Trevor Abes: Writer

10. According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the inability to simultaneously predict your and your lover’s locations and velocities means that, whether still or moving, spicing up the relationship is already implicit in the universe.

9. Spreading out like a wave comes in handy during lapses in judgement, because it allows you to consider or “try out” all the options at hand before compacting into a particle when it’s time to take responsibility for your actions.

8. Because you can only predict probabilities at the quantum mechanical realm of atomic and subatomic particles, you can never really win, no matter the argument.

7. There are minor temperature variations across the sky and as far back in spacetime as when it was cold enough for atoms to fire up their nuclei. These variations are leftovers from the formation of planets and galaxies billions of years ago. Analogously, that thing you did in the late 80’s that your partner still brings up to prove a point, even though it has nothing to do with said point, is not going away any time soon.

6. A quantum is the minimal amount of any physical entity that can be involved in any interaction. It’s a packet of energy, a cautionary tale, the birthday/anniversary home appliance of physics.

5. Hamilton’s action principle says that physical systems evolve to minimize the action. You don’t run home when you can walk. You tee off from a par 5 with a driver instead of a 9 iron. When your lover asks if s/he looks fat, you say nay.

4. One of the many claims of quantum mechanics is that we do not live in a deterministic universe, that causality, on the smallest known scales (electrons colliding), is not fixed but uncertain, whereas macroscopic examples of causality (billiard balls colliding) only seem deterministic because of how they appear to human eyes. This is why grand gestures like trips and diamonds and designer digs sometimes do not go as far as cooking dinner or sweeping house.

3. According to quantum entanglement, two particles that interact physically, adopt the same state, then become separated will exhibit correlated values for the same measurement (position, momentum, energy, etc), no matter how far apart they happen to be. If a particle is found to be spinning in the clockwise direction, its entangled partner, whether a foot or a million miles away, will be found to be spinning in the counter clockwise direction: thus the natural foundation of petty disagreements about the cleaning of dishes, the clearing of gutters, the bagging and subsequent disposal of trash, and the differences between men and women.

2. The grand intention behind quantum mechanics is to better describe the universe. Descriptions can be accepted or rejected at any point; they are never eternally true. They are only true until experimentation disproves them. It’s fair to say that science is down with you unsettling your preconceptions about life, love, death, down to the right kind of cheese for saltines, in the hopes that you’ll one day comprehend that stepping stones are made from very many mistakes.

1. The speed of light is absolute; it is not measured in relation to anything else like a moving car to the road, or a plane to the clouds. The speed of light just is how fast light goes. What about you does not depend on anything other than yourself?