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There is no experiment that can settle this - collapse can be shown to exist, but it cannot be shown to not exist, just not for a particular system at a particu
by FeepingCreature 5y ago
There is no experiment that can settle this - collapse can be shown to exist, but it cannot be shown to not exist, just not for a particular system at a particular scale. In other words, experimenters can push the possible size of a quantum superposition upwards, but they will never be able to disprove the claim "if it were but a bit bigger, it would collapse."
- rocqua 5y agoI remember a Physics PhD who thought that 'waveform collapse' was not a transition from 'waveform' to measurement. Instead, he felt that 'measurement' was just becoming entangled with the wider world, which causes the waveform to converge to a dirac-delta distribution. Are there reasons to assume that 'random' entanglements cause the waveform to 'concentrate'? it would need to be that the probability of concentration at a given 'point' is proportional to the square magnitude of the waveform? Has this been studied?
- ajkjk 5y agoThat is the correct model of what wavefunction collapse is. And yes, there are huge amounts of research in how the effects of random entanglements -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence is the general concept.
- rocqua 5y agoVery cool, thanks!
- criddell 5y agoIf I have some system in a quantum superposition state and I simultaneously measure it in n different ways, will all n measurements produce the same result?