ago, Cox delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution that was televised on the BBC, in which he made a statement about this strange quantum interconnectedness that led to a fascinating online discussion among a number of physicists including Cox about what the correct interpretation of quantum physics should be. 

In this lecture, he will revisit some of those ideas and the controversy they led to. The lecture is aimed at undergraduate physics level.