WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
Everybody would have heard of stories where a child, when goes to to bed sees the shadow of a witch's hand with her crooked fingers and long nails on the ceiling or the wall in their room, only to later conspire that it was just a branch of an old tree in front of a street lamp!
This post is somewhat about a similar dilemma which scares science only because truth has yet to be revealed!
Say Hello to Dr. Quantum!
It was 9th grade when I saw an animated video on 'YouTube' named 'Dr Quantum- Double slit Experiment' and honestly I understood very little of what was going on. Although the central idea of the double slit experiment was unclear to me I manged to grasp the message that was given at the end of the video.
Here's what the video showed- An animated excited old scientist who begins with introducing the double slit experiment as the 'grand daddy of all the quantum weirdness', which honestly is quite justified and will be agreed upon by anyone once he watches the video. He then describes an elementary idea of shooting marbles on a screen which pass through a single slit forming an identical pattern. On adding another slit, two patterns were observed, each corresponding to a single slit. Doing the same with the marble replaced by a ripple we observe a single pattern on the screen for a single slit. Now, interestingly, the ripple when passed through two slits instead of one gives an interference pattern on the screen. One can visualize as a high intensity spot on screen if there were two tops meeting and a zero intensity pattern where the crest and the trough cancel each other. On this note the videos takes things to another level, when he shoots a beam of electron on the double slit. Expecting that the electrons behave like the marbles, we are taken aback, because that was not to happen. We observe an interference pattern! Just in order to make sure that the electrons did not collide while passing through the slits, electrons were shot one at a time. Even this did not make any difference. We still end up getting an interference pattern.
If you think you are baffled, let me take you to another level of what one could call impossibility. On setting up a measuring device that observes the behavior of the electron while it passes through the slit, just to add more complications in our understanding, electron behaves like a particle. YES! Just because of an observer the electron behaved in a different way.
The question that arises here is- How can something as tiny as an electron defy what we call human logic? In fact the approach to understand an electron as a particle is shattered initially not only that,but also believing that what we observe is surely the truth is to a lot of extent false. So everything that we observe and understand around us as a non-introspecting observer might not be the complete reality. When I say a non-introspecting observer, I am referring to the observer who observes the outcome of the electron behaving as a wave, whereas an introspecting observer was the measuring device that was installed latter.
So, either introspection into an event changes the outcome to a false reality or maybe it reveals the truth. I can not comment on the reality of the nature of electron but I can surely suggest something else. Outcome of an experiment is determined by the conditions it is performed in, which also includes a condition which we have been taking for granted for many years. The condition of either being under observation or not being under observation. I definitely did not mean that if u turn around, the objects behind you will start to float or dance in the air. I am sure that is quite eerie, but that is what I questioned my self about!
For anything to behave in a particular format it must have the information about how to behave in a particular situation(conditions of experiment including under observation or free from observation). This is a very premature statement, which I could explain if given an opportunity to do so.
Lets consider human body or any other living organism of significant size. It require food for its survival because, roughly speaking, food is the supplement of the major solid entity that it is composed of. Now, consider a fruit that we(human body) consume, the particles of different nutrients which once belonged to the fruit now becomes a part of our system. This is because our body creates certain environment for the nutrients to react in a certain way. There is information that the particles have in them which commands them, that if a human body fluids react with nutrients of a fruit, they behave in a certain predetermined fashion. On an easier tone, if an orange is consumed by a human , it becomes the human to a great extent. If an orange is consumed by a monkey or a cow, it becomes a monkey or a cow. The laws governing such events is what I am referring to as information. Of course these are chemical reactions but the reason behind the reaction is what I am concerned about.
Now, before the inception of life on this planet, nature had its own laws in which atoms behaved in a certain way to form molecules and molecules to form compounds further those compounds became complex and started showing significant behavior at an extremely complex level-animals, plants etc. Reaction and events occurred due to either physical interaction of matter-collision, touch, push,pull, drop etc or exchange of energies- heat transfer, fission fusion etc. This was the case for simpler level of matter such as a table and chair(experiencing Newtonian forces), chemicals and basic compounds(experiencing thermodynamics )etc. But for a higher level of existing entities such as humans, more complex ways of reactions and behavior is observed. Behavior of one human with respect to the other or behavior of one human with respect to an object can both be different. That means different humans show different behavior for the same subject. This is due to the information of what a particular human being carries about a particular subject. If behavior of Humans can vary by touching a certain object or even by looking at it, why cant we expect a change in the behavior of an object on a touch or observation. An act of observations can bring about changes in the behavior of a human, so it can also bring about a change in objects, tiny particles, molecules, atoms, and for that matter an ELECTRON.
One other way to understand the dilemma set forth by the double slit experiment could be by defining consciousness. If nature were to give objectified results only if a conscious observer is observing, then may be we can justify to our minds the occurrence of this mind baffling phenomenon. Lets just assume that nature by its self exists as waves and possibilities. As humans we observe objectified version of what we are able to observe. That means out of the many possibilities of a thing(stone, table,chair etc) to appear a certain way, we see the most prominent or the most highly probable objectified form of the same. When I say this I mean that the object you are looking at has multiple possibilities of having a shape and the shape that has highest stability of existence and highest possibility of presence is what we observe.
At the outer level of consciousness, that is as humans we observe that shooting single electron also produces the interference pattern on the screen, that means we are witnessing all the possible places where the electron could have struck. As I mentioned earlier that nature by its self exists as waves and possibilities, it does not objectify unless it is under observation of a consciousness. Since initially electron was not under observation, we found out all the possibilities of where it can strike. But just because we have an observer, nature objectifies its results to show the region of highest possibility of existence.
Speaking of the levels of observation, we with our human senses are an upper level observer or the macro level observer. So all the things we see around us are objectified. things that are of perceivable size. Balls, buildings, coins, needle, planets, mountains, insects etc, that we can see with our naked eyes are objectified to us. Where as, air molecules which we can not see with naked eyes have their existence at multiple possible places for us. Even molecules unless we observe it with microscope exists only as a possibility, but what those millions of molecules make together is of significant size and hence becomes objectified.
If this were the case then we can also say that behavior of matter, as we know it, can also change if we design an observer to observe the exact movement of an electron in all the atoms present. This will result into perfect characterization of atom and all the anomalous characteristics of the atom will settle down to the the most stable form, only because it will be under conscious observation.Science could be objectified is observations were made at the right levels of introspection. Well this is just an idea or a possibility of how things can turn out in the coming future.
If there was a giant observer(a being), way bigger than our solar system, way bigger than everything in our galaxy it could have seen the presence of all us at multiple places. For that observer, things of the magnitude of our size will have random movement in space until it sets an introspecting conscious observer to observe us. Once he does that, the results of his experiment(broadly speaking so) will be objectified. My point over here is that the size of existence doesn't matter, its the ratio of the size of the object under observation and the extent to which we observe it, would determine the nature of what is been observed. If we observe the behavior of our subject generally like our eyes observe the results of an electron, we would find it to behave like a wave of and show us all the possible outcomes but a deeper look would make the results more specific.
I really wish to know the results when we use two layers of slits one with an introspecting measuring device and one without it placed one after the other. Also, studying the double slit experiment taking into account different frame of references could open doors to many other mysterious rooms of nature.
Here are a few pictures which could anchor you to all that has been discussed above:
Arrangement of the electron gun, double slit and the screen:
Young's double slit experiment and the miscellaneous results that follow this experiment have a great scope for research because very little is known to us about this subject. As time will pass we will surely know a lot more nature. I have made a small attempt to share my philosophy, which is inspired by a numerous sources along with my own perspective about the subject,to understand the results that have been OBSERVED.
