Bob McGown - Climbing is a Quantum Experience!

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Bob McGown - "Climbing is a Quantum Experience"!

Climbing is a Quantum Experience
(While climbing with the American Alpine Club)
By Bob McGown, FRAS

I was in a sports bar in Golden, Colorado sampling micro brews and watching a World Series game with the St Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Red Socks with the board of American Alpine Club. We just had a hard day of climbing the Rincon Wall in Eldorado Canyon. Our rope guns, climbing leaders, Phil Powers and Charlotte Fox had abandoned us and I brought up the subject of quantum mechanics as related to a sports event. I was rambling on about quantum properties and baseball and Allison Osius (AlliO) called me a ‘nerd’. But really, what do baseball, rock climbing & quantum mechanics have in common? The answer is to follow:

Can we tie in quantum logic and classical logic and understand an event whether in base ball or rock climbing? Classical logic describes the world we live in, while quantum logic is the statistical logic of the quantum world.

Probably the biggest difference between the logic of the quantum world and the logic of the everyday world is that in the quantum world, the observer affects the out come of the event. In one of the many urban legends concerning him, the great baseball player and coach, Yogi Berra, and two umpires observed a pitch coming across the plate. The first umpire said it was inside the box. The second umpire said it was outside the box. Then Yogi Berra scrutinized the pitch and said “Wait a minute boys, it ain’t anything until I see it.” In base ball as well as quantum mechanics, the act of observation may affect the outcome of the event.

Rock climbing is a technical sport where style is judged. The ascent in pure form, whether roped or free solo, is a sequence of moves. The grace, balance, technical skill, and speed are observed and compared. If a technique is done in a continuous free style, it is considered a red point. An observer might judge style, technique, and other effects of gravity upon the climber. The observation of the peers may affect the outcome. Like in baseball, there is overlap and uncertainty in the game. Two umpires observe the same event and may have different opinions.

In climbing, a sequential series event will become a catalyst to bring about the frame reference for the time sequence known as the ascent. A continuous free ascent, the red point is the act of the call like in baseball. The umpire calls “two balls and a strike” The red point would be considered a hit or a walk whether it was done on sight. (Armchair umpire) The batter achieves his goal to get on base and later like a quantum leap, steal a base and achieve is goal of the point game, thus completing the ascent.

The laws of quantum mechanics are not deterministic laws. They are probabilistic in nature. They don’t give definite answers, just probabilities. The characteristic of quantum mechanics has troubled many physicists. One suggestion is that quantum mechanics is probabilistic because we don’t have the final explanation of the quantum world. We may find that there was a deterministic theory hiding there all along. This is known as the hidden variable theory. There are certainly hidden variables in rock climbing. Ascending a climb, there might be moss on the rock or an expanding flake. Yet the hidden variable may affect the red point and the climber is considered out, sometimes affecting the nature of a first ascent.

One interpretation of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is the many worlds interpretation. In the many ‘worlds interpretation’ even though one out come is chosen, all possible outcomes are actually realized with the ones not chosen in our universe, becoming reality in parallel universes. In rock climbing, the rock climber makes it to the summit and descends safely. Or the rock climber may be not able to make it to the summit or descend. The climber may not reach the summit and is forced to descend. In each situation a different time line is taken. Rock climbers carefully use their skill to create a specific reality that faces them on each climb. Over time in alternative universes, the rock climber will experience all possible outcomes of each climb.

Another key aspect of quantum mechanics is the uncertainly principle. You can not know the values of certain pairs of variables to one hundred percent certainty. In the art of climbing and baseball, the event is a series of compounding variables where the statistical probably may or may not over ride the desired out come of the individual. An unknown error factor of perhaps 2% is one of the uncertainties that may affect the outcome of the event. The more information you have, the less the uncertainty of errors. However as in quantum mechanics you may never have complete certainty.

Another strange phenomenon of quantum mechanics is non- locally. In QM particles may affect each other from a distance without any physical connection. In climbing, the individual climbers may ascend and leap frog like a machine. As if driven by one collective mind like ants or termites, they work in unison toward a final goal.

It is difficult to describe events in the context of classical physics and QM, so scientists sometimes describe events in sequences of complexity and emerging behavior. In some ways rock climbing or baseball is a game of emerging behavior. If some one were to watch the event unfold, over time they could deduce the rules of the game.

In quantum mechanics you don’t know any thing for sure. There are limits on what you do know and when you can know it. For example: if you know where you are going, you have no idea where you are. Or if you know where you are, you have no idea where you are going. In the world of sub atomic particles, there are only likelihoods and approximations. Are the uncertainties of the macroscopic world the faint echoes of the fundamental principles of uncertainty? Reflecting on the vertical ballet of the stone master’s reality, it is the world of classical and quantum mechanics that are part of the climber’s mind journey in the parallel universes that climbers exist.

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Note: Bob is a Renaissance Man: He is a rock climber and tradtional mountaineer, father, electrician, astronomer, author, cement finisher and more. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Bob McGown, American Alpine Club Pacific North-West Chair, sent me this latest story. His most recent story, "The Space Geometry Climb" was an adventure up the slopes of Mt. Hood with Arlene Blum and others. He led this climb the early alpine morning after his two-day effort constructing a pad for a donated telescope on the top of Pine Mountain. I was tired out from the work and all the photographs, but Bob drove over to Mount Hood that night for this climb the next morning with Arlene Blum. Photos of the Pine Mountain Astronomical construction can be found here. More about Arlene Blum can be found here!
--Webmeister Speik