I How does observation affect reality

[Trollfaz]

In quantum physics, one can change a system just by observing it, such as wave function collapse and quantum Zeno effect. I don't quite get how observation affects them, unless we are interacting with them when observing them.

 

[DrClaude]

unless we are interacting with them when observing them.

That's the point. Observation requires interaction. As to how that change actually takes place is a question of interpretation.

 

[Trollfaz]

I believe that only certain types of interaction can affect the system

 

[DrClaude]

I believe that only certain types of interaction can affect the system

Technically, any interaction will affect a system, but indeed not all interactions lead to a significant change in the wave function of the system in question.

By the way, nature doesn't care what you believe. Could you clarify what you mean, and how it is related to your original question?

 

[Trollfaz]

I mean what types of interactions will affect the system but this is recently answered

 

[hilbert2]

Even in classical mechanics you need to have light reflecting from an object before you are able to see it, and that always exerts an electromagnetic radiation pressure on it, affecting its state of motion. The difference to quantum mechanics is that in QM you can't make the effect of observation on the object as small as you want just by having detectors that can see smaller light intensities (so that more dim lighting is sufficient for monitoring the object).

 

[stevendaryl]

Well, an especially weird case is EPR, where observing one system can seemingly affect a second, very distant (but correlated) system. It's not too difficult to give a technical explanation of why observation can do this, although the explanation still leaves a seemingly unresolvable nugget of mystery.

The hallmark of quantum mechanics is interference effects. Suppose you set up a system in initial state |I\rangle, and then later test whether it is in final state |F\rangle. Suppose that there are two alternative ways for the system to go from |I\rangle to |F\rangle, via intermediate state |A\rangle, or via intermediate state |B\rangle. Then the probability of finding the system in state |F\rangle at the end is given by:

P(I,F) = P(I, A) P(A, F) + P(I, B) P(B, F) + \Phi(I,A,B,F)

where \Phi(I,A,B,F) is an "interference term". Without the interference term, the probabilities are easy to interpret:

• There are two ways to get from I to F: (1) along the path I to A to F, and (2) along the path I to B to F.
• The probability for the first path is just P(I,A), the probability for the first "leg" of that path, times P(A,F), the probability for the second "leg".
• Similarly for the second path.
• The total probability is just the sum of the probabilities for each path, taken separately.

But the interference term is the thing that is hard to understand in pre-quantum terms. And it's the source of the nonlocal observer effect in quantum mechanics. There can either be destructive interference, making the probability smaller for both paths than for either path separately, or there can be constructive interference, making the probability larger than for either path. This is illustrated by the famous "two-slit interference" experiment. Shine light on one screen with two small slits allowing the light to pass through, and then a second screen will show dark and bright lines, the dark lines where the light from one slit destructively interferes with light from the second slit, and the bright lines where there is constructive interference. Intuitively, it's hard to understand why opening a second slit for light to pass through would ever make it darker in some region of the second screen. The interference pattern of bright and dark lines persists even when the light intensity is reduced so low that you are seeing single photons pass through the slit. Each photon (or you can use electrons instead) seems to experience interference between the two alternative paths.

An example of the observer effect is that if you try to observe which slit each photon travels through, then the interference pattern is destroyed. The extra, nonclassical interference term goes away. It doesn't matter how unobtrusive your observation is; if it is possible to determine which path the photon takes, there is no interference.

Some people describe this effect as "observation collapses the wave function", but there is nothing special about observation. The key to understanding the observer effect is to realize that in order for there to be interference between two paths, the two paths have to lead to the same final state. If there is some difference, no matter how small, in the final states for the two paths, then there is no interference. If you observe which path a photon takes, then that makes the final states different, because your state is different. The total state consists of the state of the photon plus the state of the observer (or a measuring device, or another particle, or whatever interacts with the photon). So depending on which path was taken, the total final state is one of two possibilities:

1. The photon is in final state F, and you are in a state of remembering that it took path A
2. The photon is in final state F, and you are in a state of remembering that it took path B

Those are different final states, so there is no interference between those two possibilities. It doesn't matter how unobtrusive your measurement was, or how slightly it affected the photon--if your final state is different at the end, then there is no interference.

For a human being, there is no way to reverse the effects of observing something, so there is no way to restore the interference pattern. But if the second system that the photon interacted with is something very small---say another particle--then it is possible in some circumstances to reverse the effects of the interaction so that the final states are the same. In that case, the interference pattern is restored. This is the essence of "quantum eraser" experiments, described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment

 

[Mentz114]

The interference pattern of bright and dark lines persists even when the light intensity is reduced so low that you are seeing single photons pass through the slit. Each photon (or you can use electrons instead) seems to experience interference between the two alternative paths.

I'm sorry to be picky but it seems that experimental support for the electron case is not strong. In this paper**, the authors say

Also, by recording single electron detection events diffracting through a double-slit, a diffraction pattern was built up from individual events.

Note, they do not say 'interference pattern'. This helps to debunk a persistent quantum myth.

**Controlled double-slit electron diffraction

https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.6243

 

[PeterDonis]

Note, they do not say 'interference pattern'.

This is quibbling over words. The pattern observed in electron double slit experiments, whether you use the words "interference pattern" or "diffraction pattern" to describe it, is explained by quantum interference between components of the electron wave function coming from each slit. That is what "interference between the two alternative paths" means.

This helps to debunk a persistent quantum myth.

What myth is that?

 

[hsdrop]

Is there any way that we know of to interact with a wave function and not collapse it??

 

[DennisN]

Is there any way that we know of to interact with a wave function and not collapse it?? (my bolding)

"Collapsing wavefunctions" actually assumes certain interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. There are interpretations without wavefunction collapse, see e.g. Interpretations of quantum mechanics - Comparison of interpretations.

Also,

Is there any way that we know of to interact with a wave function and not collapse it?? (my bolding)

is also a matter of interpretation, i.e. is the wave function physically real/existing? See e.g. Wave function - Ontology.

So, maybe your question could be reworded to "Is there any way that we know of to interact with a particle or system without disturbing it/changing it?" or something like that. If so, as far as I know, there is no way. But there is more that can be said about this, one thing you could have a look at is what is called "weak measurements".

 

[Mentz114]

This is quibbling over words. The pattern observed in electron double slit experiments, whether you use the words "interference pattern" or "diffraction pattern" to describe it, is explained by quantum interference between components of the electron wave function coming from each slit. That is what "interference between the two alternative paths" means.

Acknowledged. Diffraction is a wave property like interference. Don't know why I thought otherwise.

What myth is that?

That electrons can split into two or more parts. I will open a thread about this sometime because it would be hi-jacking this thread to continue here.

 

[PeterDonis]

That electrons can split into two or more parts.

Ah, ok. Yes, I agree this is a myth.

 

[vanhees71]

It's not only a myth it's clearly disproven by experiment. You never find "half of an electron" anywhere but always "one electron" or "no electron".

 

[bhobba]

Is there any way that we know of to interact with a wave function and not collapse it??

There is no collapse in QM.

To see this you need to study an axiomatic treatment. See post 137:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-born-rule-in-many-worlds.763139/page-7

Notice in the axiom nothing about collapse at all. It comes about from beginning texts and even some intermediate ones that don't explain things carefully enough. Study an advanced text like Ballentine for the details.

These days an observation is generally considered to occur once an interaction has happened that leads to decoherence and a superposition is converted to a mixed state.

Thanks
Bill

 

[stevendaryl]

I would say that "wave function collapse" is a rule of thumb for working with quantum mechanics, which reflects the following three interpretation-independent facts about observations:

1. If you measure a quantity, you always get an eigenvalue of the corresponding operator.
2. Measurement destroys interference between alternatives.
3. After a measurement, you can, for all practical purposes, treat the system as if it is now in an eigenstate of the operator corresponding to the observable being measured.

The meaning and/or explanation of these facts is a matter of interpretation, but the facts themselves are independent of interpretation. They are empirically confirmed. I think that they are almost completely explained by considering the measurement apparatus itself to be a quantum-mechanical system. Almost.

 

[vanhees71]

1. is part of the theory. Ok.

2. This statement already is not so easy to understand for me. What do you mean by it? Given a state, I know the probability to measure a value of the measured observable, no more no less. What do you mean by "interfering"? There are just some more or less probable possibilities for the outcome of the measurement with the only exception that maybe the system is determined in a state, where the measured observable is determined (i.e., takes a one of its possible values with 100% probability).

3. Is true for a very rare class of measurements, the socalled von Neumann filter measurements. It's almost always technically impossible to perform such an experiment. In general you destroy the system measured. E.g., registering a photon usually absorbs it, and it's destroyed, providing a bit of heat energy resulting in a little temperature increase of the detector material.

 

[stevendaryl]

1. is part of the theory. Ok.

It actually shouldn't be, in my opinion. It's a rule of thumb at best.

2. This statement already is not so easy to understand for me. What do you mean by it? [/QUOTE]

It seems obvious to me. As I said in another thread: Interference is the phenomenon where there are two possible "paths" between a fixed initial state and a fixed final state. The probability of going from the initial state to the final state is found by adding the amplitudes for the two (or however many there are) alternative paths, and squaring. The result includes cross terms involving both paths, which are "interference" terms. If you perform an observation that attempts to see which path is actually taken, that destroys the interference pattern. The mathematical explanation is entanglement: the observation entangles the system being measured with the system doing the observation. The reduced density matrix for just the system being measured then has no interference terms.

3. Is true for a very rare class of measurements, the socalled von Neumann filter measurements.

They might be rare, but they are the most interesting (such as EPR).

 

[vanhees71]

Ok, then 2. is also standard. EPR is all about entanglement. You don't need to perform von Neumann filter measurements to prove it, as zillions of such experiments with photons show, which are destroyed in the measurement rather than coming out in a definite new state.

 

[zonde]

1. If you measure a quantity, you always get an eigenvalue of the corresponding operator.
2. Measurement destroys interference between alternatives.
3. After a measurement, you can, for all practical purposes, treat the system as if it is now in an eigenstate of the operator corresponding to the observable being measured.

I am trying to follow discussions about measurements but one thing that makes it hard to follow these discussions is interpretation of term "measurement".
If I try to keep track of experimental equipment that corresponds to mathematical operations, there is some ambiguity. Let's take simple example of PBS and detector. PBS splits the beam of photons in two beams with certain polarizations. These polarizations are determined by orientation of PBS. Outputs are tested with detectors.
And it seems that there are two different mathematical operations that correspond to different pieces of equipment. PBS - projection operator, detector - Born rule. Respectively detector can only tell coefficient of eigenvector but orientation of PBS can tell what eigenvectors are it's outputs while it can't tell coefficients of eigenvectors.

So option 1. seems to correspond to combination of PBS and detector.
Option 2. seems to talk about detectors or even something more complex.
Option 3. corresponds to PBS.

 

[mikeyork]

This is quibbling over words. The pattern observed in electron double slit experiments, whether you use the words "interference pattern" or "diffraction pattern" to describe it, is explained by quantum interference between components of the electron wave function coming from each slit. That is what "interference between the two alternative paths" means.

Actually there is a clear distinction between a diffraction pattern and two-slit interference because you get a diffraction pattern from a single slit as well. (I don't know if this has been demonstrated for electrons but it has been known for photons for more than a century.) The two-slit pattern has two-slit interference inside a single slit envelope.

 

[PeterDonis]

Actually there is a clear distinction between a diffraction pattern and two-slit interference because you get a diffraction pattern from a single slit as well.

Yes, there is a difference between a single slit pattern and a two slit pattern. But the paper linked to earlier that I was responding to uses the term "diffraction pattern" to refer to an electron two slit pattern, not an electron single slit pattern. What counts is the physics, not the words.

 

[Wallis]

People get hived off into separate subjects and forget the basics. For the conservation of energy to be a consistent and whole paradigm, the collapse of the wave function is necessarily governed by/coalesces with the transfer of energy, otherwise, there would be no rules; there would be no physics. Forget observers and god. It is energy that is the god of this situation in all its forms. Once energy is transferred, the waveform necessarily collapses. This is almost a physical tautology. The wave function is simply pregnant with energy, but is unable to deliver it in that form. Only when an interaction with the wave function is completed, does the energy become realized, and get transferred to make a causal effect on the rest of the Universe. Basic, huh?

Maybe some "Aspect style" experiments can be carried out on the "shape" of this interaction?

Discuss.

 

[mikeyork]

OK. I'll discuss! It's not just about transfer of energy. There could be a transfer of momentum direction, with no transfer of energy. In general, there must be a transition and in QM that is just another word for interaction.

 

[Wallis]

OK. I'll discuss! It's not just about transfer of energy. There could be a transfer of momentum direction, with no transfer of energy. In general, there must be a transition and in QM that is just another word for interaction.

Momentum direction? Really? That's just energy. Do the maths. Momentum in one direction is energy. To convert it to another direction involves a change in energy. This is energy. Consider the electron traveling in one direction, receiving a photon. Boom. Energy.

 

[PeterDonis]

To convert it to another direction involves a change in energy.

Not necessarily. For example, an electron in a magnetic field has its direction changed by the field, but it gains no energy from the field (the magnitude of its velocity remains constant).

 

[stevendaryl]

People get hived off into separate subjects and forget the basics. For the conservation of energy to be a consistent and whole paradigm, the collapse of the wave function is necessarily governed by/coalesces with the transfer of energy, otherwise, there would be no rules; there would be no physics. Forget observers and god. It is energy that is the god of this situation in all its forms. Once energy is transferred, the waveform necessarily collapses. This is almost a physical tautology. The wave function is simply pregnant with energy, but is unable to deliver it in that form. Only when an interaction with the wave function is completed, does the energy become realized, and get transferred to make a causal effect on the rest of the Universe. Basic, huh?

Maybe some "Aspect style" experiments can be carried out on the "shape" of this interaction?

Discuss.

I don't at all understand what you're saying. Could you take some very simple example and demonstrate what you mean?

 

[bob012345]

I'm sorry to be picky but it seems that experimental support for the electron case is not strong. In this paper**, the authors say

Note, they do not say 'interference pattern'. This helps to debunk a persistent quantum myth.

**Controlled double-slit electron diffraction

https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.6243

Don't you really need a time machine to do this experiment? So you can shoot the SAME electron each time and see a diffraction pattern.

 

[Mentz114]

Don't you really need a time machine to do this experiment? So you can shoot the SAME electron each time and see a diffraction pattern.

That would give the same outcome everytime - groundhog electrons.

Actually, using a wave packet to model the electrons takes into account the inevitable inaccuracy in the initial conditions.

 

[Zafa Pi]

The pattern observed in electron double slit experiments, whether you use the words "interference pattern" or "diffraction pattern" to describe it, is explained by quantum interference between components of the electron wave function coming from each slit.

Are you satisfied with the word "explained" in the above sentence?

 

[bob012345]

That would give the same outcome everytime - groundhog electrons.

Actually, using a wave packet to model the electrons takes into account the inevitable inaccuracy in the initial conditions.

I don't think so since the electron path is unpredictable so running same one over and over should be the same as running different electrons one after another. It's not about slight differences in initial conditions, that's Chaos, it's more fundamental.

 

[PeterDonis]

Are you satisfied with the word "explained" in the above sentence?

Sure, why not?

 

[Wallis]

I don't at all understand what you're saying. Could you take some very simple example and demonstrate what you mean?

An excited atom emits a photon and the electron descends to a lower orbital, removing energy from the atom into the photon (or it's wave function.) This energy is stored in the wave function of the photon (for where else can it reside as the wave function spreads out and evolves over time?) Now, this atom was on the surface of a star, and the wave function (carrying the energy) spreads out through the Universe, subtending a considerable volume of likely interactions. The wave function interacts with another atom, exciting it (this time in my retina) and, on its decay, and I "see" the light owing to the collapse of the wave function within the atom in my eye. This means the little green man 500 light years away cannot see the photon now, even though he is "equidistant" from the star's atom.

However, the same happens when the photon attempts to warm two rocks, lying near me, and near the little green man. So, the collapse of the wave function does not need an observer, or any other special situation. It simply needs to transfer energy. Once the energy is transferred, the wave function must necessarily instantaneously collapse everywhere in the Universe, all at one, otherwise there would be no such concept as the conservation of energy. Ipso-facto, as we say.

If this were not the case, there would be no such thing as the conservation of energy, and believe me, the Universe would be a very different place.

Therefore, I propose that there is no such thing as the "observer effect." There is just plain old physics, doing the conservation of energy thing.

As for the "aspect style experiment", I was proposing that the community explore the nature of collapse. Is there a case where the photon has so much energy, it can excite both atoms? This is the sort of "exploration" I am proposing. Is the transfer "sharp" in time, or has it a "shape" in space-time that can be explored?

 

[Zafa Pi]

Sure, why not?

(I start with an off topic parenthetical comment: you're a smart and educated guy and I think that if you were offered 100 grand to write how I would respond to your question you would most likely succeed.)

Your signature hero, R.F., says in a lecture on the double slit experiment, "Nobody has succeeded in an explanation"

In an article on the D.S.E. he says, "If this seems very mysterious, you are not alone. Understanding what is going on here is in some sense equivalent to understanding Quantum Mechanics. I do not understand Quantum Mechanics." Feynman admitted that he never understood Quantum Mechanics. It may be true that nobody can understand Quantum Mechanics in the usual meaning of the word "understand."
(I actually think he is referring to the quantum phenomena of nature rather than QM as a theory)

If asked my girl friend why my toaster wasn't working and she said, "Because it's not plugged in." That would be an explanation and I would understand.

If I asked her why two masses attract one another, and she said because of Newton's Law of gravitation, that would not be an explanation for me (and it wasn't for Newton as well). That would be a mathematical rule as to how to predict their motion. (And, BTW, adding on the gravitational field or moving onto GR wouldn't help.)

So I think you see my reticence with the word "explained". I would have used "predicted". I don't think this is quibbling.

 

[vanhees71]

Feynman is of course a big entertainer, and if anybody has understood QT it was him. What he says in his textbook in the first few pages is, in my opinion, the best advice: QT works, because it is successful in describing all objective observations so far. There's a formalism and, via Born's rule, a way to relate it to the observations, and that's it. Anything beyond that is philosophicy gibberish, und you might know, what Feynman thought about philosophy making even simple things difficult to understand, and QT is difficult to understand even without the philosophers' confusion bought up about apparent "problems in understanding the measurement process". Evidence proves the opposite: Both experiment and theory are so well able to test the "weirdest predictions" of QT that it reaches amazing accuracy (in some quantities like the anomalous moment of the electron agreement between theory and experiment in 12 significant digits), that it is hard to understand, what these problems should be.

The "problems" and appararent "weirdness" is due to the fact that our intuition is trained by our usual environment consisting of macroscopic many-body systems. To understand them we only need such a "coarse-grained" view that almost all "weird" QT effects are averaged over (decoherence is very effective to the dismay of people who like to construct quantum computers).

So, to our best knowledge today, the problem is not a physical but a pedagogical one, i.e., to teach QT in a way that students can build an intuition about what's going on. The price to be paid is that this intuition is way more abstract than in classical physics, which seems to directly reflect our daily experience about the behavior of macroscopic bodies and the classical electromagnetic field much closer than the probabilistic interpretation of quantum states and the description of observables with self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space.

The heuristic link between the classical and the pictures are symmetry principles. My advice to students of QT thus is, not to bother too much about the philosophical and metaphysical issues first, but rather to invest your time in learning about the mathematics of Lie groups and their (ray) representations on Hilbert space! For the beginners of QT (and also advanced practitioners in research, bothering with understanding observations in the real world, which is what physics finally is all about), indeed Feynman's "shutup-and-calculate approach" towards interpretational issues is the best advice he could give, and he did it indeed in a very enertaining and charming way in his textbooks (especially in the Feynman Lectures).

 

[zonde]

There's a formalism and, via Born's rule, a way to relate it to the observations, and that's it.

Born's rule is part of formalism not bridge to observations.
Bridge to observations is probabilistic interpretation of numbers given by Born's rule.

 

[vanhees71]

For me the probabilisitic interpretation is Born's rule. So we agree in this point :-).

 

[zonde]

For me the probabilisitic interpretation is Born's rule. So we agree in this point :-).

Hmm, but then how do you call the "amplitude squared" operation? Or you do QM calculations without use of "probability amplitudes"?

 

[vanhees71]

Ok, to be specific, for me Born's rule is:

The state of the quantum system is represented by a positive semidefinite self-adjoint operator $\hat{\rho}$ with $\mathrm{Tr} \hat{\rho}=1$. If $\hat{A}$ is the self-adjoint operator representing the observable $A$ and $|a,\beta \rangle$ is a complete orthonormal set of eigenvectors to the eigenvalue $a$ of $\hat{A}$, then the probability to find the value $a$ when measuring $A$ is
$$P(a|\hat{\rho})=\sum_{\beta} \langle a,\beta|\hat{\rho}|a,\beta \rangle.$$
A state is called pure if and only if $\hat{\rho}=|\psi \rangle \langle \psi |$. Then
$$P(a|\psi)=\sum_{\beta} |\langle a,\beta|\psi \rangle|^2.$$
In this sense the "wave function" $\psi(a,\beta)=\langle a,\beta|\psi \rangle$ is a "probability amplitude", but that are just words. The physics essence is Born's rule.

 

[PeterDonis]

Your signature hero, R.F., says

The fact that he is in my sig doesn't mean I accept him as an authority on everything.

However, in this particular case I agree with what I think he is saying, although what I think he is saying might not be what you think he is saying. I think he is saying that there isn't actually any difference between "predicted" and "explained"--if you have a model that makes good predictions, that's the best you can do. Trying to look for an "explanation" in addition to that is a fool's errand.

If asked my girl friend why my toaster wasn't working and she said, "Because it's not plugged in." That would be an explanation and I would understand.

On what basis? On the basis that you know electricity is required for the toaster to work and it has to be plugged into get electricity. But how do you know that? On the basis of a comprehensive theory that is ultimately based on Maxwell's Equations. And what are Maxwell's Equations? They are mathematical rules that tells you how to predict how electromagnetic fields, charges, and currents behave. Just like Newton's Laws, which you said were not explanations, but just mathematical rules.

This is why I don't see any significant difference between "predicted" and "explained". The things you are saying are valid "explanations" boil down to having mathematical rules that make good predictions, and I don't see any basis other than arbitrary choice for you saying that some mathematical rules don't count as "explanations" while others do.

So I think you see my reticence with the word "explained". I would have used "predicted".

In other words, you are not satisfied with the word "explained". You would prefer the word "predicted". I have no objection to the word "predicted".

However, you didn't ask me what you would or would not be satisfied with. You asked me if I was satisfied with the word "explained". I am. I don't see any significant difference between "predicted" and "explained", as I said above. But if you do, and you would rather use the word "predicted" for this discussion, that's fine with me. The choice of words does not affect the physics.

 

[Zafa Pi]

However, in this particular case I agree with what I think he is saying, although what I think he is saying might not be what you think he is saying. I think he is saying that there isn't actually any difference between "predicted" and "explained"--if you have a model that makes good predictions, that's the best you can do. Trying to look for an "explanation" in addition to that is a fool's errand.

Feynman has explained many things and I think he is a great explainer. But he says he has no explanation for the double slit or the correlations when measuring entangled entities. So I think he is making a distinction.

When I said, "If I asked my girl friend why my toaster wasn't working and she said, "Because it's not plugged in." That would be an explanation and I would understand."

On what basis? On the basis that you know electricity is required for the toaster to work and it has to be plugged into get electricity. But how do you know that? On the basis of a comprehensive theory that is ultimately based on Maxwell's Equations. And what are Maxwell's Equations? They are mathematical rules that tells you how to predict how electromagnetic fields, charges, and currents behave. Just like Newton's Laws, which you said were not explanations, but just mathematical rules.

I showed her your response and she (being no physicist) asked if Maxwell's Equations were good to the last drop.

14th century Europeans had an excellent model for predicting when the sun would rise and set over a year. It was a table gleaned from past measurements. Looking for an explanation is not a fool's errand. At what level one is satisfied with an explanation is a personal choice. Knowing the toaster wasn't plugged in was good enough for me.

I guess this is getting a bit philosophical (a Feynman bane) and off topic, but interesting.

 

[PeterDonis]

At what level one is satisfied with an explanation is a personal choice.

Exactly.

 

[OCR]

I showed her your response and she (being no physicist) asked if Maxwell's Equations were good to the last drop.

Then, I suppose it's time to start the... experiments ...? ..

 

[vanhees71]

The aim of the natural sciences is not to "explain" anything but to "describe" quantitatively and as accurately as possible phenomena in Nature and to compare the "descriptions" to quantitative and accurate observations. If a physicist says, s/he "explains" a phenomenon, s/he means that it is describable using more or less "fundamental theories" or well-justified approximations to it. To "explain" your toaster's function for a physicist means to understand it in terms of the adequate model applicable here, and that's finally the quasistationary approximation of Maxwell's equations, which themselves are an effective classical many-body approximation of QED. For an electrician all that matters here FAPP should be Ohm's Law, and that's the right level of description and "explanation" you need to get it working.

The same holds true for the electron and the double-slit experiment. QM is the right level of description here with the slit being described simply as boundary conditions for the Schrödinger equation. There's no "deeper explanation" than QT since it's the most fundamental theory we have today about nature. Also the electron itself is already a "most fundamental" building block in the sense of the Standard Model notion of what's called an "elementary particle" (a Dirac field realizing an irreducible representation of the Poincare group, including space reflections). So there's no "deeper explanation" of the electron's behavior than the probabilistic content of QT since there's no more fundamental level of description than QT. Maybe, one day, we'll have a "more fundamental explanation" for QT, which then may become an effective model in the sense of an approximation to the more fundamental theory (as are Maxwell's equations of classical electromagnetics are an effective theory for macroscopic many-body QED).

 

[stevendaryl]

The aim of the natural sciences is not to "explain" anything but to "describe" quantitatively and as accurately as possible phenomena in Nature and to compare the "descriptions" to quantitative and accurate observations.

I don't agree with that. As @Zafa Pi said, you can describe things arbitrarily accurately by having lots of tables.

The idea that the point is accurate description is not the reason anyone actually becomes a scientist. Kids ask: "Why does the moon go through phases?", they don't ask: "Exactly how many hours are there between successive full moons?" What the kid wants is understanding, not accurate predictions.

To me, making accurate falsifiable predictions is the way that we test our understanding of nature---it isn't a goal in itself, or at least, it's not the only goal. I'm talking about "goals" in the sense of "why anyone wants to study science, in the first place".

 

[vanhees71]

Perhaps, I should have said "theoretical descriptions". "Stamp collecting" (as Rutherford put it) is of course not, what I aim at as a theoretical physicist. However, I also believe that without suficient empirical input, we can't make progress in finding better and better theories. That's why the HEP community is so eager to finally find empirical facts about "physics beyond the Standard Model", because we can speculate a lot theoretically (like inventing SUSY, technicolor, and what not) but without empirical guidance we are lost in a huge parameter space even within some class of possible models like SUSY.

 

[stevendaryl]

I don't agree with that. As @Zafa Pi said, you can describe things arbitrarily accurately by having lots of tables.

The idea that the point is accurate description is not the reason anyone actually becomes a scientist. Kids ask: "Why does the moon go through phases?", they don't ask: "Exactly how many hours are there between successive full moons?" What the kid wants is understanding, not accurate predictions.

To me, making accurate falsifiable predictions is the way that we test our understanding of nature---it isn't a goal in itself, or at least, it's not the only goal. I'm talking about "goals" in the sense of "why anyone wants to study science, in the first place".

Often in science, having a very accurate description of some phenomenon is the beginning of the quest for a satisfying theory, not the end. The spectral lines of hydrogen were described very accurately by the Balmer series, prior to quantum mechanics. The point of the Bohr model was not to get a more accurate description, but a way of deriving the Balmer series, which was already known. The point of Heisenberg's and Schrodinger's work on QM was to get a less ad-hoc and more general way to get the results of the Bohr model. The Lorentz transformations and I think even the E = mc² of SR were known before Einstein. The point of his investigations was to understand how to reconcile Newtonian physics with the constancy of the speed of light, not to give a more accurate description of how energy and momentum relate to velocity.

Scientists (or at least, the famous ones) are always striving for more complete understanding of nature. The hope is that searching for understanding will also give us better, more accurate predictions, but more accurate predictions are not what motivates them.

 

[vanhees71]

Of course, I agree with that. All models and theories are always preliminary. One day, there might be better and better theories. The Balmer series was an empirical law, i.e., it was found by looking at data and fitting a mathematical formula to it. Nevertheless it was a very important step towards building a model, because it provided a clear evidence for a systematic pattern. Bohr's model was an ad-hoc description, and many physicists tinkered around with it (most famously the Sommerfeld school) using a wealth of spectroscopic data for many different atoms becoming less and less satisfied by it and finally discovering modern QT. Whether modern QT or not is the "final word" is not known yet. Maybe there's a better/more comprehensive theory one day (including the quantum theory of gravitation perhaps).

Still, it's not the aim of all this progress in theory building to "explain" nature but to "describe" it with as consistent as possible mathematical models. The very fact, why this works at all, is not explainable. It's just an empirical fact that it works with an astonishing success!

 

[Wallis]

Feynman's explanation of how mirrors work is a delight. (As I remember it, in Six Not So Easy Pieces, but please correct me.) But back to the topic, I claim observation cannot possibly affect reality. Only the transfer of energy from one place to another affects reality. There you have it, no observer effect whatsoever. The Universe seems to work fine unobserved. When we look millenia later, it seems to have got on fine without us.

There's a probability I understand the magnitude of the wave equation, but the real and imaginary components phase me :-)

 

[vanhees71]

It's the modulus squared of the wave function which gives probability distributions, nicely real and positive.

The point is, you cannot observe anything without exchanging energy between the measurement device and the system you measure. While for macroscopic systems you can make the influence of the measurement device negligibly small, that's not possible for microscopic objects like an electron. To probe it you need other particles or em. waves to scatter at it, and there's nothing "smaller" than an elemetary particle as the electron itself to make the influence of the measurement device arbitrarily small. That's why observation and measurement are so much more emphasized in QT vs. in classical theory.