The professor opened his lecture on quantum mechanics with the statement that people who said they understood it were not telling the truth, and he ended his lecture by saying, “I hope you’re now as confused about quantum theory as I am.”

My professor was repeating this story at the end of his lecture on quantum theory, which was, fittingly, the last class of the semester. Fittingly because how can you top quantum theory, especially when you (read I) can’t even define quantum theory.

Here are a few lines from my notes: “Because the measured electron is radically different from the unmeasured electron, it appears that we cannot describe this particle (or any other) without referring to the act of observation.”

Quantum mechanics both befuddles and ignores the Newtonian world view. Quantum theory “challenges our intuitions by having conscious observation actually create the physical reality.” It’s the stuff of science fiction. Only it’s not fiction. It’s the “most stunningly successful of all the theories in science; not a single one of its predictions has ever been wrong.”

From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr, who posits that there is no deep reality; that the world we see around us is real but floats on a world that is not as real. From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation number two, that reality is created by observation and there is no reality without observation.

From quantum has flowed the many worlds theory, the idea that innumerable parallel universes as real as our own exist. The fact that I’m writing a post on quantum mechanics is all the proof I need of the many worlds theory.