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I know this article is a bad source, but why do scientists and the press continue to use the provocative explanation of QM: "things don't exist unless you look
by coldnebo 11y ago
I know this article is a bad source, but why do scientists and the press continue to use the provocative explanation of QM: "things don't exist unless you look at them at the quantum level."
According to QM, things don't exist until they are measured which is quite different (unless you are tied to an anthropomorphic interpretation of 'observer').
Since there is no formal definition of observer that in any way limits such to humans, an observer/measurer can in essence be any interacting particle in physics-- measurement is an interaction.
This specialist notion is so far removed from the lay-person's interpretation of an anthropomorphic observer creating reality wherever they look as to be nonsense. Especially since the intuition is likely to be applied at the non-quantum scale.
Systems of interacting particles are the norm, not the exception as our careful laboratory experiments are crafted to be.
- cLeEOGPw 11y ago> things don't exist unless you look at them at the quantum level But looking IS measuring.
- coldnebo 11y agoSure. But either term is usually passive in classical contexts and always destructive in QM contexts. You can't uncollapse a wave function! Consider a twist on Schrödinger's cat experiment: there are two scientists, A and B. The box can only be opened by one scientist at a time... the other scientist must wait outside the room. Scientist A looks in the box and collapses the wave function and sees that the cat is dead. What is the probability that scientist B will see a dead cat when she opens the box afterwards? 50%? 100%?
- coldnebo 11y agoOr, more simply: by the time you've 'looked' and understood what you are looking at, billions of other particles have already interacted with the experiment output, collapsing the wave function... so no, by the time you actually look at anything, it's classical, not QM.