When researchers say "observe" they actually mean "measure". And when you're working with sub-atomic particles, "measure" isn't some passive activity. It's an active thing. When you measure small particles you are applying some force upon them, changing them in some way from how they would otherwise act.
Imagine if you were tasked with measuring traffic on the other side of the planet, but you had no cameras. The only tool you had was a gigantic 30 ton, satellite-networked pendulum swinging across the highway. The only way you know if there are cars on the highway is if the pendulum thwacks into one of them. That's quantum particle physics.... I think.
Not exactly. Quantum physics applies no matter how you measure it. The double-slit experiment is an example of this: Photons moving through two slits will form a wave interference pattern on a detector plate, even though the detector doesn't affect the position of the photons beforehand.
It's more like: when you become aware of the results of a quantum measurement, you yourself become a part of the quantum system, and being a part of the system requires measurements to have real values. Whether you should interpret this as a wave-function collapse or branching into multiple parallel universes is up for debate though.
When you perform the measurement on which slit the particle passes through, then the measuring device is also part of the system and it affects it. The measurement reduces the degrees of freedom in the system so there are no longer two equivalent ways for the particle to pass through the slits (either A or B), but rather you now have a measured slit and an unmeasured slit. Since there are no longer multiple ways to achieve the same result, the is no longer interference due to equivalent probabilities.
Matt Stassler has a nice series of blog posts on this.
It gets even more interesting: to interfere in the double slit experiment, the light has to take a longer path for some points and light is really good at finding the shortest path. And, since you can extend the double slit experiment to infinite slits with infinitely thin blockers between the slits, you can leave away the slits entirely and still have a valid version of that experiment and get interference. It's just, that most interference is destructive.
Veritasium had a very interesting video about that recently and my extrapolation of this is that there is neither a collapse of wave functions nor multiple parallel universes.
My intuition says that the wave function is there after being "observed". There is no multiple possible outcomes, just very visible ones and a lot of destructive interfered ones.
However what i just wrote is not science but me extrapolating from science so don't take it for anything more than that. It somehow causes quantum physics to make intuitive sense for me so i like it. Nothing more than that.
Nerds!
Put my head where pendulum is for super powers, got it.
My favorite thing about quantum physics is that Schrodinger's Cat was presented as a criticism. It was the most ridiculous extension of quantum superposition that Schrodinger could come up with. But then all the quantum physicists went, "YES! That's a perfect way to explain it. Let's teach that to middle schoolers!"
Specifically a criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger’s thought experiment is intended to make a person consider where/when the wave function is supposed to collapse.
Pilot-wave theory is another interesting interpretation. I feel like it’s a much more “intuitive” interpretation.
Quantum physics doesn't make sense until you just let the math take you to the results and stop worrying about your intuition. You have to absolutely trust the math and work through the results as many times as you need to for them to make mathematical sense in spite of your intuition. Further, have some grace with yourself. It took us 7,000 years from the dawn of civilization to get to Aristotle, 2000 years to get from Aristotle to Newton, and 218 years to get from Newton to Einstein. In that time a lot of progress has been made to our understanding of physics, and a lot of the confusion about quantum physics is due to flawed understandings of the people who created it. Spin was literally thought to be rotational motion of the particle in the of
I remember explaining something regarding special relativity to my colleagues once, and they replied that I must be wrong because "That doesn't make sense at all". Of course it doesn't make sense, that's how you know I'm right!
Man, that's me with elertroweak unification. I didn't really understand the weak force to begin with, so it being unified with another is so far beyond my capacity I just have to call it magic
electroweak unification
Oh, that's easy! Just take your understanding of how spontaneous symmetry breaking works in QCD, apply it to the Higgs field instead, toss in the Higgs mechanism, and suddenly SU(2) × U(1) becomes electromagnetism plus weak force!
(/s)
Thanks for that. My eyeballs retreated into my skull and made their escape through my ears. They just texted me from florida.
superdeterminism gang represent ✌️
The thing is I agree with nearly every premise of superdeterminism. But the conclusions seem stretched.
I love the idea of not abiding to the strict assumptions set forth by Bell’s theorem. The idea that determinism doesn’t have to hide within the simple hidden variable model bell’s theorem disproves to be true. The idea that we are essentially always part of the experimental system. The questioning of the objective rational experimenter with free will ideal.
Yet I haven’t seen any serious mechanism explaining how the required correlations between experimenter choices and particle states could have been embedded in the universe’s initial conditions in such a finely tuned manner, given that experimentally, the outcomes are indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics.. I just can’t imagine how this could likely be the case without adding quasi-conspiratorial assumption.
I mean, effectively superdeterminism's natural conclusion is that time is an illusion. Everything that will be was already fixed at the start of the universe.
But turning this back on itself, what's the proposed mechanism for quantum wave collapse at superluminal speeds?
Our understanding is fundamentally flawed, but thankfully the math works!
Hidden-variable cult skulking in the background 🫥
Quantum Scientists: Hey, man, you just don't get it.
Hipster Artists: Hey, man, you just don't get it.
I was into quantum books until I read the book with word "quantum" in description that had a story about guy who imagines diamonds in his head and they appear in real world. After that I stopped reading quantum books.
It's "The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality" - it have very good reviews.
suspension of disbelief is a requirement
It's called "shut up and calculate"
The most important thing I've ever been told about quantum is "shut up and calculate." Results don't seem physical? That's quantum. Results don't make sense? That's quantum. Shut up and calculate
