What is The DOUBLE SLIT Experiment! w/ Dr. John Bergsma

John Bergsma explains the Double Slit Experiment. He talks about its philosophical implications, and why it shocked scientists.

[benclark]

Hello, I am a quantum physicist currently doing my PhD in nuclear physics. John Bergsma (love this guy) made a minor misstep. The observation of a wavefunction does not require consciousness. I did an experiment in my undergrad years where the collapse of the wave function was a beam splitter. Unless a beam splitter is conscious, quantum measurement does not require consciousness. There is some debate over this because some people would argue that anytime you make a measurement, you intend to observe it therefore people talk about "von neuman chains" where each measurement ends with a conscious analysis of the data and that is necessary to collapse a wave function. This is not really scientific tho this is pure conjecture and may be impossible to test. How are you going to run an experiment where you cannot analyze half the data. In quantum computing, quantum states have a tendency to "decohere" this is basically the quantum state reacting with the environment to where the particles in the air make multiple "partial measurements" on the state therefore collapsing the wave function. Again, particles in the environment are not especially conscious so it seems consciousness is not needed to collapse a wave function. I am a catholic, I am just trying to help out with the one area I actually know a thing or two about. God bless!

[Emcron]

I like to imagine God observing all our efforts to understand Creation with a popcorn bucket in his lap lol

[robertblankenship]

@Pints With Aquinas: I believe it was MIT mathematics professor, and physicist, Dr. Wolfgang Smith, whom you wouldn't have on your show, that explains that, in order to collapse the wave function of a quantum "particle", what is required is something macroscopic (not just human observation). Such an object could be the measuring device in your lab, a blade of grass, or a speck of dust. Smith published the first resolution to NASA's re-entry problem, and he founded an entire field of mathematics, so it's best we listen to him. Smith says that macroscopic objects contain qualities, and that qualities cannot be described in terms of physics (there is no redness in physics, only the frequency of light waves). This is exemplified by one of the most prominent physicists alive today, Dr. George Ellis, who in his 2018 paper "Top-down causation and quantum physics" reveals something similar to Smith's position. In short, macroscopic objects are both in space and time, plus they contain irreducible qualities (a color, shape, feel, things that can't be described in TERMS OF physics), things (qualities) available to PERCEPTION. Objects with qualities have essence thus are real, in Smith's terminology "corporeal." Per Wolfgang Smith, quantum "particles" completely lack any qualities (they're not corporeal), and as the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 shows, such "particles" have no local properties whatsoever. Looks like physics proved Smith right again. "If something lacks all properties then in what way could it be said to exist at all?" Corporeal objects are in space and time and have qualities, thus they have BEING. "Being, " per Smith, is what acts on potentials. Smith explains that quantum physics is a physics of potential, thus we must stop trying to attribute being to particles prior to measurement. He quotes Werner Heisenberg who said of quantum particles "These are entities between being and non-being." As physics has shown, wave functions can't collapse themselves, as physicalists might want. Per Smith, it is any corporeal entity (anything with being) that collapses a wave function. This is in fact what every experiment in this domain has shown. It appears that Smith had it right all along. What a shame that you refused to speak with him.

[worldnotworld]

It's even weirder than that: if you shoot the photons through one at a time and don't observe the slits, they still behave like waves, as if they'd each passed through both slits and created an interference pattern on the other side. So even though you know it's only one photon passing through, it behaves as if there are multiple waves interfering, as long as you don't look! The notion of "epistemological chain" is actually highly disputed, incidentally.

[SuperZebezian]

I don't think this aspect was emphasized in the video, but when the photons are shot through individually in the experiment, one at a time, the wave interference pattern still appears when the photons are not being measured. I think that's an extra layer of wild.

[breandanh]

Dr Quantum is my favorite video explaining the double slit experiment

[Shige]

the dr quantum video is actually the first time I thought, maybe something like god exists

[pop]

The Dr Quantum animation is very good.

Laughing at Matt's reaction to the strangness 😅

Interpretations of the double slit experiment is where 'Spiderman into the Spiderverse' came from...

Love Spiderman. 😅

[diannebartkus]

My son and I performed this experiment. So I'm very interested in this

[ForTheReallys]

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this isn't quite correct. From what I understand, the measurement itself (not consciousness) causes the electron to act differently. Imagine trying to measure the speed of a car based on the damage from the impact of a brick wall. We can figure out the speed, but the car is forced to a halt in the process. Because the electron is so small, there is no way to measure its position without altering its behavior.

[augustbergquist]

I don't think this is completely correct, though I could be wrong. There should still be interference patterns, regardless of whether a measurement is being made. It might be a mistake that *conscious* observation changes the way that light behaves. Still, I got nothing.

I got to take a pretty in-depth class on the math of quantum mechanics in undergrad, and I still have no idea what the heck quantum mechanics actually means. The math is awesome and beautiful, but when you start thinking about the physical implications it gets really confusing. I'm an aspiring mathematician, so my inclination is just to think of quantum mechanics as a helpful mathematical structure for approximating reality, without worrying to much about its physical implications.



On that note, I do think mathematical structure (especially algebraic structure) can really help someone escape from materialism, especially since it is so useful in understanding things like physics ;)

[Marcellob]

The first words said herein is what, in beginning of 20th century, in Albert Einstein contemporain, scientists noticed; "the subconscience could influence results"; something absolutely interesting.
And so, many experiences were made on random starts experiment, to not influence real better datas.

[strato]

Proceed with caution, as many many "new thought" / "new age" churches use this stuff as evidence of their prosperity gospel pseudo-Christianity. They'll talk about this double-slit experiment as evidence that manifesting works and that you are in effect your own god. The movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" also has that pseudo-scientific bent on spirituality. While scientifically fascinating, quantum mechanics is a scientific discipline that can illustrate deep philosophical truths no more than explaining personal growth in comparison to how grass grows. Faith and reason cannot contradict each other in the design of God (Fides et Ratio, 1998). However, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or in this case, a photon is just a photon.

[Ladyoffidelity]

This is my favorite experiment my dads ever talked about

[bigjoegamer]

I just watched that Dr. Quantum double slit experiment animation. It's quite informative, and the animations help his explanation make more sense to people like me who know barely anything about quantim mechanics. Thanks for mentioning it. It's fascinating how God makes particles and waves behave 🙂

[joniatoms]

6:06, I saw a documentary about the power of thought and prayer. And this was essentially how they explained it. That if you look for some thing intentionally, then it occurs. 🤷🏻‍♀️😃🥰🙏🏾🙏🏿🙏🏻

[terry]

The power of prayer. A conscious mind placing its focus on the eternal creator has very powerful effect.

[notavailable]

We can't say that consciousness is required to collapse the wave, it just requires interaction with anything at all. The Dr. Quantum video I'm pretty sure comes from a movie about how our vibes can change reality or something like that. Quantum mechanics is weird, but it isn't magic.

[david_porthouse]

In the classical world there is still an Uncertainty Principle which can be modelled by classical Brownian motion on the same scale as quantum mechanics. The interaction between this Brownian motion and any propensity to chaotic dynamics means that the classical world is not deterministic.

[david_porthouse]

I own a few icons which have been printed using a silkscreen, this being a good way to apply a layer of gold paint to wood. Well consider using a silkscreen to paint a wet layer of nitrogen tri-iodide onto a screen, let it dry, and then use this with alpha particles in the two-slit experiment. It will be seen that dots of NI3 are destroyed at random, but that there is an overall wavelike pattern to their destruction.

Each individual dot starts and ends in a monochromatic state. I suggest that it is in a monochromatic state at all times in-between. This would make it a tachyon in the Dirac theory, and as such one dot can reach out and capture the wavefront of one alpha particle.

Can we show this by computer simulation? Unfortunately a dot of just two molecules would require many dimensions of configuration space for its description, and no computer is powerful enough.