On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 04:09:15PM -0700, Norman Samish wrote: > Does this mean that the quantum wave functions of all ten balls collapsed at > the moment we viewed the record and observed what happened to "6"? Or did > the wave function never exist, since the robot's record always showed the > identity of the destroyed ball, irrespective of whether a human observed > this identity or not?
In QM, it is not possible to distinguish featureless balls (systems in the same quantum state). Storing labels in an external system (robot) would perturb the systems, stopping them being featureless and/or precisely localized. Experimental limitations currently prevent experiments with system sizes much larger than a buckyball, IIRC. If you're talking about entangling several such systems (qubits), manipulating them by the robot should cause collapse of the total wavefunction -- you need to do it in QC to be able to read the result. IANAP, though, so above may be wrong. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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