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Originally Posted by KickAssClown
Well. I suppose that helps to clarify the details of the experiment, however it does not statisfy my sense of reasoning.
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I hope I am not intruding here. This is my very first post and I don't know a lot about Science or Maths .... but perhaps I may be able to go a little way towards satisfying your reasoning. In your original thread #1 you had a problem with the barrier.
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Originally Posted by KickAssClown That would seem to be the easy answer, but if you ask the question of if the barrier is massed, and mass is 90% empty space, then why doesn't the photon merely pass through the barrier? ......
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Just for the moment forget about the photon and replace it with an electron. Electrons have negative charge .. The barrier is made from cardboard, steel or anything else you like and it doesn't matter if it is 99% space. The fact is that the barrier is a substance made of molecules locked together within an electron field. It is stable, it has the correct electron count in its shells around the positive protons and it does not want any more. The charge is balanced. You are also made of the same electron binding. Negative charges repel. This is why you cannot walk thru a wall, when you get close, the wall's negative electron field repels you as much as your negative electron field repels the wall, not the fact that the wall is solid, nor that it is 99.999% space. A bullet can tear through a cardboard wall because its electron field is tighter and 'locked' in a more stable 'matrix'. It has enough acceleration (increased mass) to literally overcome the negative repulsion and breaks the electron bonding. Remember, this is not Science, just rough understanding. The next thing in your thread was that you cannot ignore mass
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Originally Posted by KickAssClown What I mean is that one can not simply neglect the influence of the barrier in the experiment. It has mass, and energy. It curves the trajectory of the photon/electron/etc. It has a measurable effect on the surrounding space.
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Unfortunately, in Quantum Mechanics you do have to ignore mass. The mass that effects the curvature of space is to do with Classical maths. That is, the maths of Newton and Einstein. Einstein's principle of equivalence states, and very elegantly proves, that gravity and acceleration can be considered as one and the same thing. Lets not go there yet. Very, very basically classical maths says that to leave one location and arrive at another you need to travel a trajectory that can be calculated. In other words, you know where and when you are at any particular point and you can prove it with math. This enables us to build tall buildings and travel faster than the speed of sound. It ensures that commercial flights arrive at their destinations on time. It governs our Macro world.
Quantum mechanics says that if you want to know, with any degree of accuracy, the location at any point you cannot know with certainty the trajectory taken because all possible trajectories have a probabilty of being correct. Lets not go there yet.
You cannot introduce gravity (acceleration) into quantum mechanics. It turns into nonsense. Sounds weird I know, but without our grudging acceptance of Quantum mechanics there would be no computers, no smoke detectors, no internet and so on. We have to live with it.
These two forms of mathmatics do not agree and yet the
results of QM never break Einsteins rules of relativity. String theory bridges these two, but because it can never be proven it is relegated to an Hypothese along with religion etc
We are now talking about QM only: You shine a torch on the dual slits and the hot filament inside the bulb ejects trillions of electrons at much less than the speed of light, many of which strike the first barrier and each electron gives off one photon of light. They take no further part in the experiment. Those that pass thru the slits are unaffected by the negative charge of the barrier. (Trust me) They strike the second barrier in a bar pattern and each electron gives off one photon of light which enables us to see the pattern.
Of course its obvious (or is it) that the trillions of electrons pouring through the two slits are colliding and jostling each other and therby form a bar pattern as they strike the wall.
We close one slit. Now all the electrons have to pass through one slit only and of course there is no bar pattern, just a blur on the wall. This too, is obvious.
So now we slow the electron emission rate to only one every ten seconds. (very easily done) Now there can be no jostling and elbowing for position. Each electron has ten seconds to himself to get to the wall. With only one slit open, and after recording where each electron strikes with a geiger counter, the same blur pattern is built up slowly but surely. This too, is obvious.
Now we are entering the really weird part of QM. We open the second barrier and allowing each lonely electron 10 seconds to arrive at its destination we set the geiger counter to record and head of to make a brew (coffee). When we get back after a cigarette and a brew the geiger counter gleefully tells us that the bar pattern is back.
How can this be ?? The electron had to go through one or other of the slits, there were no others electron to create wave interference ?? What the fuk is going on. One particle cannot create a wave. If the particle is a wave then what the fuk is it waving with ?
And there you have QM in a very simple nut shell. Everything is a wave. How does it wave ?
Turns out it is a very special wave..... not like a water wave or tsunami, nor a mexican wave like at the football. Its a probability wave.
Whats a probability wave. QM tells us that prior to striking the second barrier the electron particle/wave had a probability of going through either slit in the first barrier. In other words there are 2 paths, each with a probability of 50%. QM says that each probability is a possibility.... further ... if its a possibility it WILL happen. In other words it must always equal 100%.
Remember you can never know 100% trajectory if you know the arrival point. In other words the particle/wave went through both slits with a probability of 50% and waved with itself. True. If there were 3 slits it would have gone through all 3 with a 33.333% probability. and so on if there were 4, 5 .... remove the first barrier and you have an infinite number of paths each with a probability.
If you put the geiger counter on one of the slits to determine its path by detecting it (or not detecting it) you simply change the arrival point to that location and from there to the wall it travels with 100% known trajectory and forms the blur again as opposed to the pattern. The same as if there was only one slit.
Quantum mechanics says that all matter has this wave particle duality. This means that prior to observation/interaction all things have a probability of being absolutely any where in the universe. Another way of thinking about it is that the particle is spread like a giant elastic sheet throughout the whole universe, thinnest where the probablity is least, thickest where its most probable. The instant you interact with the observed particle its location is now known 100% and therefore its probability of being anywhere else collapses to zero. This really means that the particle could have been in a distant galaxy, of course with a very very very minute extremely small probability immediately prior to your observation
In general, the highest probabilities for anything are where they are most likely to be. Thats why life always behaves as we expect, The odd hiccup, such as a Tyranosaurus Rex, appearing in front of your eyes for a nano-second is passed of as 'I must have been seeing things'.
But if you set out to walk through a wall and you keep at it for an enternity, no matter that the probability is an infinity to one... given an infinite numbers of tries you will appear on the other side at least once. Wow, I am very sorry if this post has gone on too long... Remember its only a rough explanation and I hope it helps
cool bananas ...... drum
