Questionable Questions in Analysis and Synthesis

Frank Wilczek says that the question of precisely when a radioactive nucleus will decay has been “rendered questionable by quantum mechanics.” Apparently, most physicists take that for granted. However, using quantum mechanics as the reason we physicists can’t solve complex subatomic problems is simply too convenient. We can just as easily think of classical, deterministic problems that exhibit the same statistical characteristics as subatomic problems do. As an example, I offer a gedanken experiment: the radioactive wiffle ball.

Take a baseball-sized wiffle ball, place a BB inside, and shake it vigorously. After a time, the excited wiffle ball will emit a BB and thus become stable. Repeat the experiment thousands of times, and you will observe that radioactive wiffle balls have a half-life. Should an outside observer assume that the internal processes of the wiffle ball are random? No, what we have is a deterministic problem with an infinite number of initial conditions. The behavior is describable only statistically, but is not due to random processes. Statistical behavior at any level is not proof of randomness in the physical world.