The Most Beautiful Experiment of All Times by Stefan Weckbach

Dear Ray,

yes, i think the only way to implement "infinity" into our physical descriptions without making ultimate reality an infinitely complex thing would be to consider fractals. They are highly redundant and therefore compressible and describable.

Dear Lawrence,

i read your essay and another paper of yours i found in the internet. I am impressed by your broad mathematical skills and your creativity. Unfortunately i cannot comment on your ideas because of my lack of mathematical background. But your results are very interesting, thought-provoking and maybe lead to more insights about holography, entropy and entanglement.

Regards,

Stefan

Dear Alan,

can the Archimedes screw analogy explain the behaviour of sinlge "particles" ("waves" or whatever) in a Mach-Zehnder-Interferometer?

Dear Jim,

no i intended you to read Constantin Ragazas proposal to explain the double-slit experiment and my discussion of this proposal with him. The whole discussion starts under the entry of John Merryman. (you must click "show all replies (95 not shown)" to have access to my comments there.

Dear Jim,

if that would be the case, the Mach-Zehnder-Interferometer (without the second beam-splitter) should be able to detect both independently directed waveforms. But that's never the case. For every "particle" that goes through the first beam-splitter, there only one and just one detector clicks for each partitioned waveform.

Sincerely,

Stefan

Dear Neil,

as you surely know, some interpretations of QM take an analog and deterministically evolving wave function as a fact. For example DI or MWI. I pondered about wether those views are really a fact or not.

To "answer" the contest's question more definitely, one has to provide an experimentum crucis that could differenciate between a strictly analog model of reality and other (non-strictly) models. This task seems to be somewhat a variation of the halting problem, because if you can measure some values to - say - the 70 billionth decimal place, that's in no way a proof that nature acts in an infinitely precise manner or not. Even if the next 50 million decimal places are only zeros, you have no garantuee that after that there will again exlusively only follow further zeros and no other numbers.

If we define "information" as something that made a factual distinction in the past (due to measurement-outcomes or mere interactions of particles), then at least within our observable horizon of the universe there should have been produced only a finite amount of information - resulting in our present configuration of the observable horizon. Though "observable" means "factual", we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved, "counterfactual" information is preserved via an analog and deterministically evolving wave function, be it as many worlds or as other unobservable dimensions.

If the holographic principle is valid, the total information content of a region of space is finite. For our observable universe, this amount of information - due to the holographic principle and the calculations of Seth Lloyd and others - cannot exceed about 10123 factual information units (bits). So, if nature would be able to outdistance this number by a quantum computer's operation that leads to a factual, verifiable output (in my experiment via the factorization of large numbers into their prime components), this would indicate - at least - that the underlying wave function does operate in a counterfactual realm, a realm that cannot be associated with ordinary space and time.

But if nature wouldn't be able to outdistance the 10123 factual bit-flips, this would be - in my opinion - a strong hint for reconsidering a strictly analog and deterministic view of QM.

"Are those particles really used, and would our doing an experiment right now actually mesh with the potential capability of all those entities in principle?"

I really don't know if those particles would be really used in such an experiment, but if the claims of the finite information bound (or let's say, the finite computational capability) of our observable universe is valid (independent of how the universe computes or is interconnected in detail), there should indeed occur a breakdown of the "wave function" at some critical point of my proposed experiment.

Dear Jim,

you are right, it seems that if the detected location is produced by the interference of independently directed waves passing through the grating.

But if we observe one of the two slits to look which slit a particle went through, the interference pattern doesn't build up, but only a pattern behind each of the slits that we know from single-slit experiments. So the two "waves" cannot be independent from each other. Otherwise there should be nonetheless a kind of interference pattern at the screen (though different from the interference pattern for the case that we don't measure a slit, but nonetheless interference between the two waves that you describe - towards their way to the screen).

How can you explain this with "real" waves?

Sincerely,

Stefan

Dear Jim,

"what is the experimental condition where one of the slits is monitored to determine which slit a 'particle' went through - how is that accomplished?"

I don't know for sure, but i think some "properties" of a particle (be it magnetic spin, mass, charge or energy or whatever - you should read up on the experimental reports) interact with another particles properties (an atom or an experimental device).

"More directly, can you explain, for an individual quantum emission single slit experiment, how a localized particle could always find its way through the slit, when it would frequently be absorbed by the grating material?"

Obviously such a "particle" gets not absorbed by the grating material, otherwise it couldn't also hit the screen anymore.

"I see that quantum emission single slit experiments produce a distribution of detections behind the slit, as a single wave collapses to produce the particle detection."

I do neither believe in particles, nor do i believe in waves as the ontological basement of reality. I rather think that the answer to that puzzle can't be found within the framework of ordinary 3D-spacetime. Imagine an electron going through the double-slit experiment. If it would be separated into two independent waves, what happens with the electrons' charge, mass, energy, spin? We could measure it imidiately after it went through the slits, but we could also don't measure it, or measure it after it moved 100 meters. Why should an electrons' wave know that at some point of a screen "it" is detected and therefore the other valid points at this screen should register it with probability zero? The potential points on the screen to register such an electron could be far away from each other.

We could have a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer and send a single electron through it. Every arm of the interferometer is 1000 meters long. There's no second beam-splitter and the two arms do not cross one another but are 2000 meters away from each other. What happens with the wave that hits the detector which doesn't click? Why can we measure the electron's properties (charge, mass, energy) at the detectors which clicks? Are there only empty waves under way with only the description - information - about the electron's properties and such properties are only re-constructed in the moment of a measurement? If so, doesn't this mean that we have to redefine our concept of matter's properties in some way and also our definition about physical space? How can the one arm of the interferometer "know" that the other arm has registered the electron and therefore need not construct the electron's properties twice (it can only be detected at one detector, at one time). If we involve entanglement into the picture to explain those "spooky action at a distance", why should we therefore need physically extended waves to transport information through spacetime?

Sincerely,

Stefan

Dear Jim,

thank you too for your patience and for visiting my page.

Best wishes to you, too,

Stefan