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Does Quantum Physics Make Sense Yet? – Jim Al-Khalili

Alex O'Connor | September 22, 2026



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– VIDEO NOTES

Jim Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist and science populariser. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey.

– TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – The Double Slit Experiment
3:43 – Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
15:14 – Why is Quantum Mechanics So Weird?
22:15 – Do Things Just Work Differently at a Quantum Level?
27:34 – What is Time at a Quantum Level?
32:54 – What on Earth is Time?
37:04 – Does the Past Exist?
45:31 – Does Time Have a Direction?
56:16 – Probability in Quantum Mechanics
01:01:35 – Could Time Be an Emergent Property of the Universe

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——————————————

Written by Alex O'Connor

Comments

This post currently has 49 comments.

  1. @jaseboon6282

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    Quantum decoherence is the primary physical process that prevents the strange rules of the quantum world from leaking into our everyday macroscopic reality. It acts as the bridge—and the barrier—between the quantum and classical worlds, explaining why a coffee cup is never in two places at once.

  2. @JavierBallesterosLopez

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    With regards to the trumpet, my interpretation is that Nosferatu is turning the light on and off. If you can´t measure it, that view is as valid as any other, it's like saying the next digit of Pi after the last measurable digit

  3. @siamakga

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    @cosmicskeptic, I like the fact that you are not angry and you genuinely asking question. Regardless of the position, I've seen people to use occasions like this to attack others as if they know the truth.

  4. @MitchRaemsch

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    The electron being everywhere in the atom or its probability cloud or superposition. Is not being measured. What measured is one position electron.
    That measurement is a fact. Why can't science measure superposition. Why only single position. Measurement wins the argument.

  5. @MitchRaemsch

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    Light collapses the entanglement wave keeping the quantized wave distribution.
    How does a wave particle fit through two slits. The waves need to be larger than the sub atomic.
    We can't see sub atomic to know how it behaves. How are you measuring what is inside the atom?
    The math doesn't work. There are no orbits. Electricity can stop where the electron's go still.

  6. @davethebrahman9870

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    People who don’t like reality will always try to smuggle the least probable explanations into gaps in our knowledge . There will still be idealists, panpsychists, dualists and other woo merchants, until such time as we have a complete physical theory, and even then they will ignore the evidence.

  7. @KirillMamonov-ij5st

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    9:22 This is silly. If you pose the question like this, there isn’t a single „why” question in the world that we can answer. Because any such question will, via a cascade of following questions, lead to some very fundamental „why does the world exist”.

  8. @Dyslexic-Artist-Theory-on-Time

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    Could Quantum Mechanics be explained by going back to 1/r², the three dimensional physics of the Inverse Square Law?
    Even back to the spherical 4πr² geometry of Huygens’ Principle of 1670 that says: “Every point on a light wave front has the potential for a new spherical 4πr² light wave". Each point on the 2D boundary of the wave front can represent a new moment in time represented by a potential photon ∆E=hf electron interaction or coupling.
    Could light photon, electron interactions be forming oscillations continuously transforming potential energy into the kinetic Eₖ=½mv² energy of matter, in the form of electrons, forming our probabilistic uncertain future quantum by quantum, moment by moment?
    Such a process of energy exchange would form greater degrees of freedom for statistical entropy forming what we perceive as time.

  9. @shoutitallloud

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    If there's a lower limit to energy that is defined as "h" Planck constant, why there's no upper limit to energy? It surely should be. Blackbody radiation was incompatible with ultraviolet catastrophy, but cosmology feels okay with all that billions sun masses black holes. Ridiculous.

  10. @KhalidRasul-KR

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    This discussion further complicated quantum mechanics and quantum physics. Like many worlds, this podcast took up numerous topics, touch and run phenomena. Next time go for one or two related topics, unfolding will work.

  11. @ferroalloys594

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    You cannot "explain" a conceptual conundrum, even using unfortunately misleadingly ineffectual ANALOGIES (they always "break down") kwontum (sic) m
    ekankks (sic) is INTRINSICALLY immune to effective realisation in "so-called" every-day experience, so is it a probability ALWAYS,? or ever a certainty INEVITABLY!? Just wondered…

  12. @LangLang5689

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    there is no time, it is just ordered particles and their physical interaction. Start point is unknown as some impulse was created, agreed as Big bang theory. If nothing is moving and Universe dies from entropy – you can't tell if there is time anymore, and if there is – it will make no difference as it lost all its parameters, so just by using Occam razor it is valid to say that there is no time by itself.

  13. @ryoung1111

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    16:10
    But the world itself is weird at normal scales, and in Newtonian paradigms, too. (Just ask Aristotle what he thinks of those Johnny-come-lately laws of motion!) It’s just that we’re so used to the weirdness, we don’t see it. For example, water is a very strange substance, unique in several ways. But its commonness has turned our judgments about it inside out, and made all the normal fluid behaviors into the perceived strange ones.

  14. @ryoung1111

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    This discussion doesn’t seem to take account of the possibility that the math of QFT could be like the decimal digits of pi: there are hundreds of formulas for pi, each of which—if it were the only one we were aware of—we would be content to consider as the “cause” of pi’s value. Aren’t these formulas like the interpretations of quantum theory? 14:30

  15. @MrPrincePinocchio

    September 22, 2026 at 2:10 am

    From a metaphysical perspective I'd agree with his position of time. Whether time fundamentally has to be temporal is not necessarily obvious. Though, that a forward progression of having affected something in whatever realm such entity finds itself, is more likely than not necessary. Implying that time is likely fundamental to at least our reality.

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