7 ms·
The difference is that when you separate a quantum Oreo, until you actually observe which side has the creme on it, the universe hasn't decided yet. Once you ob
by stouset 12y ago
The difference is that when you separate a quantum Oreo, until you actually observe which side has the creme on it, the universe hasn't decided yet. Once you observe one half, the universe instantaneously picks one of the two halves at random to contain creme, and one to be empty.
We know it must be this way due to statistics. However, that's the point where the Oreo analogy breaks down.
- FranOntanaya 12y agoHow do we know the universe hasn't decided?
- stouset 12y agoYou and I decide to test whether or not the universe has decided. We have Nabisco mail us quantum oreos, three at a time and we each choose randomly to measure one of them (this is analogous to measuring the spin of an electron in a randomly-chosen axis). Now, if we're measuring them three at at time, there are only two plausible possibilities: one of us has all three cremes (this happens 2 out of every 8 trials) or one of us has two cremes (this happens 6 out of every 8 trials). If one of us has all the cremes, it doesn't matter which one each of us independently chooses to measure; we will both have the same outcome. If one of us has only two of the cremes (e.g., [M]e has two and [Y]ou have one), we agree 5/9ths of the time M M Y M 1 1 0 M 1 1 0 Y 0 0 1 If we run this experiment many, many times, we should converge upon (2/8 * 9/9) + (6/8 * 5/9) = 2/3 of the time our measurements agree. This would be consistent with a model of "preprogrammed" quantum Oreos. This is not what we see in practice. When we actually run this experiment, our measurements agree exactly 50% of the time which can only be explained if the quantum Oreos are not preprogrammed.