Do we create the world just by looking at it?

[RBM]

This post title comes from the complete Seed Magazine title A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

The author, hedging his bets, has a qualifying 'may' in the title. This is to note that there may be loopholes indicating quantum physics is wrong. This post is to highlight one more experiment, with increased rigorousness, which has closed one more loophole.

This thread picks up from a thread titled Prove you exist. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) In that thread I introduced (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) a link to a recent BBC video Horizon - What is Reality ? (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) That video includes the man, and the experiment of which the Seed Magazine article is about. The Seed Magazine adds information the video didn't have.

The first page is a history lesson. All the players and their roles are covered - Heisenberg, Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Born, Podolsky, Rosen, Bohm. Bell, Leggett and Zeilinger.

For those grasping at loopholes:

Leggett doesn’t believe quantum mechanics is correct, and there are few places for a person of such disbelief to now turn. But Leggett decided to find out what believing in quantum mechanics might require. ... The only assumption Leggett made was that a natural form of realism hold true; ... [and it] could be tested.

The stakes are high:

The experiment wouldn’t be too difficult, but understanding it would. It took them months to reach their tentative conclusion: If quantum mechanics described the data, then the lights’ polarizations didn’t exist before being measured. Realism in quantum mechanics would be untenable.

The result:

In mid-2007 Fedrizzi found that the new realism model was violated by 80 orders of magnitude; the group was even more assured that quantum mechanics was correct.

The last apparent loophole to be closed will be accomplished by an experiment in space, according to Leggett's view.

[Asat]

I think discussion is likely to go off on a variety of tangents unless you specify what you mean by "create". To my ongoing annoyance, attempting to define that word usually plunges me into circularity. For instance (and I'm trusting you not to mock me too hard for this):

"To create a thing is to change at least one measured quality of the world. What was formerly not measured has now been measured. An empty lot has become a house. A proton and antiproton have become a soup of particles."

But then creation is dependent upon two measurements, before and after the act. Plus a third that verifies an act took place between the other two. Yet there is always time between the first measurement and the act-measurement, time during which the measured quality might have altered for other reasons. Which means that claiming to have created a thing is always at best a plausible boast.

That definition won't work at all for your question since it renders creation a matter of opinion, where you're looking for something more tangible.

[RBM]

@Asat

Does your fear of being mocked have something to do with non-scientific background ?

It has been said the P&E forum (Prove you exist thread, for example) is a forum of 'opinions'. This is in the S&H forum because it is an experimental 'data point'. It is a controversial one, here on iNTJf as it is in the wider real-life world. This is much mocking over the OP assertion, everywhere. It may well show up in this thread by others, but not me.

Creation in this case means to 'make manifest in the physical world from the non-physical state'. In conventional physics jargon it is stated as 'collapsing the wave' referring to quantum physics and it's characteristic of discovering what reality 'really is'.

Measurement can only occur in the physical reality, so yes, one needs a before/after set of measurements to make empirical observations. The time-past between measurements is what experimental design criteria is about, in part. Good design considers it and designs accordingly.

If you read the Seed article, you will have jumped into the middle of 'the story' excepting what history is included in the article. If that is your sole 'data base' of direct knowledge it may be difficult to grasp the gravity of this experiment. It would also be easy to underestimate the significance of why space is most likely the last stage for this type of experiment.

Enjoy !

[MrFreakaficial]

Most physicists believe that quantum effects get washed out when there are a large number of particles around. The particles are in constant interaction and their environment serves to “decohere” the quantum world—eliminate superpositions—to create the classical one we observe. Quantum mechanics has within it its own demise, and the process is too rapid to ever see. Zeilinger’s group, which has tested decoherence, does not believe there is a fundamental limit on the size of an object to observe superposition. Superpositions should exist even for objects we see, similar to the infamous example of Schrödinger’s cat. In fact, Gröblacher now spends his nights testing larger-scale quantum mechanics in which a small mirror is humanely substituted for a cat.

Brukner and Kofler had a simple idea. They wanted to find out what would happen if they assumed that a reality similar to the one we experience is true—every large object has only one value for each measurable property that does not change. In other words, you know your couch is blue, and you don’t expect to be able to alter it just by looking. This form of realism, “macrorealism,” was first posited by Leggett in the 1980s.

Late last year Brukner and Kofler showed that it does not matter how many particles are around, or how large an object is, quantum mechanics always holds true. The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe it. The human body is a just barely adequate measuring device. Quantum mechanics does not always wash itself out, but to observe its effects for larger and larger objects we would need more and more accurate measurement devices. We just do not have the sensitivity to observe the quantum effects around us. In essence we do create the classical world we perceive, and as Brukner said, “There could be other classical worlds completely different from ours.”

Very interesting. With my limited understanding of quantum mechanics, I had very similar and almost as crystallized ideas regarding decoherence, á la musings like this (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), if that makes sense. I'm not sure if I understand how superposition could apply to objects made up of objects which are already interacting with each other (the atomic structure of any given "object").

[Asat]

@Asat

Creation in this case means to 'make manifest in the physical world from the non-physical state'. In conventional physics jargon it is stated as 'collapsing the wave' referring to quantum physics and it's characteristic of discovering what reality 'really is'.



If my understanding of QM is close to the mark then we need not look at the universe to create it, using the definition you propose. Previously manifested objects will do that for us.

I was unsure whether you were looking for speculation on what could be the cause of an uncollapsed wave becoming available for transformation in the first place.

[RBM]

My effort in relation to this post can best be described as one to define the boundaries and it's internal mechanisms of the whole system.

It seems you are thinking, exclusively, in reductionist terms. I am not.

[Sk8ordude]

There are some pretty good theories that allow for mind creates matter, the only problem is is there would have to be a collective or primary to keep it all on the same page, and to account for the existence of the universe before say... 2 billion years ago. I read a book called "the quantum self" a while back that seemed to infer there was some sort of a basic "awareness" even to sub-atomic particles in how the reacted to others in their vicinity. That book was written in the 90s so it is a bit outdated by quantum physics standards.

[RBM]

There are some pretty good theories that allow for mind creates matter, the only problem is is there would have to be a collective or primary to keep it all on the same page, and to account for the existence of the universe before say... 2 billion years ago. I read a book called "the quantum self" a while back that seemed to infer there was some sort of a basic "awareness" even to sub-atomic particles in how the reacted to others in their vicinity. That book was written in the 90s so it is a bit outdated by quantum physics standards.

There is actually at least one falsifiable theory that goes to higher level of abstraction to explain mind/matter relationships, since 'the beginning'. Some can't/won't get there because they have 'belief systems' that are more important to them than the truth.

There are a significant number of 'data point's' also derived from experimental data which accurately explain reality, as it is. A typical critique of such experiments hangs on 'interpretation'. Yet the implicit model used to deny mind/matter connections, in such arguments, is rife with anomalies. This fact is hand waved away.

One stumbling block as Asat has pointed out has to do with the word 'create'.

This is a sticking point, because the dialogue in framing the questions is not in the most productive manner to provide elucidation. Materialists seem to have the most problems with the mechanism's explanation.