How light is detected affects the atom that emits it

from: nanowerk

13 May 2016
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www.nanowerk.com...=43390.php?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=nanowerkemergingtechnologiesnew s
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This article is fascinating to me but stretches the boundaries of my understanding of physics. I'd love some ATSers to make it a bit clearer to me. It sounds to this layman that this is a feature of quantum mechanics. Is that right?

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Kater Murch, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, might give you an argument about that. His lab is one of the first in the world to look at spontaneous emission with an instrument sensitive to the wave rather than the particle nature of light, work described in Nature Communications ("Mapping quantum state dynamics in spontaneous emission").
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But it gets stranger. The fact that an atom's average excitation can increase even when it decays is a sign that how we look at light might give us some control over the atoms that emitted the light, Murch said.
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This might sound like a reversal of cause and effect, with the effect pushing on the cause. It is possible only because of one of the weirdest of all the quantum effects: When an atom emits light, quantum physics requires the light and the atom to become connected, or entangled, so that measuring a property of one instantly reveals the value of that property for the other, no matter how far away it is.
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It sounds like they have some incredibly delicate high tech sensors involved.
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It sounds like they have discovered something a bit new.
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It sounds like most scientists would not have predicted their findings??
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I wonder what the implications of their findings might be in the practical real world of daily life of most of us??
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a reply to: BO XIAN

His lab is one of the first in the world to look at spontaneous emission with an instrument sensitive to the wave rather than the particle nature of light…

Ummm, isn't light a wave of particles?

So "effect" can come before "cause"?

Sounds like a the source of light has human-like perception. But of course, light has consciousness as well.

a reply to: intrptr

That wasn't my understanding . . . but I'm a very ignorant layman in such matters.

a reply to: DBCowboy

That's kind of what I was curious about.

Kind of sounds like it, to me.

a reply to: AgarthaSeed

Hmmmm . . . not sure I want to touch that with a Planck length!

So basically the act of observing light is detected by the emitter (atom), I think it's observable on the atom how the light was measured wave/particle... I think

Does that mean if for instance someone beamed light to Earth from elsewhere the person observing the atoms emitting the light could tell if it was being measured?

That would be the ultimate way to contact other civilizations in the cosmos. I'm not sure if I understand this properly so if anyone wants to fill me in?

it's more supernatural than that.....more magic than science

I figured that out when I discovered the visual ray.....

if you look at a cloud it disintegrates.....in just 2.6 minutes.....take that......pick a distinct puffy one....you'll see the first sign in just 60 seconds.....stare that kills, huh

O if we detect a photon from a galaxy 10 billion light years away, we can effect the atom that emitted the photon even though the atom does not exist any longer after 10 billion years? If so this is time travel back in time.

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Time is an artificial construct and is bound only by the dimension it exists in.

(I think writing this just gave me a stroke)

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: TinfoilTP

Time is an artificial construct and is bound only by the dimension it exists in.

(I think writing this just gave me a stroke)

Well I should rephrase, it's not that the atom does not exist anymore it is that the atom does not exist in that state anymore it is likely drifting star dust or maybe part of a complex molecule that makes up a bacterial excretion hole. By detecting that photon we may cause an anal pucker then the poor sucker dies of constipation.

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Bu the atom does still exist.

Just in a different reference of time.

(I think)

Hell, I'm waaaay out of my comfort zone here.

a reply to: intrptr

To paraphrase this video, "Sometimes light behaves like a particle and sometimes it behaves like a wave. But it isn't exactly like either."

a reply to: enlightenedservant

Thanks all y'all for your interesting replies.

If I could add anything intelligent to them, I'd comment more. But I like reading them. Thanks!

a reply to: BO XIAN

Interesting! I have my own personal 'theory of everything' that considers the following:

On a quantum level, the 'effect' (the life of the Universe) dictates the cause -- contrary to our natural perspective as beings living in each moment within the dimension of time and its one-way arrow.

In a mathematical sense, I would describe it as this: Because 2 necessarily must exist for the universe to exist, then 1+1 is forced into existence, too. It could be described as an unrecognized dimension where all mathematical equations exist as truth even if no one has ever contemplated them as unique ideas of the mind. A dimension of ideas that are possible within space-time.

My personal theory is that the precise catalyst for the existence of the universe is yet to be known, in time, by us. But that catalyst already exists as an 'effect' of everything leading up to it, in the fabric of 'time' (space-time), somewhere, AND also within an encompassing dimension of ideas that are possible.

A dimension where it's possible for the idea of the Universe to exist.

Everything we see as 'cause' for this one necessary catalyst 'effect' is, in reality, the effect of a cause.

I like to think there is a dimension of all ideas that are possible and, like us, it is driven by an instinct of survival. In this hypothetical dimension, MINDS are the catalyst to ensure a perpetual, surviving dimension of ideas that gave birth to the universe.

When minds evolved, then even absurd ideas could exist & survive...at least in the fabric of time.

Minds are special in our universe because they can have ideas the universe cannot produce without wasting vast amounts of energy or defying physical laws and destroying a long equation which exists purely to produce one effect: Minds and their idea generating capabilities.

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(After going back and proofing this comment, I should add that If you actually read my entire comment...you must be a glutton for punishment. I hope you could find some thread of logic and didn't waste your time.)

=D

a reply to: intrptr

Ummm, isn't light a wave of particles?

I think it's a photon that could be both, hitting the electron of the atom that ejects energy as seen as light.

That's why we are visible and all other stuff.

So if I understand the article correct? the light particle sticks to the atom and reads what it's used for.

For example if we shoot a laser on an object in space we can read the data coming from that object, so we can then say it's a rock or metal or gas or something biological.

Well cool stuff anyway, I'm trying to understand how the quantum physical world works ..

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Sounds like there's a measure of logic to your view.

Not my construction on reality. But I think I could get your drift . . . generally.

Thanks for your bothering to reply.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

Same with an ocean wave or wind, sand dune, ice, clouds, solar 'wind'.

Everything we see is a wave of particles, why not light?

originally posted by: BO XIAN
It sounds like they have discovered something a bit new.
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It sounds like most scientists would not have predicted their findings??

It sounds like a new experimental result, but it doesn't sound like the results would have been impossible to predict, just difficult to measure. In fact the headline is misleading, since it says "How light is detected affects the atom that emits it", and this is not really what happened, not with a real atom. The experiment used an artificial atom, presumably because the small effect would be too difficult to measure with a real atom, would be my guess.

PS this is the correct link, your link didn't work:
How light is detected affects the atom that emits it