I’m floating with them. Unknowingly bound to one another, we exist across hallways, in shared glances and brief conversation. Entangled by invisible histories we are yet to understand.
Quantum theory holds such intellectual and poetic promiscuity, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to investigate its potential. The poetic promise is undeniable: liquid forces bubble beyond my understanding, entwined particles bind across space/time and indivisible quantum states operate before measurement. Considering the destabilization of straight Newtonian physics, it’s no surprise to those who know me that I associate this fluid rupture as a queer occurrence. Here I am to test that hypothesis per say, with two transcribed discussions as follows: one with Physics student Hugo Sebesta, and another with dear queer friend Casper Wallen. In parallel correspondence, I hope to cross pollinate the fields, asking, what could a quantum queer theory look like? The following piece is in continual development, so thank you for reading its blossoming state <3
Meeting Hugo
To give a summarized description of quantum entanglement: Entangled quantum states hold a shared ‘superposition’. This superposition is indeterminable, as any attempts of individual measurement result in a collective change of properties. From their superposition, measured particles across the system have their properties cemented. This cemented property is observable, but unlike the superposition which lay before. Hugo uses a coin analogy to explain:
H: Okay, you have two coins. You know one is head and one is tails, and you go “great”, and you give them to people. If they look at them, and go, “Oh, my coin is a head” – then they must know the other one is tails, because that's how it was set up.
J: This is referring to a particle spinning up or down, right?
H: Well, you can apply this to basically any system, like a particle moving is an infinite dimensional system, because each kind of location will be one dimension. But spin is a really nice one. Everything is a superposition or sum of every little state. So,with spin systems, there's only two levels. So, it's a sum of two things.That's easy to keep track of, which is why we often talk about it, because it's easily seen.
The reality is that when you measure something, it must be one of the two, it must be either up or down. It doesn't make sense to measure somewhere in the middle, particularly because we usually represent those states with complex numbers. And you cannot observe a complex number. If you can, then –
J: you're doing something wrong!
H: You’re doing - I don't know what you'd have to - It's unbelievable. Un-imaginable. So eventually, it must collapse into one of two things and that happens when you observe it. What happens before you observe it is not determinable, really.
Quantum states are unobservable and undeterminable. They cannot be determined via a sum of individual parts. They exist as an unknowable amalgamation of combined states. Despite Hugo’s generous explanations and patient corrections, he emphasizes the importance of math, the inadequacy of language and quantum’s fundamentally unknowable reality.
H: there's kind of this philosophical thing where there's basically no way to look at what's happening at that scale. There's really no way to put it into our words, the best we can do is with maths. So it's almost a question of, is it a meaningful question to ask what is happening? Because if it's not something we can intuit… It's just nothing like what we see around us… at all.
We've had this whole tradition of 1000s of years of classical physics, we looked at the world a certain way, and, it just doesn't work. Finally, we get down and look at these results,and they're just wrong. So, we have to use really abstract ideas. We can’t even look at it, really, we can only ever observe indirectly – like you talk about spins, no one has ever observed a spin.
J: (laughing in disbelief) Oh my god!
The math still confounds me, the clarity of the theory is hazy and humbling. Despite the elusiveness of quantum theory’s description, Hugo’s account will, I hope, provide a rich lens for queer cross pollination.
Meeting Casper
Casper and I went to high school together. We found each other when I was in year 10, and he in year 11.
J: I remember clocking you and feeling – I think there was a little intimidation or scariness, not from you as a person, but from your queerness. Does that make sense? I was getting close to something I had never gotten close to before.
C: Totally. I think I immediately wanted to become close with you. As we spoke more through theatre and drama stuff, that kind of became more obvious, it became more obvious not only on how much we connected on other issues, but also on how much we related in terms of experiences.
I invited Casper to chat to me about queer connection – specifically in a time in our lives when queerness was unmeasured – when we connected across year groups for reasons we didn’t understand at the time.
J: You may have heard of the idea that queer people find each other before formally being ‘out’. How the queer group is the queer group before anyone knows they are queer. Do you have any experience of that, or maybe a reason why that is?
C: I think it has to do with a few things. There’s already the fact that even prior to coming out, all of us know that there’s something different about us. We know that we are not the same as others, or to what we see in society or within media or even within our peergroups. So I think there is already that otherness. That’s where queer people, especially queer people of our generation, where we did look to the internet, find groups on the internet. Which again, weren’t queer specific at all, but were about all different topics and interests that somehow appealed to queer people.
I think that the reason why so many queer groups become friends before they even realize they are queer is because of the connection that is found because of that underlying, subconscious otherness. That somehow is always there, but we don’t know what it is, and I think that it’s that otherness and that feeling that one can be outside or an outsider, but with others.
J: You speak about not knowing what this difference is, or its ill-defined or maybe you don’t have the language yet. It’s such an interesting state, and I think a state that I forget about now that I’m in a place where I do have the language, and boundaries and definitions that I can operate and situate myself within. But I forget there was that point – such a hazy gut feeling that in the end drew us together.
Convergence
I haven’t properly seen Casper for two years. It’s nice to think we’re still spinning in alignment with each other. There are properties which link us, and we can pick up where we left off. Thinking of our beginning, perhaps Casper and I’s gut feeling is a shared state of undeterminable liquid identity. Felt across time and space, the “unknowable subconscious otherness” drew us together and held us in tandem – and continues to do so. I love the idea that we were both feeling the same unknowable force in isolation. Then through correspondence we could situate one another and begin to understand ourselves.
The idea that particles change fundamentally when measured could easily reinforce coming closeted/coming out binaries if applied to our queer lives. Rather than perfectly reflect the processes of scientific understanding, I think quantum queer theory instead permits my continued uncertainty. I now realize this permission falls at the center of my inquiry. To see the fluid, difficulty of queerness reflected in nature is euphoric. My unknowing is material – and a vital component of my being. I recognize the irony of trying to decenter language and measurement through language and measurement. To describe this shared super position of ours is to misrepresent it – to give names and draw borders is to ignore its state beyond language. We felt it in our gut, we sensed it in ourselves and in each other. I mentioned that I’d forgotten what this ‘unmeasured’ state felt like now that I had the words to situate myself. But even with the words, I still don’t know. I still struggle to understand and communicate my ever-shifting relationship to queerness – and I hope it stays that way.
Thank you to the ever-eloquent Casper and Hugo for being so generous with your time. I couldn’t have done it without you<3
Love, Josh.
