Jan 18, 2025 11:41 PM
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/17/is-real...roversial/
EXCERPTS: John Wheeler was an ideological leader in developing quantum cosmology [...] "He was very taken with the thought that no phenomenon becomes a true phenomena until it has been observed."
One of his ideas, which he called the “participatory universe,” posits that our own observations could actually be what is creating our physical reality.
The idea could be depicted in a drawing of the letter “U,” where an observer stands on one column of the letter looking backward at the past history of the universe, said Dr. Bob Wald...
[...] “He was very taken with the thought that no phenomenon becomes a true phenomena until it has been observed,” Wald told Salon in a video call. “The idea is that the past history of the universe has become definite when someone or people now are observing things about the past universe.”
[...] The famous “two-slit experiment,” demonstrated something similar but with photons. It found that these particles, which can either act like a particle or wave, acted as waves passing through both slits in the experiment when they were unobserved. However, when observed, they acted like particles passing through one slit or the other.
Wheeler also proposed his own “delayed choice” experiment. Whereas the two-slit experiment shows that observations before or during the experiment influenced its outcome, Wheeler’s experiment showed that delayed observations influenced the results of the experiment after the particles had already passed through the slits.
“One can decide, at the quantum level, whether an object shall go two routes to get to its final point or just one route,” Wheeler once said in an interview. “You can make the decision after it has already made the trip. That sounds like a contradiction, but it works.”
[...] To put this idea into more tangible terms, said Dr. Andrei Linde, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who is one of the authors of the theory of the multiverse, recommends imagining opening the box with the Schrödinger's Cat with a three-day delay. The cat inside will either be dead or alive, making it seem like the outcome of the experiment was determined three days ago as expected and the observer registers the fact of what happened in the past, Linde said.
However, to be consistent with the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, one would need to ascribe certain reality to both outcomes and understand that the universe consisted of these two branches: one universe with a dead cat and one with a live cat.
"By observing the cat, we are learning in which one do we live," Linde said.
Wheeler’s idea of the participatory universe was initially seen as being a little too far out and was not pursued by the scientific community when he proposed it in the 1970s [...] After all, it changes the way we traditionally think about the way time works. Instead of the past causing the present, which causes the future, Wheeler’s idea flips this on its head to suggest that the future "determines" the past.
[...] However, the field’s initial rejection of the idea has started to change. In fact, an idea like the participatory universe that accounts for the role of the observer in determining something’s quantum state could help explain some mathematical conundrums that have appeared in quantum physics, Linde said... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: John Wheeler was an ideological leader in developing quantum cosmology [...] "He was very taken with the thought that no phenomenon becomes a true phenomena until it has been observed."
One of his ideas, which he called the “participatory universe,” posits that our own observations could actually be what is creating our physical reality.
The idea could be depicted in a drawing of the letter “U,” where an observer stands on one column of the letter looking backward at the past history of the universe, said Dr. Bob Wald...
[...] “He was very taken with the thought that no phenomenon becomes a true phenomena until it has been observed,” Wald told Salon in a video call. “The idea is that the past history of the universe has become definite when someone or people now are observing things about the past universe.”
[...] The famous “two-slit experiment,” demonstrated something similar but with photons. It found that these particles, which can either act like a particle or wave, acted as waves passing through both slits in the experiment when they were unobserved. However, when observed, they acted like particles passing through one slit or the other.
Wheeler also proposed his own “delayed choice” experiment. Whereas the two-slit experiment shows that observations before or during the experiment influenced its outcome, Wheeler’s experiment showed that delayed observations influenced the results of the experiment after the particles had already passed through the slits.
“One can decide, at the quantum level, whether an object shall go two routes to get to its final point or just one route,” Wheeler once said in an interview. “You can make the decision after it has already made the trip. That sounds like a contradiction, but it works.”
[...] To put this idea into more tangible terms, said Dr. Andrei Linde, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who is one of the authors of the theory of the multiverse, recommends imagining opening the box with the Schrödinger's Cat with a three-day delay. The cat inside will either be dead or alive, making it seem like the outcome of the experiment was determined three days ago as expected and the observer registers the fact of what happened in the past, Linde said.
However, to be consistent with the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, one would need to ascribe certain reality to both outcomes and understand that the universe consisted of these two branches: one universe with a dead cat and one with a live cat.
"By observing the cat, we are learning in which one do we live," Linde said.
Wheeler’s idea of the participatory universe was initially seen as being a little too far out and was not pursued by the scientific community when he proposed it in the 1970s [...] After all, it changes the way we traditionally think about the way time works. Instead of the past causing the present, which causes the future, Wheeler’s idea flips this on its head to suggest that the future "determines" the past.
[...] However, the field’s initial rejection of the idea has started to change. In fact, an idea like the participatory universe that accounts for the role of the observer in determining something’s quantum state could help explain some mathematical conundrums that have appeared in quantum physics, Linde said... (MORE - details)