The Quantum Theory That Peels Away the Mystery of Measurement

Quanta Magazine ^ | 7/3/19 | Phillip Ball

[aquila48]

Very cool optical illusion!

[Moonman62]

If you know that a priori why do you need to measure anything?

...

So we can verify the theories of how nature works.

[Ezekiel]

The twirling lady is a good demonstrator of cognitive bias.

Mysteries of the universe are a matter of perception and perspective. :)

Like with pi,

because either way you look at it, forward or reverse, it's the same...

the inverse of pi

It's like what Ben He He famously said:

"Ben He He said, 'according to the labor is the reward.'" (Pirkei Avot 5:23)

Hehe, that quote, because it's:

לְפוּם צַעֲרָא אַגְרָא

722, the same as

"shmo Esav" [שמו עשו], meaning "his name is Esav"

Esav *IS* the laborer of the family -- that's the meaning of his name, the do-er. "His name is Esav" is 722, the inverse of pi -- 7/22, whereas pi is 22/7.

According to the labor is the reward:

*The Quantum Theory That Peels Away the Mystery of Measurement*

LUV it. Simple. And fun. People don't want simple. Discover the unknown because it is the joy of discovery. Unlike at Disneyland, there are no crowds.

The magic Kingdom truly is the happiest place on earth.

Gotta laugh..

[mdmathis6]

Altering the cat’s pre conditions and preparatory box activities may improve the cat’s chances of remaining alive.... but it doesn’t alter the basic question....the cat might be a live or it might be dead...
….just as altering conditions that affect sub particle spins might affect the calculus and conclusions of certain experiments and bring about a desired positive result but the desired result still might not happen.

We might have seen that result happen during the 2016 election. They were so sure they had Clinton elected that when she was defeated, I think some seriously thought there was interference from some source. That tells me that there was a lot of planned secret sauce cheating going on somewhere but Trump got unplanned support from voters in places that they had not planned for and it spoiled their strategy. Hence the extreme anger of the Dem’s against the Electoral college and their disparaging of small town folks and the out of the way voting districts that they couldn’t get their cheating hooks into.(The main cheating seems to be repeat counting of ballots such as 51 voters came in that day in one district in Detroit with 50 voting for Hillary and 1 vote for Trump. The ballots were recast 6 times so that Hillary got 300 votes and trump got 6 votes. The ballot lock box read 306 votes but when the Michigan recount began they found that the box only had 51 ballots in it and only 51 persons had come into the voting precinct that day. Talk about prepping the “cat’s box”!)

[aquila48]

“just as altering conditions that affect sub particle spins might affect the calculus and conclusions of certain experiments and bring about a desired positive result but the desired result still might not happen.”

It’s not altering, but knowing the actual state and conditions.

The whole point of this article is that the better you know a priori the state of the particle the better you can predict what it’s going to be and even control it. DUH!

[aquila48]

“So we can verify the theories of how nature works”

If I KNOW everything, I know how nature works.

[mike70]

bfl

[mdmathis6]

“Duh”?

Dude....now we know your spin state when your particles are observed. No one was attacking you!

Particles or lots or votes.....doesn’t matter; Proverbs 16:33 The dice are thrown, but the Lord determines every outcome!

[discostu]

Reality is more complicated than that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

[mdmathis6]

Not sure of the reference but if you wish to criticize at least use big words like Aquila’s use of the term “Duh”!

Proverbs 16:33 is an interesting verse to bring up in discussions of Shrodinger’s Cat and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle!

It explains a lot about the Dem’s total melt down concerning Trump’s win. They had accounted for all variables and had the cheating game going well....but some how he still won. Something had interfered, many of the uppers I believe were sure of it. Where had the rigging gone wrong(?); they were sure they had us “normals” all sewn up! Yes the theoretically the vote should be unplanned but due to their extreme reactions, it tells one they felt they had the game rigged but everything went awry.

[BikerTrash]

bumpmark

[Chode]

is it possible to set up a double slit device/detector with another double split device/detector behind only one of the slits?

[AFreeBird]

L8r

[mdmathis6]

I’ll bet they tried all sorts of combo’s over the years. Interesting though....if diffractions off the edges of the slits themselves affect observable phenomena...changing diameters.

Camera apertures for example are fascinating studies. Depth of focus changes towards infinity(all things in the field of focus) or equal focal sharpness as the apertures get smaller(and more light exposure is needed for a proper picture) but unless the shutter blades are designed for it, there is a point that light rays will glint off the edges of the aperture blades causing diffractions and loss of focus. Obviously when the aperture blades close completely no light hits the sensor...but just at that point with good control of aperture design, all objects beyond minimal focus distance are in infinity focus having equal maximum sharpness.

I just wonder in their ‘slit’ experiments they account for the effects of light diffractions off the inner edges of the “slits”. Yes I’m familiar with what the various slits were supposed to do...a light beam gets split in a way that make it behave as a wave or a particle as the first split is sent through a slit and the twin beam is unaltered but is observed behaving in the same fashion as the altered beam. I’m curious if diffraction effects are also accounted for and if affects are seen in the unaltered beam as well. I guess I’ll never know.

[mdmathis6]

Yes indeed but even if you know and control every variable there is still no way to know the outcome for you never know that a force acting outside of your control might alter expected events.

We are stuck in a kind of Tautology principle; that we have to trust that the cat stays alive as we planned for it to be. Linear cause and effect science and reasoning drops off and we are stuck with faith that things will continue as we have always observed them to continue and dead-end our reasoning and experimentation modelling along that path. Or we continue our searching combining both faith and reason, being open to an ever enlarging expanding universe.

Proverbs 16:33 has much to say concerning this article and one can even derive a kind of principle from it. All structured reality and it’s quantum substructures remain unaltered unless acted upon by an intervening agency.(a kind of quantization of the laws of inertia)

Proverbs 16:33 The dice are thrown, but the Lord determines every outcome!

[Chode]

good question

[aquila48]

“All structured reality and it’s quantum substructures remain unaltered unless acted upon by an intervening agency.(a kind of quantization of the laws of inertia)”

I’m coming to appreciate the idea of “random variables” from statistics. When I first studied statistics, it took some effort to grasp the concept. I used to think, like most people, that measured quantities were fixed. My height is X and that’s that. But it isn’t that. Every measurement carries with it a margin of error, even in our macro world, thus my height has an uncertainty, a distribution, thus it is a random variable. We’re in luck that in the macro world these distributions have a fairly small standard deviation, so that any measurement is a good enough approximations for making decisions about most things. But like subatomic particles you really don’t know its “value” until you measure it, and next time you measure it, it may be slightly different, but in the macro world the small difference doesn’t matter.

Variables in the micro world appear to have much larger standard deviations, thus their distributions cannot be ignored when doing calculations, and so quantum mechanics must be done with statistical methods.

One other thing that I find interesting about this article is that it says they are now able to “capture” and manipulate particles between quantum states. One of the hallmark of quantum theory (and where it gets its name) is that particles can only exist in discreet states - quantized states. But if you can now capture and manipulate entities anywhere between two quantum states, does this mean that the most hallowed notion of quantum theory is out the window and that we are now back to a continuous nature?

Also, does this mean that the only reason up to now that scientists took on faith the idea of discrete states was simply ignorance about the conditions of whatever they were looking at? Because, according to the article, if they can get sufficient information about a subatomic entity then they can “catch” it between states. So, in essence, quantization is simply an “ignorance” effect.

[Ezekiel]

That was a nice, thoughtful, and thought-provoking post. I enjoyed reading it very much. Thanks!

[Hot Tabasco]

I was just saying that at a cocktail part last night.

Nice try Larry, that was our bowling team in the bar after the games.

You really screwed up the celebration when you brought up string theory..We warned you about that before.

As a side note, congratulations on winning the mystery jackpot...........

[aquila48]

Glad you enjoyed it.

As an aside, it’s always struck me as odd that atheists have a hard time believing in God, yet they all believe in QM. But you need a hell of a lot of faith to believe some of the weird stuff predicted by QM.

I wonder what has a higher probability, you being able to walk through walls or you rising from the dead?