What is Decoherence?

How gravity suppresses quantum behavior

Quantum theory, the other major discovery in physics in the early 20th century, predicts that the fundamental building blocks of nature show fascinating and mind-boggling behavior. Extrapolated to the scales of our everyday life quantum theory leads to situations such as the famous example of Schroedinger's cat: the cat is neither dead nor alive, but in a so-called quantum superposition of both. Yet such a behavior has only been confirmed experimentally with small particles and has never been observed with real-world cats. Therefore, scientists conclude that something must cause the suppression of quantum phenomena on larger, everyday scales. Typically this happens because of interaction with other surrounding particles.

The research team, headed by Caslav Brukner from the University of Vienna and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, found that time dilation also plays a major role in the demise of quantum effects. They calculated that once the small building blocks form larger, composite objects -- such as molecules and eventually larger structures like microbes or dust particles -, the time dilation on Earth can cause a suppression of their quantum behavior. The tiny building blocks jitter ever so slightly, even as they form larger objects. And this jitter is affected by time dilation: it is slowed down on the ground and speeds up at higher altitudes. The researchers have shown that this effect destroys the quantum superposition and, thus, forces larger objects to behave as we expect in everyday life.

Source


Any thoughts?

a reply to: Kashai

Any thoughts?

Well obviously that's just one small part of why large objects don't exhibit superposition, large objects which travel into space don't suddenly start showing signs of superposition as they move away from the Earth. Just because large objects are made of many smaller building blocks which jitter all over the place, doesn't mean a large objects built out of those smaller building blocks will also jitter. The pixels on my screen are flashing different colors at a high frequency, but I don't notice it because I'm looking at millions of pixels all grouped together from a distance. Only if I get really close and examine each pixel individually will I start to notice their strange behavior.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder


Given memory serves (and it does), Multiverse theory developed as a result of a problem in Chemistry.

a reply to: neoholographic



Good vid BTW.

Maybe some of the materialists can watch it and tell me what is wrong with his arguments for the role of consciousness in this experiment.

Note: This guy actually lists his source and shows the exact setup of the experiment.

a reply to: HotMale

Thanks and it pretty much destroys materialism. When you talk about entanglement swapping and different delayed choice experiments.

The question is, why is which path information more important than measurement? If there was an independent material reality then measurement by a mechanical device would be the final answer. But particles care more about which path information is available then they do about measuring devices. This comes down to choice and which path information is available. Let's look closer.

With Entanglement swapping, you have entangled particles going to Alice, Bob and Victor.

The particles go to Alice and Bob's detectors and measure them but Alice and Bob don't know which path information. They haven't observed their measuring devices. A particle then reaches Victor after Alice and Bob's particles have been detected.

THE WAY VICTOR CHOOSES TO MEASURE HIS PARTICLE IS CORRELATED WITH BOB AND ALICE'S PARTICLE EVEN AFTER ALICE AND BOB'S PARTICLES HAVE BEEN MEASURED!

Why is which path information important to particles? Even when Bob and Alice's particles were measured it didn't matter because which path information wasn't observed by Alice or Bob.

How do the particles know that Alice and Bob aren't observing which path information? How do they know what Victor will choose to measure when he hasn't measured it yet?

When you look at the delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, again which path information reigns supreme. An entangled particle can be sent to detector D0 and will be a clumping or an interference pattern based on whether which path information is available and the particle hits detector D0 before it's entangled pair hits D1,D2,D3 or D4.

How do particles know when which path information will be available? It gets even worse when you look at things like the subjective universe based on the math of quantum theory and the free will theorem.