(January 31, 2014 at 10:44 am)Cato Wrote: When the word quantum is used or quantum phenomenon are invoked as explanations for 'macro' level events.
Yes, I love it when people tell me how Quantum Mechanics proves the afterlife or other nonsense. Having studied Quantum Mechanics for years at University I don't feel in any way confident to proclaim anything of the sort (QM is not at all intuititve, is pretty complicated and I've forgotten a lot of it), yet without any knowledge of said subject they do.
Having said that there are macro level events that are reliant on quantum properties (e.g. Chandrasekhar limit for star collapse), but in a lot of cases you are right, it is totally mis-used. These is a reason QM is so difficult to comprehend - it doesn't occur at sizes that are a similar scale to us. In the same way, Special relativity wouldn't seem so weird either if we all ran around at near light speeds.
