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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Double-Slit Experiment
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Some physicists say that the Double Slit Experiment begins to act like a time-machine, that events of the past can be altered. But other physicists like Tom Campbell state that this is the wrong interpretation of the data. I side with Tom, and I’ll tell you why.
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return to "Double-Slit experiment" main-page
The question under review is difficult to grasp in its subtleties, but I think we can make sense of it if we’re willing to do some homework. We’ll need to survey the videos on the Double-Slit main-page for background information.
Let’s begin by examining some quotations from the philosophical camp that believes that the past can be changed:
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Arjun Walia: “In 2007 scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus and showed that their actions could retroactively change something which had already happened.”
Asher Peres: “If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance, but also, as seen here, influence our future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.”
from the internet: “Dr. John Wheeler in 1978... believed that this [Double-Slit] experiment was best explained on a cosmic scale. He asks us to imagine a star emitting a photon billions of years ago, heading in the direction of planet Earth. In between, there is a galaxy. As a result of what’s known as gravitational lensing, the light will have to bend around the galaxy in order to reach Earth, so it has to take one of two paths, go left or go right. Billions of years later, if one decides to set up an apparatus to ‘catch’ the photon, the resulting pattern would be (in the Double-Slit experiment) an interference pattern. This demonstrates that the photon took one way, and it took the other way. One could also choose to ‘peek’ at the incoming photon, setting up a telescope on each side of the galaxy to determine which side the photon took to reach Earth. The very act of measuring or ‘watching’ which way the photon comes in means it can only come in from one side. The pattern will no longer be an interference pattern representing multiple possibilities, but a single clump pattern showing ‘one’ way. What does this mean? It means how we choose to measure 'now' affects what direction the photon took billions of years ago. Our choice in the present moment affected what had already happened in the past… Time as we measure it and know it, doesn’t really exist.”
Dr. John Wheeler: “… it begins to look as if we ourselves, by a last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing … we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in shaping what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until it has been registered. Or, put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present.”
Editor's note: And one of my favorite quotations, one I discovered when Word Gems was new, is now called into question, and is probably incorrect:
Dr. Freeman Dyson: "Thirty-one years ago, Dr. Dick Feynman told me about his 'sum over histories' version of quantum mechanics. 'The electron does anything it likes,' he said. 'It just goes in any direction, at any speed, forward or backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up the amplitudes and it gives you the wave function.' I said to him, 'you're crazy' -- but he isn't."
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What’s going on with all this?
As mentioned, a little homework is required. You’ll want to watch Tom Campbell’s basic videos which explain the essence of the Double-Slit. When you do, you’ll discover that the world and reality are not what we thought they were.
Here’s a fundamental concept, fairly non-intuitive, but somewhat unavoidable to accept, once we perceive the implications of the Double-Slit.
Tom Campbell: There’s a traditional analogy, borrowed from religion, to explain what a human being is and how we interact with this world. It’s said that we have a spirit and it’s housed in a body. But this viewpoint is not entirely correct, not the best way of understanding what’s happening around us. The better paradigm is that our mortal bodies – not our consciousness – are like characters in a virtual reality software game, with consciousness localized “outside the system” in another non-physical dimension.
When you play a video game, the characters act as if they are solid and real to each other. They can knock each other down or whatever, and seem to be in charge; but you, outside the system, actually control everything and determine what the characters will do.
The characters in the game do not represent ultimate reality. They're just pixels of light on a screen. And we think we're solid, but we’re just electrical force-fields overlaying a nothingness, all of which can be manipulated easily.
And so we can’t climb inside the computer to run around with the characters – because the only existence they have is of a derivative sort. They “live” only at the pleasure of the computer programmer and the one controlling the joystick.
Our mortal bodies are like the characters in the game. Consciousness is not part of the game, not part of the mortal bodies, not part of the digital characters of the game, though all is controlled by consciousness.
Rather than viewing ourselves with a spirit, a consciousness, dwelling within a body, it is more accurate to say that we dwell within consciousness. Because – as the great quantum fathers came to see, consciousness – Consciousness – not matter, is the ground of all being.
Much could be said here, and much needs to be said; but, your homework will need to fill in more details.
Even though, arguably, the greatest scientists of history, the quantum fathers, strongly asserted that Consciousness is the ground of all being, most scientists today disagree and remain materialists. And this realization takes us to the heart of the question concerning the Double-Slit and time-travel. Here’s the real problem:
Materialistic scientists do not believe in the hegemony of Consciousness. They believe in matter. Therefore, when they talk about a particle “going back in time,” this explanation, for them, is a “Joker is wild” proposition, something they need to believe in to give a measure of credibility to their materialistic theories.
The particle doesn’t go back in time because it wasn’t a physical particle at all until a measurement is taken. What this means is,
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Tom Campbell:
There is no “delayed choice.” There is no “going back in time.” These ideas are based on “the photon or electron” fired from the gun as already a particle, like a hard little beebee, which is the materialist’s view. But there is no physical particle until the data is analyzed, until a measurement is taken, until new information is established in this world.
it's only a 'probable particle' in the beginning, and this is the center of the debate
Before the analysis of the detection, before the measurement is taken, all we have are waves of probability. A “probable particle” is fired from the gun, and a “probable particle” goes through the slits, and a “probable particle” hits the screen at the back. The differential pattern at the back represents a normal probabilistic distribution of landings. The bright line in the middle of the screen is the area where most particles would probably land.
Editor’s note: It took me quite a long time to understand that the “particle as probability wave” doesn’t mean that we have a little bee-bee that’s waving up and down. The “particle” is not yet a real particle, it’s not yet a “thing” in the world. It’s a mathematical idea. A “probability wave” is not a real wave, it’s a statistical probability “wave” on a chart that describes the likelihood of a particle, should it exist, to move in a certain area. The “particle” becomes a real particle, something real and fixed in the world, only after definite knowledge of it has been perceived. Before then, it’s all theoretical: it might exist or it might not, it might be in this area or that area, or it might not. See the article on Dr. Goswami’s thoughts concerning Universal Consciousness paring down infinite quantum possibilities allowing for certain desired outcomes in the universe and the world.
Materialists resort to a kind of "name calling" to diminish the stature of the Double Slit. They try to say that quantum physics is "just math" now, just a conceptual construct, and that we shouldn’t even try to understand it as something real because it’s just “weird science” and "we'll never understand it"; but, it’s weird only if you try to force materialistic ideas into it and if you’re afraid of the metaphysical questions related to Consciousness. Materialists call it “the measurement problem.” But it’s a problem only if you don’t like the answer, if it attacks your materialistic view. It is to say, “We already know the nature of reality, it’s made up of hard little beebees, particles and sub-atomic particles, and so the Double-Slit is a 'problem' because it doesn’t conform to what we’ve already decided reality has to be.”
Most people think that this world is an objective reality, that things exist even if no one has ever seen them, that they have a life of their own. The Double-Slit says this isn’t true. Our world is a virtual reality, a mass of wave-forms, which is a mass of probabilities, that is controlled by an observing consciousness. Once the data is part of the general knowledge, only then is it “fixed” in our reality and other “players in the game” will see it too. But until it's fixed by a measurement being made, it’s all just probability waves, and it could come out in different ways.
We talk about the observer effect, about consciousness collapsing the probability wave, or taking the measurement; well, this is partly right because it takes a consciousness to make a measurement, to create information. But it’s actually the data, the information becoming part of the world system, to a degree that it’s established and can be verified, that actually collapses the wave-form.
Once the data is part of the world's system, and it’s known, it won’t disappear, meaning, “the measurement is taken.” It won’t disappear then because there can’t be an inconsistency in our reality, you can’t have things popping in and out of existence in the world, which would cause confusion, and this won't happen once you collapse the wave and you make the data part of this reality.
The world around us is “a virtual reality based on information.” Consciousness has to interpret the data but the data itself, becoming known to “all players in the game,” is the critical element. The “quantum erasure” experiment shows this.
Editor's note: Is our world a "virtual reality" system? Consider this:
Space may not be the “final frontier” after all, as it's not a “thing” in the Newtonian sense. The great scientists and philosophers see it as an underlying matrix, a hidden field of probability and potential blueprint, a womb of the cosmos from which material reality issues.
If we were travelling at the speed of light, there would be no distance, no space, no time, for us; as such, space exists only for the mortal plodders lumbering along at snail-like speeds.
Space is a mental construct that presents itself to us, is disgorged from the “space-time continuum” at pre-determined rates, such that, no “thing” can go faster than the speed of light: the faster we go, the more space shrinks, or more slowly unfolds; the slower we go, the more space stretches out before us.
Space is an innate concept “built into” the mind – Kant called these “intuitions” and “categories” – allowing snail-like mortals to make sense of reality.
Space is a quantum field of probability. It’s like a maternal womb from which all life, all material object, of the cosmos comes into being. For more discussion, see the articles on the "Einstein" page.
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Editor’s note: It hardly needs to be said that there’s much here to digest. The best source is Tom’s videos, as he explains the details well. I've come to appreciate that Tom’s explanation is the only one that incorporates all of the data into coherent theory.
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