The Simple Act of Observation Can Literally Change Reality

The video below shows scientific proof as to why there is something about this universe that is NOT quite logical nor scientific. The mere act of observation can completely change the outcome of an event! Before I get too ahead of myself, you need to watch the video below to understand:

(Forgive the corny cartoon character explaining the concept — at least he knows his stuff)

Recap:

When a camera observed the electrons, they acted as particles. However, when the no equipment was used to observe the electrons, they acted as waves and particles simultaneously.

So what’s the reason for this? Does the electron somehow know that it is being watched? That was the only “logical” reason that scientists could come up with so much skepticism and controversy followed.

Want Even Further Proof?

Then in 2002, a group of researchers set up the experiment in a way that the electron could not possibly receive information about the existence of an observing instrument. The setup was on a much smaller scale: a single photon was emitted and an interferometer that observed the wave-or-particle behavior was either inserted or not inserted. (Click here to download the full report)

Here’s the kicker: The insertion of the interferometer took only 40 nanoseconds (ns) while it would take 160 ns for the information about the configuration to travel from the interferometer to reach the photon before it entered the slits. This means in order for the photon to “know” if it was being watched, that information would have to travel at 4 times the speed of light, which is impossible (the speed of light is the universal speed limit).

The Results: The photons acted like particles 93% of the time that they were observed. Even if the photon “guessed” the configuration each time, statistically speaking it would never have more than 52% accuracy. In scientific experiments, a 93% success rate is as conclusive as they come.

What Are The Implications of This?

1. Matter can act as both a wave and a particle depending on whether or not it is being observed (Wave-Duality Theory)

This is the least meaningful implication for you as a macroscopic organism, but nonetheless it’s a pretty crazy concept.

2. Observation can (possibly) affect the outcome of macroscopic events

After all, you and everything you know are composed of these microscopic particles, so why couldn’t something large be influenced as well? It would be the sum of a seemingly infinite amount of pieces of matter acting as either waves or particles. Scientists have very mixed opinions on this topic so I’ll just say it makes sense to me that this could happen on a larger scale.

3. We don’t know very much about this universe (Science is not yet an ‘exact science’)

There are a couple things out there that science still cannot explain like the characteristics of gravity, but this blows Newton’s discovery out of the water. As we study smaller and smaller particles in order to understand more about what we’re made, we seem to find more things that just don’t make sense. Point being that nothing should be ruled out completely because we simply cannot know anything for certain at this point.

What other implications did you get out of these experiments?

Came across this a few years ago when a friend had me over to watch a movie titled "what the bleep" while i didn't agree with a lot of the movie, i found this part extremely interesting.

Its amazing that simply viewing an object can change its property's like this.

I hope you all found this as interesting as i did.

Source

I think we need to establish what an observer is in quantum mechanics.

An observer is anything that can collapse the wave function of a system.

Anyway I will be posting some helpful physics links here...

oyc.yale.edu...

About the Course This course provides a thorough introduction to the principles and methods of physics for students who have good preparation in physics and mathematics. Emphasis is placed on problem solving and quantitative reasoning. This course covers Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, gravitation, thermodynamics, and waves.

Here are the courses...

oyc.yale.edu...\

Here is some more...

ocw.mit.edu...

These both come complete with exams and solutions as well as video lectures.

Have fun!

reply to post by Alaskan Man


If you want read more about this, and an easy / simplified read, you should get "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukov. Great informative read!

reply to post by Alaskan Man


Oops, reading stuff into the OP that wasnt there.

[edit on 26/7/2010 by LightFantastic]

Double post...

[edit on 25/7/2010 by LightFantastic]

Originally posted by Alaskan Man
The video below shows scientific proof as to why there is something about this universe that is NOT quite logical nor scientific.

Recap:

When a camera observed the electrons, they acted as particles. However, when the no equipment was used to observe the electrons, they acted as waves and particles simultaneously.

So what’s the reason for this? Does the electron somehow know that it is being watched? That was the only “logical” reason that scientists could come up with so much skepticism and controversy followed.

It's because the camera is made out of electrons and protons and neutrons and they all have physical interactions with the stuff. It's not a question of 'knowledge' it's a question of physics.

We normally don't think about it, but it's always there. For instance, the speedometer on your car has to get its input from a physical connection to the wheels. In the old days when it was a spinning wire, the presence of this spinning wire connected to the wheels DID change the speed of the car, as a small among of linear momentum was changed into angular momentum of the speedometer shaft.

So "observing" the velocity changed the velocity, even in classical physics! It just happens that quantum systems are so small and delicate and human-useful measuring devices are fat and big, that this effect is much more important.

1. Matter can act as both a wave and a particle depending on whether or not it is being observed (Wave-Duality Theory)

This is the least meaningful implication for you as a macroscopic organism, but nonetheless it’s a pretty crazy concept.

No, matter acts as it is. Humans want to make it one or the other.

3. We don’t know very much about this universe (Science is not yet an ‘exact science’)

There are a couple things out there that science still cannot explain like the characteristics of gravity, but this blows Newton’s discovery out of the water. As we study smaller and smaller particles in order to understand more about what we’re made, we seem to find more things that just don’t make sense. Point being that nothing should be ruled out completely because we simply cannot know anything for certain at this point.

That's completely wrong. In fact, science does know PLENTY about this universe, and compared to 1850 we have gone from knowing 15% to maybe 85-90%. Every result in that experiment would have been predicted in 1930.



This is all woo-woo confusing explanation for actual quantum mechanics. No wonder Einstein thought it was a crock, because it is a crock. Einstein didn't think QM was a crock, but the Copenhagen interpretation thereof is, and I agree. Nowadays quite a number of other people do.

a) "Observation" does not have to involve any conciousness.

b) the strange paradoxes come when people try to describe the observing device as obeying classical physics and the quantum system obeying quantum physics. In truth, everything obeys quantum physics at all times, with the Heisenberg time evolution operator for everything

c) large systems of particles can apparently behave differently from small ones, but this isn't new, it's otherwise known as thermodynamics.

d) if you anthropomorphise quantum particles you get confused. The problem is you, not the physics.

e) the truly weird part of quantum mechanics is that the evolution/state vector does truly appear to act in a Hilbert space and not a finite-dimensional vector space or classical field. And in that space something is 'non-local' though no faster-than-light true information transfer (transmit-receive) is possible. And all the unintuitive results keep on confirming this.

f) dynamics in function space is NOT intuitive and will never be intuitive.

g) The statement the "speed of light is the universal limit" is not actually the laws of physics. The actual law of physics is that all other laws of physics, as far as we know, must be relativistically covariant (essentially no preferred coordinate frames, or asserting a general symmetry of all laws of physics in the universe).

h) The laws of quantum mechanics are so covariant. The experimental results show that some kind of faster-than-light correlation as implied by quantum mechanics is in fact allowed, and there is no additional as-yet-undiscovered restrictions in quantum mechanics. Einstein thought there would be which would make QM make more sense, but experiments performed after his death said "no", and today people have developed more sensible explanations of QM (decoherence). Einstein would have appreciated the importance of chaos from classical determinism.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by mbkennel]

Originally posted by Alaskan Man

2. Observation can (possibly) affect the outcome of macroscopic events

After all, you and everything you know are composed of these microscopic particles, so why couldn’t something large be influenced as well? It would be the sum of a seemingly infinite amount of pieces of matter acting as either waves or particles. Scientists have very mixed opinions on this topic so I’ll just say it makes sense to me that this could happen on a larger scale.

This starts with good science and devolved into misunderstood speculation. It's cute, innocent and ignorant like a lot of the things my 5 year old nephew says. Saying the quantum effects we see on quantum sizes particles will affect larger objects the same way is kind of like saying if I pee in a small body of water like a toilet the water turns yellow, so I can expect the same thing to happen when I pee in the ocean.

Yes there is some effect on larger scales but nobody has turned the ocean yellow yet, and don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Originally posted by Gentill Abdulla
Anyway I will be posting some helpful physics links here...

oyc.yale.edu...

Thanks for linking to real science, I wish people would realize how fantastically strange the quantum world is, without having to make stuff up that has no evidence like "observation can (possibly) affect the outcome of macroscopic events". There's enough real mystery in science based on real observations without having to fabricate things like that. Now if anyone has any evidence that observation can affect the outcome of macroscopic events, post it, but to my knowledge you won't be able to because it's an unrealistic extrapolation of true observations.

And I have problems with the source that clip was extracted from:

The source for your videos is the movie "What the bleep so we know" which has taken real science and distorted some scientific truths and facts into exaggerated claims and pseudoscientific nonsense. If you wanted to discuss the real science of quantum mechanics there are much better sources. The wave function doesn't always collapse when observed, it depends on how the observation is made:

Double-slit experiment

It is a widespread misunderstanding that, when two slits are open but a detector is added to the experiment to determine which slit a photon has passed through, then the interference pattern no longer forms and the experimental apparatus yields two simple patterns, one from each slit, superposed without interference. Such a result would be obtained only if the results of two experiments were superposed in which either one or the other slit is closed. However, there are many other methods to determine whether a photon passed through a slit, for instance by placing an atom at the position of each slit and monitoring whether one of these atoms is influenced by a photon passing it. In general in such experiments the interference pattern will be changed but not be completely wiped out. Interesting experiments of this latter kind have been performed with photons[7] and with neutrons.[8]

What the Bleep Do We Know!?

New Age community reaction

What the Bleep Do We Know!? has been described as "a kind of New Age answer to The Passion of the Christ and other films that adhere to traditional religious teachings."[10] It offers alternative spirituality views characteristic of New Age philosophy, including critiques of traditional religion's moral values. The movie was well received at film festivals where New Age adherents are demographically strong, for example Sedona, Arizona.[10][16]

Academic reaction

Scientists who have reviewed What the Bleep Do We Know!? have described distinct assertions made in the film as pseudoscience.[17] Amongst the concepts in the film that have been challenged are assertions that water molecules can be influenced by thought (as popularized by Masaru Emoto),[3] that meditation can reduce violent crime rates,[8] and that quantum physics implies that "consciousness is the ground of all being." The film was also discussed in a letter published in Physics Today that challenges how physics is taught, saying teaching fails to "expose the mysteries physics has encountered [and] reveal the limits of our understanding." In the letter, the authors write "the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum 'insights' that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense." It went on to say that "Most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided," and that "a physics student may be unable to convincingly confront unjustified extrapolations of quantum mechanics," a shortcoming which the authors attribute to the current teaching of quantum mechanics, in which "we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered."[5]

I have to agree that apparently "Most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins", just as that review says.

[edit on 26-7-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Alaskan Man


The OP makes some good points.

It always amazes me how "experts" will get on threads and try to put quantum mechanics into their little box. They then try to tell everyone in absolute terms how you can or cannot interpret the evidence based on their personal belief system.

Again, the choice of the Observer causes a measurement to occur. This has been observed.

Double Slit Experiment
en.wikipedia.org...

Delayed Choice Experiment
en.wikipedia.org...'s_delayed_choice_experiment

Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser
en.wikipedia.org...

The materialist have been trying to kill the Observer since Copenhagen. It has very little to do with science and everything to do with personal belief. The Observer couldn't be defined and it sounds too mystical. David Deutsch said in his book "The Fabric of Reality" that one of the reasons he likes many worlds interpretation is because in his mind it gets rid of the Observer.

The fact is decoherence says nothing about the choice of the Observer. Decoherence just tells us that after a measurement has occured it's thermodynamically irreversible.

If the Observer makes a choice to know which path information then you get a particle. If the Observer doesn't make the choice to know which path information then you get a wave.

The Observers choice causes a measurement to occur therefore the Observers choice creates reality.

I have a different view on this
Particles are not really particles until they become particles, as in the electron

For example water is ice, it's really the same thing, once ice melts it becomes water and it has mass when it's ice. Fire will melt ice. It's not the point of observation so much as it is light, to view an elecron you must turn the flashlight on it. Where there is light things don't go strange into the dark, they behave perfect.

It's constructing and then taking it a part, the little ice particle becomes a water wave again.



Energy can focus and can expand just like water and ice.
Welcome to quantum mechanics.

reply to post by Matrix Rising

I've never liked the idea of requiring a conscious observer myself. After all we cannot even define consciousness properly.

We can also gain some information about quantum systems without completely collapsing the wave function with 'weak' measurement methods.

I have seen a paper of an experiment where the superposition collapsed when the detector was turned on but not when off, even though it still intercepted the electron (or photon). If this experiment wasn't flawed I guess it would lead to some more complex information theory based description of an observer. Anyway this paper led me to believe that the transactional model of QM is the rational explanation.

I originally thought this thread was about that experiment when reading on my phone. After all the standard double slit experiment is very well known has been posted on here quite a few times.

I will continue to try to find this paper...


[edit on 26/7/2010 by LightFantastic]

reply to post by LightFantastic


Use your sense, can you see into the dark ? You can't. There is a wave of posibilities in the dark that you do not know about. When you turn on the light it makes sense for you, it's the point of focus as expansion is the point of everything possible.


Things exist where there is light and things break apart where there is no light, they become just like water, like a wave.

To take a look at an electron you must put light on it, there is not other way you can see it because at a subatomic level there is only darkness.

The water wave is the snow ball, ice cube or however you may want to view it, because it is really the same thing.

Originally posted by pepsi78
reply to post by LightFantastic

 

Use your sense, can you see into the dark ?

Things exist where there is light and things break apart where there is no light, they become just like water, like a wave.

To take a look at an electron you must put light on it, there is not other way you can see it because at a subatomic level there is only darkness.

en.wikipedia.org...

An electron microscope is a type of microscope that produces an electronically-magnified image of a specimen for detailed observation. The electron microscope (EM) uses a particle beam of electrons to illuminate the specimen and create a magnified image of it. The microscope has a greater resolving power than a light-powered optical microscope, because it uses electrons that have wavelengths about 100,000 times shorter than visible light (photons), and can achieve magnifications of up to 1,000,000x, whereas light microscopes are limited to 2000x magnification.

Yeah you can see in the dark using infrared cameras.


No, I don't think you have understood the concept of wave particle duality.

That's like saying that because you can't see something that's behind you it cannot exist.

(Technically you can't see anything without light because your eyes only pick up a small portion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.)

Anyway do you even know what causes light?

[edit on 26-7-2010 by Gentill Abdulla]

reply to post by pepsi78


If what you say is correct, would I be able to pass through the wall in a completely dark room into another completely dark room?

Or would I just bang my head. Again...

Watching this video, I might as well flush 12 years of science down the toilet.

What is matter? Is it a thing or a wave?
Electrons KNOW when we're observing them so they act differently?

So the smallest known objects of existence...
...thinks for itself?

Originally posted by ohsnaptruth
Watching this video, I might as well flush 12 years of science down the toilet.

What is matter? Is it a thing or a wave?
Electrons KNOW when we're observing them so they act differently?

So the smallest known objects of existence...
...thinks for itself?

No as I have stated in my first post on this thread an observer is anything that can collapse the wave function of a system.

The particle isn't thinking when it is "observed" upon by an electron the electron itself changes the system and that makes the following information about the system inaccurate.

Originally posted by LightFantastic
reply to post by pepsi78

 

If what you say is correct, would I be able to pass through the wall in a completely dark room into another completely dark room?

Or would I just bang my head. Again...

Acording to quantum mechanics there is a possibility where you can do that, yes.

reply to post by Gentill Abdulla


Thank goodness. Nice super saiyan pic. ;D

Hi, duality fans.

Don't try to "convert/explain" things to materiali$t$.

I am NOT a religious dude, but my signature's first line
**waked* me up to very fun, nice, and mysterious things !
. . .and I say again, it is NOT religious !

! ! ! ??? Ask a materialist to explain the "placebo effect" ??? ! ! !

! ? Ask a materialist to explain the "random generators' effect" ? !
noosphere.princeton.edu...

See # 80 and 266 !

Blue skies.

Originally posted by ohsnaptruth
Watching this video, I might as well flush 12 years of science down the toilet.

What is matter? Is it a thing or a wave?
Electrons KNOW when we're observing them so they act differently?

So the smallest known objects of existence...
...thinks for itself?

I don't know that they "know" they're being observed. I believe the method that is used to detect their behavior is what influences the change.

Hmmm.... What's a good analogy?

Suppose you're in a dark room with a solar panel hooked up to a motor of some sort. You can't see anything. You open a window. The motor starts spinning. Was their a change in its behavior because you observed it or because the light that you used to see the motor/solar panel caused the change?

"Yet, it seems that if we, in a sense, retroactively remove the electron detectors at the slits (not by going back in time to physically remove them, but only by removing the information they have gathered so that it is not available from the time of the erasure going forward into the future), we can "change" the results of what we presume is a mechanically complete experiment"

Measure and keep results = particle pattern
Measure and delete results = wave pattern

Consciousness is a factor.

The act of observation is not the issue.

The availability of information to a conscious observer is the issue.

www.bottomlayer.com...

3. Record the measurements at the slits, but then erase it before analyzing the results at the back wall. Suppose we take our modified double slit set up -- with electron detectors at the slits -- and still leave everything intact. And we will still keep the electron detectors at the slits turned on, so that they will be doing whatever they do to detect electrons at the slits. And we will record the count at the slits, so that we will be able to obtain the results. But, we will erase the data obtained from the electron detectors at the slits before we analyze the data from the back wall.

The result upon analysis: an interference pattern at the back wall. Notice that, in this variation, the double slit experiment with detectors at the slits is completed in every respect by the time we choose to erase the recorded data. Up to that point, there is no difference in our procedure here and in our initial procedure ([pp. 15-17]), which yielded the puzzling clumping pattern. Yet, it seems that if we, in a sense, retroactively remove the electron detectors at the slits (not by going back in time to physically remove them, but only by removing the information they have gathered so that it is not available from the time of the erasure going forward into the future), we can "change" the results of what we presume is a mechanically complete experiment, so far as those results are determined by a later analysis, to produce an interference pattern instead of a clumping pattern. This is mind-boggling.