Thread by @CarliFrueh

“Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death” by Robert Lanza, MD with Bob Berman

Chapter 6: The End of Time

The more precisely we pin down one aspect of an object, like its position, the less well known its motion becomes. It depends on what one is looking for and what measuring equipment is used. In reality, Heisenberg said, “all possibilities simultaneously exist until a single one materializes upon observation”. Suppose we wish to know which slit or given electron or proton has gone through on its way to the barrier. It’s a fair enough question and it’s easy enough to find out. We can use polarized light. This is light whose waves are not all scrambled up the way they usually are. But instead vibrate either horizontally or vertically. There orientation can also be slowly rotated. Light is polarized in nature when it is reflected, for example— which is why your sunglasses can remove the glare from windows or ocean surfaces. They have been treated to block the reflected polarized light, yet if you cock your head suddenly those reflections appear. Thus, each polarized lens is set at an angle that allows only one of the two kinds of photons to pass through the gap, effectively tagging these bits of light and letting us know the “which way” path the photon traveled. When a mixture of assorted polarizations is used we get the same result as before, but now let’s determine which slit each individual photon is passing through, by using light of either a vertical or a horizontal polarization.

Many different techniques have been used but it doesn’t matter which method we choose, the important point is that we employ a setup that lets us determine the which way information for each electron or photon as it heads through one of the gaps towards the detector. So we repeat the experiment, shooting photons through slits one at a time, except this time we will learn what slit each photon traverses. We can gain such which way knowledge by placing polarizing lenses in front of each opening, as depicted in figures 6-3, and shooting a scrambled ensemble of light containing photons with both horizontal and vertical alignments. The polarizing lenses act like markers or toll booths. Each lens blocks all light except for photons with the correct polarization. So, if we have a vertical polarizer on the right slit, then we know that only vertically polarized photons can penetrate it and strike the final barrier. By having the lens in front of the right slit oriented to one polarization and the left slit guarded with the opposite polarization, we will learn which way each photon went. Because only an up down oriented photon can penetrate the right lens, and only a sideways photon can go through the other one.

In short, we have gained “which way” information. Astonishingly, the results now dramatically change. Even though our slit detector is known not to alter photons or electrons, we no longer get the interference patterns seen in figure 6-2. Now the results suddenly change to what we’d expect if the photons were particles. A mass of bullet hits on the detector screen behind each slit, as in figure 6-1. The wave pattern showing interference is gone. Something happened—turns out, the mere act of measurement, of learning the path of each photon destroyed the photons freedom to remain blurry and undefined, and take both paths, until it reached the final detection screen. It’s probabilistic wave function must collapse at our “which way” measuring device, because this time we are essentially observing and gaining knowledge before the photon hits the slits, as well as at the detector in the back. Its wave nature was lost the instant each photon lost its blurry, probabilistic, not quite real state.

But why should the photon have chosen to collapse its probabilistic wave function? How did it know or care that “we” the “observer” could learn which slit it went through? Countless attempts to get around this by the greatest minds of the past century have failed. Our knowledge of the photon or electron path alone caused it to become a definite entity, ahead of the previous time. Of course physicists also wondered whether this bizarre behavior might be caused by some interaction between the “which way” detector or various other devices that have been tried, and the photon, but no. Totally different which way detectors have been built, none of which in anyway disturbs the photon. Yet we always lose the “interference pattern” since the measured photon invariably changes its nature from a wave to a discrete particle.

The bottom line conclusion reached after many years is that it’s simply not possible to gain which way information and produce the interference pattern caused by “energy waves”. This which way experiment illustrates that photons can exist as a particle, which it must be if it is to pass through just one slit at not both or as a wave, which blurredly penetrates both simultaneously. But they cannot be seen to be both, a particle and a wave. Again, the main point is that where we observe the photon or electron is what makes it become one or the other, and just in case you’re suspicious of the detectors, note that when used in all other contexts, including double slit experiments without the information providing which way read outs at the end, polarizing lenses never have the slightest effect on the creation of an interference pattern.

We’re left with no choice, but to accept that our presence as an observer and how we make the observation physically changes what we’re looking at, but we need more persuasion. Turns out the tool for reaching the next level of proof arrives with one of quantum theories wildest realities, “particle entanglement.”

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