by Ned White

Created on: November 23, 2009   Last Updated: November 24, 2009

The entanglement of quantum theory with spirituality has fired the minds and stirred the passions of many scientists, writers, and spiritual leaders for several decades. The Dalai Lama, in particular, has written and spoken widely about the broad convergences of Buddhism and physics. He has noted that Buddhism, like quantum theory, is a body of work that is incomplete: as knowledge of physics advances, he has said, Buddhism will learn from it, grow and adapt - a remarkable statement from the leader of long established religion.

Quantum theory is considered the most successful theory in all of science, with experiment matching prediction with well over 99% accuracy. It explains the working of the atom nearly perfectly, with a coherent mapping of the strong nuclear force (what binds protons together so tightly in the nucleus when they should be repelling each other) and the electroweak force (electromagnetism combined with particle decay). But the prevailing Standard Model of quantum mechanics treats particles mathematically as dimensionless points, which leads to absurd results when gravity enters the equations. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was all about gravity - how time and space are shaped on the grand scale by massive bodies. But quantum theory in its present state fails completely to account for gravity or integrate it into a complete physical theory of the universe. As precise as it is, quantum theory is ultimately unsatisfying as an accurate description of our world.

Also unsatisfying to human minds are some of the theory's basic principles, which defy common sense and feel, intuitively, ridiculous. Consider:

*an electron "leaps" from one atomic orbit to another in an instantaneous quantized jump, not traveling any distance in between.

*a particle, like a photon or electron, is at the same time a wave, with no "stuff" to it at all until it is measured.

*two paired particles, like electrons with opposing spins, can be fired away from each other - both at nearly the speed of light - and when one of them is altered in experiment to change its spin, so does its paired mate. A famous experiment by Alain Aspect and others in 1982 proved beyond doubt that quantum mechanics is "nonlocal," that particles are somehow entangled with each other, able to affect each other instantaneously across vast distances.

*and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: the more we know about a particle's momentum, the less we know about its location. We cannot know both quantities

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