Read Quantum Times for Free Online

to talk to someone named Benjamin Planck.”
         The professor spread his hands out with his palms up. “I know nothing about a Benjamin Planck. I asked about him. No one seems to know him.”
         “The funny thing is Professor I recognize the name. It sounds familiar.”
         “Of course it sounds familiar David! Max Planck…one of the most famous names in physics. Of course Planck sounds familiar.”
         And that’s when David remembered. Benjamin Planck! All of the physics students at Columbia just called him ‘Planck.’ How could they not? When he had Max Planck’s last name….and David then remembered that Planck had said Max Planck was his like great great great uncle. But when Planck introduced himself he said his name was Ben.
         “Professor, I remember now! About ten years ago, the same time I was there, Ben Planck was a doctoral candidate in Physics at Columbia. We were sort of friendly competitors. But honestly, he was way smarter than I was. He was smarter than the professors!”
         “But I have never heard of him. Did he not move forward in a career in Physics?”
         “It was ten years ago … but as I remember it....His doctoral degree advisors didn’t like what he wanted to do his thesis on. They pushed him to do something related to Super String Theory. He considered that a fun mathematical puzzle but not what he was interested in. So he did what they said, he got his degree and then dropped out of sight. I never heard from him or of him again.”
         Professor Wheeling was intrigued. “Do you remember what it was he wanted to pursue – what was the core idea?”
         David leaned back in his chair and tried to remember back ten years earlier. He knew he would remember…he always remembered things. All he had to do was get his mind back into that frame of reference. He stared up at the ceiling and then as if it was written on the ceiling of Dr. Wheeling’s office he recalled a discussion Planck and he had had over beers at Planck’s apartment one night. Planck had just been told he couldn’t do his thesis on what he wanted. The powers that be thought it too insignificant and silly – they had actually used the word ‘silly’.
         David nodded to himself and then said, “He wanted to explore the issue of the need for an observer in quantum physics. He could never choose to ignore that the famous double slit experiment produced different results if the passage of the electrons through the slits were observed versus not observed. He thought that the classic Schrödinger’s Cat thought problem was actually true at a deeper level of existence. I recall he used to take the philosophical question of ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?’ and add to it. Planck would ask: if there is no one ever to observe the fallen tree, does it even fall? Or is its falling suspended until an observer finally arrives. Then he would ramble a little about ‘consciousness’ and some equation that he had envisioned. “
         “So what else?” Dr. Wheeling asked.
         David thought a moment longer, “He thought the universe was a vast sea of potentiality and it was consciousness that gave it form.”
         Dr. Wheeling’s focus was full on David, with all its intensity boring into him. “And what else?”
         “There is no ‘what else?’ The Ben Planck I knew was not much of a talker. That conversation was the longest I ever had with him. We were in his apartment because he almost never left it and talking to him was usually like talking to the wall. He was very shy and usually monosyllabic.”
         “But you say he was brilliant. How would you know?”
         “It was just obvious. The papers he wrote… his comments on anyone else’s work. He’d say something you first thought was ridiculous and then he would say just a little more and then you’d realize he saw