Busting the myth of the observer: the double slit experiment

In summary: it's been pretty much abandoned, as it doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the universe.
  • #1
steviereal
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We all remember the animations describing the double slit experiment to the public, laying out the foundations of the mysterious quantum world. Now take the part when we try to determine which slit the electron went through. The narrator will say something like this, in a hushed voice: „And now, the electron, as if it somehow knew we were watching, becomes a particle! It changes just because we observe it!”
If I’m correct, the notion of the intelligent observer is so serious that it gave rise to the anthropic principle where consciousness interferes with quantum objects. I don’t understand something here because I see an error so glaring, it’s as bright as the Sun.
How could anyone call a which-way detector an innocent little observer? For a quantum particle, it is a brutal machine, that interacts with it in a physical way. The detector has no choice by the way but to interact, after all, how else would it get any information out of that photon or electron? It places an electromagnetic field in the path of the particle, or is bombarding the path with particles, I don’t know exactly how it does it but there is no choice but to do something like that. And it is perfectly natural for an electron in its wave form to collapse into a particle after you bump it against some other particle for the purpose of measurement.
Suggesting that all we do is observe gives everyone the false idea that a flying particle in the double slit experiment is bothered by an imaginary line, which we call our line of sight.
I think the word „observe” should only be used if we know what we are talking about:
Step one: Brutal interference
Step two: Drawing conclusions after checking what happened (good luck by the way, after step one)
So what am I missing here? Surely I can’t be smarter than all those scientists who had good reason to pursue the theory of the intelligent observer.
 
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  • #2
steviereal said:
We all remember the animations describing the double slit experiment to the public... The narrator will say something like this, in a hushed voice: „And now, the electron, as if it somehow knew we were watching, becomes a particle! It changes just because we observe it!”
...
So what am I missing here? Surely I can’t be smarter than all those scientists who had good reason to pursue the theory of the intelligent observer.

What you are missing is that the narrator of that animation is not a scientist and doesn't know what he's talking about. The notion that observation requires a conscious observer was pretty much abandoned by those who understand QM decades ago, but eradicating it from the popular imagination has proven to be a bit more difficult.

Your thinking, that a detector cannot be an "innocent little observer", that it must "brutally interact" is much closer to what scientists believe. The words "observation", "interaction", and "measurement" are used, if not interchangeably at least with substantial overlap.
 
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  • #3
Thank you, that's a relief! Let's just hope all those tv shows popularizing science catch up with the latest knowledge, and stop misleading any newbie science fans out there.
 
  • #4
It seems like you are referring to the clip from "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

That's a movie that was made by crackpots, not scientists, and I don't go around calling people crackpots, unless they are really out there (as in, people who claim to be channeling 35,000 year old spirit-warriors). It's a shame because I think it's a pretty nice little illustration in that particular clip, if it weren't for the little bit of their silliness that they had to inject into it.
 
  • #5
Nugatory said:
What you are missing is that the narrator of that animation is not a scientist and doesn't know what he's talking about. The notion that observation requires a conscious observer was pretty much abandoned by those who understand QM decades ago, but eradicating it from the popular imagination has proven to be a bit more difficult.

Some Professors of Physics still entertain the notion of consciousness collapsing the wave function.
 
  • #6
steviereal said:
Thank you, that's a relief! Let's just hope all those tv shows popularizing science catch up with the latest knowledge, and stop misleading any newbie science fans out there.

I admire your optimism but I'm not going to hold my breath. Pop-sci shows don't CARE about actual science, they exist to sell soap.
 
  • #7
StevieTNZ said:
Some Professors of Physics still entertain the notion of consciousness collapsing the wave function.

They are very much in the minority - but yes they still exist.

It grew out of the Von-Neumann cut issue (the issue was the quantum classical cut can be placed anywhere so you trace it back to the conscious observer as the only thing that's different - hence you place it there) in Von Neumann's classic Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

But since then a lot of water has gone under the bridge and we now understand things a lot better - especially in the area of decoherence:
http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_decoherence.asp [Broken]

Just after decoherence would seem the logical place to put the cut.

In fact the other high priest of conciousness causes collapse, Wigner, abandoned it when he heard about some early work on decoherence by Zurek. Unfortunately Von Neumann died young, which was a great tragedy for mathematics, physics, economics, game theory, computer science, all sorts of areas, as he was one of the greatest polymaths that every lived.

Thanks
Bill
 
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  • #8
steviereal said:
Thank you, that's a relief! Let's just hope all those tv shows popularizing science catch up with the latest knowledge, and stop misleading any newbie science fans out there.

Unfortunately the real issues in QM are rather subtle and not particularly sensationalist.

Even highly respectable scientists in explaining it to the public lapse into half truths like particles being in two places at once. I sort of give them a bit of a pass because at the beginner level of QM, even in textbooks used for college students, they have a number of half truths (eg the so called wave particle duality) that are only corrected in more advanced texts.

But that What The Bleep Do We Know Anyway is gutter trash of the first order.

I shake my head when I see posts of poor high school students made to sit through it. No wonder enrolment in physics/math type majors is declining.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #9
bhobba said:
They are very much in the minority - but yes they still exist.

It grew out of the Von-Neumann cut issue (the issue was the quantum classical cut can be placed anywhere so you trace it back to the conscious observer as the only thing that's different - hence you place it there) in Von Neumann's classic Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

But since then a lot of water has gone under the bridge and we now understand things a lot better - especially in the area of decoherence:
http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_decoherence.asp [Broken]

Just after decoherence would seem the logical place to put the cut.

In fact the other high priest of conciousness causes collapse, Wigner, abandoned it when he heard about some early work on decoherence by Zurek. Unfortunately Von Neumann died young, which was a great tragedy for mathematics, physics, economics, game theory, computer science, all sorts of areas, as he was one of the greatest polymaths that every lived.

Thanks
Bill

Just out of curiosity, where is the quantum cut for the half dead/alive cat, which is unfortunately still being used not for what it was initially intended.
 
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  • #10
256bits said:
Just out of curiosity, where is the quantum cut for the half dead/alive cat, which is unfortunately still being used not for what it was initially intended.

The cut should be at the detector that opens the vial of poison - it's either triggered or not.

The "paradox" is the result of placing the cut somewhere above the cat.
 
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  • #11
Nugatory said:
The cut should be at the detector that opens the vial of poison - it's either triggered or not. The "paradox" is the result of placing the cut somewhere above the cat.

As Meatloaf said - you took the words right out of my mouth.

In modern times its placed just after decoherence, which in that case would just a bit before the actual detector registered - at least that's what I seem to recall from an article I read on how they work.

Thanks
Bill
 
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  • #12
that makes absolute pefect sense. Thanks you two.
 
  • #13
Nugatory said:
The cut should be at the detector that opens the vial of poison - it's either triggered or not.

Is this your personal opinion? As far as I know, "the universal validity of unitary dynamics and the superposition principle has been confirmed far into the mesoscopic and macroscopic realm in all experiments conducted thus far;", and "no positive experimental evidence exists for physical state-vector collapse;", at the detector or anywhere else (M. Schlosshauer, Annals of Physics, 321 (2006) 112-149)
 
  • #14
akhmeteli said:
As far as I know, "the universal validity of unitary dynamics and the superposition principle has been confirmed far into the mesoscopic and macroscopic realm in all experiments conducted thus far;", and "no positive experimental evidence exists for physical state-vector collapse;", at the detector or anywhere else (M. Schlosshauer, Annals of Physics, 321 (2006) 112-149)

That I agree with, and it's the reason this problem was so perplexing for so long. If you put the cut at the detector the quantum weirdness goes away, but there is nothing in the theory that says that you have to put it there. In effect, Schrodinger was asking why we shouldn't put the cut above the cat, and then-contemporary QM had no good answer.

With the discovery of decoherence we found an answer - we put the cut at the point where decoherence happens. It's worth pointing out that this is not necessarily the line between microscopic and macroscopic, as we have experiments in which macroscopic (small, but still macroscopic) systems have been maintained in superposition by using various heroic measures to stop them from decohering.
 
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  • #15
Nugatory said:
That I agree with, and it's the reason this problem was so perplexing for so long. If you put the cut at the detector the quantum weirdness goes away, but there is nothing in the theory that says that you have to put it there. In effect, Schrodinger was asking why we shouldn't put the cut above the cat, and then-contemporary QM had no good answer.

With the discovery of decoherence we found an answer - we put the cut at the point where decoherence happens. It's worth pointing out that this is not necessarily the line between microscopic and macroscopic, as we have experiments in which macroscopic (small, but still macroscopic) systems have been maintained in superposition by using various heroic measures to stop them from decohering.

I am by no means an expert in quantum decoherence, so I have more of a question than a comment (although it will come out to sound like a comment). Quantum decoherence, as I understand it is simply the evolution of pure states into mixed states. The density matrix no longer has the property Tr(ρ2)=1. Is this correct? The evolution of a density matrix; however, will not turn a pure state into a mixed one because the Von-Neumann equation reduces directly to the Schroedinger equation for a pure state. And we know that the Schroedinger equation will not turn a pure state into a mixed one.

It seems to me therefore, that in order to obtain evolution from pure to mixed states one may have to appeal to the quantum kinetic equations, where now the Boltzmann collision factors will indeed turn a pure state into a mixed state. But as we all know from classical non-equilibrium stat mech, or from our studies of the Boltzmann transport equations, we are neglecting a ton of interactions and other particles when we make the kinetic theory approximations. It is our inability to solve the full equations that forces us to truncate the series of coupled equations at the first or second order collision terms (otherwise there would be N coupled, partial differo-integral equations where N is of order 10^23 for a macroscopic system). Is this not borne out in the quantum kinetic case? It seems to me that the decoherence really just comes from our inability to keep track of all the cross terms in the density matrix, and so we just simply "trace out" all the "external" (corresponding to the macroscopic systems) degree of freedoms.

If we were supermen, and we could keep track of every cross term in the 10^23 by 10^23 density matrix, then couldn't we say that no decoherence actually happens? In that case, there is no longer a nice divide between where we make the cut in Schroedinger's cat's problem. Sure you can say "make the cut where decoherence happens", but "decoherence happens" when we are no longer able to keep track of all the phases...which is still arbitrary!

Am I completely off my knocker here?
 
  • #16
I'm with Matterwave on this one. Decoherence explains why the issue of collapse is not a problem in practice: due to decoherence it doesn't matter where you put the cut, since even if you put it after the measurement everything works out since from that viewpoint the quantum coherence of the subsystem decoheres into the total system (= subsystem + measurement apparatus) such that the reduced density matrix of the subsystem gives the same result as if you had put "collapse" at the moment of measurement.

However, decoherence or not: we still choose where to put the collapse, and of course it never really happens since if someone is smart enough one can always undo the decoherence to get back normal superposition behaviour (in principle, of course). So there are two ways out of this:

(1) We confess we have to put the cut somewhere, arbitrarily, and as long as we put it late enough in principle we avoid any possible issues (like inconsistency). The theory then works as a predictive theory.

(2) On philosophical/aesthetical/etc grounds one presumes that the laws of QM are not complete: there shouldn't be the arbitrariness of choosing where the collapse happens (with the caveat that one has to take it sufficiently late), so one must look for a deeper theory.

Pragmatists opt for (1), realists (and others?) opt for (2), which gives rise to proposals such as GRW theory, de Broglie-Bohm theory, etc.
 
  • #17
nonequilibrium said:
Pragmatists opt for (1), realists (and others?) opt for (2), which gives rise to proposals such as GRW theory, de Broglie-Bohm theory, etc.

Bohmians can opt for (1), since Copenhagen can be derived from BM. Just as we can have emergent degrees of freedom, one can have emergent ontology.
 
  • #18
nonequilibrium said:
However, decoherence or not: we still choose where to put the collapse,

Yes - you can put the Von-Neumann cut anywhere. What decoherence does however is break the logic of the argument for introducing conciousness into it. There is a place that's different - just after decoherence.

nonequilibrium said:
and of course it never really happens since if someone is smart enough one can always undo the decoherence to get back normal superposition behaviour (in principle, of course).,

For simple cases in practice as well - see the delayed choice experiment.

nonequilibrium said:
We confess we have to put the cut somewhere, arbitrarily, and as long as we put it late enough in principle we avoid any possible issues (like inconsistency). The theory then works as a predictive theory.

Put it just after decoherence - dead simple. That amounts to saying an improper mixture is a proper one.

nonequilibrium said:
On philosophical/aesthetical/etc grounds one presumes that the laws of QM are not complete: there shouldn't be the arbitrariness of choosing where the collapse happens (with the caveat that one has to take it sufficiently late), so one must look for a deeper theory.

Aesthetics is very personal and not subject to scientific verification.

nonequilibrium said:
Pragmatists opt for (1), realists (and others?) opt for (2), which gives rise to proposals such as GRW theory, de Broglie-Bohm theory, etc.

I think if you delve deeply into the 'whaky' world of interpretations you will find all sorts of reasons for adopting all sorts of positions.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #19
Nugatory said:
That I agree with, and it's the reason this problem was so perplexing for so long. If you put the cut at the detector the quantum weirdness goes away, but there is nothing in the theory that says that you have to put it there. In effect, Schrodinger was asking why we shouldn't put the cut above the cat, and then-contemporary QM had no good answer.

With the discovery of decoherence we found an answer - we put the cut at the point where decoherence happens. It's worth pointing out that this is not necessarily the line between microscopic and macroscopic, as we have experiments in which macroscopic (small, but still macroscopic) systems have been maintained in superposition by using various heroic measures to stop them from decohering.

Whether I agree or disagree with this, as far as I understand, until you define some specific decoherence mechanism, you cannot justify putting the cut at some specific point. So I don't see any clear reason so far to put the cut at the detector.
 
  • #20
Stephen M Barr, Professor of Physics, notes nicely in his book "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith":

... experts will realize that at the stage of the measurement process when macroscopic objects - such as cameras and eyeballs - become involved, what is happening can no longer be described in practice by a wavefunction. One must really use the density matrix formalism. Moreover, at the stage when macroscopic objects begin to be affected, the parts of the wavefunction - or density matrix - that represent different possible outcomes "decohere" from each other. That, however, does not affect the central point of the foregoing line of argument. It remains the case that the evolution given by the equations of quantum theory, whether one is speaking of a wavefunction or of a density matrix, does not tell which outcome is actually going to happen. The actual "collapse" is not merely a matter of decoherence, it must result in a definite actual outcome, and therefore cannot be given by the equations of standard quantum theory.
 
  • #21
akhmeteli said:
Whether I agree or disagree with this, as far as I understand, until you define some specific decoherence mechanism,

I don't know what you are getting at here.

Decoherence is a well defined process that converts a superposition to an improper mixed state. Its to do with observing just one part of an entangled system - you can find the detail for example in Susskinds textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465036678/?tag=pfamazon01-20

There are issues like decoherence time, why position is usually singled out, the preferred basis problem etc, that depend on particular models, but, basically, what's going on isn't hard.

Thanks
Bill
 
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  • #22
StevieTNZ said:
Stephen M Barr, Professor of Physics, notes nicely in his book "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith":

He is correct.

But that's not the point.

The point is that conciousness was introduced to cope with the Von-Neumann regress that the cut can be placed anywhere. If you keep going back you end up with the conciousness of a conscious observer as the only place different, which is why guys like Von-Neumann etc introduced it into it.

However decoherence invalidates that argument - there is a place different - just after decoherence. There is simply no need any more to introduce conciousness into it.

This is exactly why Wigner abandoned it, as well as the problematic baggage that goes along with such a bizarre view.

You can still put it there if you like - but there is zero reason to do so.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #23
Matterwave said:
If we were supermen, and we could keep track of every cross term in the 10^23 by 10^23 density matrix, then couldn't we say that no decoherence actually happens? In that case, there is no longer a nice divide between where we make the cut in Schroedinger's cat's problem. Sure you can say "make the cut where decoherence happens", but "decoherence happens" when we are no longer able to keep track of all the phases...which is still arbitrary!

It's arbitrary, but you'll find the same sort of arbitrariness in classical statistical mechanics. Given a collection of gas molecules, when do you stop trying to analyze the system in terms of the position and velocity of each particle and start to think in terms of pressure and temperature?

Decoherence tells us that classical behavior will appear as the system interacts with the environment. When this behavior is fully appeared is somewhat arbitrary (I'd rather say that it depends on how accurate an answer you need how quickly), but the point for this thread is that it will appear, whether there's a conscious observer or not.
 
  • #24
Isn't it true there is an observable of the system + measuring apparatus + environment that can be measured to see if the whole state of system+measuring apparatus+environment is in a pure or mixed state?

David Albert makes reference to it in his book "Quantum Mechanics and Experience", and I think Jeffrey Bub also explains along those lines in his book "Interpreting the Quantum World".
 
  • #25
Nugatory said:
It's arbitrary, but you'll find the same sort of arbitrariness in classical statistical mechanics. Given a collection of gas molecules, when do you stop trying to analyze the system in terms of the position and velocity of each particle and start to think in terms of pressure and temperature?

Decoherence tells us that classical behavior will appear as the system interacts with the environment. When this behavior is fully appeared is somewhat arbitrary (I'd rather say that it depends on how accurate an answer you need how quickly), but the point for this thread is that it will appear, whether there's a conscious observer or not.

I agree with this viewpoint. But it doesn't seem to be the viewpoint with regards to decoherence of many of those in this thread.
 
  • #26
What I learned many years ago is any interaction that increases entropy is sufficient to collapse a wavefunction. In simple terms, any interaction that would require going back in time to reverse it will create a "real" particle/event. This seems to agree with what one of the creator of QM said:

"Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the 'possible' to the 'actual,' is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory." - Werner Heisenberg​

Perhaps this view is a bit simplistic for some, but I've personally never seen any explanation that involves consciousness which is testable and refutable, thereby putting them more in the realm of philosophy than science.
 
  • #27
In "The Character of Consciousness" by David Chalmers, he states
In quantum mechanics, collapse theories yield predictions slightly different from no-collapse theories, and different hypotheses about the location of collapse yield predictions that differ from each other, although the differences are extremely subtle and currently impossible to measure.

When I emailed Dave, he mentioned the test could be done using interferometers.

With regards to my previous post, I believe the 2nd book that draws on the observable I mention is "The Quantum Mechanics of Minds and Worlds" by Jeffrey A. Barrett (pages 224-227).
 
  • #28
Matterwave said:
But it doesn't seem to be the viewpoint with regards to decoherence of many of those in this thread.

There is nothing Earth shattering being proposed here.

Its simply that it's reasonable to put collapse just after decoherence ie when the off diagonal elements are below some threshold way below the ability to detect.

That's it - that's all.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #29
But if we take eg. Weinberg, the cut requires "common sense". What is so different between "common sense" and "consciousness"? Both seem to me equally undefined.
 
  • #30
I don't think that standard QM allows collapse without a conscious observer, e.g. someone who decides what part of the world is included in the quantum description and what part of the world is not.

I think that collapse without a conscious observer either leads to a) an objective splitting of the world in a quantum mechanical domain (where QM is valid and classical mechanics is false) and a classical domain (where QM is false and classical mechanics is valid instead) or b) an objective mechanism for collapse which modifies QM. Both possibilities lead to -at least in principle- testable predictions which differ from standard QM.
 
  • #31
atyy said:
But if we take eg. Weinberg, the cut requires "common sense". What is so different between "common sense" and "consciousness"? Both seem to me equally undefined.

It also takes common sense to decide whether to analyze the behavior of a free-falling object in the vicinity of the Earth using ##F=mg## instead of ##F=Gm_Em/r^2##; or whether to use the methods of statistical mechanics instead of solving for the position and velocity of every particle in a system. However, we know that our choice doesn't affect the actual physics of the problem; the same laws of physics are at work either way. Common sense applied here doesn't lead to any deep special role for the consciousness of the observer applying the common sense.

The problem with the pre-decoherence Von Neumann cut is that the physics changes at the cut, classical above and quantum below. This makes our freedom to put the cut anywhere we please much more problematic than in the falling object case.

Decoherence shows that the physics is the same on both sides of the cut; the unitary evolution of the quantum mechanical wave function does it all and the classical behavior is an emergent phenomenon. Because the physics is the same we can, as with my examples above, place the cut where it is convenient (that is, where common sense suggests, in any given problem) without involving our consciousness in the physics.
 
  • #32
Matterwave said:
I am by no means an expert in quantum decoherence, so I have more of a question than a comment (although it will come out to sound like a comment). Quantum decoherence, as I understand it is simply the evolution of pure states into mixed states. The density matrix no longer has the property Tr(ρ2)=1. Is this correct? The evolution of a density matrix; however, will not turn a pure state into a mixed one because the Von-Neumann equation reduces directly to the Schroedinger equation for a pure state. And we know that the Schroedinger equation will not turn a pure state into a mixed one.

It seems to me therefore, that in order to obtain evolution from pure to mixed states one may have to appeal to the quantum kinetic equations, where now the Boltzmann collision factors will indeed turn a pure state into a mixed state.
There's an important difference between classical mechanics and QM for composite systems. If the state of the composite system is entangled, the states of the parts are mixed although the state of the whole is pure. So no, we don't need thermodynamics to evolve pure states into mixed states. If these states refers to only part of the system, Schrödinger time evolution of the whole system is enough.

But you are right that in order to derive permanent decoherence, one has to make thermodynamic approximations. I think these are very similar to the approximations needed to derive Boltzmann's H-theorem but I haven't seen a detailed comparison between the two.
 
  • #33
Nugatory said:
It also takes common sense to decide whether to analyze the behavior of a free-falling object in the vicinity of the Earth using ##F=mg## instead of ##F=Gm_Em/r^2##; or whether to use the methods of statistical mechanics instead of solving for the position and velocity of every particle in a system. However, we know that our choice doesn't affect the actual physics of the problem; the same laws of physics are at work either way. Common sense applied here doesn't lead to any deep special role for the consciousness of the observer applying the common sense.

The problem with the pre-decoherence Von Neumann cut is that the physics changes at the cut, classical above and quantum below. This makes our freedom to put the cut anywhere we please much more problematic than in the falling object case.

Decoherence shows that the physics is the same on both sides of the cut; the unitary evolution of the quantum mechanical wave function does it all and the classical behavior is an emergent phenomenon. Because the physics is the same we can, as with my examples above, place the cut where it is convenient (that is, where common sense suggests, in any given problem) without involving our consciousness in the physics.

Neither F=mg nor statistical mechanics are universal laws, and we know or at least assume that there are deeper underlying laws. However, if we take the view that there are no deeper laws underlying quantum mechanics, then the cut and common sense become fundamental. We don't have a scientific definition for common sense, and we don't have one for consciousness. So how can we say that common sense does nor does not require consciousness. Of course, there are no problems if we accept that something like Bohmian mechanics is the deeper physics underlying quantum mechanics.
 
  • #34
atyy said:
But if we take eg. Weinberg, the cut requires "common sense".

That's the beauty of defining an observation via decoherence - its objective.

An observation is simply once decoherence has occurred.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #35
kith said:
I don't think that standard QM allows collapse without a conscious observer, e.g. someone who decides what part of the world is included in the quantum description and what part of the world is not.

But Kith collapse isn't even part of the formalism of QM.

It's simply something SOME interpretations have for filtering type observations.

Thanks
Bill
 
<h2>1. What is the double slit experiment?</h2><p>The double slit experiment is a classic experiment in quantum mechanics that demonstrates the wave-like nature of particles. It involves shooting particles, such as electrons or photons, through two parallel slits and observing the resulting interference pattern on a screen behind the slits.</p><h2>2. What is the observer's role in the double slit experiment?</h2><p>The observer's role in the double slit experiment is to measure or observe the particles as they pass through the slits. This measurement or observation is thought to collapse the wave function of the particles, causing them to behave like particles rather than waves and resulting in a different interference pattern on the screen.</p><h2>3. Why is the double slit experiment considered a "myth" of the observer?</h2><p>The idea that the observer plays a crucial role in the outcome of the double slit experiment is often misunderstood and exaggerated, leading to the myth that the observer has a mystical or magical influence on the behavior of particles. In reality, the observer's role is simply to measure or observe the particles, which is a fundamental aspect of scientific experimentation.</p><h2>4. Can the double slit experiment be explained without the need for an observer?</h2><p>Yes, the double slit experiment can be explained without the need for an observer. The behavior of particles can be described by mathematical equations, and the interference pattern observed on the screen can be predicted without any reference to an observer. The role of the observer is simply to gather data and confirm the results of the experiment.</p><h2>5. What implications does the double slit experiment have for our understanding of reality?</h2><p>The double slit experiment challenges our traditional understanding of reality, as it shows that particles can behave like waves and exhibit interference patterns. It also raises questions about the role of consciousness in the universe, but it is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that consciousness has a supernatural or magical influence on the behavior of particles.</p>

1. What is the double slit experiment?

The double slit experiment is a classic experiment in quantum mechanics that demonstrates the wave-like nature of particles. It involves shooting particles, such as electrons or photons, through two parallel slits and observing the resulting interference pattern on a screen behind the slits.

2. What is the observer's role in the double slit experiment?

The observer's role in the double slit experiment is to measure or observe the particles as they pass through the slits. This measurement or observation is thought to collapse the wave function of the particles, causing them to behave like particles rather than waves and resulting in a different interference pattern on the screen.

3. Why is the double slit experiment considered a "myth" of the observer?

The idea that the observer plays a crucial role in the outcome of the double slit experiment is often misunderstood and exaggerated, leading to the myth that the observer has a mystical or magical influence on the behavior of particles. In reality, the observer's role is simply to measure or observe the particles, which is a fundamental aspect of scientific experimentation.

4. Can the double slit experiment be explained without the need for an observer?

Yes, the double slit experiment can be explained without the need for an observer. The behavior of particles can be described by mathematical equations, and the interference pattern observed on the screen can be predicted without any reference to an observer. The role of the observer is simply to gather data and confirm the results of the experiment.

5. What implications does the double slit experiment have for our understanding of reality?

The double slit experiment challenges our traditional understanding of reality, as it shows that particles can behave like waves and exhibit interference patterns. It also raises questions about the role of consciousness in the universe, but it is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that consciousness has a supernatural or magical influence on the behavior of particles.

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