What does "double slit" experiment mean to you?

[SaltyNuts]

You know, the one where a single electron is shot through a slit or a couple of slits, and, if a measuring device observes it when it goes through the slit(s), said measuring device, and a screen measuring device behind it where the electron hits, shows a single electron going through the slits and hitting the screens behind them, but if is NOT observed as it goes through the slit(s) it instead creates a wave pattern on the measuring device behind it, which wave pattern shows the probabilities of where the electron could have hit given its wave function. A single, unobserved election is apparently EVERYWHERE ALONG it wave function until it is "observed", then said wave function collapses and it is located at a single point.

What is your take on this?

1. This shows there are trillions and trillions (vast understatement) of universes out there, all branching out based on the collapse of each wave function in all the different ways they could collapse.

2. This shows that the universe was "programmed" to save time and/or energy or effort - the creator said "just let shit stay in wave function until it matters at all to SOME observer, don't worry about collapsing it before that because it makes no difference".

3. Science just hasn't figured this out really, and once they do, some totally different, and logical explanation that is not so completely weird, will prevail.

4. Alternate theory?

Let me know!

 

[brianmanahan]

needs a poll

2

even massive objects have a de broglie wavelength, its just really tiny

 

[SaltyNuts]

2 is what I say as well brianmenahan. Its veeeeeery interesting, the exact type of thing that you would think a programmer might put into effect if he/she/it were creating a simulated universe... more evidence I believe that we are living in one...

 

[IronWing]

2 is what I say as well brianmenahan. Its veeeeeery interesting, the exact type of thing that you would think a programmer might put into effect if he/she/it were creating a simulated universe... more evidence I believe that we are living in one...

How would the double slit experiment look different if we weren’t in a simulated universe?

 

[SaltyNuts]

How would the double slit experiment look different if we weren’t in a simulated universe?

??? The particle would simply go through as a particle whether or not its being observed. Or, hell, even as a wave whether or not its being observed. But having it go one way if its being observed, another if its not, seems to indicate that someone, or some thing, made it that way as, say, programming "lazyness"... "just make the wave function collapse when it really matters"...

 

[BarkingGhostar]

It was Physics trying to explain two women, one cup theory.

 

[IronWing]

??? The particle would simply go through as a particle whether or not its being observed. Or, hell, even as a wave whether or not its being observed. But having it go one way if its being observed, another if its not, seems to indicate that someone, or some thing, made it that way as, say, programming "lazyness"... "just make the wave function collapse when it really matters"...

Programming one result or another is easy peazee, programming a truly random function is hard as hell. Laziness doesn’t explain the double slit experiment.

 

[brianmanahan]

2 is what I say as well brianmenahan. Its veeeeeery interesting, the exact type of thing that you would think a programmer might put into effect if he/she/it were creating a simulated universe... more evidence I believe that we are living in one...

once we figure out how to break the PRNG for nuclear decay, we'll pwn the universe

 

[SaltyNuts]

Thanks

Programming one result or another is easy peazee, programming a truly random function is hard as hell. Laziness doesn’t explain the double slit experiment.

Well, that's why I was just trying to use "lazyness" as one possible view of it. So we could take your view - instead of the universe having the most simple, straightforward explanation - i.e. the electron is EITHER a particle OR a wave, it has a much more unique, and harder to program, aspect to it - it is one or the other depending on whether its being observed! Still, seems to me to be at lease some indication we are living in a simulated universe.

 

[SaltyNuts]

once we figure out how to break the PRNG for nuclear decay, we'll pwn the universe

Are you referring to radioactive decay appearing to be totally random? Assuming it is totally random, how would be break it? And how would that help us pwn the universe? Harvest the decay energy or what not?

 

[IronWing]

One theory is that the universe contains only one electron that really gets around.

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

 

[pete6032]

Why did I have to scroll through so many replies before seeing this?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Option 4. Because delayed choice quantum eraser.

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

Why did I have to scroll through so many replies before seeing this?

I was asking the same thing. Shocked that it wasn't the first reply and 100 times more shocked when it wasn't in the first ten.

 

[SaltyNuts]

Option 4. Because delayed choice quantum eraser.

Do go into more detail DAPUNISHER, I am intrigued!!!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Do go into more detail DAPUNISHER, I am intrigued!!!

From reading around (Tommy Boy - I have free time) experimental quantum optics is really snowballing. Now, if I get any of this wrong, and this being ATOT, Smithers will release the hounds. But hey, they gotta eat too.

Some guy named Walker (Hello Mr. Fancy Pants!) proposed the thought experiment about delayed choice. The Kim experiment that I mentioned, extrapolated on that. With your classic double slit, the explanation comes down to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. I.E. you don't have measuring equipment delicate enough to avoid disturbing the system it is measuring. Anyways, Kim shoots photons through the double slit, but they don't get to just do their thing, nope! They enter a beta-barium borate crystal at either point A or B, depending on which slit. Okay, now that we have one of the god damned infinity stones The infinity stone takes that photon and re-emits it at the same point as a pair of non classical entangled photons that take off in opposite directions. And apparently you can measure the one to figure out the other's path. Then they have the reflectors -

The left side records the which-way info, the right side the interference pattern. Directly quoting the article I read, where that diagram also came from "However, in this experiment, the “which-way” information of the particles is found without disturbing their wave function. The reason for the interference loss, is the quantum information contained in the measuring apparatus, by means of the entanglement correlations between the particles and the path detectors. The experiment shows that if such quantum information is afterwards erased from the system, then the interference reappears (which would be impossible in the case of a perturbation)."

The article then concludes with "when D1/D2/D3/D4 are triggered, we find interference in the correlated subsets of past D0 records undergoing future erasure of the which-way information."

That is where things get stranger yet. It implies backward causation. But evidently some smarty pants named Eberhard proved a theorem that if the currently accepted equations for relativistic quantum field theory are correct, that it's basically impossible to violate causality using quantum effects. And some other crap about conditional probabilities (Trump voice - Not cool, bigly boring) The whole "Effect proceeding cause" thing is way more exciting to me.

There is a bunch of other stuff going on in this field, and I for one, am looking forward to seeing? just how brain melting things get.

 

[ondma]

my first though as well

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

2. This shows that the universe was "programmed" to save time and/or energy or effort - the creator said "just let shit stay in wave function until it matters at all to SOME observer, don't worry about collapsing it before that because it makes no difference".

This. We literally employ this concept right now in world generation/scene rendering, no reason to think our programmers wouldn't employ it to save on CPU cycles.

 

[amrnuke]

3 or 4

The wave-particle duality may have some dependency on Higgs field interactions (at the very least, mass). Maybe this also correlates with the "collapse" of wave-particle duality when measured?

The Higgs field is what explains the variance in weak and EM forces in our current cool universe. The Higgs field imparts mass on quarks, neutrinos, etc. but not on photons which are massless. For composite particles like protons, their mass still consists of the sum of their constituent particles (e.g. quarks) which comes from Higgs field interactions, but that accounts for only 1% of the mass, the other 99% coming from quantum chromodynamic binding energy (strong force).

Photons are essentially (or totally) massless and do not interact with the Higgs field. They exhibit strong wave-particle collapse when we detect them in the double-slit experiment. Tennis balls have huge masses, and interact heavily with the Higgs field. Tennis balls exhibit no substantial wave-particle duality. In between, it's hard, but we've detected wave-particle duality with particles several hundred atoms in size.

With respect to long-standing attempts to detect a particle's presence without collapsing its waveform, we've found that things aren't either 100% particle or 100% wave, that is, there isn't really collapse, it's a varying state of effect with a lot of other weird stuff (see the above discussion on the quantum eraser). When we develop more delicate equipment, we can get an interference pattern somewhere in between wave and particle, and the more delicate the detection method, the closer it gets back to that wave pattern. The more heavy-handed the detection method, the closer we get to particle pattern.

It seems like this makes sense if the particles' mass (or, more interestingly, Higgs field interaction) has a big effect on the result of the test in some way, though just because it makes sense, doesn't mean it's right. But at least there is consistency to the results that scale with particle size.

What we need to know is how it scales, and whether it scales better with mass or with Higgs-derived mass.

Overall it seems the more a thing interacts with the Higgs field or gravitational field, the more deterministic (consistent with our "expected" result) its experimental results are.

My question, going from observation to understanding, would be to think of reasons why this is:

1) When we observe a photon, we are obviously interfering with it, even if in some small way. Does the sharp wave-particle collapse come as a result of the photon having no Higgs field or gravitational interaction? If this is true, could we define such interactions further by seeing how much a delicate detection method affects the wave-particle collapse of particles of varying sizes? That is, if a very delicate method for detecting which slit a proton went through is found, and has almost no effect on its interference pattern, if we use the same detection method on an electron, will it produce a larger effect on its interference pattern because it is less massive?

2) How does the interference cause a particle to stop behaving like a wave? Is it because a detection method adds energy, or filters, or modifies the particle in some way? If so, how?

3) If you polarize the light before the double-slit experiment, does it change the results? Does it change how the photon is affected by detection?

It's very curious, but at least it's consistent. Does not at all seem random. And when things aren't random, we can find patterns and explanations, given enough time, then develop hypotheses, do experiments, and come away with solid theories.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Option 5 -- Lets all pull up a chair and a bowl of salty peanuts and crack open the last keg that is in the Lifer Recreation room......

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I'm sticking with my interpretation.