Read The Holographic Universe for Free Online Page B

have been cut, it can go through both slits
simultaneously. When wavelike electrons collide with each other they even
create interference patterns. The electron, like some shapeshifter out of
folklore, can manifest as either a particle or a wave.
    This chameleonlike
ability is common to all subatomic particles. It is also common to all things
once thought to manifest exclusively as waves. Light, gamma rays, radio waves,
X rays—all can change from waves to particles and back again. Today physicists
believe that subatomic phenomena should not be classified solely as either
waves or particles, but as a single category of somethings that are always
somehow both. These somethings are called quanta , and physicists believe
they are the basic stuff from which the entire universe is made.
    Perhaps most astonishing
of all is that there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever
manifest as particles is when toe are looking at them. For instance, when
an electron isn't being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is
always a wave. Physicists are able to draw this conclusion because they have
devised clever strategies for deducing how an electron behaves when it is not
being observed (it should be noted that this is only one interpretation of the
evidence and is not the conclusion of all physicists; as we will see, Bohm
himself has a different interpretation).
    Once again this seems
more like magic than the kind of behavior we are accustomed to expect from the
natural world. Imagine owning a bowling ball that was only a bowling ball when
you looked at it. If you sprinkled talcum powder all over a bowling lane and
rolled such a “quantum” bowling ball toward the pins, it would trace a single
line through the talcum powder while you were watching it. But if you blinked
while it was in transit, you would find that for the second or two you were not
looking at it the bowling ball stopped tracing a line and instead left a broad
wavy strip, like the undulating swath of a desert snake as it moves sideways
over the sand.
    Such a situation is
comparable to the one quantum physicists encountered when they first uncovered
evidence that quanta coalesce into particles only when they are being observed.
Physicist Nick Herbert, a supporter of this interpretation, says this has
sometimes caused him to imagine that behind his back the world is always “a
radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.” But whenever he
turns around and tries to see the soup, his glance instantly freezes it and
turns it back into ordinary reality. He believes this makes us all a little
like Midas, the legendary king who never knew the feel of silk or the caress of
a human hand because everything he touched turned to gold. “Likewise humans can
never experience the true texture of quantum reality,” says Herbert, “because
everything we touch turns to matter.”
    Bohm and
Interconnectedness
    An aspect of quantum
reality that Bohm found especially interesting was the strange state of
interconnectedness that seemed to exist between apparently unrelated subatomic
events. What was equally perplexing was that most physicists tended to attach
little importance to the phenomenon. In fact, so little was made of it that one
of the most famous examples of interconnectedness lay hidden in one of quantum
physics's basic assumptions for a number of years before anyone noticed it was
there.
    That assumption was made
by one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, the Danish physicist Niels
Bohr. Bohr pointed out that if subatomic particles only come into existence in
the presence of an observer, then it is also meaningless to speak of a
particle's properties and characteristics as existing before they are observed.
This was disturbing to many physicists, for much of science was based on
discovering the properties of phenomena. But if the act of observation actually
helped create such properties, what did that imply about the future of