Our classical intuition is no good in a quantum Universe. To make sense of it, we need to learn, and apply, an entirely novel set of rules.
The most remarkable fact about the Universe is simply that it can be understood at all. The universe, for all its complexity, can be reduced to its simplest, most fundamental components. If you can determine the underlying rules, laws, and theories that govern your reality, then as long as you can specify what your system is like at any moment in time, you can use your understanding of those laws to predict what things will be like both in the far future as well as the distant past. The quest to unlock the secrets of the universe is fundamentally about rising to this challenge: figuring out what makes up the universe, determining how those entities interact and evolve, and then writing down and solving the equations that allow you to predict outcomes that you have not yet measured for yourself.
It’s an idea that makes perfect sense, and applies very well to our classical notions of reality. Newton, Maxwell, and even Einstein would all be quite happy with these ideas, but when it comes to our quantum reality — including the questions of what makes up the Universe and how the laws of nature…
