excreationist
Married mouth-breather
0:45 ....In 1978, a physicist by the name of John Archibald Wheeler proposed a thought experiment, called
delayed choice. Wheeler’s idea was to imagine light from a distant quasar which is billions
of light years from earth, being gravitationally lensed by a closer galaxy. As a result, light
from a single quasar would appear as coming from two slightly different locations, because
of the lensing effect of gravity from a galaxy between earth and the quasar.
Wheeler then noted that this light could be observed on earth in two different ways. The
first would be to have a detector aimed at each lensed image. Since the precise source
of this light was known, it would be measured as particles of light when viewed. But if
a light interferometer was placed at the junction of the two light sources, the combined light
from these two images would be measured as a wave because it’s precise source would
not be known. That’s the way quantum mechanics should work.
This is called a delayed choice because the observer’s choice of selecting how to measure
the particle is being done billions of years from the time that the particle left the quasar.
So presumably the light would have to be committed to either being a particle or wave, billions
of years before the measurement is actually made here on earth.
This quasar experiment isn’t practical, but modern equipment allows us to perform
a similar experiment in the lab, where the decision to measure a particle or wave is
done at random after the quantum system is “committed.” And indeed his thought experiment
is confirmed – that even if measured at random, when the path information is known,
the light is a particle. When path information is erased by using an interferometer, the
light is a wave. But how could this be?...the light began its
journey billions of years ago, long before we decided on which experiment to perform.
It would seem as if the quasar light “knew” whether it would be seen as a particle or
wave billions of years before the experiment was even devised on earth.
Does this prove that somehow the particle’s measurement of its current state has influenced
its state in the past?.....
delayed choice. Wheeler’s idea was to imagine light from a distant quasar which is billions
of light years from earth, being gravitationally lensed by a closer galaxy. As a result, light
from a single quasar would appear as coming from two slightly different locations, because
of the lensing effect of gravity from a galaxy between earth and the quasar.
Wheeler then noted that this light could be observed on earth in two different ways. The
first would be to have a detector aimed at each lensed image. Since the precise source
of this light was known, it would be measured as particles of light when viewed. But if
a light interferometer was placed at the junction of the two light sources, the combined light
from these two images would be measured as a wave because it’s precise source would
not be known. That’s the way quantum mechanics should work.
This is called a delayed choice because the observer’s choice of selecting how to measure
the particle is being done billions of years from the time that the particle left the quasar.
So presumably the light would have to be committed to either being a particle or wave, billions
of years before the measurement is actually made here on earth.
This quasar experiment isn’t practical, but modern equipment allows us to perform
a similar experiment in the lab, where the decision to measure a particle or wave is
done at random after the quantum system is “committed.” And indeed his thought experiment
is confirmed – that even if measured at random, when the path information is known,
the light is a particle. When path information is erased by using an interferometer, the
light is a wave. But how could this be?...the light began its
journey billions of years ago, long before we decided on which experiment to perform.
It would seem as if the quasar light “knew” whether it would be seen as a particle or
wave billions of years before the experiment was even devised on earth.
Does this prove that somehow the particle’s measurement of its current state has influenced
its state in the past?.....
I suspect I am in a simulation. I don't believe this simulation explicitly simulated billions of years of history before our modern history.
The simulation would know how the star was being viewed. It would generate an output of the star based on that. It is easy for the output of the star to be generated when it is viewed today. An alternative is that a message from the present is sent back billions of years.... ???