One of the biggest mysteries concerning physics today is the role of the observer. The world of the mind has captured the imaginations of some of the biggest giants in the world of physics... and with good reason. We learn that the observer must play one of the most important parts in what we call reality. Hence, a physicist is compelled to say, 'the mind is reality,' and in this thread, we will investigate why physics is driven into believing this statement.
The observer plays one of the biggest roles in physics - but unfortunately, it isn't explored enough i feel. Theoretical physicist, Fred Alan Wolf has written many tributes to the theory of consciousness. Physicist and mathematician Erwin Schrödinger, most famous for 'Schrödinger’s cat paradox' also dedicated a lot time to the observer. Niels Bohr, the founder of the 'Copenhagen interpretation' showed us the effects of the observer on the observed. Einstein himself brought back the role of the observer, in many examples such as the 'twin paradox', the 'train-platform game of catch,' the 'grandfather paradox', the 'EPR paradox', Ect.
The EPR paradox is by physicists Einstein, Boris (Podolsky) and Nathan (Rosen). It raises the question of the state of one half of a system that was previously attached to the other system. If one half of the system is observed and measured, what happens to the other half? Well, whatever is determined for the half being observed, instantly determines the other system, even though it is no longer connected to it. The paradox is how this happens. The research on the EPR is still on-going, and the results of physicist Alain Aspect showed a connection of entangled behavior in 1996.
I can understand why Einstein was highly critical of physics; considering half of the unsolvable paradoxes came from him. Even 'Schrödinger’s cat' was inspired by Einstein. It was as though Einstein was out on a mission to show everyone of the world that quantum physics was strange, and there was nothing we could do about it - and this included the paradoxical world of the observer.
Though, as physics and our assumptions about physics progressed, we are only just beginning to understanding some of the mysteries concerning consciousness. Just recently, physics made a big turn around. In the last decade of the 20th century, physicists proposed that gravity might be responsible for the mental phenomena of consciousness. Quantum gravity is known to keep our planets and stars in their galactic orbits, but it also exists at the subatomic level - and if it does, that must mean it exists inside of my head. The force of gravity might have a special influence on the electrons and hydrogen atoms whizzing around in my brain!
This is an important discovery. If it is true, it will revolutionize our ways of thinking. We can only hope that now more discoveries on mind will arise in the future. There are already a lot of documented works on consciousness, but nothing as of yet set in stone.
We will see how the mind directly influences the properties of whatever it observes, as the information travels superluminal (faster-than-light) through time and space. These quantum waves are best described by physicist John G. Cramer. A collapse of the wave function occurs, only when two quantum waves travel through time, one travels forward in time, and the other wave travel backwards through time; then the waves meet in the present and they multiply. This multiplication is called the collapse. The original wave can only multiply with it’s complex conjugate.
Multiplying two answers to obtain a single answer is common in everyday life. You might remember the mathematical formulae from school. Here are a few to example;
1. Force = mass x acceleration
2. Velocity = frequency x wavelength
3. Volume = area of base x height
4. Area = half the length of base x perpendicular height
Once they multiply, the 'transaction', as Cramer terms it, is complete. He feels that using these quantum waves helps in teaching how they work. It is after all, understandable. It is quite an elementary way of looking at it all.
Let's have a look at Schrödinger’s Cat. It refers to a cat that is locked up in a box, and inside the box is a device that will or will not emit poisonous gasses. Einstein had previously suggested a similar paradox, but involved an unstable keg of gunpowder instead of a cat. It suggests that if no one looks into the box, the cat has 50/50 chance. One it could be alive, or two it could be dead. Is the cat dead or alive?
Schrödinger just took the next step in applying quantum mechanics to an entity that may or may not be conscious, to illustrate the putative inconsistency of quantum mechanics when going from microscopic to macroscopic events, (the world of objects the eye can see directly). He once wrote;
'One can even set up quite ridiculas cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) - in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of one hour at least one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of this entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat mixed, or smeared out in equal parts... which can be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a 'blurred model' for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and snapshot of clouds and fog banks.'
So... after one hour, is the cat dead or alive? In the parallel universe model (even though Schrödinger never considered the many worlds theory in his paradox), the cat is both dead and alive. The cat will have split the universe into two, with a happy living cat in one universe, and a dead smeared cat in another.
The Copenhagen interpretation says that a system halts when an observation takes place. Schrödinger’s cat will be in a superpositioning until such an observation is performed - until then the experiment will exist as 'decayed nucleus/dead cat' simultaneous with 'undecayed' nucleus/living cat.' This is the effect of the quantum wave function until any observation is carried out, (no such thing as a collapse happens in the parallel universe theory. Instead, the observer and the observed become involved in a split). However, Schrödinger did not make this experiment to example the split.
According to the Copenhagen school of thought, the amount of uncertainty for complex quantum systems is predicted by 'quantum decoherence.' Particles which exchange photons become so entangled with each other that the uncertainty in a macroscopic system, like a cat, is almost zero - this means we can say that the cat is no longer dead and alive, but rather is one or the other - one (the cat is alive) or zero (the cat is dead).
'Wigner’s Friend,' by physicists Eugene Wigner, is an extension of Schrödinger’s Cat. It is meant to provoke thought. Professor Wigner stands outside of the room, ready to look in to see Wigner’s friend looking at the cat. Is Wigner’s friend in a happy state, or a sad state?
Eugene Wigner designed the experiment to highlight how he believed consciousness is a requisite for mathematical measurement process - if a material device is substituted for Wigner’s friend, the wave function hasn't collapsed and superpositioning continues. However, he also reasons that a conscious observer must be in one state or the other.
'We ourselves can bring about into existence only very small-scale properties, like the spin of the electron. Might it require intelligent beings, 'more conscious' than ourselves to bring into existence the electrons and other particles?
Barrow and Tipler, 'the Anthropic Principle.'
'No photon exists until a detector fires, only a developing potentiality. Particle-like and wave-like behavior are properties we ascribe to light. Without us, light has no properties, no existence. There is no independent reality for phenomena nor agencies of observation.'
Niels Bohr
'The world in Copenhagen interpretation is merely potential before our observation, and is actual afterwards.'
Bryce S. DeWitt
'We have to imagine the system a-attentively trying out all potentialities out of which one actually emerges.'
David Bohm
'There is always a triple correspondence;
1. A mental image, which is in our minds and not in the external world
2. Some kind of counterpart in the external world, which is inscrutable in nature
3. A set of pointer readings, which exact science can study and connect with other pointer readings
To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is 'mind stuff'. '
Sir Arthur Eddington
''The Mind is a dimension.''
A. Einstein
The observer plays one of the biggest roles in physics - but unfortunately, it isn't explored enough i feel. Theoretical physicist, Fred Alan Wolf has written many tributes to the theory of consciousness. Physicist and mathematician Erwin Schrödinger, most famous for 'Schrödinger’s cat paradox' also dedicated a lot time to the observer. Niels Bohr, the founder of the 'Copenhagen interpretation' showed us the effects of the observer on the observed. Einstein himself brought back the role of the observer, in many examples such as the 'twin paradox', the 'train-platform game of catch,' the 'grandfather paradox', the 'EPR paradox', Ect.
The EPR paradox is by physicists Einstein, Boris (Podolsky) and Nathan (Rosen). It raises the question of the state of one half of a system that was previously attached to the other system. If one half of the system is observed and measured, what happens to the other half? Well, whatever is determined for the half being observed, instantly determines the other system, even though it is no longer connected to it. The paradox is how this happens. The research on the EPR is still on-going, and the results of physicist Alain Aspect showed a connection of entangled behavior in 1996.
I can understand why Einstein was highly critical of physics; considering half of the unsolvable paradoxes came from him. Even 'Schrödinger’s cat' was inspired by Einstein. It was as though Einstein was out on a mission to show everyone of the world that quantum physics was strange, and there was nothing we could do about it - and this included the paradoxical world of the observer.
Though, as physics and our assumptions about physics progressed, we are only just beginning to understanding some of the mysteries concerning consciousness. Just recently, physics made a big turn around. In the last decade of the 20th century, physicists proposed that gravity might be responsible for the mental phenomena of consciousness. Quantum gravity is known to keep our planets and stars in their galactic orbits, but it also exists at the subatomic level - and if it does, that must mean it exists inside of my head. The force of gravity might have a special influence on the electrons and hydrogen atoms whizzing around in my brain!
This is an important discovery. If it is true, it will revolutionize our ways of thinking. We can only hope that now more discoveries on mind will arise in the future. There are already a lot of documented works on consciousness, but nothing as of yet set in stone.
We will see how the mind directly influences the properties of whatever it observes, as the information travels superluminal (faster-than-light) through time and space. These quantum waves are best described by physicist John G. Cramer. A collapse of the wave function occurs, only when two quantum waves travel through time, one travels forward in time, and the other wave travel backwards through time; then the waves meet in the present and they multiply. This multiplication is called the collapse. The original wave can only multiply with it’s complex conjugate.
Multiplying two answers to obtain a single answer is common in everyday life. You might remember the mathematical formulae from school. Here are a few to example;
1. Force = mass x acceleration
2. Velocity = frequency x wavelength
3. Volume = area of base x height
4. Area = half the length of base x perpendicular height
Once they multiply, the 'transaction', as Cramer terms it, is complete. He feels that using these quantum waves helps in teaching how they work. It is after all, understandable. It is quite an elementary way of looking at it all.
Let's have a look at Schrödinger’s Cat. It refers to a cat that is locked up in a box, and inside the box is a device that will or will not emit poisonous gasses. Einstein had previously suggested a similar paradox, but involved an unstable keg of gunpowder instead of a cat. It suggests that if no one looks into the box, the cat has 50/50 chance. One it could be alive, or two it could be dead. Is the cat dead or alive?
Schrödinger just took the next step in applying quantum mechanics to an entity that may or may not be conscious, to illustrate the putative inconsistency of quantum mechanics when going from microscopic to macroscopic events, (the world of objects the eye can see directly). He once wrote;
'One can even set up quite ridiculas cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) - in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of one hour at least one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of this entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat mixed, or smeared out in equal parts... which can be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a 'blurred model' for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and snapshot of clouds and fog banks.'
So... after one hour, is the cat dead or alive? In the parallel universe model (even though Schrödinger never considered the many worlds theory in his paradox), the cat is both dead and alive. The cat will have split the universe into two, with a happy living cat in one universe, and a dead smeared cat in another.
The Copenhagen interpretation says that a system halts when an observation takes place. Schrödinger’s cat will be in a superpositioning until such an observation is performed - until then the experiment will exist as 'decayed nucleus/dead cat' simultaneous with 'undecayed' nucleus/living cat.' This is the effect of the quantum wave function until any observation is carried out, (no such thing as a collapse happens in the parallel universe theory. Instead, the observer and the observed become involved in a split). However, Schrödinger did not make this experiment to example the split.
According to the Copenhagen school of thought, the amount of uncertainty for complex quantum systems is predicted by 'quantum decoherence.' Particles which exchange photons become so entangled with each other that the uncertainty in a macroscopic system, like a cat, is almost zero - this means we can say that the cat is no longer dead and alive, but rather is one or the other - one (the cat is alive) or zero (the cat is dead).
'Wigner’s Friend,' by physicists Eugene Wigner, is an extension of Schrödinger’s Cat. It is meant to provoke thought. Professor Wigner stands outside of the room, ready to look in to see Wigner’s friend looking at the cat. Is Wigner’s friend in a happy state, or a sad state?
Eugene Wigner designed the experiment to highlight how he believed consciousness is a requisite for mathematical measurement process - if a material device is substituted for Wigner’s friend, the wave function hasn't collapsed and superpositioning continues. However, he also reasons that a conscious observer must be in one state or the other.
'We ourselves can bring about into existence only very small-scale properties, like the spin of the electron. Might it require intelligent beings, 'more conscious' than ourselves to bring into existence the electrons and other particles?
Barrow and Tipler, 'the Anthropic Principle.'
'No photon exists until a detector fires, only a developing potentiality. Particle-like and wave-like behavior are properties we ascribe to light. Without us, light has no properties, no existence. There is no independent reality for phenomena nor agencies of observation.'
Niels Bohr
'The world in Copenhagen interpretation is merely potential before our observation, and is actual afterwards.'
Bryce S. DeWitt
'We have to imagine the system a-attentively trying out all potentialities out of which one actually emerges.'
David Bohm
'There is always a triple correspondence;
1. A mental image, which is in our minds and not in the external world
2. Some kind of counterpart in the external world, which is inscrutable in nature
3. A set of pointer readings, which exact science can study and connect with other pointer readings
To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is 'mind stuff'. '
Sir Arthur Eddington
''The Mind is a dimension.''
A. Einstein
