Most of us who took high school physics are familiar with the double slit experiment. Which has been repeated countless times to yield the same results. But there is a take off on that experiment, that has its own implications, and that is what this post is about. So follow along... Now before we lay this out, remember, Feynman is famous for saying, that no physicist really understands quantum mechanics, all of it, and so not to worry yourself with trying to have a total understanding, so just work the equations, and leave it at that. And of course most physicists have done that since the founders discovered it. But several of the founders were not content just to work the equations, and thought deeply about the implications of what was behind the equations. And that is what I want to do here, to think about the implications, and get you intelligent men to write about those. Ok, let me lay out the experiment, which has also been repeated many times... We are gonna run two double slit experiments, and both will have detectors at the slits, and both detectors will be recording information, data. The screens which will illustrate the results of each experiment will also be recorded, and no human being will see the results of either. It will just be recorded, which can be looked at later on. So we make two identical runs, and each is recorded. These are kept, and no one looks at the results,for, lets say 5 years. So 5 years later we then will complete the experiment and it will be done as follows... On the first run, we will call up the data, and look only at the results that is on the screen. And as expected, we see a particle pattern, which is no surprise, for we had detectors at the slits, which recorded that data. On the second run, before we look at the data on the screen, which should be showing a particle pattern too, since it is identical to the first run, instead before we look there, we erase the data taken by the detectors at the slits. We have not looked at that data, we just erase it. Now, when we do that, and then look at the data on the screen, we get the wave pattern!!! What are the implications of this? Now data is information. If the information is recorded, you get the particle pattern, but if it is erased, even if you recorded it 5 years ago, you get the wave pattern. I have my own idea of implication, but I do not want to influence anyone and am interested in what other brains come up with.
What the phenomena of particle wave interference demonstrates is that events in the present are actually correlated to potentialities in the future. It's not the normal cause-effect relationship we are used to conceptualizing. This is part of how nature upholds its laws, it has to limit what can happen before to prevent a violation of the laws in the future. This type of correlation can actually stretch across long distances and fairly long periods of time, in some instances. Scientists refer to this phenomena as "entanglement". It's not that two things are either "entangled" or are not, everything is actually entangled with everything else, it is just a matter of the degree to which it is entangled. When any two particles interact, or even if they will soon react in the future, they become entangled, but when these isolated two particles begin interacting with the outside environment, they quickly loose their entanglement, at least from the perspective of the outside environment.
Are you saying that the recording at the slits entangles the wave/particles, so that information is entangled with the wave/particles? That doesn't sound like two particles being entangled by an action of the scientist. In the case of the double slit, it's information and wave/particle being entangled. Yet the idea of information entangling with something makes sense when we see what happens in these double slit experiments. For you can move the recording of the information to the other side of the earth, and the experiment still yields the same results. As Einstein said, spooky action at a distance. I think Bohm and Hiley had another explanation of this?
I like that example! I think it's an example of how reality doesn't exist until we look at it. Just think. The past and the future are linked together, and in order for them not to be so linked you've got to cut the link in the middle or somewhere in between. I think this is a special, undescribed link between the photons of an event and all future forms that are affected by those photons. Even if that's results on a screen and not the original photons there's still a link there. What I think is that the photons flow outward, hit the sensor, and then there's a link back to that moment. The sensor sends an electron signal to the computer, but those electrons are another step back towards the original event. And so on and so forth until you pull it up years later. But the photon and the forces linking it flow across time and space. And as long as one exists they all exist concurrently in a continuous chained link. Unless, that is, you cut it in the middle before an observation takes place on any part of that chain. Then you break the link and the photons you see are new ones of the moment instead of the old linked ones.
Forget about the slits for a moment. All particles of light that have had their wave functions overlap in the past, or will have their wave functions overlap in the future, are entangled. The slits do not really do anything special. One of the interesting implications of this phenomena is that it could be potentially used to send information back in time from the future. Imagine knowing the information published on the stock market 1 second ahead of time, an automatic computer trading program could earn someone millions. Unfortunately the technology is not there at this time. There are many possible "interpretations" of the phenomena. All of them are equally valid (unless new evidence in the future proves otherwise). Wikipedia even has a page on it: Interpretations of quantum mechanics
Or it does exist, but we only see our reality. Why do you think you and I are both seeing the same words on this screen? It is because both your reality and my reality and entangled. Here is the really unsettling thing: From the perspective of someone else's reality what we think of as reality could still be in a state of superposition. That statement is really hyperbole, of course, and in reality it would be extremely difficult to separate something as large as two human beings from entanglement with the rest of the world. But theoretically, what I stated is valid, from the standpoint of three separate particles. The largest object scientists have been able to observe interference patterns from is bucky balls. Something I find notable is that light can still pass through a medium without becoming entirely entangled with that medium. For example, the double slit experiment still works under water.
But they can use electrons, instead of photons. And the slits are doing something different. One slit always yields particles. So there is something special going on with two slits. Right? It looks like to me, that the recorded information has to be taken into account. For if it is erased, before viewing screen data, the results change. So information is in someway linked to the photons or what other wave particle is used. And time nor distance affects this link, which looks to be non local. I am still trying to understand what Basil Hiley is saying about the double slit. LOL. Bohm was really good at making a novice understand what he was thinking. But beyond the mechanics of what is seen with this double slit experiement, there are other implications too. As Hiley asked, how does the wave particle know of the recorded information? He never offered up entanglement of information and wave particles. Perhaps this is where the idea of consciousness, not the consciousness of the experimenter looking at the recorded information from the slit, but of another consciousness seeing the information, or the lack of information, and this gives the results at the screen.
The first thing you need to do to understand these interference patterns is to abandon any traditional notion of cause and effect. I like the word correlation, because we can see there is a connection, but it does not necessarily imply a cause. One thing interference patterns demonstrate is that the particle-nature of a particle is correlated not just to the present wave function but also the future wave function of that particle. The particle may be small, but it exists within its wave function, which is much larger (and arguably does not really end at all). The wave function describes where that particle will be.
I also want to point out that entanglement never really ends. It is just that the entanglement gets entangled with our frame of reality in such a way that it changes the relationship between that original entanglement and our frame of reality. That is really the best way I can describe it. It is also an unanswered question whether the particle-nature of a particle in our frame of reality is the only real true location of that particle, or whether it is all relative. This is basically the many-worlds interpretation. One bizarre implication of this is that the wave function tells us that, even when the photon has been "measured" at one of the slits, there is still an interference pattern! It is just that this pattern is not observable to the same observer who "measured" the light. Of course, the person conducting the experiment need not actually "observe" the light, it is more a matter of information leaking out of the system through multiple interactions.
Yes reality exists but we can only perceive a small portion of it due to the limitations of our inputs and processing. Good example. So light can only be entangled with itself?
No, of course not. But apparently light can pass through water without getting entangled with it. Think about it, even in a vacuum the light still gets diffracted by the edges of the two slits, yet the superposition is still maintained. This is indeed very strange. I think perhaps the interaction is so small that other effects dominate. Effectively the photon passes through the water without any reaction at all. In quantum mechanics, it often tends to be all or nothing, so the probability of interaction would be exceedingly small. There must be something about the wave function that makes it reluctant to collapse. The real miracle is that information is not lost to the water about which path the photon takes. While this may seem very difficult to believe, this type of phenomena is not all that unusual in quantum mechanics. The water does slow the photon down though. It would be interesting to try to measure this, to see if some energy is imparted into the medium. A medium cannot slow the velocity of a wave without, at least transiently, taking on some of that velocity. Yet one potential path cannot take on energy without the other or the wave becomes "observed". It would be amazing if the medium through both paths were to take on energy, that would truly prove the particle took two separate paths at the same time, if confirmed. This is the type of question that could stump the best minds, I suspect. Edit: actually after thinking about this some more I realized that a medium can still slow a wave down without actually absorbing energy. The energy absorbed is transient and completely localized. So no information would be lost.
Yes. That poses another difficult question that I do not know the answer to. In the example I just gave above, light can travel straight through a medium and be slowed down by it, but not affect the medium in any way. But in many experimental setups that involve interference patterns they use mirrors. I do not know how a photon can reflect off a mirror and not impart some small amount of energy to it. (The same would be true of refraction, if the photon's path is altered, it has to impart some small amount of energy) Actually, after giving it some thought, I have never seen an actual single photon interference experiment that used mirrors to divert the possible paths of the photon. Perhaps it simply is not possible. Maybe when mirrors are involved you just need multiple photons to get any interference patterns.
Present condition: determinate. Known distribution tendencies. Present condition: indeterminate. Random probability distribution tendencies. This is the little picture reductionist mindset at work: try to figure out how the little particle or wave does its thing. It gets hairy when you try to say that the future is influencing the present, or that the past is porting knowledge of the future. While itÂ’s true that the rules of our space-time reality loosen up when crossing the reality boundary into the quantum domain, itÂ’s still awkward to try to correlate between the two. This is further complicated by the fact that our reality is a subset of the next level, nonphysical to us, where the rules make it a different ballgame. According to our good Dutch Uncle Tom Campbell, that level has ties to ours and can affect our reality. ThatÂ’s even more reason not to pretend that we can figure out from here what itÂ’s contributing to our mysteries. This state of affairs does offer some incentive towards gaining abilities to do whatever might broaden our horizons to where we can know more about those ties. Bingo. Simple digital information management that keeps it straight (logical and consistent). The pattern in real-time reflects the fact that it is now without a determinate source, i.e. not ever known even though the data once existed. My money is on Uncle Tom. He's been there. We should be immensely grateful that the experiment didnÂ’t turn out the way we expected, else 2015 might be just a minor updated version of 1920.
Yes Uncle Tom Campbell. Glad you like the simplicity of it, compared to other implications which are talked about. For those here that want to know what is being talked about with Campbell here, if you are really interested..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMIz_iJtzQ I agree with him as he starts the video in saying that the founders had a better idea of what was going on than many do today. But that might be because some people were wanting to get out of the consciousness idea, which is the simplest, IMO, and you could fit it on a postcard. It is bothersome to some, this consciousness factor. But what would replace it is far more complex, and one wonders if a simpler interpretation might be more believable, at the end of the day? Of course this would have other implications that some people just do not want to accept, I think.
Its highly interesting to ponder what if macro objects are somehow entangled unbeknown to our science. However now only virtual particles seem to have that fantastic trait. BTW I was under the impression that only particles in which certain laws are followed are entangled or can be entangled. Allow me an example? Most of the time when commenting about quantum entanglement its normally between something like two fermions (electrons) that were being 'measured' and were obeying certain processes throughout the measurement process. So according to my take we can not use just any electron and then choose randomly any other electron then claim they are (quantum) entangled. That statement (above) should be true surprisingly so, even if the electrons are from the same atom. (surprising...nah this that is the way of the QM world) reva
The last sentence in my reply should have read as; (surprising ?...nah, that is the way of the QM world) I went after coffee and forgot aout the edit time...
Like I previously stated, basically all particles in the universe are entangled to some degree. The important thing to point out here is that it is not simply a matter of whether two particles are entangled or whether they are not. Particles can be entangled to different extents and in different ways. For example, it is common knowledge that a certain property of two particles can be entangled, but not another property of those two particles. Another thing to point out is that entanglement appears completely different if the observer's frame of reference is entangled. Imagine if you were one of those two electrons that were entangled. What would your reality look like? You see, to an outside observer, things have not been decided yet, but when you are inside the entangled frame of reference, there is no ambiguity. This may sound extremely non-intuitive and impossible. For example, in the single-photon double slit experiment how can there be both an interference pattern and not an interference pattern? But it is important to point out, even if we observe one of the possible paths (make a measurement at one of the slits) so that we can no longer see an interference pattern, the pattern still exists. It is just we cannot see it from our frame of reference. To an outside observer who is not entangled with our reality, who effectively never "observed" the measurement, there would still be an interference pattern. This is hypothetical, of course, because in reality information easily leaks out, or things quickly get entangled. It is rather difficult to continue to keep a property of two particles entangled without it getting entangled with everything outside, at which time the "entanglement" is basically "broken". As soon as it is entangled with outside reality, saying that the two particles are "entangled" essentially becomes meaningless.
If we are talking from a philosophical perspective, I think our reality has inherent meaning, even if there is more beyond this present reality.
I don't disagree. But that doesn't change the fact that our reality is in fact a simulation. In essence, we're playing an MMORPG from the inside.
Or as Campbell believes, a Virtual Reality, with the Computer(Consciousness) outside it. Which is kinda like what some of the early founders thought. Campbell just worked it out in greater detail. And really, even Bohm would fall into this camp, minus some minor differences. Bohm was highly interested in Consciousness, as layed out in The Implicate Order. Like Campbell, Bohm was interested in the Totality.
It seems to suggest that the future is not all just determined by the past, as we have been led to believe. There is something about the fundamental structure of the existence of space-time that ties the future to the past, or that seems to tie future "potentialities" to the past, even if these potentialities never existed. To see how weird the phenomena of destructive interference is, imagine a wall with two doors. If one of the doors is open you can go through. But if both doors are open, you cannot go through. It is as if your two possible selves that went though either door got into an imaginary fight on the other side and prevented both of you from going forward.
Hi Anders Hoveland. Is that your theory or hypothesis? I am not asking to be unkind, its just that I know of no interpretation that makes that claim. Of course I only know the basics of the major interpretations of Quantum Theory.. Also, I was answering in the spirit of our discussion which included our realities being ‘entangled’ and other ideas that deviated from main stream theory. I too love to think outside the box. That said can you point me a source where it confirms all particles are quantum entangled, and like theories etc? Yes I touched on as well that in my reply to you. The quote from post #16; “I was under the impression that only particles in which certain laws are followed are entangled or can be entangled“. And here also from post #16 ; “For example, it is common knowledge that a certain property of two particles can be entangled, but not another property of those two particles. How can a frame of reference be entangled? Again that is new information. If I understand your question, you are asking what if I were an quantum sub atomic object, with quantum uncertainty removed ? If correct I think my reality would be unchanged, by that I mean I would not notice any change. That said do you interpret the macro universe (our physical universe as a whole) as being deterministic? Well my inference may differ from yours my friend. I say that because I think my interpretation of QT may be a little to quite a bit different than yours. For example I believe superposition is a real event and not just a mathematician concept or a measurement problem. Also I feel there are ontological OP systems built into our universe. The theistic implications are obvious. and continue to emerge at an astonishing rate. When you say the entanglement is broken do you mean the wave function has collapsed? If so we are closer to agreement. I feel our timeline in this universe acts like we are a quantum particle. We have free will in a predestined universe because of uncertainty allows that free will. Its not until an observer looks at our place on the timeline and place in the universe is the future time line ie the wave function collapsed forcing us to become a wave or a particle or in this case causes us to make a choice which determines our future until the next observation by the only entity that can observe such reference frames ie God. God is the observer IMO. Now of course all the above is just an idea, maybe just qualifies as a hypothesis, lol. Anyway I hope I haven’t mucked everything up! reva Richard Feynman; “No one understands quantum mechanics.” Indeed!
Or an advanced race could be playing us, having built the universe as a zoo. Or man may have sped up biological evolution with synthetic add-ons we were cyborgs then maybe he tired of a physical body and became a sentient plasma a form of energy or signal first inside a machine then later as free energy, lastly after a few billion years he became immortal with unlimited creative power, maybe he became God. With computer power increasing at an exponential rate and becoming so fast that relativistic effects are encountered it does not take too much imagination to think the above could happen. As far as reality goes its as strange as QM. We do not live in the present moment as the universe sees it, rather we perceive the past as the present so our senses can understand the world around us. Its also obvious to me that something is rotten in virtual Denmark. We should by now have a theory of everything (a TOE) and if QT is correct a we should already have a unified theory which merges classical physics seamlessly with quantum physics. But we don't, even with supercomputers CERNs and fermilabs. We witness our most cherished theories like the laws of gravity going awry in deep space acting directly opposite, repelling instead of attracting.....smell that? Its something rotten for sure! Well the cat is mewing (midnight is demanding I feed him)...I just hope he doesnt want a dog bone... reva
