Wavefunction collapse filmed for the first time

[Magical Realist]

Is it caused by the act of filming it?

"Physicists just captured the exact millisecond a quantum particle stops being everywhere at once and snaps into a single definite reality — the most fundamental mystery in physics, finally filmed.

A team at ETH Zurich used ultra-fast electron microscopy running at one quadrillion frames per second to observe a single electron transitioning from quantum superposition — existing as a probability wave spread across multiple locations simultaneously — into a definite measurable particle. The collapse took 84 attoseconds, far faster than any previous measurement could detect. For the first time, the boundary between quantum uncertainty and classical reality was not inferred from statistics but directly observed in real time.

What makes this extraordinary is that wave function collapse has been the central mystery of quantum mechanics for 100 years. Every quantum computer, MRI machine, and transistor on Earth depends on this process, yet nobody had ever directly seen it happen. Scientists debated for a century whether collapse was a physical event or merely a change in mathematical description.

The ETH team confirmed it is a real physical event with a measurable duration, answering the measurement problem that Einstein and Bohr argued about their entire careers.

Source: ETH Zurich Physics Department, Nature Physics, 2025

[Syne]

If so, that would be the death knell to the many world interpretation.

[Magical Realist]

Another quantum physics breakthru that suggests the Penrose-Hameroff model of consciousness may be correct.


NEW YORK, April 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- "Scientists at Valis Corporation have demonstrated gravitationally induced wavefunction collapse on an IBM Eagle quantum chip and will present their findings at Deep Tech Week, New York. Their results are consistent with the Penrose-Hameroff theory of Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) – an explanation for human consciousness. The Penrose theory is one of the many competing proposals that solve the famous physics paradox of Schrödinger's Cat.

One of the most important paradoxes in physics is Schrödinger's Cat. At the microscopic level, light and particles behave according to quantum mechanics. This allows them to be in two places at once (superposition), coordinate their behavior instantaneously across vast distances (entanglement), and exhibit interference patterns. We see evidence of this with the naked eye when we look at the colored films on puddles of oily water. But we never see any large object – such as a cat – in two places at once. Why?

Schrödinger's famous thought experiment involves a cat in a sealed box with a radioactive sample and poison. Radioactive decay—a quantum event—triggers the release of the poison, killing the cat. Quantum mechanics says the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Schrödinger thought this was absurd and meant quantum mechanics was incomplete. Einstein agreed.

Physicists have proposed many solutions to this puzzle, including that there is never a collapse and, instead, a new Universe is spawned every time a particle is in two places at once. This is called the 'many worlds' theory and is the origin of numerous science fiction plots. But, Sir Roger Penrose, the Nobel Laureate, thinks this is far-fetched and proposes a simpler solution.

Penrose realized that cats or any similar large objects would bend space-time in two different ways if they were simultaneously alive and dead. Quantum mechanics allows this, but Einstein's General Relativity does not. Thus, we have another paradox, and the solution solves Schrödinger's paradox. When the Universe bends too much – technically above the Heisenberg uncertainty limit – it snaps to one or other configuration, and the cat lives or dies.

One of the features of the Penrose-Hameroff theory is that it can be tested with real quantum devices coupled to large objects. In the Valis experiment, the quantum device is a single bit on an IBM Eagle chip, and the large device is the microwave control system that connects the qubits to the real world. These usually allow scientists to see what is happening inside the machine, but they have a significant mass and can be co-opted into testing gravitational collapse. A test is then set up to see whether the system collapses. We duplicate Schrödinger's thought experiment using modern quantum hardware.

The code for the test is too complex for a human to build alone in a reasonable time frame, but using modern LLMs, it was possible to rapidly iterate to a quantum program that will solve the problem. The final system is remarkably simple but resulted from many attempts made possible by using natural language descriptions of the science to guide program creation. The program and test system are implemented using IBM's Qiskit quantum operating system, and several LLMs were used in parallel to solve the problem, including OpenAI's ChatGPT 4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7 & Code, Google's Gemini 2.5, xAI's Grok 3, and IBM's Granite-Qiskit running locally. The test ran on the public IBM quantum platform, and a GitHub repository will be available shortly. "We think a new era of AI-assisted Science is unfolding," said James Tagg.

Does this mean IBM Quantum chips are conscious? This is a hard question to answer, as over 400 competing definitions of consciousness exist. According to the Penrose Hameroff definition, it would make IBM computers proto-conscious. They have the necessary capability to become conscious, but they still need to be orchestrated to achieve consciousness."

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases...19751.html

[C C]

Is it caused by the act of filming it?

"Physicists just captured the exact millisecond a quantum particle stops being everywhere at once and snaps into a single definite reality — the most fundamental mystery in physics, finally filmed.

A team at ETH Zurich used ultra-fast electron microscopy running at one quadrillion frames per second to observe a single electron transitioning from quantum superposition — existing as a probability wave spread across multiple locations simultaneously — into a definite measurable particle. The collapse took 84 attoseconds, far faster than any previous measurement could detect. For the first time, the boundary between quantum uncertainty and classical reality was not inferred from statistics but directly observed in real time.

What makes this extraordinary is that wave function collapse has been the central mystery of quantum mechanics for 100 years. Every quantum computer, MRI machine, and transistor on Earth depends on this process, yet nobody had ever directly seen it happen. Scientists debated for a century whether collapse was a physical event or merely a change in mathematical description.

The ETH team confirmed it is a real physical event with a measurable duration, answering the measurement problem that Einstein and Bohr argued about their entire careers.

Source: ETH Zurich Physics Department, Nature Physics, 2025

I can't find anything about it, nor can AI. The Facebook source seems to be the only source. Might be yesterday's prank.

AI: While no specific 2025 Nature Physics publication from ETH Zurich regarding the filming of wave function collapse was found, researchers did demonstrate techniques for operating quantum computers "in the dark" and achieved room-temperature quantum states for nanoparticles. Other 2025 studies highlighted include investigations into inelastic scattering and gravitationally induced collapse on superconducting chips. More information on related quantum developments can be found at Nature.

Nearest to anything related, by an ETH Zurich team in 2025:

https://scitechdaily.com/room-temperatur...hysicists/

[Magical Realist]

Is it caused by the act of filming it?

"Physicists just captured the exact millisecond a quantum particle stops being everywhere at once and snaps into a single definite reality — the most fundamental mystery in physics, finally filmed.

A team at ETH Zurich used ultra-fast electron microscopy running at one quadrillion frames per second to observe a single electron transitioning from quantum superposition — existing as a probability wave spread across multiple locations simultaneously — into a definite measurable particle. The collapse took 84 attoseconds, far faster than any previous measurement could detect. For the first time, the boundary between quantum uncertainty and classical reality was not inferred from statistics but directly observed in real time.

What makes this extraordinary is that wave function collapse has been the central mystery of quantum mechanics for 100 years. Every quantum computer, MRI machine, and transistor on Earth depends on this process, yet nobody had ever directly seen it happen. Scientists debated for a century whether collapse was a physical event or merely a change in mathematical description.

The ETH team confirmed it is a real physical event with a measurable duration, answering the measurement problem that Einstein and Bohr argued about their entire careers.

Source: ETH Zurich Physics Department, Nature Physics, 2025

I can't find anything about it, nor can AI. The Facebook source seems to be the only source. Might be yesterday's prank.

AI: While no specific 2025 Nature Physics publication from ETH Zurich regarding the filming of wave function collapse was found, researchers did demonstrate techniques for operating quantum computers "in the dark" and achieved room-temperature quantum states for nanoparticles. Other 2025 studies highlighted include investigations into inelastic scattering and gravitationally induced collapse on superconducting chips. More information on related quantum developments can be found at Nature.

Nearest to anything related, by an ETH Zurich team in 2025:

https://scitechdaily.com/room-temperatur...hysicists/

Could be..I couldn't find anything else on it either. Sorry everyone. It would be neat though!

[C C]

Biologists...

X _ Jessica PhD ... https://x.com/NatureGalleryTV/status/203...7201032701

I completely disagree with the deterministic "pre-recorded film" conclusion. This perspective ignores the most crucial element of quantum mechanics: The Observer.

Yes, past, present, and future exist simultaneously right now. But they do not exist as a fixed block of stone. They exist as a state of Quantum Superposition.

Think of an electron. Until it is measured or observed, it doesn't have a fixed, predetermined location; it exists everywhere at once in a cloud of probabilities.

The timeline works the same way. It isn't a pre-written script; it is a matrix of infinite potential states. This is exactly where consciousness and imagination come in.

The moment you imagine a new reality and make a conscious choice, you collapse that wave function. We aren't just passively reading the book of spacetime; our consciousness is actively writing it in real-time.

7:41 AM · Mar 30, 2026