Parallel Universes

Originally posted by Ectropic
Maybe I don't understand the point of the experement, but I thought that the point was to show that light has properties of a particle and a wave. A wave could interfere with itself if it were split.
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I think you should dig deeper than that,light was the start,but theres more to it.

Hmmn i wonder if dreams are actually a superposition of states,till you wake up and collapse the wave function of your brain,reality is defined by concious observers,so when you are asleep and dream you only collapse the wave function when you wake up.

Are dreams just a superpostion of states,a everything you are doing,thinking in many universes happening all at once,till any of you wake up and realise the reality which stays set in classical terms but maybe not for the function of the mind.

MWI is interesting as a theory,we may prove it one day,i think a quantum computer with AI is one of the only ways it can be done.

Although i think the human mind and dreams may be the connection,people think im nuts...but there ya go.
 
I don't think dreams are as important as people make them out to be. I think they are the result of the brain replenishing supplies of chemicals. The Neoron that need the chemicals the most are the ones that were used the most that day. This is my reasoning for why we tend to dream about the days events. Not because we are thinking of them in our sleep, but because the same patters of neurons are firing while being replenished.
 
Originally posted by Ectropic
Maybe I don't understand the point of the experement, but I thought that the point was to show that light has properties of a particle and a wave. A wave could interfere with itself if it were split.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is partially correct but the experiment has some new factors since Young. In the 80’s the experiment was carried out with an emitter that was capable of sending a single photon at a time. A single photon cannot be split (Plank’s Quantum Hypothesis), yet we still get the interference pattern (one must send many single photons through the experiment to perceive the pattern though). Even stranger is the fact that if we place a detector at each of the slits in order to ‘see’ which one the photon goes through the interference pattern goes away (the wave function collapses).

http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/kenny/papers/quantum.html

It gets even weirder though: In another variation (Chiao, Kwiat, Steinberg) 2 polarizing lenses are used to differentiate which photon goes through which slit (we could tell because they would have a particular polarization depending upon which slit they go through). Sure enough, the interference pattern vanishes. But if we put a third polarizing lens between the slits and the screen the pattern reemerges.

And another fun one with quantum indeterminacy: If we take two polarizing lenses, one horizontal and one vertical, no light will get through because the first lens only lets horizontally polarized light through the second only lets vertically polarized light through. However, if you take a third lens and put it in between the two at a 45 degree angle, some light will get through.

~Raithere
 
A couple of quick addendums:

One is that the slit experiment has also been performed with the same results with electrons and atoms. We hear about the wave/particle duality of light often but not the wave/particle duality of atoms.

Two, in the double slit experiment with the sensors, the same results are found even if we only put a sensor at one of the slits. That is, the photons traveling through the slit without the sensor somehow ‘know’ that the sensor is at the other slit and behave accordingly.

~Raithere
 
also

you me the earth etc.. are wave/particles. The wave function is just very very very small.
 
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