What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole Page #5

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back screen shows that intensity.

This is similar to the

line the marbles make.

But when we add the second slit...

something different happens.

If the top of one wave meets

the bottom of another wave...

they cancel each other out.

So now there is an interference

pattern on the back wall.

Places where the two tops meet are the

highest intensity- the bright lines-

and where they cancel, there is nothing.

So, when we throw things, that

is, matter, through two slits...

we get this-

two bands of hits.

And with waves, we get

an interference pattern...

of many bands.

Good, so far. Now, let's go quantum.

An electron is a tiny,

tiny bit of matter...

like a tiny marble.

Let's fire a stream through one slit.

It behaves just like the

marble:
a single band.

So if we shoot these tiny

bits through two slits...

we should get, like

the marbles, two bands.

What? An interference pattern.

We fired electrons, tiny

bits of matter, through.

But we get a pattern like waves...

not like little marbles.

How? How could pieces of matter...

create an interference

pattern like a wave?

It doesn't make sense.

But physicists are clever.

They thought, "Maybe those little

balls are bouncing off each other...

and creating that pattern. "

So they decide to shoot

electrons through one at a time.

There is no way they could

interfere with each other.

But after an hour of this, the same

interference pattern is seen to emerge.

The conclusion is inescapable.

The single electron

leaves as a particle...

becomes a wave of potentials...

goes through both slits...

and interferes with itself...

to hit the wall like a particle.

But mathematically, it's even stranger.

It goes through both slits

and it goes through neither.

And it goes through just one and

it goes through just the other.

All of these possibilities are

in superposition with each other.

But physicists were

completely baffled by this.

So they decided to peek and see

which slit it actually goes through.

They put a measuring

device by one slit...

to see which one it went through...

and let it fly.

But the quantum world is far more

mysterious than they could've imagined.

When they observed, the electron went

back to behaving like a little marble.

It produced a pattern of two bands...

not an interference pattern of many.

The very act of

measuring, or observing...

which slit it went through...

meant it only went

through one, not both.

The electron decided

to act differently...

as though it was aware

it was being watched.

And it was here that

physicists stepped forever...

into the strange,

never-world of quantum events.

What is matter, marbles or waves?

And waves of what?

And what does an observer

have to do with any of this?

The observer collapsed

the wave function...

simply by observing.

We are always the observer.

But sometimes we identify

with the events so much so...

that we even lose the

aspect of the observer.

That's why the materialist

gets totally lost...

and thinks that we could

do without the observer.

The physics data tells us that the-

that an object itself is

really a simplification...

for what's we call "out there. "

One is particularly

- When we're looking at atomic and subatomic particles...

or atomic and subatomic

matter in any form...

what we find is how

we go to look at it...

or what we choose to examine it with...

actually changes the properties

of what we observe to be out there.

Is this the observer...

and which is so intricate

to understanding...

the wacky, weird world...

of quantum particles and how they react?

Is this then the observer?

And even though we cannot

have a quantum field...

without the observation of

scientists who have gone there...

who have uncovered it layer

after layer after layer.

They're all observers...

but not one of them

agree conclusively...

on all points in the field...

because they're perceiving

the field mathematically...

from different angles of perception.

We don't know in quantum mechanics...

how to hook ourselves as

observers up with the world.

We don't know how to treat

ourselves as observers...

as just another part of the physical

system that we're describing.

The only way we know how to do quantum

mechanics as it's traditionally formulated...

is to keep the observer outside

of the system you're describing.

Uh, the minute you put him in,

you get all these paradoxes.

And we're forced to say things

in quantum mechanics like...

"Look, the book is doing what it's

doing because of quantum mechanics.

"And I see that because

I'm there and I see it.

"And you'd better not try to analyze

that second part of the sentence...

in terms of applying quantum mechanics

to it, because it's gonna break down. "

That's why there are these two separate

laws of the evolutions of physical systems...

one that applies when

you're not looking at them...

the other that applies when you are.

But that's crazy.

There's no way that we're

ever going to mathematize...

or put into mathematical formula...

this very act in which a conscious

observer comes up with the answer.

People say, "Oh, the measuring

instruments, the recorder records it.

And there it is. It's on

the tape. It's recorded. "

You forgot one part of the equation.

Somebody has to look at the tape.

And until somebody looks at the

tape, it ain't recorded at all.

When you are not looking,

they are waves of possibility.

When we are looking, then

they're particles of experience.

A particle, which we think

of as a solid thing...

really exists in a

so-called "superposition"...

a spread-out wave of

possible locations...

and it's in all of those at once.

The instant you check on it...

it snaps into just one of

those possible positions.

It's easy to generate situations...

where the equations of

motion will predict...

that, say, the wave function-

the psi of a certain basketball-

is uniformly distributed all

over the basketball court.

We don't have any idea what a

state like that would look like.

Um, according to the law

of quantum mechanics...

that's supposed to be a state in

which it fails to make any sense...

even to ask the question,

"Where is the basketball?"

That is, according to the

law of quantum mechanics...

asking the question,

"Where is a basketball...

whose psi is uniformly distributed

over a whole basketball court?"

is the logical equivalent of asking about,

say, the marital status of the number five.

Okay? It's not that you

don't know the answer-

you don't happen to know whether the

number five is married or a bachelor-

it's that the question somehow is

radically inappropriate in the first place.

The number five doesn't

have a marital status.

There's nothing there to ask about.

And similarly, a basketball whose wave

function was uniformly distributed...

over the entire basketball court...

would not have a position that

could even coherently be asked about.

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