- #1
StevieTNZ
- 1,933
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Hi there,
Here is my email to Bruce Rosenblum, author of Quantum Enigma, his reply below. But I was wondering if someone could elaborate more on what I'm asking as I'm utterly confused.
Reply from Bruce:
"All decoh does is make interference impossible, FAPP. Just FAPP! A mixture FAPP. If your happy with FAPP, decoh solves the measurement problem."
Email to Bruce:
I am racking my brain over trying to understand decoherence… I was wondering if you could please explain it to me in layman terms, or maybe you had a document on decoherence for the non-scientist or point me to a website that would explain it… I know you say in QE that it doesn’t really solve the measurement problem and that consciousness is still encountered, but how? I can understand that if a wavefunction can be written for a system + environment, that it’ll follow QM and QM doesn’t say it’ll collapse – and if QM holds at all times the macroscopic object and environment shouldn’t collapse, which is reasoning given by a emeritus professor of physics. I see written on pg. 191 in QE that even though the object looks wholly in one box, it can still be considered to be a superposition so wouldn’t the same be true for the macroscopic object even if interacting with the environment? But other books are saying the macroscopic object is a mixture, what would mixture mean and how would it relate to superposition’s?
Here is my email to Bruce Rosenblum, author of Quantum Enigma, his reply below. But I was wondering if someone could elaborate more on what I'm asking as I'm utterly confused.
Reply from Bruce:
"All decoh does is make interference impossible, FAPP. Just FAPP! A mixture FAPP. If your happy with FAPP, decoh solves the measurement problem."
Email to Bruce:
I am racking my brain over trying to understand decoherence… I was wondering if you could please explain it to me in layman terms, or maybe you had a document on decoherence for the non-scientist or point me to a website that would explain it… I know you say in QE that it doesn’t really solve the measurement problem and that consciousness is still encountered, but how? I can understand that if a wavefunction can be written for a system + environment, that it’ll follow QM and QM doesn’t say it’ll collapse – and if QM holds at all times the macroscopic object and environment shouldn’t collapse, which is reasoning given by a emeritus professor of physics. I see written on pg. 191 in QE that even though the object looks wholly in one box, it can still be considered to be a superposition so wouldn’t the same be true for the macroscopic object even if interacting with the environment? But other books are saying the macroscopic object is a mixture, what would mixture mean and how would it relate to superposition’s?