Re:Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wav...
by canadiantim on Sunday March 16, 2025 @04:11PM
(#43381847)
Hadn’t hear that, that one is wild
Re:Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wav...
by smolder on Sunday March 16, 2025 @06:38PM
(#43383216)
That version is called the quantum eraser experiment. It really is brain bending.
Re:Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wav...
by wruza on Sunday March 16, 2025 @06:26PM
(#43383111)
I think Sabine explained this social effect few years ago. I know she's a little controversial, but the key thing in the video (as opposed to all other videos about DSE on the internet) was that you don't get "two clusters" actually. They are both statistical parts of a single [non-]interference pattern. "||" is a lie. I'm not in a physics rebel camp and don't prefer Sabine either, but after that I sort of lost trust in the interpretations that can't even get the resulting picture right. I even suspect that showing dumbed results amplifies "wow" effect and monetizes better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQv5CVELG3U
This is the video if you're interested. Again, I'm no physicist and don't know if explanations are legit or statistically correct. But that little || trick that all other popsci videos play on you, that's a true concern.
Re:Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wav...
by namaria on Sunday March 16, 2025 @07:17PM
(#43383519)
You are correct, the experiment I referred to does not yield two distinct clusters of collisions at all.
You can check it out here.
Summary https://www.stonybrook.edu/laser/_amarch/eraser/index.html
Paper https://www.stonybrook.edu/laser/_amarch/eraser/Walborn.pdf
My fascination with these experiments has never been due neat clusters of impacts, although popsci depictions have clearly tainted my memory.
They did it by splitting a beam of particles into a pair of entangled particles and then setting up a way to measure the polarity of one of them after the point in time where it even hits the final screen. If you measure the polarity then, after the other stream of particles from the beam had already had time to make the pattern, the pattern will be two clusters. If you don't, it goes back to an interference pattern.
That one really cemented the notion in my head that this is just how the Universe is and not some local weirdness with particles and measurements.