Monday, March 14, 2005
2 SLIT EXPERIMENT TAKES A NEW DIRECTION
You may well have done the 2 slit experiment in school. It is where light from one source coming through 2 slits set close to each other doesn't mix together again in an equal way. What happens is that the combined light comes together in a regular pattern of highlights no lights. You get places of no light where there would have been a visible effect from only 1 slit.
I suggest you get the full story on http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/
This is one of the weirdest experiments in all of physics - what we are witnessing is an interference pattern of 2 waves crossing, at the peaks of the waves they double in height, where peaks meet troughs they cancel out - it proves that light is a quantum effect (ie that photons don't really exist in one place but merely exist as a wave of probabilities as do other subatomic particles from which you & I are ultimately made). It is also strong evidence that the Everett-Wheeler Multiverse theory, that all possible positions of all possible subatomic particles actually take place & that an infinite number of universes are being created every instant, most of which rejoin instantly as the wavefront "moves").
If all possible universes currently exist it brings to mind questions about the nature of reality, whether universes with nobody to observe them don't actually exist (as quantum theory normally assumes) & thus whether we or God or whoever create a universe by being in it.
..........................................................
Now for the strange bit:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/3/1/1
A number of different scientists have done the same experiment but instead to separating the 2 slits a few millimeters apart they were placed a few femtoseconds apart in time! The interference pattern is still there.
I am not remotely smart enough to tell you what that proves. But it does seem to disprove that time is any more "real" than the material universe.
I suggest you get the full story on http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/
This is one of the weirdest experiments in all of physics - what we are witnessing is an interference pattern of 2 waves crossing, at the peaks of the waves they double in height, where peaks meet troughs they cancel out - it proves that light is a quantum effect (ie that photons don't really exist in one place but merely exist as a wave of probabilities as do other subatomic particles from which you & I are ultimately made). It is also strong evidence that the Everett-Wheeler Multiverse theory, that all possible positions of all possible subatomic particles actually take place & that an infinite number of universes are being created every instant, most of which rejoin instantly as the wavefront "moves").
If all possible universes currently exist it brings to mind questions about the nature of reality, whether universes with nobody to observe them don't actually exist (as quantum theory normally assumes) & thus whether we or God or whoever create a universe by being in it.
..........................................................
Now for the strange bit:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/3/1/1
A number of different scientists have done the same experiment but instead to separating the 2 slits a few millimeters apart they were placed a few femtoseconds apart in time! The interference pattern is still there.
I am not remotely smart enough to tell you what that proves. But it does seem to disprove that time is any more "real" than the material universe.
