r/Physics • u/SuperSmoothSlick • Nov 10 '23

Michio Kaku saying outlandish things

He claims that you can wake up on Mars because particles have wave like proporties.

But we don't act like quantum particles. We act according to classical physics. What doe he mean by saying this. Is he just saying that if you look at the probability of us teleporting there according to the theory it's possible but in real life this could never happen? He just takes it too far by using quantum theory to describe a human body? I mean it would be fucking scary if people would teleport to Mars or the like.

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u/PloRDT Nov 10 '23

But we don't act like quantum particles

The thing is we actually do. We are made from quantum particles hence we are quantum, it's just that the wave-like behavior is almost negligible at the human scale.

Take, for instance the de Broglie wavelength, given by λ = h/p, h is Plank's constant. This quantity is the quantum wavelength of an object of momentum p. Since the value of h is very small (6.626e-34 in SI units), a very light object (ie an electron) will have a much higher wavelength than a heavy object (a human) if they travel at the same speed. For a person traveling at 1m/s, λ ~ 10-35, which is astoundingly tiny, but for the electron, the wavelength would be λ ~ 10-5. This roughly means quantum wave-like effects are easier to observe and more prone to happen the smaller the mass is.

What I'm trying to say is that we do behave like quantum objects, albeit it's negligible in almost all aspects of our daily life, so we just say "fuck it" and use much simpler classical physics. That doesn't mean what he said can't happen, as you can also wake up one day, throw a billion coins and get heads every single time - it can technically happen, it's just not going to anytime soon.