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Cake day: April 28th, 2024

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  • gonna keep banging this drum every time this comes up:

    When physicists say “observe”, they actually mean “measure”. And to measure a photon of light, you have to interact with it somehow, there is no passive way to do so.

    The post’s header image implies that the interference pattern goes away just by looking at it. If that were the case, we would never see the interference pattern, never know it was there in the first place! In the actual experiment, they put a sensor at one or both of the slits. But to “sense” a single photon, you have to interact with it in some way. Otherwise you wouldn’t know it was there.

    Again, this is where the language trips us up. Rather than “sensor”, would really be more accurate to say they put a photon-touch-er at the slits.

    So, what we actually get is “Touching the photon changes the photon’s behavior.” The universe doesn’t magically infer when we happen to be looking at it, there is no spooky action-at-a-distance!



  • AppleTea@lemmy.ziptoDogs@lemmy.worldURGENT
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    14 days ago

    see now that actually sounds like a real security upgrade from tech

    I sleep soundly through all the creaks and groans of the house at night because if it were actually something to worry about, the dog will (probably) start barking

    i Don’t feel secure at the thought of jeff bezos having a servers full of footage of the view from my neighbors porch.