Only True Science Nerds Get This Joke

Five quantum physicists are in a car. Heisenberg is driving like he is in The Matrix. Schrödinger is in the front seat waving at the other cars. Einstein and Bohr are in the back arguing while Everett sits between them daydreaming about another universe.

They get pulled over. The officer walks up to the driver’s side and asks Heisenberg, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

“No, but we know exactly where we are,” Heisenberg replies.

The officer looks confused and says, “You were going 120 km/h!”

Heisenberg throws his arms up and cries, “Great! Now we’re lost!”

The officer looks over the car and asks Schrödinger if they have anything in the trunk. “A cat,” Schrödinger replies.

The officer opens the trunk and yells, “This cat is dead!”

Schrödinger angrily replies, “Well it is now.”

Bohr says, “On the bright side, a moment ago, we didn’t have a position, speed, or a cat. Now we have all three!”

Fed up, the officer says, “I just want to know how many of you I need to bring back to the station!”

“Roll dice for it?” Einstein asks.

“That’s it. I’m bringing you all in!” The officer yells.

Everett jumps in the driver’s seat, hits the gas, and drives the car off a cliff. The officer can hear him trailing off, “We’ll survive somewhere in the multiverse!”

Not laughing? Read on.

Heisenberg

Heisenberg’s name is attached to probably the first conceptual hallmark of quantum physics to reach popular culture: the uncertainty principle. Colloquially, the uncertainty principle has been understood to be the incontrovertible fact that some things can never be known. This doesn’t sound so profound. In fact, it sounds a bit lame.

However, there is a sense in which you, more than anyone in history, should find that a limit on knowledge is empowering. Whereas waves and energy seem like properties of the world independent of us, uncertainty pertains to knowledge and that means we are back at the center of it. And nothing delights humans — especially 21st-century humans — more than being the center…