What does it mean to "observe" a quantum process?
What does it mean to "observe" a quantum process?
Landon King
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
sciencevibe.com
shockingscience.com
everythingforever.com
twitter.com
Jordan Bennett
It means the act of knowing. Many people misinterpret the results of the double slit experiment and think that it's the interaction of the electron and the detector that makes it behave as a particle. This isn't actually true though because we see an interference pattern form when the detector is active but without a connection to record the data. Meaning it's the act of collecting data that informs the observer of which slit the electron went through that alters the result of the experiment, not the detector. This can also be seen in the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment, where photons don't interact with anything at all and yet still change their behavior retroactively based on whether we obtain data on which slit they went through.
In short it is NOT interaction, it is knowledge which causes the waveform to collapse.
Leo Morris
>Be quantum entangled particle
>Collide with another particle, collapse wave function
>Enter magnetic field, collapse wave function
>Photon hits me, collapse wave function
The wave function of an atom is described as a probability function for its position/rotation. So we measure or "observe" the problems that occur when a quantum object loses its probabilistic nature and turns into a classical object.
This is my limited understanding, I have only recently started delving into these processes
Samuel Collins
Depends on interpretation, but here's one way of thinking about it:
There's a process called 'decoherence', where interactions of a quantum state with the outside world cause the 'quantumness' to sort of 'leak out' (handwaves frantically) into the wider universe, causing the states to stop interfering with each other and start acting like regular classical probabilities. (This isn't an interpretation thing - you can get decoherence straight from the equations).
This process actually looks a lot like the concept of 'collapse' of a quantum state, and in some interpretation this in fact replaces any concept of collapse entirely - the quantum state simply turns into one entangled with the whole universe, and because it's decohered then to anybody in one of the states the other states seem to have completely vanished.
And, well, you're a big warm messy system leaking information all over the place into the outside world, so anything that causes you to become aware of the state of a quantum system necessarily decoheres it, because that quantum state gets entangled with your macroscopic state and 'poof', out it goes.
----
Another, more practical, way of thinking about it is just that 'observation' is whatever goes on that causes fuzzy quantum states to get nailed down to specific, defined states whenever you actually try to actually detect particular details about them.
Owen Watson
All interesting answers, thanks.
Noah Howard
The wave function collapse means that when one of the observable states is observed (0,5,10,15,20,...), then this is the new state of the system.
Going back to the example of the QM model for a armwrist-watch:
Maybe the quantum state was 17 minutes and 55 seconds, and the QM model implies that at this time you have a 10% chance of measuring 10min, 40% of measuring 15 min, 50% of measuring 20 min and 10% of measuring 20min.
When the observation is made, and e.g. the result is that the watch says 10min (there was a 40% chance computed for this to happen), then the "wavefunction collapsed", meaning that the new state of the minute clock is set to 10min (and the previous (and unobservable) state of 17 minutes and 55 seconds becomes irrelevant)
William Thompson
These answers are directly contradictory. So which is it:
>a human finding out about it
>interaction with another field/particle
Cooper Wilson
It means to lie creatively.
Christian Wilson
Completely and utterly wrong.
It's ALL about interaction with other particles.
Gabriel Torres
so what if you record the data but everyone involved agrees to destroy the data after a couple days without looking at it
John Torres
this also repeat same experiment but look at data if theres an interference pattern
also same experiment but look at data only if there isn't an interference pattern
Oliver Perez
Effectively interacting with it
Good job faggot more completely inaccurate quantum WOO to mislead the masses.
Lincoln Perez
If it's interaction then why do we see an interference pattern when the detector is switched on but not recording? Why is it only the act of recording data that collapses the waveform?
Jace Kelly
Ill need a source on that.
Easton Powell
Why is this so hard to explain using human language?
Hudson Wilson
The way I see it is that waves spread through time, and a particle is a slice of said wave in "the present", whatever the fuck "the present" is.
Nicholas Baker
Because quantum physics is made up bullshit that has no equivalent in reality.
Dominic Morgan
Wow I was going to ask this exact question today. I'm taking Undergrad. Quantum Mechanics right now and I get all the math of QM but I don't get the mechanism of collapse at all.
The decoherence explanation is fantastic. Best I've ever heard. Is the particle necessarily entangled with the universe? Can't it just be entangled with the observer.
Noah White
It's not. Being human is made up bullshit.
Nicholas Brown
youtube.com
Go to 2:40
Juan Russell
>on
>by "not reccording" they mean the circuit was oppen
WOO
LAD
Camden Perez
Could the interference pattern in the double slit experiment be viewed as a superposition parallel universes? When we measure the path we are no longer living in a superposition of the two universes, so we can only see the effect of one or the other. (Replace "universes" with "states" and you get get the decoherence explanation from above)
Cameron Fisher
He means everything was on, there was just no magnetic tape for the heads to record to.
Nathan Hernandez
And besides, even if it wasn't open, physically connecting the circuit to a computer would obviously affect the circuit and therefore the coil's interaction with the particles. There are SO many factors you'd have to control for before coming to that conclusion.
This, his "CONSCIOUSNESS IS EBIN" image on his podium, his fucking look, everything is suspicious.
Looking deeper into who Thomas Campbell is, he looks less like an accomplished physicist and more like a those key biology Phds creationists use to make themselves look credible.
His book was a failure among his physicist colleagues, and so he had to appeal them to uneducated and impressionable masses.
The stuff in his book sounds like your average religious "intellectualism" too, these "series of logical statements" instead of empirical evidence, that are filled with flaws.
Basically he's a merchant selling snake oil to gullible retards using his degree for credibility. Wonderful.
Luke Nelson
That could very well influence the results too without the need for a conscious observer.
Ayden White
You realize Ad Hominem is a fallacy, right? Attacking the character of the person making the argument is not addressing the point.
Jace Sanders
>AD HOMINEM AD HOMINEM AD HOMINEM
Brainlet detected.
Ad hominem is a fallacy when used to discredit an argument, especially when the person being insulted is being insulted for a completely unrelated reason.
>reasonable person: 2+2=4
>asshat: that can't be right, the person saying this fucks goats
A completely non fallacious use of insults is as follows
>asshat: 2+2=3
>No, 2+2=4. Such a statement shows you're an asshat and not likely to make reasonable statements in the future
>asshat: hur dur ad hominem
Which is what I did
Nice try though.
Adrian Hernandez
And besides, I did address the point separately. Even if I did commit a fallacy later on, discrediting my earlier statement based on that would be an application of the fallacy-fallacy.
Juan Scott
>Ad hominem is a fallacy when used to discredit an argument, especially when the person being insulted is being insulted for a completely unrelated reason.
Ad hominem is a fallacy period.
Thomas Diaz
Then what I did wasn't ad hominem, just an insult/rightfully discrediting him.
You can play with words all you want but in the playground of reality I will still be right, you're just changing the perspective of the observation.
Faggot.
Blake Kelly
So you agree you made a fallacious argument based on an ad hominem. Ok. Look, I'll even point out the ad hominems for you.
>This, his "CONSCIOUSNESS IS EBIN" image on his podium, his fucking look, everything is suspicious.
Irrelevant to the argument. Fallacy.
>Looking deeper into who Thomas Campbell is, he looks less like an accomplished physicist and more like a those key biology Phds creationists use to make themselves look credible.
Irrelevant to the argument. Fallacy.
>Basically he's a merchant selling snake oil to gullible retards using his degree for credibility. Wonderful.
Very irrelevant.
Your entire post was one big ad hominem attacking the reliability of the person making the argument.
Easton Johnson
Because """the act of recording data""" entails physical processes
Ethan Kelly
HAHAHA no it's not a fallacy.
Just because something is irrelevant to the argument does not make it a fallacy.
I addressed it in the first part of my post, which you conveniently ignored.
The second part is a large detailed, separate remark. Correct at that.
>So you agree you made a fallacious argument based on an ad hominem
Now, that, would be a straw man =^)
Joshua Morris
Also, now that you used that point to discredit my post, I can confirm this is a application of the fallacy fallacy.
A very bad one, because I did not commit a fallacy in the first place.
Mason Price
So the theory that time isn't chronological, but indeed tightly wound and happening all at once, instantaneously, kind of what I mean here:
shockingscience.com
everythingforever.com
Has always innately explained to me the double slit experiment. These tightly wound up waves are small enough to travel through "time" as we experience it, and change the result once we "observe" it. At least, that's what I've thought to myself for the past year or so.
So basically, waves or essence, or existence does not happen until we "put" it there.
Probably sounds like complete and utter mystical bullshit, but a newer thought that I've had, or an analogy rather, is: The same reason we will never reach the end of "pi" is the same reason we will never intellectual grasp the double slit experiment. It's the beauty in fractals, they infinitely repeat until the eventually loop back around and effect the present moment. We're controlling our existence, moment by moment, literally shapeshifting reality.
Also, probably why the near death experience cliche goes "I saw my life flash before my eyes," because it happened all at once, but we're just counting down fractals, which isn't counting down.
Also, if this theory is true, it promptly explains the multiverse theory, if we're separate beings each shifting an infinite amount of possibilities, all of the time, then yea.
"History repeats itself" because we created it already, present tense.