The Observer Effect: Testing Double-Slit Experiment?

[Fra]

It doesn't? How is it 'informed' and what exactly is being 'informed'?

My view of things is that incompleteness is always and issue, and we don't know everything.

To a certain extent I like the way W.H Zurek put's it.

"What the observer knows is inseparable from what the observer is"

I think that any system, or observer, is formed in a style similar to evolution by interaction with the environment, and eventually the stable system "formed" is in a certain sense in equilibrium with the environment. But if the environment changes, and the system is given unexpected feedback from it's environment it induces response, because the system configuration is now perturbed from it's previously "stable" or "preferred" state.

Furthermore I like to think of interactions and observation as a kind of communication. And in this communication both the sender and the receiver is self-assembled, and the communication protocol is also self-assembled by a kind of evolution or negotiation. The observers communication both remodels theirselves as well as possibly their protocol in the course of how the interaction evolves.

But I agree that there are issues here that aren't yet completely solved to satisfaction, and that's one thing I'd expect from future physics.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

Another analogy I find useful in grasping is "learning". Learning can be thought of as someone communicating/interacting with what you want to understand, complemented with some intelligent mechanisms to adapt and refining your questions.

There are strong similarities with "learning" and "equilibration", "in agreement" and "in equilibrium"

Edit: The analogy "in equilibrium" refers to the communication channel. So two systems can be in partial agreement, relative to a specific communication channel. (the only way they leve so to speak) So equilibrium can be seen to occur at different levels.

/Fredrik

 

[Magic Man]

I can understand what you are saying but it still seems more like a convienience to explain a theory - i.e. it could be anywhere and everywhere at the same time until the time it is observed and then, at that moment, it chooses its final state.

Or perhaps it was in that state all along.

It's a bit like saying that I could be anywhere in the universe or everywhere at the same time until the moment someone spots me, then I am only at that one location. Same theory really but plausible...?

 

[gavinengel]

A side question. How easy is it to re-create (at home) the Double-slit experiment, with a particle detector showing the Observer effect?

 

[reilly]

You want an experiment, see http://grad.physics.sunysb.edu/~amarch/ Will show and explain to you everything you want to know about the double slit expt; blocking slits opening slits, and all the stuff that is sort of confusing.
Regards, Reilly Atkinson

 

[RandallB]

A side question. How easy is it to re-create (at home) the Double-slit experiment, with a particle detector showing the Observer effect?

For an at home experiment you will find some suggestions in the thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=209224"