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Hi, I read quite a few popular science books and try to wrap my head around quantum physics. I am reading Stephen Hawking's "Theory of everything" again in which he explains the double slit experiment and how particles take every possible path in the universe (with some paths being more likely than others). He says that in theory a photon that was sent from a distant galaxy billions of years ago would also have the same result in a double slit experiment. We could show the wavelike pattern but we could also measure through which slit the photon would go, basically forcing it to choose one of the two slits (I hope my understanding is right so far).
This made me wonder something: do particles not only take every imaginable path in spacetime but are they also "present" simultaneously in every possible time, not being restricted by the laws that seem to govern what we call time in the macroscopic world? Interacting with the particle would somehow force it into a fixed path in the complete "history" of the particle?
This made me wonder something: do particles not only take every imaginable path in spacetime but are they also "present" simultaneously in every possible time, not being restricted by the laws that seem to govern what we call time in the macroscopic world? Interacting with the particle would somehow force it into a fixed path in the complete "history" of the particle?