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The advantage of manipulating the entangled partners of the photons in the double-slit part of the experimental apparatus is that experimenters can destroy or restore the interference pattern in the latter without changing anything in that part of the apparatus. Experimenters do so by manipulating the entangled photon, and they can do so before or after its partner has entered or after it has exited the double-slits and other elements of experimental apparatus between the photon emitter and the detection screen. t)So, under conditions where the double-slit part of the experiment has been set up to prevent the appearance of interference phenomena (because there is definitive "which path" information presen, the quantum eraser can be used to effectively erase that information. In doing so, the experimenter restores interference without altering the double-slit part of the experimental apparatus. An event that is remote in space and in time can restore the readily visible interference pattern that manifests itself through the constructive and destructive wave interference.
So, under conditions where the double-slit part of the experiment has been set up to prevent the appearance of interference phenomena (because there is definitive "which path" information present,
In doing so, the experimenter restores interference without altering the double-slit part of the experimental apparatus.
In physics, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. This effect can be observed in many domains of physics.
Originally posted by Frankidealist35
I think reality is an illusion merely because we don't know what real is.
Originally posted by ElectroMagnetic Multivers
Do we hear sounds the same? taste the same tastes? see the same colours? I think not.
It is not YOU doing the observing, it is the instruments themselves. Your looking at the outcome of the observation as it is done through the instruments, YOU never DIRECTLY OBSERVED nor DIRECTLY CHANGED the physical properties of the electron. The entire time you used INSTRUMENTS.
So light is both a particle and a wave. OK, kind of unexpected (like Jell-O) but perhaps not totally weird. But the double slit experiment had another trick up its sleeve. One could send one photon (or "quantum" of energy) through a single slit at a time, with a sufficiently long interval in between, and eventually a spot builds up that looks just like the one produced when a very intense (many photons) light was sent through the slit. But then a strange thing happened. When one sends a single photon at a time (waiting between each laser pulse, for example) toward the screen when both slits are open, rather than two spots eventually building up opposite the two slit openings, what eventually builds up is the interference pattern of alternating bright and dark lines! Hmm... how can this be, if only one photon was sent through the apparatus at a time?
The answer is that each individual photon must - in order to have produced an interference pattern -- have gone through both slits! This, the simplest of quantum weirdness experiments, has been the basis of many of the unintuitive interpretations of quantum physics. We can see, perhaps, how physicists might conclude, for example, that a particle of light is not a particle until it is measured at the screen. It turns out that the particle of light is rather a wave before it is measured. But it is not a wave in the ocean-wave sense. It is not a wave of matter but rather, it turns out that it is apparently a wave of probability. That is, the elementary particles making up the trees, people, and planets -- what we see around us -- are apparently just distributions of likelihood until they are measured (that is, measured or observed). So much for the Victorian view of solid matter!
It's as if the act of observing somehow changes the results which leads me to think there is either a flaw in the way the such things are measured or observed, or we simply do not understand how the waves/particles.
I would say however, that all observation/measurement is made at a conscious level... According to Wiki "Reality" may contain things which are unobservable including "nothing", in which case things get convoluted, but I will just have to go along with it because there will always be unexplained elements of reality.