There Is No Quantum World

Physicists, philosophers, enthusiasts, and Marvel scriptwriters all love to imagine the so-called quantum world or quantum realm. This place is meant to represent the hypothetical experiences of a human that has been miniaturized to subatomic scales. While at times amusing, with questions like, “What’s it like to be entangled?” or “What does being in superposition feel like?”, the science doesn’t provide a tangible world one can step into to explore and answer these questions. There are two reasons why. One is obvious, and the other is much more subtle.

Honey, I Shrunk The Grad Student

The concept of shrinking a human, depicted in various science fiction scenarios, confronts numerous scientific, biological, and physical barriers — we’d have more than a few small problems. (Okay, fine, no puns.) Consider the square-cube law. If you shrink something by a factor of 1,000 in volume, the surface area only shrinks by a factor of 100. While it is often claimed that this would provide superhuman strength, it would probably simply halt all cellular functions and biochemical reactions in the body.

The way our lungs work is based on the diffusion of oxygen across membranes into our bloodstream. If our lungs were shrunk, the amount of oxygen they could intake would be drastically reduced, leading to insufficient oxygen supply for the body.