h a l f b a k e r yMake mine a double.
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The well known double slit experiment set up with electron
detectors on its slits which will detect the moment an electron
passes but will never divulge the information on pain of death, (or
to
be precise would blow up and destroy the experiment, rather than
pass the information on. )
With
one exception: if an interference pattern appears on the
collection screen, ( implying wave manifestation) the slit
detectors
would be electronically unlocked by this outcome. (How is the
interference pattern detected? It shouldn’t be too complicated.
Maybe something like a bar-code reader, or simple pattern
recognition programme does it and then sends an ‘unlocking
signal’
to the slit detector.)
Then the slit detector would immediately stop being a secretive
detector, and allow the information about when and which slit the
electron went through to be passed on to the scientist.
In other words, the detector is useless unless the electron acts as
a
wave, but if the electron acts as a wave, the detector is no longer
useless, so the electron cannot act as a wave, it must be a
particle,
but that would make the detector useless, so the electron must
act as a
wave, but if it’s a wave the detector is no longer useless and
..blah
blah blah.. to eternity.
I’m new to thinking about this stuff, and I tried to see if this kind
of
thing had already been done, but am none the wiser for looking
into
it. Very hard to follow some of the ideas. Plus maths for me a no-
no.
So I put it to anyone who grasps this stuff better. Does anyone
know
A) is this baked? B) what would it look like? Would electron toggle
rapidly between wave and particle, or something else happen? C)
is
it the same as a computer dealing with ‘ this statement is a lie’?
Like
the incompleteness theorem
oil droplet walkers on silicon; pilot wave theory
https://www.youtube...watch?v=WIyTZDHuarQ
[beanangel, Nov 22 2017]
[link]
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This is a cool thought experiment. I think (and I don't know the details well enough to be sure) that it's basically equivalent to the "delayed choice" experiment. I'm not sure how that one fails, but basically nature bites you in the arse and you end up no wiser. |
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I'm pretty sure they most often use photographic film to
record the impact of photons that pass through the
double-slit. When electrons or other particles are
employed instead of photons, they probably have some
other type of chemically treated strip that reacts to
impacting particles. |
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I do know that the experiment often involves just one
particle at a time passing through the double-slit (and
indeed still gradually builds up an interference pattern). |
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I speculate that the simplest explanation for the
interference pattern involves the virtual particles in the
vacuum. Any real particle moving along is constantly
interacting with those virtual particles. The momentum
of the real particle is uncertain, meaning that some
fraction of it is always getting carried by nearby virtual
particles. It is easy to imagine the total momentum as
being at least partly a wave across a sea of virtual
particles. |
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*Usually* there is no net effect, because virtual particles
must vanish and real particles always get their
momentum back. However, when the real particle
encounters
a double-slit, some of its momentum can be carried by
virtual particles through the slit that the real particle
does not
pass through. The real particle still gets its momentum
back, but now the slits have imposed an effect upon the
wave-front of the distributed momentum (distributed per
the Uncertainty Principle) that passed through the
double-slit. |
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[vernon], [DDRD] is talking about the detectors at the slits, which record the passing-by of an electron; not the detector at the screen. |
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The screen (of film or equivalent) is a detector, the thing
that that detects the interference pattern. The simplest
explanation for the destruction of that pattern when
trying to detect the particles generating that pattern is: |
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1. an interaction with that particle must be
accomplished.
2. any interaction changes the momentum of the particle.
3. If the particle reaches the detector/screen at all, it
will now reach it in a different place than it would have
reached, without the intermediary interaction. |
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Yes, but in [DDRD]s experiment, the screen is of secondary importance (ie, it can be film, photomultipliers, or whatever). The key element is the detectors sitting next to each of the two slits. |
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Also, your 3-step explanation is still grounded in classical concepts, whereas I think that the two-slit experiment has been shown not to be tractable to any classical theory. Quantum mechanics is just other. |
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For instance, a particle does not reach any part of the screen - it is simply detected at one location of the screen, which is a very different kettle of geese. |
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The experiment described in the main text here requires
the self-interfering wave-form to be detected. This is
theoretically possible at any point *after* the particle has
exited the double-slit, but impossible on the other side,
since the wave is not self-interfering before the particle
reaches the double-slit. |
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What I wrote in my previous anno (especially #2) is
entirely acceptable to QM --one of the foundations of QM,
the Uncertainty Principle, directly derives from how
observations affect the things observed. |
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And so, by attempting to observe how a particle's
waviness self-interferes, that attempt destroys the ability
of the particle's waviness to self-interfere. |
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Indeed it does, which is rather the nub of [DDRD]'s idea. |
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No in fact your idea MB. Upon reading your Shodingers Twin
Slits expt from 2007.. already baked by you.
Ps your title is also more erotic, damn |
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Anything with twin slits in it is bound to have a little frisson. |
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Wait!! Someone read one of my ideas??? |
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I misread the title and thought the idea was going to be
about a twin bowled toilet. |
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[Vernon]'s annotation reminded me of a simulated double slit experiment where drops of oil diffract at a double slit. They mention pilot waves at the video. [link] |
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I think the "pilot wave" concept got discredited and its formalization sort of morphed into mainstream QM. |
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Reading this I almost had an idea about using a double-slit experiment to perform otherwise impossible calculations. I was right on the tip of my brain, which started to smoke and bubble before the idea slipped away. Now I'm 15 IQ points down and have no idea where I was going with that. -_- |
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