Double Slit Experiment.
The double split experiment is where a particle (electron, proton, atom, molecule etc) is fired at a wall with two slits on it. The particle travels through the slits to a further wall. The particle’s ending position is measured on the back wall (using sensors). The particle will travel in one of two ways. Either as a spread-out wave or a concrete particle.
The difference in how it will travel is, amazingly, dependent on whether someone knows which slit the particle went through. This could be you, me, the scientist or the paperboy down the street. This experiment places the observer (conscious life) at the centre of how the laws of physics works.
This experiment has been repeated so many times that it is perhaps the most confirmed result in science. If we don’t know which slit the particle went through, then the formation at the back resembles the outcome of the particle acting as a wave. If we do know which slit, the particle will virtually be a straight line from the firing gun through one of the slits to the back wall.
To investigate this amazing phenomena further, we can attach two lights, one to both of the slits which lights up when a particle passes. Because this tells us (conscious observers) which slit the particle went through, it will always travel in a straight line to the back wall. We can turn the intensity of the light down so that eventually the human eye cannot tell which or whether any light comes on. As soon as it gets to that stage we don’t know which slit the particle went through and immediately particle’s position at the back wall resembles a wave (probability) function. Now not everyone’s eyes are the same. But as soon as the particular person says ‘I can no longer see the light on the sensor’ the particles way of travelling goes back to being a probability wave. If someone with good eyes and someone with bad eyes are watching, it changes over always when the person with the best eyes can no longer see the light.
As long as ‘someone’ knows, or ‘can know’ the position of the particle it does not ‘collapse’ to being a probability wave function but stays as a ‘concrete’ particle. This is clear evidence that the behaviour of matter is dependant not only on observation but the knowledge of where the particle has been.
To repeat the above assertion, science cannot prove the existence of God because it deals only in the physical world. But discovering that the very laws of the physical world should take into account the knowledge of a conscious being lifts the importance of ‘knowledge’ to the very centre of physics.The materialist viewpoint is that knowledge is simply an abstract concept that was made up (by humans) to describe an organisms learned responses to nature. To have knowledge at the centre of physics turns the materialist view of the world on its head.
How can the laws of physics be determined so strongly by the knowledge of conscious beings when the materialist worldview believes that the laws of physics predate both conscious beings and knowledge? It is as if the laws of physics not only anticipated conscious beings and knowledge but were specifically designed for it. Right there is where I believe the concept of a Creator is by far and away the most rational explanation for our existence.
Delayed Choice Double Slit experiment. (Modification).
After detection, we can send the position at both the slits and the back wall to a computer to record the information there without looking at the information. We could fire through a billion particles, collect the data and then repeat the exercise many times. We could then come back the next day, or next week or a year from the experiment. When we do, we have the choice of being able to see (in retrospect) where the particle was at the slits or just look at the distribution at the back wall. If we look at where the particle was and then look at the results of the back wall the distribution will always be a straight line from the firing gun.
If, on the other hand we destroy the data recording which slit the particle went through so that there is no way of ever knowing which slit the particle went through, then the distribution at the back wall will always be a wave (probability) distribution.
So we can arbitrarily decide to destroy the first set of data (at the slits) or not and this will affect the distribution results at the back wall. This happens even if the actual experimental testing happened yesterday, or last week or last year. If we have the data at the slits but don’t look at it, but keep the data so that we could look at it in the future, then we look at the data at the back wall it will also be a straight line distribution – BECAUSE WE CAN POTENTIALLY KNOW WHERE THE PARTICLE HAD BEEN even though we have not yet looked at the data. This is clear evidence of the secondary nature of matter and its behavioural dependency on the knowledge (conscious realisation) of the preceding position of a particle.
Einstein’s thought Experiment
I accept that quantum physics says the behaviour of matter is directly dependent on the conscious knowledge of it’s position. One of the weird connections between matter and conscious knowledge is shown with the uncertainty principle. The more we know the position of a particle, the less we know about its speed. Conversely the more we know about its speed, the less we know about its position. In fact importantly, the more we know of one of the characteristic of something, the more the reality of the other characteristic changes. Again, knowledge changes a matter’s characteristics. It was originally thought that this may be because of experimental interference, but the mathematical relationship was so exact that many thought it a law of nature – and now it has been proven so. Again, what we as conscious beings know about a particle’s position affects its speed and vice versa.
Einstein designed a thought experiment to test this. He said that if we were to freeze some material to just above absolute zero then we know that its speed is close to zero. Quantum physics says that if we know its speed, then its position will be undefined. The ‘common sense’ view would be that if we freeze an object so that it doesn’t move it should be stationary and well defined. After Einstein’s death a series of breakthrough’s meant that it was possible to freeze an object to just above the absolute freezing temperature. When the scientists did this and looked under the microscope, at just the calculated temperature the molecules of the substance became a condensate and was not well defined. That meant, looking through the microscope the molecules seemed to overlap and be in more than one place at the same time. And this happened just at the exact temperature (speed) predicted by quantum physics to make a difference. And the underlying quantum theory held up – because we know its speed (close to zero) the position will become undefined.
This is another example of the secondary nature of matter. It appears in more than one place at the same time because of the conscious knowledge of it’s speed. The Einstein thought experiment (to disprove Niels Bohr) said that if we cool matter to a few millionths of a degree Kelvin then in principle we should know the momentum of the atoms are about zero. When this happens the position should be undefined. This is based on the idea (from Bohr) that physics works based on what a conscious person knows about the state of matter. When the cooling experiment proceeded then we did see the definition of the atoms overlap and seem to be in more than one place at one time which could be argued to show some aspects of a ‘physical’ wave motion. BUT this very experiment seems to point to the particle also being of a underlying reality we are not familiar with.
The question that comes to mind is what is the fundamental reality? How can matter be part of that fundamental reality if it changes so readily dependent on what we know? Certainly we do not see this power we have over matter at the level of our normal daily lives, but quantum physics shows that it is fundamental to how reality works.
The actual conducting of Einstein’s thought experiment is important because it shows that it is not the eye, or our brains or measurements which creates the wave function or makes it appear as a particle. It is knowledge. The only time we might see any sort of evidence for a ‘physical’ wave in real time is when we deliberately conflict with the uncertainty principle that will not let an observer know both the position and momentum of an object.
Such a result can only happen in the scientific laboratory pushing the limits of matter, but it is unquestionably real. Again this is consistent with a view of physics that puts consciousness at the heart of how physics works and also asserts that matter is secondary to a, as yet unknown, fundamental reality. It might be unexpected, but it seems to me to be the only credible explanation for what we see, taking into account all of the results.
Quantum Computer.
The design for a quantum computer works on the principle that the component parts are in ‘more than one place’ at the same time and can therefore, in theory, do many more calculations than a ‘regular’ computer. This type of computer is currently being researched but as yet, is not close to being in production.
We should just stop to pause and consider the ramifications of this. Mainstream science accepts the principle that the same matter can be n multiple places at the same time and is investing on this basis to design and then put into production the quantum computer. Again, if matter can be in many places (actually an infinite number of places) at the same time then how can matter be fundamental to reality? If matter is not fundamental to reality then what is?
Quantum Electricity Regulation
What is in production right now and is used in just about all computers is the use of regulating electricity supply through quantum resisters. The classical way of regulating electricity supply was to design circuits with varying paths of different resistance. If you wanted only an infinitesimal small amount of electricity to go through a certain path then you give that path a greater resistance and that would regulate electricity supply in proportion to the path resistance.
Eventually, regulating the supply eventually wears out the resistor parts (because of electron flow) and the computer breaks down. Because quantum physics says that
unobserved matter travels as a probability function where matter pops in and out of existence according to a probability distribution, a circuit was designed with a thin non conductor across one of the paths.
Classically the electrons should not go through the non conductor, but quantum physics says there is a small probability of the electron popping out of existence on one side of the non conductor and reappearing on the other side. Again just pausing to think about this. Matter popping out of existence at one location and then popping into existence at another location as calculated by science. Matter and fundamental reality?
The circuit was built and it works and the engineers can regulate the electricity supply to an almost exact level as the electrons are following laws of probability. What is more, the circuit part NEVER wears out because there are never any electrons travelling through the material. They are re-appearing on the other side. This shows again that matter is secondary. Something is making it pop out of existence and then making it come back into our 4 dimensional world following exact mathematical laws of probability.
Faster than Light.
We can fire a photon (light) from a laser gun to a back wall (with a sensor) and of course, it travels at the speed of light. If we fire two at the same time they will arrive at the back wall simultaneously. We can block one of the paths by putting a thin reflective glass just before the sensor (say the lower photon) then this will cause the lower photon to bounce away so that it does not arrive at the back wall and is not sensed.
We know from the previous experiment though that matter does not travel as discrete blocks of ‘stuff’ if unobserved and so there is a mathematical probability that the photon will ‘jump across’ the reflective mirror and hit the sensor at the back wall.
Experimentation shows that this does happen and it happens to exact laws of probability. The rare times it does happen (there is a very small probability) the lower photon always hits the back wall sooner, or faster than the unblocked top photon. So we say that it has travelled ‘faster than light’ even though it is light. The difference in the speeds can be directly calculated and matched by the width of the reflective mirror. In essence, the lower photon does not travel through the mirror, but ‘jumps’ across it. This is again evidence that a 4 dimensional view of reality of matter travelling in a 3 dimensional continuous space is not what happens in practice.
Nature does not work that way. There is something laying behind the properties of matter that is not in our 4 dimensions and that causes the matter to pop back into our universe obeying precise probability distributions.
Quantum Zeno Effect.
When we have a radioactive substance it decays at a certain rate. We don’t know why it decays yet, but it loses atomic components at a fixed rate (or probability). As time continues the chance that a radioactive substance will decay (lose one of its particles) increases.
A theory in quantum physics says that when we observe the particle then it makes it a concrete reality. When we don’t observe it, then it stays only a probability (not a real physical reality). So the theory goes, that if we continuously observe a radioactive material, it will never get into the state of being a probability and will remain as a concrete particle and so will not decay.
Of course our eye cannot continuously observe something, It is limited by light photons entering the eye for a start. What we can do is fire an ionised gas into an experimental container and measure the density of the radioactive substance. In this way we can see (or know) how much of the radioactive substance has already decayed. This ‘knowing’, the theory says, should collapse the probability function of the radioactive material back to a concrete reality.
This process would then ‘reset’ the probability function and thus delay it’s radioactive decay. And we should be able to measure that exact delay mathematically by the number of times a second we make this ‘observation’. The ionised substance does not have any effect on the rate of radioactive decay. When we do the experiments we find that yes, the number of times we ‘know’ the state of the radioactive substance or ‘reset’ its ‘probability reality’, the longer it takes to decay in exact accordance with mathematical probability calculations. This tells us again that matter’s interactions works on a probability basis until observed by a conscious being that then ‘knows’ or resets’ or ‘makes concrete’ the ‘reality’ of that matter.
Electron Spins – Up and down. Complimentaries with the Uncertainty Principle.
Again, quantum physics tells us that matter (pretty much everything we know) acts as a probability function until observed. An electron is said to have a particular spin. We can measure this spin with respect to a certain axis. We could measure the spin at axis say 0 (degrees) and the spin can be up or down. We could measure the spin at right angles to this at 90 (degrees) to get a spin of left or right. What quantum physics finds is that the measure of electron spin at 0 is complimentary to that at 90. That is, we can’t know the spin at both 0 and 90. Just like above in the Einstein thought experiment we can’t know both the position and speed of a particle. The more accurately we know one, the less the other is actually defined. Knowing close to the exact speed of the atoms for Einstein’s experiment meant that the atoms position was not only not known, but it’s very reality of position was seen to have been compromised. It was in more than one place at a time (like the quantum computing parts).
If we fire a group of electrons along a path and measure the spin of each electron at 0 then the spin ups and spin downs will be a 50/50 split, half up and half down according to the probability function.
If we take all of the spin up electrons and measure them again of course they are all still spin up and they will remain that way. If we take this group of electrons and then measure the spin at 90 we find that half of the spin up electrons will be left spinning and the other half right spinning (50/50 split). If we then collect all these spin up electrons back together and measure again the spin at 0 they are no longer all spin up but now are 50/50 spin up and down.
The theory says that because we know (or can know) the spin at 90 then there is no longer any reality of a spin at 0 (zero) and they will go back to being a 50/50 split even though we originally only chose the spin up electrons.
The real interesting find is that if we put a box over the middle part that measures at 90 so that we don’t actually know whether the electrons are spin left or right, then we get the incredible result that they are all still spin up simply because we do not know the left / right spin and so have not reset the 50/50 probability function. (By putting a box over the middle part i mean that we don’t record the left/right spin). Everything is the same accept we prevent ourselves from knowing what the left right spin was. (Similar to the delayed choice experiment above).
Quantum physics says that if we don’t know (or are in a position to retrospectively know) certain characteristics of an atoms ‘reality’ then it doesn’t actually have a ‘reality’ until we interact with it by ‘looking, measuring etc.
These are not thought experiments or ideas outside the square of science. They are science and these experiments have been checked and rechecked thousands of times. The question is why does it work like this ? My conclusions are that matter is secondary to mathematical law and matter is programmed to react in certain ways to create a reality for conscious beings. It is programmed to give us an almost seamless view of reality that is a physical, local cause and effect nature but this is only programmed to be how it looks to an observer. Much like a programmer giving a user a certain ‘virtual reality’ simulation. I’m not saying we are in a computer simulation but the evidence for a programmed existence where matter is secondary is overwhelming.
Certain atheistic scientists have gone to extraordinary lengths to try and explain these phenomena. ‘Parallel universes’ and ‘time travelling in waves backwards and forwards’ are some of the more intellectual constructs to try to keep another other-dimensional intelligence out of the equation. Ultimately i find their explanations contrived, incomplete, lacking in proof, not credible and basically designed to try and ‘keep God out’.
I think the data shows we will not find the answer to life, the universe and everything within our 4 dimensional existence although we have to keep looking. We know science has limitations. The creators of modern science, the Christians of the 11th to 18th centuries knew this to be the case. They also knew there was an intelligence sitting outside of the material world Who made it, as well as our laws of nature. The atheist philosophers of the 19th century have taken a wrong turn and unfortunately taken a vocal minority of the western world with them. Science and history is against the atheist. At some stage it is going to be common knowledge IMHO.
Delayed Choice Double Split experiment (A Further Modification).
As usual, the experiment fires a photon through a wall with two slits to a further wall behind. When we fire the photon it is a particle, no doubt about that. After it leaves the laser gun, science says it acts in a wave probability. Because the particle encounters 2 slits and is ‘acting as a wave probability‘, then it will radiate out from these two slits something like the river through a dam with two run-offs. The two resultant waves from the slits will overlap and form crests and troughs and this will affect its final destination at the back wall. When it hits the back wall, it is a particle again but where it will hit on the back wall is a distribution that matches exactly the distribution of two waves radiating from the slits.
Now we can put 2 detectors at the slits with 2 lights that go on when a particle is detected at the slits. We could have these two lights come on in the room next door where a lab scientist is monitoring the process. We find though when we do this that only one detector light will go on at a time and the distribution at the back wall now is always a straight line from the laser gun, through the slit where the detector gave a signal to the back wall.Now if we take the light bulbs out of the lights in the next room so that no light comes on and keep everything the same so that what happens in the actual experiment room is exactly the same (the detectors are still working and sending a signal – its just that there is no bulb at the end stage) we find the distribution goes back to being a wave phenomena at the back wall. It is important to realise here that nothing has changed accept the light bulbs in the next room have been removed so we can’t know which slit the particle went through. Any measuring at the slits in the experiment room is just the same though.
We could put one light back in and keep the other one out and yet now the distribution at the back wall will always be a straight line (particle). This is an example of where something other than direct observation collapses the wave. We know the particle went through one slit when the light goes on, but importantly, when it doesn’t go on we can derive it must have gone through the other slit since that bulb is missing. So the lack of observation here still makes the wave probability become a particle. There is only indirect measuring going on here and this measuring is the logic that the scientist is using in ’knowing’ which slit the particle went through. In affect – by observing a non measurement.
Now as mentioned previously. Instead of having lights and a scientist we could connect the detector information to a computer and record the data. Likewise we could hook up the sensors at the back wall to a computer and store the results of where the particles landed.
After doing millions of tests we can first look at the back wall results and it will act as a particle straight line distribution. It will do this because in theory, we could still look at the computer results of the detector slits and ascertain which slit the particle went through. This is like the experiment by Carpenter and Anderson. The photon has acted like a particle because it is possible to derive information, not that it was derived.
Alternatively, we could have first destroyed all of the computer information recorded at the 2 slits before looking at the computer results at the back wall. Whenever we do this option, the results at the back wall will always be in the distribution of a wave. The big question is how does reality decide on the way the matter will behave in the experiment before we have decided to look at, or destroy the first set of computer information ?
If we did the experiment yesterday then surely the particles (matter) have already landed at the back wall and were recorded. We instinctively believe we can’t go back and change history. This questions whether matter and time are fundamental components of the ultimate reality. The experiments suggests strongly that they are not. So what is?
These are really important questions and I urge you again to look at the results of the experiments listed here and further research the findings of quantum physics. To me, the conscious knowledge of matter, or whether it is possible to have conscious knowledge seems to directly affect the way physics works.
This has important implications for the explanation of the emergence of our reality.
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