Frightening Double Slit Experiment Interpretation

Aweffewa

I noticed a youtube video, where Thomas Warren Campbell, a physicist and author of the book trilogy My big TOE the last standing for Theory of Everything and apparently he also works for NASA, deducts some very disturbing things from a certain double slit experiment.

Here it is, I marked the beginning where the big words start rolling, just put it behind the youtube url ...

watch?v=GrL9kBx5jS4&feature=player_detailpage#t=714s

To summarize he makes the following assertions:

1. Reality is not objective

2. When used, a measuring device will not disturb the measurement of photons in the Double Slit Experiment. Something else does it.

3. A conscious observer by observing the particle [retroactively] changes it's distribution on the "wall". If a conscious observer, knows, just knows where the particle went, by looking at the measurement data (I remind you in his model the measurement does not interfere with the photons) he will alter what he is about to see when he checks the "wall" data.

I have read the Steinberg Double Slit Experiment from Science june 2011 and it seems very clear from that paper that one can measure the photon and get a diffraction pattern. So that seems to demonstrate that Thomas' whole premise is wrong, that the measurement truly was disturbing that which was being measured, until the Steinberg team found a way.

Well, is this guy Tom Campbell just full of it or ... I don't know why a physicist that works for NASA would jump to such wild conclusions. I don't feel good dismissing any idea without further review... Maybe I just don't get it?

Please help me get my head around this!

StevieTNZ

I doubt there was any universal agreeement over the experiment claiming knowing the trajectories of photons, and still produce interference. And from the top of my head, they only knew about the average trajectory all up, not for each individual photon. I think also from memory they did not claim the photon went through either slit.

Cthugha

Campbell is on the 'crackpot index', so to speak. I would not waste my time with that stuff.

Just two comments and ideas on why a physicist working for NASA might jump to such wild conclusions:

1) Being a good scientist in one field does not stop one from being a crackpot in a different discipline. There have even been Nobel prize winners who went astray.

2) Books containing wild sensational claims typically sell much better than well written books only containing facts and reasonable assumptions.