The Double Slit Experiment - QM

[Arthur]

Recently, I started to get a glimpse of how profound Quantum Mechanics is. I've heard about the famous Double Slit Experiment when I was in high school. I even did some basic calculations of the interference pattern in my college physics class. Yet, it never occurred to anybody just how counter-intuitive, profound, and outright bizarre that experiment is.

Brief description
Imagine you have a loaded gun pointed at a wall with two slit openings. Behind it is another one, where every bullet entry can be clearly seen. The first wall acts as a sieve for all the bullets fired at the second wall.

Common sense suggests that only the bullets fired at a specific angle will go through. After hundreds of rounds fired from different angles, you should expect two lines on the second wall. Those lines are a projection of the two primary slits.

After a good number of rounds, the emerging pattern was very counter-intuitive. The marks suggested that a bullet was not following a straight path. There were bullet holes found in spots that were physically un-reachable without curving the bullet direction. 
The marks appeared in an Interference pattern, which is a phenomenon of waves. It can be observed at a beach when ocean waves encounter rocks. Still, bullets - electrons, are not waves, they are real physical particles. Your body and everything around us is made out of them... or so it seems.

This result was basically the stuff of science fiction. It suggested that when a bullet was shot, it immediately transformed into a soup of all possible positions. It collapsed back into a bullet again when it reached the second wall.
And then it got even weirder...

When scientists put a measuring device that catches the bullet's exact position. They stopped transforming into a wave and acted just as regular physical entities! There was no Interference pattern, and the results were predictable. When they removed the measuring devices, the pattern appeared again.

So what the hell is going on? The conclusion was that the act of observation collapses this wave of infinite possibilities into a single point of outcome. Yet when you are not looking, it all exists as a primordial singularity, infinite potential or a probability function. Although this function (Bell curve distribution) favors certain outcomes, there is never a 0% chance for any outcome. 

This result caused credible scientists to consider that we truly live in a simulation. We are in a game engine that and only renders things we actually need to see. Like a game character uncovering dark areas on the map, except that dark areas are non-existent prior to discovery.

I'd like to hear your conclusion. Here is mine:
Aside from quotes like "when you are not looking at the moon, it isn't there". What this seems to suggest is that consciousness is not separate from the "outside" events. In fact, there are is no external reality. Everything exists as nothingness, void, and infinite potential until consciousness is introduced. That stoplight awareness gives rise to the 10,000 things we see around us. Like an old movie projector with a tape running through it. The tape images become visible only through the light of the projector. The present moment manifests itself only because of awareness. There is no outside reality to present experiences. We are the raw experience that collapses the emptiness and manifests reality every single moment.
 

[zambize]

So observation in this sense doesn't necessarily mean consciousness, it might just be shining a light on one of the particles.  In QM, there are many types of measurements that will collapse the wave function, but that's being too technical.  While I agree QM does point to there being something really strange and kind of meta-physical, I would not use these QM results to try and prove the conclusions you've come to, I would use direct experience

[zambize]

1 minute ago, Mikael89 said:

Are you 100% sure about that? Because I have heard that it has been proven that that's not the case.

The scientists are not idiots, they know that that could be a possibility. So they have made experiments to investigate if that's the case, and they found out that it's not the measurement which affects it.

For example with the delayed-choice quantum eraser and stuff.

I think what you are saying is a myth among materialists.

Are you trying to argue that shining light onto a particle that's in a superposition of going through two slits will not collapse the wave function?  What specific claim are you arguing?

[zambize]

1 minute ago, Mikael89 said:

I mean that it's not the measurement device ("dead matter") which affects the experiment ("dead matter") in a materialistic way.

Another interesting thing is quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement communicates infinitely much faster than the speed of light. So that could show that Consciousness is one (has no distance.)

No it's pretty certain that it is the light, if you can clearly see that the particle went through one of the slits, it definitely didn't go through the other.  How do scientists know it went through one of the slits?  They shine a light at the entrance of the slits to see if it went through, if it did, it won't act strangely, it will just act like the particle went through the slit that the light showed it go through.  Quantum entanglement does not communicate information, that's against the laws of physics.  While it's true that a system that is entangled seems to communicate a measurement on one end of the entanglement to the other instantaneously, it's not the same thing as "communicating", it's much more technical and has its limitations.  It's not materialistic to believe that the perceptual universe effects the perceptual universe, I would argue it's more materialistic to use a topic of dead matter that you don't fully understand to prove concepts that unless you understand from direct experience, you don't really understand

[zambize]

I work in a quantum computing lab, I'm not going to argue quantum mechanics with copy and pasted mainstream articles 

[zambize]

10 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

@zambize It doesn't matter where you work. You are still just a human (apparent). You might be brain washed by your materialist colleagues and materialist education who are clinging to materialism to make you believe that it's just the measuring apparatus (supposedly "dead matter") which affects the experiment (also supposedly a experiment made of "dead matter".)

No I think me saying light will effect the outcome of a particle it hits is no more materialist than saying a hammer will effect your head if you hit yourself in the head with it.  I would say it does matter where I work in the sense that I had to get an education in QM and am frequently exposed to the literature.  And even if I'm wrong, it doesn't mean my materialistic cult colleagues are trying to brain wash me.  They may have limitations on their view of reality if they believe that QM and measurements in the lab are the only way of answering deep questions of the universe, but that's to each individual to decide.  Most of them are just working a job in a topic they found semi-interesting, not really much more complicated than that.   But yeah I'll leave the QM for you to decide for yourself, it wouldn't really matter to me if I was wrong or right because my questions aren't going to be answered with quantum mechanics

[zambize]

25 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

@zambize There are detectors which don't use light for the measurement.

"No I think me saying light will effect the outcome of a particle it hits is no more materialist than saying a hammer will effect your head if you hit yourself in the head with it."

I understand but that doesn't mean we have to rule out that quantum mechanics might reveal the real Reality (for whatever reason).

They don't necessarily brain wash you on purpose, but they could it do subconsciously/automatically because of their dogmas, assumptions and beliefs.

Also P-hacking/data dredging could be a factor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/quantum-experiment-space-confirms-reality-what-you-make-it-0

QM breaks the speed of light limit, it breaks the materialist notion of matter, it breaks the materialist notion of space, it breaks the materialist notion of time.

Another interesting thing with QM is quantum tunneling.

I'm aware there are detectors that don't use light, that was just one example of a possible detector. Others could use magnetic/electric fields, could be a photomultiplier etc.....  I haven't ruled out quantum mechanics, I just at this point am not interested in trying to explain reality via QM, maybe in the future I will.  I don't really care about materialists, I don't agree with them, and I really don't care what they think.  The people with at work, we don't really talk about QM and the nature of reality, nor do college classes.  They teach the probability side of it, the matrix math you need etc.  In my work, we talk about specific designs of circuits and what not, I don't know I think you have this weird view of brain washing scientists.  It's just a bunch of dumb fucks in grad school trying to get a paper out and graduate, no ones talking about god,consciousness, materials etc.  We talk about how it's a bitch when certain wires need to be replaced and how much they hate their jobs.  Just so you don't have this notion that I'm in any way a materialist, or that we're a materialist cult in colleges haha

[Arthur]

I think everybody has their own point of view and can interpret this experiment differently.

I happen to look at it through the spiritual lense. To me, it dovetails nicely with mysticism. I enjoy scientific results that brake the material notions of reality and take consciousness into account. Like for example the Quantum Gravity research theory, which proposes that reality is a pattern of a unified 8-dimensional crystal. In the end, it's all speculations and attempts to caricature some aspects of existence.. but its fun. 

[Amun]

I would like to clear some misinformation on this topic. There is an effort on the internet to make this experiment seem like conscious observation has an effect on the behavior of a particle. But that is not the case. In order to measure a particle, you need to interact with it, for instance you need to hit it with a photon, which on the quantum level changes the attribute (like velocity) you want to measure significantly. This does not have to be a conscious observer and in fact, if you looked at the experiment with your bare eyes it would have no effect because the act of looking doesn't interact with the particle in any way. What is significant about the experiment is just that, that as long as we don't measure the particle, it seems to be in a "quantum super state", you can think of it as the particle being in all possible locations in space that it can be simultaneously, like a cloud of possibilities. That is why when we don't measure the particle, it creates the wave pattern, because the particle being in its quatum state makes it behave like a wave. When we measure the particle, the measurement forces it to collapse down from all possible locations to one possible location (this is called wave function collapse and one individual possible location is called an eigenstate). That is why when we measure it, it creates the particle pattern. Because only one eigenstate can go through a slit at a time. Altough it is very significant that unmeasured particles exist as a cloud of possibilities, it doesn't have much to do with the observer being conscious. 

Edited December 25, 2018 by Amun
Corrected incorrect term

[Arthur]

@Amun So you are suggesting that "dead matter" in fact collapses the wave function and not consciousness?

I hear you. But how would the Scientist know that the measurement did or did not affect the experiment? He would have to look at it. Maybe not directly, but at the measurement device that was present during the experiment. Yet, that looking, even after a certain period of time, will collapse the function of the result itself.

The result might prove indeed that electron wave collapsed during the experiment, but he looked at at the result nonetheless! even if it happened after the experiment. I'm trying to apply the principle of this experiment to the one doing the experiment. If a particle can exist in multiple states at once, I don't see why the result of the experiment can and can not show the collapse of the wave at the same time.  

What I'm saying is that the experiment, the result, and everything exists only as a "probability wave" without consciousness.  

[Amun]

@Arthur Thank you for your Reply. I understand where you are coming from. It is indeed not possible to know whether the results were predetermined before the conscious observer observes the results and the results might have been changed by the conscious observer. However the consistency of the results makes us think that it was predetermined independently from the conscious observer. But as you have pointed out this doesn't constitute a strong proof that the results are independent. My take on the topic is, the results as we see them don't do violence to what we experienced internally and the insights we gained (at least to what i personally I personally experienced), therefore the results can as well be accepted, altough with a healthy dose of skepticism. 

[Nahm]

@Mikael89 Ya. Doesn’t matter when the “results” are observed, but it does matter if they are. Have you thought about the implication of the double slit, quantum erasure, “relativity”, nonduality and the law of attraction / no assertion? (In the cumulative sense) 

@Arthur Great post!

[Aakash]

It's ironic lol, but i believe i have found the answer in some way. But it's not the complete answer at the end of the day as another answer will come and replace it in the end. 

But the double split experiment and even quantum entanglement is basically as so... the electron cloud density is in all positions and in every possible position at all times. Depending on the observation point, the electron changes property from wave function to particle. SO the only conclusive conclusion is that particles are wavelengths when we are not looking. But my theory is simple it is just everything , everythwhere in all positions within the encapsulation of the proton, neurtron (but thats my best scientific answer, not metaphysical answer). 

 

[zambize]

29 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

@Amun If you could see the particle with your bare eyes it would affect the result. It doesn't matter how you do the observation, the observation itself affects the result.

And no, it's not the detector itself which physically interacts with it and changes the result. That has been proved with the delayed-choice quantum-eraser.

"If you could see the particle with your bare eyes it would affect the result"

I mean this is seemingly true because in this case a photon is hitting the particle and then back to your eye, but at the same time I don't see how you can make guesses about the nature of reality/QM in a universe that we don't live in (one where we can see elementary particles) without understanding QM in our own reality first.

Then you go on to say the detector is not physically interacting with it?  Of course it is, it's a detector, it needs to interact with it in someway to know its there.  You don't have to call a photon-particle interaction physical, but that's one case of a detector.  There's nothing mysterious about detectors though, if the particles were large enough I could bend over on the other side of the slit and my ass could be a detector, really nothing special about this detector terminology.

I would like your proof though if you're going to disagree with me, as far as why the delayed quantum eraser proves the detector itself is not physically interacting with the system

[zambize]

2 hours ago, Arthur said:

@Amun So you are suggesting that "dead matter" in fact collapses the wave function and not consciousness?

I hear you. But how would the Scientist know that the measurement did or did not affect the experiment? He would have to look at it. Maybe not directly, but at the measurement device that was present during the experiment. Yet, that looking, even after a certain period of time, will collapse the function of the result itself.

The result might prove indeed that electron wave collapsed during the experiment, but he looked at at the result nonetheless! even if it happened after the experiment. I'm trying to apply the principle of this experiment to the one doing the experiment. If a particle can exist in multiple states at once, I don't see why the result of the experiment can and can not show the collapse of the wave at the same time.  

What I'm saying is that the experiment, the result, and everything exists only as a "probability wave" without consciousness.  

This to me is like proving there is something we aren't listening to, maybe it's the case maybe it isn't.  You can theorize all you want, but your complaint is with the Scientist taking the measurement, but for any study you have to measure the particle haha, you can't just set up an experiment and not do a measurement.  But at the end of the day it really shouldn't matter,  going into consciousness work with any assumptions about knowing infinity/consciousness because of the results of QM which is based on results from measuring dead matter, seems really materialistic to me, and I'm a big fan of QM, but QM seems to be being used to validate assumptions and ideas that haven't been realized through direct experience, and that direct experience of consciousness/infinity is probably only going to be more difficult with assumptions from a materialistic science.   I don't know, I don't want to come off as harsh, but at the same time I want to make sure this isn't keeping you from self-inquiry.  

 

What I'm saying is that the experiment, the result, and everything exists only as a "probability wave" without consciousness.  

 

I can't disprove this, because it's just not our reality, and we can make conjectures about a reality without consciousness if that's even a thing, but that's just a guessing game, who knows  

 

[abrakamowse]

32 minutes ago, zambize said:

This to me is like proving there is something we aren't listening to, maybe it's the case maybe it isn't.  You can theorize all you want, but your complaint is with the Scientist taking the measurement, but for any study you have to measure the particle haha, you can't just set up an experiment and not do a measurement.  But at the end of the day it really shouldn't matter,  going into consciousness work with any assumptions about knowing infinity/consciousness because of the results of QM which is based on results from measuring dead matter, seems really materialistic to me, and I'm a big fan of QM, but QM seems to be being used to validate assumptions and ideas that haven't been realized through direct experience, and that direct experience of consciousness/infinity is probably only going to be more difficult with assumptions from a materialistic science.   I don't know, I don't want to come off as harsh, but at the same time I want to make sure this isn't keeping you from self-inquiry.  

 

What I'm saying is that the experiment, the result, and everything exists only as a "probability wave" without consciousness.  

 

I can't disprove this, because it's just not our reality, and we can make conjectures about a reality without consciousness if that's even a thing, but that's just a guessing game, who knows  

 

I agree with that.

One thing I don't understand in Quantum Mechanics is the fact that when there's no "measurement" the particles behave like waves and when someone is measuring them they behave like particles.

Isn't it also that the same slits are also affecting the particles/waves? How is it possible to do anything without any kind of "observer". There's always an observer. It can be a person or it can be just another particle, photon, whatever... maybe I am a bit dumb.

LoL

 

Maybe you can help me understand that @zambize

[Arthur]

@Mikael89 That's awesome, I love this channel, but haven't heard of Quantum Eraser before. 

At 14:12 they mention precisely the point I was making in my previous post.

Thanks for sharing.

[zambize]

10 hours ago, Mikael89 said:

After 9:34

Wow this is a mess, I don't usually accept a video with cats and shit as an argument against a pretty clear question, but I'll entertain the video.

So 11:25, that blockage and what they say after happening is what should happen if you put a detector at the front of one of the slits and know which hole it has gone through.  If you know which slit has gone through via a detector, you know it did not go through the other, and it will not produce an interference pattern, just a diffusive light pattern

As far as the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser video goes,  I wasn't super impressed and a lot of it feels like bro science.  Quantum Mechanics was built largely on just getting results, and modeling the results without having any fucking idea with what's going on.  A lot of the material of these types of videos goes into actual science, but also just whatever interpretation they feel explains it best, and because there isn't really a good understanding of why QM is the way it is, you can basically say whatever the hell you want, especially in a youtube video.  They do have a good point about detectors, and you're right to say that in this case it is slightly more nuanced, when I was talking about the detector, of course something sending light at a particle and looking for a reflection or whatever detector you use would be recording that information or be available to the scientist, and would collapse the wave, however it appears that you can ignore the detector results, in which case you don't have path information, and in more complicated experiments, you can at least prove that a detector can be in a superposition state, but that's not really the simple experiment we are talking about.  I found a more rigorous video, that was done more inline with the actual researchers who did the experiment, and shows how complicated the actual experiment is compared to a double slit haha

 

 

 

 

[zambize]

10 hours ago, abrakamowse said:

I agree with that.

One thing I don't understand in Quantum Mechanics is the fact that when there's no "measurement" the particles behave like waves and when someone is measuring them they behave like particles.

Isn't it also that the same slits are also affecting the particles/waves? How is it possible to do anything without any kind of "observer". There's always an observer. It can be a person or it can be just another particle, photon, whatever... maybe I am a bit dumb.

LoL

 

Maybe you can help me understand that @zambize

No you're not do dumb haha, here is a quote from the fathers of QM

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"

-Richard Feynman

This guy was super super fucking smart when it came to QM, just to put things into perspective.  While I agree that QM points to something being a bit strange about our universe, explanations from Multiverse and more probabilistic models to consciousness exist out there, and you can't really refute or add to them because it's mostly just interpretations of results without ever seeing the actual mechanism.  Don't worry about understanding it, it's a slightly entertaining mess.  I wish I had answers to your questions ( I don't), but good news, a lot of consciousness questions can be answered or experienced right here right now, you're bathing in consciousness atm

[abrakamowse]

@zambize Thank you! I feel better now... hahahaha...

 

Yes, the thing for me is that anything can be an observer and create an interference (or a collapse in the wave function). I am not so sure quantum mechanics proves anything.

The only clear thing to me is what Niels Bohr said, that matter is made out of things that we don't consider matter. (Not his exact words, but that's the idea.)

 

Thanks again!

:-)

Edited December 26, 2018 by abrakamowse
grammar