Comment on Gottem

• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No, not the slits. How the “observation” is done is you measure what goes through the slit with a detector just on the other side. The detector has to interact with the photons, so it collapses the waveform, making it behave like a particle, only passing through one slit. If you remove the detector then it has wave-like behavior, as the waveform only collapses once it hits the surface on the far end.

  The waveform collapses any time it interacts with something. The experiment just takes advantage of this by making it collapse in a way that creates a different result than if we don’t collapse it until later, where the waves can interact.

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  • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Ok so technically there are 2 to 3 ways it’s interacting to dissolve here?

    1 - the slits 2 - the surface at the far end on which the particles land 3 - whatever method is being used to read it on the other side of the slits?

    Just clarifying as the experiment has more than one interaction so when you said interaction I need to clarify which interaction.

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yes, that’s correct! Interacting with the barrier that creates the splits we don’t care about, but yes, that collapses it too.

      Interacting with the surface we’re measuring in all the experiments. It doesn’t change, so it shouldn’t be effecting the results. It does collapse the waveform though, which is how we measure it.

      Detecting it at the slit is the part that changes. If we don’t do this, we get wave-like behavior, because there’s no interaction until it hits the surface at the end. The wave can pass through both slits without any interaction. If we put in a detector, then it must interact with that to pass through, so it collapses the waveform and behaves like a particle at that point. This means it must be at one slit or the other, and not both.

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      • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        And What are the ‘detectors’ that were used?

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      • vivalapivo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Interacting with the barrier that creates the slits we don’t care about, but yes, that collapses it too.

        Ok, I see you’re ignorant actually. Interactions do not lead to the collapse, they are intrinsic part of quantum fields. Collapse happens when you step out of quantum picture with (mostly)linear equations and try to project the calculations onto the “classical picture”, whatever your cult of choice explains how that’s actually happening.

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