CardinalFang;191091 Wrote: > > The really weird part for me is that the Copenhagan Interpretation, > which is probably the most widely accepted explanation for the > experiment, is that electrons and other quantum objects exist as > probability waves until they are detected, when they become particles. > In other words, nothing really exists as a particle unless someone is > looking at it. If you try to watch the individual electrons passing > through the slits, they appear as particles, if don't, you see an > interference pattern. It's called "collapsing the wave function". > > Taken to its extreme, that also implies that if there wasn't someone or > something observing the universe, then it would still exist as > probability waves, and therefore it proves the existence of God, > because something has to be observing the universe to collapse the wave > function. Either God, or the flying spaghetti monster. >
This is actually a very interesting question. The Copenhagen interpretation is clearly incomplete, as it doesn't specify what is necessary to make the wave-function collapse - what exactly constitutes a measurement? The (partial) modern answer comes from something called decoherence - essentially when systems containing large numbers of degrees of freedom (like people and measuring devices) interact, it can be shown that the wave function of both the large system and any small system it might have interacted with become very sharply peaked very quickly; that is, it collapses. The only trouble is, it collapses to all possible configurations at the same time - electron is localized at slit 1 and measuring devices reads "1" PLUS electron is localized at slit 2 and measuring device reads "2". This leads to the "many worlds" interpretation, where both possibilities exist, but for reasons not well understood we only experience one, while at least in the mathematical structure of the theory the other copy of us moves off along another branch. This happens all the time - every time there's an interaction. The implications for the wavefunction of the universe are a bit hard to comprehend :-). EDIT - but the implication for magic markers is very easy - ZERO! -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33956 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
