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General Epistemology        Chapter IV-11       

 

IV-11 The Delayed Choice Experience,
Or Wheeler experience.

 

(Permalink) (Was chapter 38 in version 1)

 

I decided to add this 11th chapter here, because I thought that the Wheeler's Experiment contributes to validate the whole Logical Self-Generation Theory (Experimental confirmation). I even proposed a similar experiment in the version 1, in 1999, without knowing that physicists imagined it as early as 1971. Then, not including it in version 2 would have been a regression. Hence this chapter added after the others, a sort of keystone for the whole. (An additional chapter better illustrates the unfolding of my understanding...good pretext to avoid rewriting the previous ones, he he he).

Principle

(Permalink) Scientists are naughty cachottiers: they known about this fantastic experiment since 1971, but it is only since 2017 that we hear about it (article in Futura Science, November 3, 2017). This experiment was devised in 1971 by John Archibald Wheeler, as a test that quantum mechanics is just as weird as it sounds. It has brilliantly confirmed the said Quantum Mechanics, Copenhagen's interpretation, pure and fast line. But I think that it also confirms the Logical Self-Generation Theory presented in this book.

 

There are many ways of doing this experiment. However the «reference» is the Young's slits, which we saw in chapter IV-2. It is therefore better to refer to this chapter first, if you do not know what it is about.

Copenhagen Electron in the interference experiment

Remember that in this experiment, a photon passes through two slits before reaching a screen. Depending on whether one or both slits are opened, the photon behaves as a particle or as a wave when it reaches the screen. At the time, 1971, nobody knew how or why the photon «chose» to appear as a particle or as a wave. But Archibald Wheeler had the idea to search when it does so. For this purpose, he equipped himself with fast shutters capable of opening or closing one of the two slits during the photon's flight time, after it had passed through the slits.

These shutters are made with Kerr cells, capable of shutter times as short as 10 nanoseconds: the light only travels 3 metres during this time. Therefore the experiment just needs to be much larger than this size.

Our daily intuition tells us that once the slits are passed, opening or closing them would have no effect on the photon. But Quantum Mechanics says that the operation of the fast shutters controls the photon even after it has passed through the slits. And this is what the experiment has shown! And of course, as in Aspect's Experiment, this information was passed at a much higher speed than the speed of light, in order to be able to catch the photon itself.

 

Thus this experiment confirms that Quantum Mechanics is indeed «as strange» as it claims to be. But it also radically destroys any reference to intuitive physics at our scale: how did the information pass to the photon, at an almost infinite speed? And what becomes of Relativity in this?

 

But before I come to any conclusions, I need to set a point:

Disambiguation: wave or particle?

(Permalink) Nearby all the presentations of the experiment try to find out whether the light will behave as a wave, or as a particle. By the time, in 1971, these two interpretations were considered to be contradictory, and therefore the light had to make a «choice» to behave in one way or in the other.

What I wrote in version 1 in 1999 was that, in fact, both descriptions point to the same reality, and it is only in our interpretation that an interaction appears more as quantum or more as a wave. I concluded that there was a non-duality between the two concepts, that is to say a non-Aristotelian logical relationship. And only our attachment to Aristotelian logic made us feel the situation is «incomprehensible» (Chapter I-3).

But scientists did better since then: they have found that, finally, the mathematical formalisms of the quantum interpretation (particles) and the one of wave interpretation (fields) can be deduced from each other. Their link is therefore indeed Aristotelian, and it is now known as the Quantum Field Theory, the unification of Quantum Mechanics and of Wave Mechanics (chapter IV-8).

It is in fact very easy to understand: a musical note can be defined as an integer on a musical scale. But it can also be defined as a sinusoid, for example in a .mp3 file. But the two can be deduced from each other, through adequate mathematical transformations.

 

So we now agree that these experiments, Young, Aspect or Wheeler, are about a single quantum choice, which produces a new state of the Universe, rather than about a wave-particle choice. However, the old presentations are not «wrong», but should be read with the new one in mind. Simple transposition of concepts.

Scientists quite frequently have small conceptual inconsistencies of this kind, which academics later correct when they have to teach, and thus bring some order into the proliferation of theories. But the media have trouble to break their attachment to certain attractive little phrases, for example the consciousness which intervenes in quantum choice. A joke that physicists are reluctant to repeat today, for fear of seeing the reptilians showing up.

Results

(Permalink) Wheeler's experiment was carried out with a laser on a 40m table, then with satellites, over distances of around 3000kms. All versions confirm the expected result: the photons react to the state of the slits when they arrive on hte screen.

 

In theory, it can also be done with electrons.

 

One fascinating version would use a quasar as a light source, and the gravitational field of a galaxy on the way, which deflects the light from the quasar and thus makes two paths, which is equivalent to the two slits. The image of the quasar, e.g. QSO 0957+561, then appears twice, on either side of the deflecting galaxy. In this case, the apparent return to the past would be 8.7 billion years! Unfortunately the experiment cannot be done simply with QSO 0957+561, because there also is a time lag of 417 days between the two beams.

What I had proposed in version 1

(Permalink) I presented a very similar experience in the version 1 of this book in 1999 (registered in 2000 at the Library of Congress in Washington). However, I was reluctant to include it in the version 2, as it all seemed too far-fetched to me. It was therefore a mistake, which I am now obliged to correct in this chapter. This date does not allow me to claim precedence over John Wheeler, but it does show the relevance of my own views, which independently led to the same tests and the same predictions.

Well I must say, while rereading myself, my style at the time was more abundant, lol, and I strongly recommend to any beginner author to learn to be concise! And not to start in a thousand directions at once. But chapter 38 «Time in two different universes» did address the problem of time as dealt with in Wheeler's experiment.

More precisely, I proposed an Aspect Experience at an inommensurable distance. (Incommensurable meaning here: outside the light cone, which is the case in Wheeler's experiment). I don't have something simple to quote, but the idea was very similar to Wheeler's, except that I was starting from the Aspect experience (chapter IV-2) rather than Young's.

 

A reminder of the Aspect experiment:

In the middle of the Aspect experiment, we have excited atoms which produce pairs of correlated photons (which actually form a single quantum object). The two photons are inversely polarised, and emitted in two opposite directions, to the right and to the left.

On the left, we have an «emitter»: a device which imposes a polarisation on the photon it receives.

On the right, we have a «receiver», which reads the polarisation on this side. Quantum Mechanics predicts, and Aspect's experiment has shown, that this second photon has its polarisation forced in the opposite direction to the one on the left. The «paradox» is then that the polarisation information was passed instantaneously from the left to the right, at an «infinite» speed, while the two photons are moving away at the speed of light. Quantum Mechanics says that this information is non-local, and therefore available everywhere without the need to propagate. This is also what the theory of logical self-generation says.

 

My purpose in 1999 was to find out at which moment the polarisation information became available on the right. To do this, I proposed to perform the reading at different times, adjusting the length of the right receiving branch, to know «from which moment» the photon «decides» to take the received state. Depending on the length of the right arm, the reading will be done before, or after the creation of the state on the left (in our reference frame).

It is clear that this was a variant of Wheeler's experiment, because we shall similarly try to find out «from when» the information on a quantum state is available. At the time I had correctly assumed that this information became available the moment it was created on the left, which the Aspect experiment had indicated anyway. But I had also assumed that some temporal fuzziness might exist, allowing information to be available on the right before it existed on the left (an idea I had developed as early as 1989 in my novels about the Eolis).

As far as I know, this modified Aspect experiment has not been done. But the Wheeler experiment provides the answer anyway.

Interpretation according to the of Logical Self-generation Theory

(Permalink) We tend to think that the photons «decide» their behaviour as they pass through the two holes. However, the opening of the holes occurs after this passage. We then feel that this modification influences the «choice» of the photon in the past, that is a causality towards the past! This expression is often found in literature.

 

In the theory of Logical Self-generation, time does not exist in an absolute way. There is in fact no defined time, only a series of quantum interactions (called «nibs» in this theory) according to a law of cause and effect (called laws of physics for the physical world). It is only the succession of quantum interactions which creates the appearance of a continuously elapsing time.

The conclusion is that in Wheeler's experiment, only the reception of the photon constitutes a «nib» (quantum interaction), even if the different influences, such as the opening of a slot, took place at different dates, or are very far away. There is therefore no «temporal return», even if it looks like it. At a pinch, we could speak of the «atemporality» of quantum interactions, by analogy with «non-locality». Thus each nib is non-local and atemporal.

 

We can specify: the nib appears to us at a given date. But it does not intrinsically have a date. This date is attributed to it afterwards by the other nibs in the environment (or by the observation process, but it is also formed of nibs, and therefore it is not different from any other nibs in the environment). For example, the moment when Wheeler opens or closes one of the slots appears to us at an «earlier date». But the precise causality between the two, in the sense of the Logical Self-Generation, is timeless. Hence all the quirks about the flow of time, which the equations of Quantum Mechanics also predict.

What it must be possible to say is that each nib instantly creates a new state of the entire universe. These nibs then create waves and fields. And the next nibs will therefore appear under the influence of these new wave and fields.

 

What Relativity says is that, since the photon goes at the speed of light, in its relativistic frame of reference, the point of emission, the slots, and the point of reception all are in the same place. There is therefore no violation, neither of Relativity nor of the principle of causality.

However, Relativity affects the field equations, for example the Maxwell's equations of electromagnetic waves, which guide the photons. Thus the above quantum information may well propagate at infinite speed (it is rather said that it is non-local), it is nevertheless true that a photon can only manifest its presence if there is an electromagnetic wave containing energy, which must arrive at the place of detection at the speed of light. This is why, in the end, neither Wheeler's nor Aspect's experiment can provide true supra-luminous communication (although not everything has been said yet, it may happen that an indirect method will be found one day, by some trick).

 

Finally I am not displeased that my simple metaphysical intuitions have relevant enough to provide the same result as the complex equations of Quantum Mechanics, especially on such a sharp and strange experiment. However, nothing in classical physics allowed to imagine Wheeler's experiment and its astonishing result.

Aspect experience in parapsychology

(Permalink) Well, yes, sorry to speak about parapsy in a chapter on physics. But if we want to know how consciousness can bend physics, we have to start by knowing how physics can be bent. And personally, I observed several times such phenomena, including a «big one», also seen by tens of persons. So for me the discussion on the existence of these phenomena is moot, and I shall no longer lose time at trying to «debate». If somebody does not trust public observation, let him manage himself.

 

In the same chapter of version 1, I presented a variant to the Aspect experiment, using extrasensory perception at incommensurable distance, which according to the of Logical Self-Generation Theory should produce the same result as the physical Aspect experiment. But this would require that one of the two teams is far away in space, as typically a single ESP test takes at least ten seconds, during which the light travels millions of kilometres. Maybe when we have a Topor Likan space station (Anti-spoiler here) in Lagrange point 2...

 

Warning: to write that consciousness is «quantum», with big quotation marks, (note 91)requires to keep a safe distance from the pseudosciences which put quantum in all the soups, without knowing what it is. Nor should this be confused with the actin microtubules theory, which sees the origin of consciousness in non-local quantum states of those said microtubules. Consciousness being itself non-local, it does not require physical non-local quantum states.

What the Theory of Logical Self-generation says is that consciousness is also a self-generation system, and as such it is also made up of successive states, linked by a law of cause and effect. (It is easy to check that the content of consciousness changes by one element at a time, for example with the study of dreams, chapter V-8).

I leave it to History to decide whether or not to use the terms «quantum» or «Copenhagen interpretation» in the case of consciousness. There are serious arguments to do so, and it would be sad to do without, just because of some crooks. But we also need to recognize that consciousness has different laws of self-generation from physics, and moreover non-Aristotelian laws. There is therefore no identity between quantum physics and «quantum consciousness». As to me, I keep the quotation marks. As for an analogy. But it is more than an analogy: a common origin to the two ways of functioning.

 

We studied with more detail the properties of logical self-generation systems in the third part. Since the physical world and consciousness are different logical self-generation systems, they should by principle not communicate. However, they do, at least when information from the physical world reaches consciousness via the sensory organs (more precisely the neurons, chapter V-20). But this point by point bijection between neurons and the consciousness experience they produce, implies that communication in the other direction is also possible, though less common.

And when it happens, it then appears to us as free will (chapter V-3), ESP, moments of super-consciousness, etc.

In a more general way, any exchange of information between consciousness and the physical world (other than the sensory organs) then appears to us as a «parapsychological phenomenon». So much that, in chapter VII-4, we were able to correlate their bizarre nomenclature with the precise types of information exchange mathematically allowed by the bijection. So this is a rational explanation (in the true sense of the term, chapter II-6) of these phenomena, if not a means of producing them at will.

 

My purpose in the first version was to see what would happen in the Aspect experiment (Wheeler today), if we observed parapsychological phenomena instead of physical ones. Of course, we would observe the same «infinite speed»: the elements of the experience of consciousness are as much non-local as the physical quantum states.

But the Logical Self-generation Theory predicts a much more astonishing result in this case: since there is no definite relationship between the flow of time in the physical world and the spiritual world, it is possible to observe real retrograde causalities! That is, the future acting on the past, via the spiritual world. But only via the later.

 

Amazing? Yet we already have clues in this direction:

☻ Some UFO cases, like the Valdez affair.

☻ The prophecy about the invasion of Tibet, chapter IV-3.

☻ The telepathy experiment attempted by astronaut Edgar Mitchell (wikipedia) from the Moon. According to some sources, he did a timing mistake, but three of the four receivers still received the message.

The PEAR experiment (Archive of the original censored site) also explored time shifts, and the results suggest that some were observed.

 

Any of these experiments should be enough to demonstrate that consciousness has its proper time, independently of the physical time, and thus it exists independently of the physical world, especially from the brain. Relativity was accepted with no more proofs. The problem however is that we find on the Internet as contradictory as uncheckable statements on these experiments. This uncertainty is the cost of the idiot prejudice against parapsychology, especially of not having academic checked and sourced reports on such experiments: Either we miss interesting results, or we cannot eradicate falsehood. See chapter II-9.

 

This clues are not yet really reliable and definitive proofs of the Logical Self-Generation theory, but these observable time shifts cannot be explained by physics alone (which totally forbids them). Only the Logical Self-Generation Theory of consciousness can explain them without adding ad-hoc elements.

We therefore have here a theoretical framework which can be used for a scientific study of parapsychology.

In the longer term, understanding how these interferences between the physical and the spiritual occur, would lead to a mastery of extraordinary things like the psychic spaceships that I describe in the wonderfull world of the Eolis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

General Epistemology        Chapter IV-11       

 

 

 

 

 

 

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