I guess this bothers me because isn't quantum theory supposed to explain the universe on a micro level? It seems to me that this is simply saying Quantum Theory is useless.
Cheers!
Ascended masters :eek:
Sounds pretty terrible. I think the idea is to posit as many non-metaphysical theories as possible because how the heck can you test anything else?
Cheers!
Edit: Your point about non-starter theories earlier in the thread strikes me as pretty important.
I think it may not be a good idea to think of "collapse" or "uncollapse" as pertaining to an individual electron cloud but rather look at it as a large collection of particles and their distribution on a detector screen. Collapse would be seen simply as the disappearance of an interference...
Nope, its pretty much a survey book. He's partial to certain theories (like String) and does try to give attention to possible theories where they are noteworthy...he didn't give any attention to this particular theory though - maybe he didn't think it noteworthy.
I would imagine the...
I disagree with this as far as it pertains to Brian Greene's book Fabric of the Cosmos. Mr. Greene made no claims about the original question in the book, it was simply my own thought derived from his explanation of the Scully/Druhl's experiments. It was a rather obvious thought to be honest and...
That sounds good, but only if you don't think about it too closely. What is which path information? It is when the data has "meaning" aka...knowledge. There are plenty of points in the experiment where the data has no meaning and we see the interference pattern...it is only when we are able to...
That seems to answer the delayed choice past/present question - or at least state this is acceptable wierdness. However, it still doesn't seem to address the fact that the final data depends on whether or not we know the which path (a real empirical effect)...except that it is "dangerous" to...
If you "look" away, how do you know they are gone?
Sometimes an electron can "behave" like a wave and sometimes it can "behave" like a particle but it is always an electron. Observation, depending on how you do it can interfere with the experiment...but its not going to make the nature of...
It does seem like a red herring doesn't it? How can nothing tangible (the "quantum information"), have a tangible effect on the experimental outcome? But that's exactly what this experiment implies and that's why I asked...swore I misunderstood the experiment. I assumed there was some hidden...
Amplitudes are not "real" things? I'm not sure I understand. It seems to me that an amplitude is an abstract representation of real data. I want to know why the data changes (and subsequently the amplitude) based simply (as far as I can see) on our knowledge of the which-path.
I guess I'm...
This is an excellent paper. They made a comment at the end of the paper:
This describes my question. Why is the information/knowledge the critical factor? Anyway, I need to think more about your response as it sounds promising, but not sure I understand it entirely yet.
Thank you!
I did not say there was magic (although I still think its wierd!) - I am simply wondering if there was an explanation. Obviously these are statistical values, but that's not what I'm asking. What I am asking is why do the stastical averages change depending on whether we know the which-path or...
Yes. I emphasized OUR KNOWLEDGE because that's what it seemed to me be the reason for the behavoir.
He (Brian Greene) basically describes the beam splitter experiments done by Scully and Druhl. They use different ways of determining the which path including tagging (and erasing) the spin (he...