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<DIV>Here's a quick and possibly ignorant interpretation of the Afshar experiment.</DIV>
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<DIV>Sometimes my mind thinks in English. Sometimes it thinks in French. When it thinks in French it thinks in ways that it can't think in English. Language has amazing properties--properties to constrict us and properties that set us free.</DIV>
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<DIV>Back to the Afshar experiment. We're asking a question based on metaphor. Which metaphor do the characteristics of a photon fit--the metaphor of a tiny crumb, a particle, or the metapor of a ripple in a pond, a wave. </DIV>
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<DIV>As the centuries roll on the number of metaphors in our vocabulary increase. And with new metaphors come new terms, new ways to use language to comprehend. Descartes could not think of things in terms of software versus hardware. There were no computers in his day. </DIV>
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<DIV>We use computers all the time. Software versus hardware thinking comes to us with ease. Our rapidly evolving technology has given us new metaphors and new language--a new vocabulary.</DIV>
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<DIV>Our problem is that we don't yet have a metaphor for something that "acts like a particle", a crumb, when we use one sort of detection contraption and "acts like a wave" of water when we use another detection device entirely.</DIV>
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<DIV>So let's make our own metaphor. Let's call it a "wavicle". A wavicle is a thing or a process (or both--as most things are). It is a thing or a process that shows the characteristics of a wave when viewed with one detection gadget and the characteristics of a particle when we switch to another gangle of gadgetry.</DIV>
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<DIV>Now let's shuffle our deck of metaphors and yank out that metaphorical wonder called the elephant. If the hairs on the tip of the tail act like particles and the trunk ripples like a wave, what does the elephant look like? </DIV>
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<DIV>The elephant whose shape </DIV>
<DIV>we're seeking right now is the wavicle--or at least one wavicle, the photon. There may well be other wavicles out there.</DIV>
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<DIV>Is the invisible linkage between the scattershot bristles of the tail and the woobling wavery of the trunk simply still invisible because we haven't invented enough new detection devices with which to touch, test, and see photons--wavicles-- in their full glory? Or is the body of the wavicle in another dimension entirely?</DIV>
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<DIV>There's an old Bloom theory about non-locality. It says that when you part a stream of photons they still seem linked to each other because they ARE linked in a fifth dimension. Here's the sort of thing I mean. Imagine that you are of dragging a tuning fork sideways through Flatland. To the Flatlanders it looks as if your tuning fork is just one straight line. If the Flatlanders put an obstacle in the tuning fork's path, you, the tuning-fork dragger, can twist the tuning fork around 90 degrees. </DIV>
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<DIV>A tuning fork is shaped like an upside-down U. One arm of the tuning fork can go around the obstacle to the left. Another can go around the obstacle to the right. </DIV>
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<DIV>To the Flatlanders, it looks as if the tuning fork has split in two. If the branches continue to show the same characteristics, the Flatlanders might wonder how faster-than-the-speed-of-light communication between the two occurs. You wouldn't have to wonder. You'd see that the connection has never been broken. The right and left branches of the tuning fork, the upside-down U, are connected in a dimension the Flatlanders can't perceive.</DIV>
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<DIV>(I wish I could show you this with a flash animation.)</DIV>
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<DIV>I've just used a small barrage of metaphors on you: waves, particles, elephants, Flatlanders, and tuning forks. I can use them easily because you know their stories and their shapes. You know the tale of the five blind scientists arguing about the shape of the elephant. And you know the story of Flatland. They are part of your vocabulary. </DIV>
<DIV>Now we have a new story--the story of the mystery thing--the story of the unknown what's-this that sometimes appears like a particle and sometimes appears like a wave. It's simply a wavicle. Now we have to determine what a wavicle is. </DIV>
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<DIV>New vocabulary and new metaphor, new way of asking questions and of solving them. New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being. And new ways of being lead to new ways of seeing. </DIV>
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<DIV>Perception is a collective thing that oscillates like a wave. Or does it oscillate like a wavicle?</DIV>
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<DIV>In a message dated 10/13/2004 3:23:32 AM Eastern Standard Time, Howl Bloom writes:</DIV>
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<DIV>Hopefully I can write more tomorrow. But here' the compilation I picked up by following your leads. It's very intriguing:</DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Retrieved October 13, 2004, from the World Wide Web<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=819<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sci-Phi 28: Is the Copenhagen interpretation under threat?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Click for a printer friendly version of this article<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mathew Iredale<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Since it was first developed, some 70 years ago, the “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum theory has been the cause of significant disagreement amongst both physicists and philosophers.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Its main architect, the physicist Niels Bohr, summed up the typical response to it when he said “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Einstein disliked it because of its probabilistic implications, but also because he believed that it was the task of science to provide us with knowledge of the world that is independent of observers and their acts of observation. And this is something that the Copenhagen interpretation expressly forbids.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Bohr insisted that the only way to make sense of the mathematics of quantum theory is to assume that nothing really exists until it is measured. We cannot talk about an objective reality independent of observers because our observations make a difference to what we will see.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Another of the architects of quantum theory, Erwin Schrödinger, was unimpressed by this interpretation. He created a celebrated thought experiment, now referred to as Schrödinger’s Cat, to make plain the absurdity inherent in it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>He imagined a closed room, or box, containing a live cat and a tiny radioactive sample connected to a container of cyanide. The whole thing is set up in such a way that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the radioactive sample will trigger the release of the cyanide and kill the cat.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Common sense tells us that the cat inside the box is either dead or alive, depending upon whether the radioactive trigger has fired. But according to the Copenhagen interpretation, one cannot say this until an observer actually looks into the box and sees that the cat is dead (or that it is alive). Until then, the cat is taken to be both dead and alive at the same time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Clearly, this is an extraordinary state of affairs and yet it has been part of scientific orthodoxy for the last 80 years. But perhaps not for much longer, if the results of a controversial experiment by the physicist Shahriar Afshar prove to be valid.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One of the strange features of the fundamental building blocks of reality is that under some circumstance they behave as particles, whereas under other circumstances they have clear wave-like properties. This is most clearly shown in<B> the “double-slit” experiment, in which electrons are fired at a thin metal plate with two narrow slits in it. The electrons pass through one or other of the slits to arrive at a phosphor coated screen, where they produce a flash of light that is picked up by a detector.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The experiment is carried out in three stages. In stage one, only one of the slits is open, and the electrons form a pattern on the screen similar to that which is seen when bullets are fired at a target. There is a concentration of “hits” centred on one part of the screen which gradually fades as one moves away from this centre. In the second stage of the experiment the first slit is closed, the second slit is opened, and the electrons form a pattern on the screen similar to that observed in stage one, but with the concentration of “hits” in a different position on the screen, corresponding to the different position of the slit on the metal plate.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></B>So far, so good. Nothing out of the ordinary here. The fun begins <B>when you open both slits in the metal plate and fire electrons at the screen. If electrons always behaved like particles (as they did in stages 1 and 2) you would expect to see a combination of the results from stage 1 and stage 2. That is, the screen would have two concentrated areas of “hits” corresponding to the electrons passing through the two slits, with the concentration of hits gradually fading away from each area of concentration. But this is not what you observe. What you observe is a classic interference pattern, such as that obtained when two water waves meet.</B> That is, you observe a collection of peaks and troughs of “hits” on the screen, inconsistent with the firing of simple particles through the two slits. The electrons appear to start out as particles when they are fired from the electron gun, and to end up as particles when they hit the phosphor screen, but to transform themselves into some sort of wave as they travel between the two.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>From such experiments it might appear as if electrons can be both waves and particles, but Bohr believed that it is more likely that they are something else entirely, something so novel that our ordinary, everyday experiences do not equip us to describe or understand them.</B> [hb: a failure of metaphor—we need more tools in our kit of concepts.]<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Nor can our experimental equipment adequately capture them. When measured, a quantum entity will behave either like a particle or a wave. <B>Bohr argued that it was the way in which you set up your experiment that determined which sort of behaviour you would observe and that you would never see both at the same time in one experiment. He called this the “principle of complementarity”</B>. Einstein objected to this, but was not able to refute it experimentally. It now appears as if Shahriar Afshar has done so.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>Afshar’s experiment</B>, recently described in New Scientist, <B>is a variation of the “double-slit”experiment. Laser light falls on two pinholes in an opaque screen. On the far side of the screen is a lens that takes the light coming through each of the pinholes (another opaque screen stops all other light hitting the lens) and refocuses the spreading beams onto a mirror that reflects each onto a separate photon detector. In this way, Afshar gets a record of the rate at which photons are coming through each pinhole. According to the principle of complementarity, that means that there should be no evidence of an interference pattern. But according to Afshar, there is</B>, as he has specifically designed the experiment to test for its presence. As he says, “This flies in the face of complementarity…Something everyone believed and nobody questioned for 80 years appears to be wrong.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When he was invited to repeat the experiment at Harvard University earlier this year he got the same results and has now submitted his work for peer-reviewed publication. This is, of course, the acid test of his research and will determine whether his ideas are accepted or rejected by the wider scientific community, although a number of physicists have already voiced their support.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Afshar is confident that his research will be accepted and that for many this will come as a relief. “Many physicists have found Bohr’s ideas either vague or intolerable, but until now nobody has been able to show in an experiment that complementarity fails,” says Afshar.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>However, before anyone starts celebrating the apparent victory of common sense over quantum weirdness, it should be noted that, for example, we are still left with the situation in which a particle is a wave and a wave a particle. One part of the Gordian knot that is quantum theory may be slowly unravelling, but much of the rest remains as tightly bound as at any time in the last 80 years.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Suggested reading The Quantum Universe , Tony Hey & Patrick Walters (Cambridge University Press) ‘Quantum Rebel‘, Marcus Chown, New Scientist 2457, 24 July 2004<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Comment on this article here.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Join our Mailing List<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Enter your email address into the box on your right and click on the button labelled 'Subscribe'.* *Note: we do not give out email addresses to third parties.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Email Address </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1097729574@aol.com" title="" height=568 alt="" width=575 v:shapes="_x0000_i1025" DATASIZE="47834" ID="MA1.1097729574"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>TPM Online is The Philosophers' Magazine on the net It is edited by Dr Jeremy Stangroom © The Philosophers' Magazine Contact Us </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>________</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Retrieved October 13, 2004, from the World Wide Web </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>http://www.analogsf.com/0410/altview2.shtml</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Analog Science Fiction</FONT></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Alternate View</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>John G. Cramer</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>A FAREWELL TO COPENHAGEN?</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>This column is about experimental tests of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The question at issue is whether we can perform experiments that can show whether there is an "observer-created reality" as suggested by the Copenhagen Interpretation, or a peacock’s tail of rapidly branching alternate universes, as suggested by the Many-Worlds Interpretation, or forward-backward in time handshakes, as suggested by the Transactional Interpretation? Until recently, I would have said that this was an impossible task, but a new experiment has changed my view, and I now believe that the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds Interpretations (at least as they are usually presented) have been falsified by experiment.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The physical theory of quantum mechanics describes the behavior of matter and energy at the smallest distances. It has been verified by more than 70 years of experiments, and it is trusted by working physicists and regularly used in the fields of atomic, nuclear, and particle physics. However, quantum mechanics is burdened by a dismaying array of alternative and mutually contradictory ways of interpreting its mathematical formalism. These include the orthodox Copenhagen Interpretation, the currently fashionable Many Worlds Interpretation, my own Transactional Interpretation, and a number of others.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Many (including me) have declared, with almost the certainty of a mathematical theorem, that it is impossible to distinguish between quantum interpretations with experimental tests. Reason: all interpretations describe the same mathematical formalism, and it is the formalism that makes the experimentally testable predictions. As it turns out, while this "theorem" is not wrong, it does contain a significant loophole. If an interpretation is not completely consistent with the mathematical formalism, it can be tested and indeed falsified. As we will see, that appears to be the situation with the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds Interpretations, among many others, while my own Transactional Interpretation easily survives the experimental test.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The experiment that appears to falsify these venerable and widely trusted interpretations of quantum mechanics is the Afshar Experiment. It is a new quantum test, just performed last year, which demonstrates the presence of complete interference in an unambiguous "which-way" measurement of the passage of light photons through a pair of pinholes. But before describing the Afshar Experiment, let us take a backward look at the Copenhagen Interpretation and Neils Bohr’s famous Principle of Complementarity.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Quantum mechanics was first formulated independently by Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the mid-1920s. Physicists usually have a mental picture of the underlying mechanisms within theory they are formulating, but Heisenberg had no such picture of behavior at the atomic level. With amazing intuition and remarkable good luck, he managed to invent a matrix-based mathematical structure that agreed with and predicted the data from most atomic physics measurements. On the other hand, Schrödinger did start from a definite picture in constructing his quantum wave mechanics. Making an analogy with massless electromagnetic waves, he constructed a similar wave equation describing particles (e.g., electrons) with a rest mass. However, it soon was demonstrated by Bohr and Heisenberg that while Schrödinger’s mathematics was valid, his underlying mass-wave picture was unworkable, and he was forced to abandon it. The net result was that the new quantum mechanics was left as a theory with no underlying picture or mechanism. Moreover, its mathematics was saying some quite bizarre things about how matter and energy behaved at the atomic level, and there seemed no way of explaining this behavior.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>In the Autumn of 1926, while Heisenberg was a lecturer Bohr’s Institute in Copenhagen, the two men walked the streets of the ancient city almost every day, arguing, gesturing, and sketching pictures and equations on random scraps of paper, as they struggled to come to grips with the puzzles and paradoxes that the quantum formalism presented. How could an object behave as both a particle and a wave? How could its wave description spread out in all directions, then "collapse" to a location where it was detected like a bubble that had been pricked. Did an electron smoothly make the transition from one atomic orbit to another or did it undergo a "quantum jump", abruptly disappearing from one orbit and appearing in the other? How could the occurrence of seemingly random quantum events be predicted?</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Copenhagen autumn phased into winter, and no solution was found. In February on 1927, Bohr went away on a skiing vacation, and while he was gone, Heisenberg discovered a key piece to the puzzle concealed in the mathematics of Schrödinger’s wave mechanics. When one tried to "localize" the position of an electron by specifying its location more and more precisely, the mathematics required that the momentum (mass times velocity) of the electron must become less localized and more uncertain. One had to add more and more wave components with different momentum values to make the position peak sharper. Knowledge of position and momentum were like the two ends of a seesaw: lowering one raised the other. The product of the uncertainties in position and momentum could not be reduced below a lower limit, which was Planck’s constant. The mathematics required that any attempt to do so must fail. This became the essence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, first published in early 1927.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>When Bohr returned to Copenhagen, he was presented with the new idea. At first he was skeptical, because of problems with Heisenberg’s "gamma ray microscope" example used in the paper, but he finally convinced himself that, example or not, the basic idea was correct. The Uncertainty Principle brought Bohr to a new insight into quantum behavior. Position and momentum were "complementary", in the sense that precise knowledge of one excluded knowledge of the other, yet they were jointly essential for a complete description of quantum events. Bohr extended the idea of complementary variables to energy and time and to particle and wave behavior. One must choose either the particle mode, with localized positions, trajectories, and energy quanta, or the wave mode, with spreading wave functions, delocalization and interference. The Uncertainty Principle allowed both descriptions within the same mathematical framework because each excluded the other. Bohr’s Complementarity and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty, along with the statistical interpretation of Schrödinger’s wave functions and the view of the wave function as observer knowledge were all interconnected to form the new Copenhagen Interpretation.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>In Bohr’s words: ". . . we are presented with a choice of either tracing the path of the particle, or observing interference effects . . . we have to do with a typical example of how the complementary phenomena appear under mutually exclusive experimental arrangements." In the context of a two-slit welcher weg (which-way) experiment, the Principle of Complementarity dictates "the observation of an interference pattern and the acquisition of which-way information are mutually exclusive." By 1927 the Copenhagen Interpretation was the big news in physics and the subject of well-attended lectures by Bohr, Born, and Heisenberg. In the next decade, through many more lectures and demonstrations of the effectiveness of the ideas and despite the objections of Albert Einstein, it was canonized as the Standard Interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it has held this somewhat shaky position ever since.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Afshar experiment was first performed last year by Shariar S. Afshar and repeated while he was a Visiting Scientist at Harvard. In a very subtle way it directly tests the Copenhagen assertion that the observation of an interference pattern and the acquisition of particle path which-way information are mutually exclusive. The experiment consists of two pinholes in an opaque sheet illuminated by a laser. The light passing through the pinholes forms an interference pattern, a zebra-stripe set of maxima and zeroes of light intensity that can be recorded by a digital camera. The precise locations of the interference minimum positions, the places where the light intensity goes to zero, are carefully measured and recorded.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Behind the plane where the interference pattern forms, Afshar places a lens that forms an image of each pinhole at a second plane. A light flash observed at image #1 on this plane indicates unambiguously that a photon of light has passed through pinhole #1, and a flash at image #2 similarly indicates that the photon has passed through pinhole #2. Observation of the photon flashes therefore provides particle path which-way information, as described by Bohr. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, in this situation all wave-mode interference effects must be excluded.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>However, at this point, Afshar introduces a new element to the experiment. He places one or more wires at the previously measured positions of the interference minima. In one such setup, if the wire plane is uniformly illuminated, the wires absorb about 6% of the light. Then Afshar measures the difference in the light received at the pinhole images with and without the wires in place.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>We are led by the Copenhagen Interpretation to expect that the positions of the interference minima should have no particular significance, and that the wires should intercept 6% of the light they do for uniform illumination. Similarly, the usual form of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics leads us to expect 6% interception and no interference, since a photon detected at image #1 is in one universe while the same photon detected at image #2 is in another universe, and since the two "worlds" are distinguished by different physical outcomes, they should not interfere.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>However, what Afshar observes is that the amount of light intercepted by the wires is very small, consistent with 0% interception. There are still locations of zero intensity and the wave interference pattern is still present in the which-way measurement. Wires are placed at the zero-intensity locations of the interference minima intercept no light. Thus, it appears that both the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many-Worlds Interpretation have been falsified by experiment.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Does this mean that the theory of quantum mechanics has also been falsified? No indeed! The quantum formalism has no problem in predicting the Afshar result. A simple quantum mechanical calculation using the standard formalism shows that the wires should intercept only a very small fraction of the light. The problem encountered by the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds Interpretations is that the Afshar Experiment has identified a situation in which these popular interpretations of quantum mechanics are inconsistent with the quantum formalism itself.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>What about the Transactional Interpretation, which describes each quantum process as a handshake between a normal "offer" wave (_) and a back-in-time advanced "confirmation" wave (_*)? The offer waves from the laser pass through both pinholes and cancel at the positions of the zeroes in the interference pattern. Therefore, no transactions can form at these locations, and the wires can intercept only a very small amount of light. Thus, the Transactional interpretation is completely consistent with the results of the Afshar Experiment and with the quantum formalism.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Does this mean that the Copenhagen and Many Worlds Interpretations, having been falsified by experiment, must be abandoned? Does it mean that the physics community must turn to an interpretation like the Transactional Interpretation that is consistent with the Afshar results? Perhaps. I predict that a new generation of "Quantum Lawyers" will begin to populate the physics literature with arguments challenging what "is" is and claming that the wounded interpretations never said that interference should be completely absent in a quantum which-way measurement. And most practicing physicists who learned the Copenhagen Interpretation at the knee of an old and beloved professor will not abandon that mode of thinking, even if it is found to be inconsistent with the formalism and with experiment.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>But nevertheless, the rules of the game have changed. There is a way of distinguishing between interpretations of quantum mechanics. It will take some time for the dust to settle, but I am confident that when it does we will have interpretations of quantum mechanics that are on a sounder footing than the ones presently embraced by most of the physics community.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>AV Columns On-line: Electronic reprints of over 120 "The Alternate View" columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available on-line at: http://www.npl.washington.edu/av. Electronic preprints of papers listed below are available at: http://arxiv.org.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Reference:</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Copenhagen Interpretation:</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Neils Bohr, Nature 121, 580 (1928).</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Neils Bohr, in: Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, P. A. Schlipp, Ed. (Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, Illinois, 1949).</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Transactional Interpretation:</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>John G. Cramer, Reviews of Modern Physics 58, 647 (1986); http://www.npl.washington.edu/TI</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The Afshar Experiment</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Shariar S. Afshar, (submitted to Physical Review Letters, July, 2004); See also http://users.rowan.edu/~afshar</FONT></P>
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<DIV>In a message dated 10/12/2004 3:00:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, kurakin.pavel@gmail.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial>Howard -- happy to hear You! <BR><BR>Oh yes, You are right. Right is "Asfar", and here is what Google finds:<BR><BR>http://users.rowan.edu/~afshar/<BR>http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/archives/000674.html<BR>http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2004/Jul/hour2_073004.html<BR>http://www.analogsf.com/0410/altview2.shtml<BR><BR>Not only this, but in fact this covers web-available information. No<BR>original papers, just discussions and\or advertisment to buy the<BR>hard-copy magazine. Here's the problem.<BR><BR>Here's why I am so much excited. From web-discussions I've picked up<BR>that Prof. John Cramer is highly optimist about Ashfar results, since<BR>this experimant confirms (in some way! - in which exactly I can't find<BR>out) his transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (TIQM), in<BR>preference to Copenhagen.<BR><BR>And John Cramer's TIQM is one step from my (and Yours!) idea of "talks<BR>of particles". In short, a _talk_ (what we two You and me believe in)<BR>implies questions and answers, i.e. -- two-directional flow of<BR>information, two-sided waves. TIQM just introduces those 2-sided<BR>waves.<BR><BR>And then, my "hidden time" idea, as I believe, makes such waves fully<BR>lawfull in physical sence.<BR><BR><BR>On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 02:35:45 EDT, howlbloom@aol.com <howlbloom@aol.com> wrote:<BR>> <BR>> <BR>> <BR>> Pavel-- Are you sure the spelling is correct? I couldn't find it in the NY<BR>> Public library computer system, in Questia, or in Google. Google will<BR>> usually return results on anything in this cosmos that has a name. But on<BR>> Ashafar it comes up blank. Onward--Howard<BR>> <BR>> In a message dated 10/11/2004 3:00:55 AM Eastern Standard Time,<BR>> kurakin.pavel@gmail.com writes:<BR>> May I ask Your help to find out what Ashafar experiment is. I have<BR>> found out that it is a kind of 2-slits experiment, but in some way it<BR>> falsifies Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which is widely discussed<BR>> in web-forums.<BR>> <BR>> <BR>> ----------<BR>> Howard Bloom<BR>> Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of<BR>> History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to<BR>> the 21st Century<BR>> Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core<BR>> Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>> www.howardbloom.net<BR>> www.bigbangtango.net<BR>> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic<BR>> of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder:<BR>> The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American<BR>> Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,<BR>> Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,<BR>> International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:<BR>> Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>> For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:<BR>> www.paleopsych.org<BR>> for two chapters from <BR>> The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History,<BR>> see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>> For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big<BR>> Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR>></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>