New Study shows the Choice of the Observer Creates Reality

This is a HUGE BLOW to materialism!! This study shows that the Observer's choice creates what we call "reality." Here's a few key lines from the study.

But still, scientists have wondered, does light switch from being a particle to being a wave depending on the circumstance? Or is light always both a particle and a wave simultaneously?

Now, for the first time, researchers have devised a new type of measurement apparatus that can detect both particle and wave-like behavior at the same time. The device relies on a strange quantum effect called quantum nonlocality, a counter-intuitive notion that boils down to the idea that the same particle can exist in two locations at once.

"The measurement apparatus detected strong nonlocality, which certified that the photon behaved simultaneously as a wave and a particle in our experiment," physicist Alberto Peruzzo of England's University of Bristol said in a statement. "This represents a strong refutation of models in which the photon is either a wave or a particle."

news.yahoo.com...

WOWZERS!!

Let's back up.

Scientist came to realize that the universe couldn't be a one time event because of the fine tuning of the universe. This would be like covering the earth with trillions of pennies and marking one penny with a black magic marker and then one person has one chance to pick the penny that's marked. That's impossible and scientist knew it. This pointed to a Designer of the universe and of course this couldn't stand. The Multiverse helps get around this problem. Instead of one person picking a penny, you have a billion people picking a penny and someone picking the marked penny is more likely to occur.

At the end of the day, QM has given materialist a big headache. There objective is to kill conscious and kill the observer and things like consciousness are just hiccups of a random, blind process. Sadly for them, the multiverse supports consciousness and the Observer.

This is dependent on a split occurring between worlds. So I when I come to a fork in the road, I don't make a choice to go right or left, this is just the multiverse and the observer is an innocent bystander of randomness.

This study shows that the state of a particle depends on the Observer. It's neither a wave or a particle until we make the choice to see if it's a wave or a particle.

Here's more:

The researchers found that this allowed them to delay the photon's wave or particle quality until after it has passed through all the experimental equipment, including the second beam splitter tasked with determining that very thing. "We can delay by a few nanoseconds, but in principle it's equivalent to delaying as much as you want," explains Peruzzo.

Meanwhile, Sébastien Tanzilli at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France and colleagues have shown exactly the same thing using a slightly different set-up.

The upshot of both experiments can be cast in the language of Schrödinger's cat. "Long after the cat has supposedly been killed or not, one can choose to determine if it is dead or alive or determine if it is dead and alive," says Seth Lloyd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in either experiment.

"There aren't so many experimentally accessible demonstrations of quantum weirdness available, and this is one of the coolest," he adds.

Peruzzo also reckons the effect could have practical applications. Because the bits in a quantum computer are entangled, they could be affected by the same bizarre effects. "Every technology that will use quantum information will have to take this into account," he says.

www.newscientist.com...

So I can make a choice to go right at the fork in the road and their doesn't need to be another universe where I go left. Choice is fundamental!! Another blow to materialism!!

Does this mean that we (one conscience in specific) exist in all the different parts of the multiverse, at the same time.
So to say, "floating" around depending on our choices?

Originally posted by neoholographic
This is a HUGE BLOW to materialism!! This study shows that the Observer's choice creates what we call "reality." Here's a few key lines from the study.

1. You are confused. It doesnt mean what you think it does.

2. It was posted a few days ago...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

3. This experiment is just a new version of a "delayed choice" experiment already done multiple times in different ways. Here is the most famous one, from 2007.

4. Its another confirmation of what has been known about photons for the last 100 years.

I think this just proves that we haven't got a clue as to the true nature of the universe. We are like the ancient map makers drawing mythical creatures like dragons and leviathan and the edge of our flat earth maps. The conclusion we are drawing now based on current knowledge, will one day be considered ignorant and primitive. People will wonder how we could have ever believed the things we now accept as true.

I just hope I live long enough to gain a clear understand of the true nature of quantum mechanics.

i'm not an expert by a far shot on quantum physics,but it does interest me a great deal!
i do study different religions,and mysticism,and quantum theory seems to go hand in hand,or at least draws parallels with the above.
now this study about light either being a wave,or a particle,depending on what your looking for,well,
doesn't this coincide with the theory about atom particles - how they don't really exist until you observe them?
(forgive my lay language,i'm not a physicist!)
doesn't it take a conscience observer to 'prove' that a certain particle or wave exists where we think it should?
what about the theory that particles from the same atom,separated by many thousand miles are empathic with one another? does this new light wave/particle support this as well?
very cool find though! thanx!

"there's a crack in everything. thats how the light gets in"
leonard cohen.

"that which is hidden in the darkness will be revealed in the light"
jesus the christ.

reply to post by neoholographic


The notion that the answer to our complex and finely tuned universe is to create an infinitely more complex "multiverse" is absurd in my humble opinion. It seems that physicists will grasp at any conclusion that eliminates the need for an intelligent designer even if it makes the model infinitely more complex and of course, ultimately unprovable.

I'm old school though, maybe my brain is just not evolved enough to accept the whole multiverse idea. It just seems instinctively repellant to me.

It's a good experiment, but certainly not revolutionary. Its been conducted so many times.

In summary: It won't impact your life at all except by getting you to spend countless hours researching it just to come to this same conclusion.

Originally posted by Sparky63
reply to post by neoholographic

 

The notion that the answer to our complex and finely tuned universe is to create an infinitely more complex "multiverse" is absurd in my humble opinion. It seems that physicists will grasp at any conclusion that eliminates the need for an intelligent designer even if it makes the model infinitely more complex and of course, ultimately unprovable.

And yet, the math works. Physicists aren't trying to "disprove God." They just see no evidence for it. Besides, even if the Universe is more complex that we can imagine, that doesn't disprove God either, nor are they saying it does. Even if you buy off wholesale on the Anthropic Principle* that STILL doesn't disprove God. So really, you can have your cake and eat it, too, for this issue. To say the "multiverse is absurd" is itself an ignorant statement. I suggest you avail yourself of The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene to learn about some of this stuff.

* The Anthropic Principle states that the Universe is the way it is because we are there to observe it. In a multiverse context our universe is the one (of perhaps several) that is compatible with conscious life, so surprise, that's where we are.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by neoholographic
This is a HUGE BLOW to materialism!! This study shows that the Observer's choice creates what we call "reality." Here's a few key lines from the study.

1. You are confused. It doesnt mean what you think it does.

QM and some of the related experiments are indeed quite "old" already, I am a little perplexed because the article doesn't really say anything new. Must be a slow day right before the elections?

But despite this, the subject is of course very interesting. I have to disagree with you since there are INDEED some voices in the scientific community who interpret the observations from those experiments as exactly how the OP is wording it:

That our observation, in some way, really CREATES the reality. The particle materializes as a wave OR a photon the moment it is observed, or it reveals its position OR momentum based on the observation - while before being in an undefined "non materialistic" state.

Nothing wrong with that really.

However, "HUGE BLOW TO MATERIALISM" is of course funny, since QT and some of the findings is really not so new as to make headlines TODAY as some revolutionary new discovery

Of course it's new. Did people even read the article? It's a similar set up to past delayed choice experiments but the results are different and astounding.

Conventional wisdom said a particle had to be in a definite state. Either a wave or a particle. What this shows us that it can be a wave and a particle at the same time.

So this has nothing to do with past results of the delayed choice experiment. It's just a similar set-up.

I repeat:

"The measurement apparatus detected strong nonlocality, which certified that the photon behaved simultaneously as a wave and a particle in our experiment," physicist Alberto Peruzzo of England's University of Bristol said in a statement. "This represents a strong refutation of models in which the photon is either a wave or a particle."

A HUGE BLOW TO MATERIALISM!

The Delayed choice experiments showed Choice rules and this experiment goes further. It shows Choice rules even when it's a wave-particle at the same time!!

The quantum field doesn't take a definite state as a particle or wave until the observer makes a choice to see whether it's a particle or wave. This begs the question, how can the universe exist without the Observer making a choice?

reply to post by neoholographic

the multiverse supports consciousness and the Observer.

But is consciousness required, or is it an emergent quality? Perhaps consciousness is just the interface between multiverses.

Then I run into issues with other life. Are they conscious? My dog, your cat? A horse? Anything with neural pathways? There we run into a sticky situation to determine what actually qualifies as conscious.

We often branch into the metaphysical realm after that. That to me, becomes untidy.

Good article, thanks for sharing.

Perhaps what this experiment shows is that there is two ways to look at the universe at any one time. Everything is both a wave and a particle at the same time. The way it is manifest into a reality depends on your point of view. Am I correct in beleive that before this experiment there wasn't a device which could make a measurement of both the wave and particle nature of light at the same time??

We humans seem to like to think of things as particles since its easier for us to understand. We also see ourselves to be made of particles. We interact as particles do with reality.

Maybe there exists right next to us beings of 'wave energy' (not sure of a better way to say it). They exist as a waves and interact with their reality as a wave. Wouldn't that be cool?

Since this line of thinking would suggest that we are both a solid mass of yourself and a wave of potentiality, that would mean we should be able to tune our perception to the other side... Could this be what remote viewing and other psychic phenomenon is actually all about?

yeah... this article got me thinking a little.

A good break from all the political nonsense going on. Sorry for laying down some thoughts as they came out, but I needed to let my mind wander after today. Thanks OP for putting up this post.

The observer is the observed. The observed is the observer.

Can't have an observer without an observation. Can't have an observation without the observed. Can't have the observed without an observer.

It's a merry go round until you stop trying to have one of the three without the other.

Round and round we go... which type of label will become dominant next generation?

Yes... it's a blow to materialism in the sense that reality is clearly not made of "physical solid objects", but rather something much more abstract and unintuitive.

However, I don't see why you have to bring God into it and twist this into some religious propaganda. The nature of particle-wave duality proves nothing about the existence of a God.

reply to post by Druid42


The observer, can be, and in this case is, an inanimate object. Therefore consciousness is not required at all for the observer effect.


---------------------------------
OP, I think it's pretty clear that you believe you can think your reality into whatever you want based on this experiment. This is where alf is correct, you don't really understand what this experiment proves. It does not mean you can believe yourself through walls or believe yourself rich. Like I said above, the observer effect does not require consciousness, which kind of disproves all that new age mumbo jumbo about creating your own reality through QM that new agers clearly have no real clue about.

reply to post by schuyler


Well, under the most popular understanding of the Universe, a multi-verse is a fairly absurd notion... that's why scientists have tended to ignore it until the last few years. A lot of people assume the big bang happened at the beginning of time, which would indicate our Universe is probably the only one. Stephen Hawking believes the big bang took place at the start of time, and he claims that since time didn't exist before the big bang, God couldn't have existed either.

In my opinion the opposite is closer to the truth. If the big bang happened at the start of time, one must still bear the task of explaining exactly why time suddenly decided to start, and the most obvious conclusion in such a scenario is that our Universe was actually initiated by someone or something that exists OUTSIDE the realm of time as we know. Time is the 4th dimension after all, it's linked closely to space, and anything that exists in a realm outside of this space must exist outside of our time realm.

So the notion that the Universe mysteriously started at the beginning of time, indicates to me that in fact some sort of God does exist. However, that's not actually how I believe the Universe works. I don't think there was actually a start to time, in the same way there will be no end to time, it's an infinite realm at the heart of reality. That means that our big bang wasn't the first or the last. It's just one of many... one of infinitely many.

And we just happen to be in one of those Universes which turned out perfect for the formation of galaxies and stars and planets and life as we know it. It just seems amazing to us because we are the end result, and of course it would seem amazing, unless we really understood what led up to us being here. But for some reason, in our closed mindedness, we assume this must be the only one, and thus its brilliance can only be explained by a creator.

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
Does this mean that we (one conscience in specific) exist in all the different parts of the multiverse, at the same time.
So to say, "floating" around depending on our choices?

edit on 5-11-2012 by LiberalSceptic because: (no reason given)

I would say yes. I do think there really is room for the idea that if you make a "choice" it's just one line of development you could have followed. The one you "didn't make" happens too, with it's own line of development. You're only aware of the one you "decided" to follow.

When it comes down to it, consciousness, and the universe, couldn't really exist in any other way. We just don't see this very often because we are so single minded.

Consciousness is a fundamental process in this universe. I will try defining it in the most concrete terms possible in my threads ahead.

I tend to disagree with a one sided notion of any kind this included. All this experiment shows is that everything exists in a state of possibility which means in order to fully be in understand and make use of reality we have to let go of the idea that it is ever one or the other. It is all things and nothing happening at once. We can chose one over the other but the result will always only be half the truth and thus our predictions based on that truth will fail some of the time as the other half of the truth makes itself known. Materialism and non materialism mind or matter all at once neither or both is

Much love

Originally posted by neoholographic

I repeat:

"The measurement apparatus detected strong nonlocality, which certified that the photon behaved simultaneously as a wave and a particle in our experiment," physicist Alberto Peruzzo of England's University of Bristol said in a statement. "This represents a strong refutation of models in which the photon is either a wave or a particle."

I see something wrong already with the phrase "... photon IS either a wave ...."
Because how I interpret QM, a photon *IS* not ..it's simply wrong if someone either said the photon "is" a wave, or the photon "is" a particle. According to some, if it "is" anything, it's undefined until observed...then "materializing" into reality as whatever it "is". (If we interpret it in a more "mystical" way).

So..no wonder that models were refuted stating that photons ARE something...but that's not really news either.