As Erric already pointed out, Lanza doesn't prove anything, how could he, given that consciousness is a subjective 'entity' whereas the scientific approach is based upon reproducible results in objective experiments. Naturally, these two approaches don't go together very well, see e.g. the hard mind-body problem.
So the best he could do is to support his theory with a series of experiments from the wacky weird world of quantum physics which all indicate that the conscious observer influences if not completely determines what we think of as objective physical reality.
The mother of all those experiments is the infamous 'double-slit experiment' which Lanza presents very elaborately. Unlike the multitude of main-stream versions out there, Lanza portrays a member of a newer family of double-slit experiments which not only demonstrates the effect of a conscious observer but also shows how the law of cause and effect breaks down in the quantum world (published in Physical Review A 65 033818) – very cool stuff!
Before we look into that experiment it is good to introduce some fundamental aspects of quantum physics that will help to appreciate the full madness of the quantum world.
In the upcoming 2 blog posts we can then discuss the implications of the double-slit experiment and finally enter the ultimate quantum weirdness: quantum entities seem to 'know' in advance what the observer intends to measure and then behave accordingly, how about that?
The measurement problem
Like Prof. Henry pointed out, the effect of an observer is nothing new in physics - the fathers of quantum mechanics themselves debated the role of the observer for decades: Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg, both giants of physics, believed that it was indeed the observer that produced our perception of the world around us. This view is deeply rooted in the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' of quantum physics and eventually became known as the 'measurement problem':
The natural state of any given system, aka its wave function is a super-position of all possible quantum states, the act of measuring leads to a collapse of the wave function depending on the type of experiment – sounds nice, but what does that actually mean?
Quantum effects only seem to play a role in the microscopic world of atoms and molecules, so macroscopic analogies don't exist, or do they? Anyway, let's still imagine an "analogy" in form of our moon to make it more tangible:
The moon can be new or full, waxing or waning, hanging around on the horizon or high above us in the sky. The full quantum description of the moon, or its 'wave function', is a super-position of all those possible states. Only if you perform a measurement (i.e. look at the moon) does the moon chose to be in only one of those states - e.g. it is full. If you don't look the moon is in all possible states at the same time.
The mind blowing aspect is that in this analogy another observer might see a different moon phase - it all depends on the experimental setup or you could say on the way you look! Now this is really hard to grasp, but don't worry, it will all become clearer when looking at the double-slit experiment in the next post.
To summarize: Only when a measurement is carried out, ONE of the variety of possible states of any given quantum system is magically picked out and is then called "reality". This reality depends on how the observer looks, i.e. on the particular way the experiment is carried out. The process of picking out one of many possibility is what we call 'collapse of the wave function'. Nobody knows how the system 'truly' looks like, and when we look we see only one aspect.
It has to be emphasized though that the mechanism by which the act of measurement is actually linked with the consciousness of the observer is not understood at all to the present day, and subject of huge discussions. Still, the math works beautifully and has so far always reproduced or predicted the experimental results (with an accuracy of up to 6 decimals).
Talking of which, the mathematical formulation of such a measurement involves applying an operator called 'projector' onto the system's wave function, the result is called 'expectation value'. So what we actually do when we measure (or look, or experience for that matter) is that we project out one possibility depending on our expectation, depending on the way we look. We don't measure reality but our expectation of it - I thought Buddhists might like that :-).
Erwin Schrödinger later formulated a famous macroscopic analogy of the measurement problem, aka 'Schrödinger's cat'. But you can also ask the question „Is the moon there when nobody looks?“.
Quantum entanglement
Another founder of quantum physics, Niels Bohr never really endorsed the view that an observer would cause the collapse of the wave function, later this was even despised as mystical by Albert Einstein et al in the infamous EPR thought experiment. They combined the measurement problem with another pillar of quantum physics called 'quantum entanglement' which basically says that two particles, once correlated or entangled, will always stay entangled even after having been separated by arbitrarily large distances. When a measurement of one of the pair's quantum numbers (e.g. spin, momentum or polarization) is performed you immediately gain information about the corresponding quantum number of the other member of this entangled pair - no matter how far they were separated.
Here is a very simplified example: you have a pair of particles A and B that have been created together out of energy in the particle accelerator at CERN. Both A and B have a property called 'spin' which can have a value of either +1 or -1. Through the act of being created together the two particles are 'correlated'. Scientists at CERN measure the total spin of the pair to be equal to zero.
Now you separate the two particles, particle A is sent to K-Pax at the other end of the galaxy, particle B stays at CERN. According to the law of spin conservation the sum of spins of both particles has to be zero at all times. Yet due to the laws of quantum mechanics you cannot know which spin each of these particles has individually: each one can have +1 or -1, in fact here we encounter the super position of possible states again. The wave function of each particle is a sum of +1 and -1, both with 50% probability. Remember, as long as you don't measure the spin of each particle is in an undefined state.
Finally our alien science colleagues on K-Pax perform a measurement on particle A and measure its spin to be +1. As the initial spin of the correlated pair was zero, they correctly conclude that the spin of particle B on the opposite end of the galaxy must be equal to -1.
Note that nobody touched particle B, nobody has performed a measurement on particle B. The really mind-numbing observation is that the measurement of the spin of particle A must have caused the instantaneous collapse of the wave function of particle B on the other end of the galaxy without any measurement on particle B - otherwise its spin wouldn't be -1 but still a super position of +1 and -1.
To cut a long story short: through a measurement on the spin property of particle A one obtains immediate information about the spin property of the partner particle B on the other end of the galaxy. The measurement of particle A caused the immediate collapse of the wave function of particle B.
Einstein was not happy about that “spooky action at a distance“, to say the least, as it implies some interaction between A and B that seems to have covered 100,000 light years in no time.
Imagine that during the big bang all energy and consequently all matter was created in one big event – couldn't that mean that all particles, all the stuff we are made of, are still entangled?
Our 'local' view of the world assumes that phenomena are
separated by time and space and that no influence can travel faster than
the speed of light. With the EPR thought experiment Einstein et al wanted to prove that quantum entanglement violates this locality, hence quantum mechanics cannot be a complete description of reality. But the quantum entanglement is theoretically coherent and the non-local behaviour of quantum entities has been verified experimentally hundreds of times.
Although being my hero, the evidence suggests that in this particular case Einstein was wrong - or so it seems.
Still there is some debate about the underlying mechanism that enables this entanglement to occur and its implications for the basic characteristics of nature. Those discussions led to all kinds of attempts to replace the probabilistic view of a collapsing wave function with a classical deterministic view, yet none of those new approaches (see the introduction of hidden variables or the many-world theories) could be verified experimentally so far.
Although physicists don't understand how it really works, the quantum world behaves in a probabilistic and highly correlated way with the observer being central to the outcome of a quantum experiment.
The next post will deal with how that can be demonstrated in terms of the double-slit experiment, click here to read it.
Erric announced in his
blog about Robert Lanza's book 'Biocentrism' that I would write a
little something about the science in the book. Here
we go, this is the first in a series of three posts about the
effect of an observer in quantum physics.
Lanza's theory can be
combined in the following two axioms:
What we
perceive as reality
is a process that involves our consciousness.
An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition
have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and
time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and
animal mind.
The behaviour of subatomic
particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably
linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a
conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of
probability
waves (or 'wave functions').
Let's begin by a
quote from Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at
Johns
Hopkins University. He pointed out that Lanza's theory is
consistent with quantum physics: “What Lanza says in this book is
not new. Then why does Robert have to say it at all? It is because
we, the physicists, do NOT say it - or if we do say it, we only
whisper it, and in private––furiously blushing as we mouth the
words. True, yes; politically correct, hell no!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Erric already
pointed out, Lanza doesn't prove anything, how could he, given that
consciousness or awareness are very subjective
'entities' whereas the scientific
approach is based upon reproducible results in objective
experiments. Naturally, these two approaches don't go together very
well, see e.g. the hard
mind-body problem.
So the best he can do is
to support his theory with a series of experiments from the wacky
weird world of quantum physics which all indicate that the observer
or a consciousness influences if not completely determines what we
think of as objective physical reality.
The mother of all
those experiments is the infamous 'double-slit experiment' which
Lanza presents very nicely. Unlike the many simplified versions out
there (e.g. the animation in 'What
the bleep do we know, part 2'), Lanza portrays a member of a
newer family of double-slit experiments (published in Physical Review
A 65 033818) which not only demonstrates the effect of an observer or
consciousness but also shows how the law of cause and effect breaks
down in the quantum world – very cool stuff!
Before we look into that
experiment its good to introduce some fundamental aspects of quantum
physics that will help to appreciate the full madness of the
double-slit experiment.
In the upcoming 2 blog
posts we will then discuss the implications of that experiment and
finally enter into the ultimate quantum weirdness: quantum entities
seem to 'know' in advance what the observer intends to measure and
then behave accordingly, how about that?
Measurement problem
Like Prof. Henry
pointed out, the effect of an observer is nothing new in physics -
the founders of quantum mechanics debated the role of the observer
for decades: Wolfgang
Pauli and Werner
Heisenberg believed that it was indeed the observer that produced
our perception of the world around us. This view that is deeply
rooted in the 'Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics' and
eventually became known as the 'measurement problem': The natural
state of any given system is a super-position of all possible quantum
eigenstates – sounds nice, but what does that actually mean?
Quantum effects only seem
to play a role in the microscopic world of atoms and molecules, we
don't really know why exactly they are not part of our everyday
experience. But let's still imagine a macroscopic analogy in form of
our moon:
The moon can be new or
full, waxing or waning, hanging around on the horizon or high above
us in the sky. The full quantum description of the moon, or its 'wave
function', is a super-position of all those possible states. Only if
you perform a measurement (i.e. look at the moon) does the moon chose
to be in only one of those states. e..g. it is full.
The mind blowing aspect is
that in this analogy another observer might see a different moon
phase - it all depends on the way you look or you could say on the
way you measure! Now this is really hard to grasp, but don't worry,
it will all become clearer when looking at the double-slit experiment
in the next post.
To summarize: Only when a
measurement is carried out, ONE of the variety of possible states of
any given quantum system is magically picked out and is then called
'reality'. This reality depends on how the observer looks, i.e. on
the particular way the experiment is carried out.
The process of looking or
picking out one of many possibility is what we call 'collapse of the
wave function' - indeed nobody knows how the system 'truly' looks
like before looking.
It has to be emphasized
though that the mechanism by which the act of measurement is actually
linked with the consciousness of the observer is not understood at
all to the present day, and subject of huuuge discussions. Still, the
mathematics works beautifully and has so far always reproduced or
predicted the experimental results (with an accuracy of up to 6
decimals)
Talking of which, the
mathematical formulation of such a measurement involves applying an
operator called 'projector' onto the system's wave function, the
result is called 'expectation value'. So what we actually do when we
measure (or look, or experience for that matter) is that we project
out one possibility depending on our expectation, depending on the
way we look… I thought Buddhists might like that :-).
Erwin Schrödinger
later formulated a famous macroscopic analogy of the measurement
problem, aka 'Schrödinger's
cat'. Others simply asked the question „Is the moon there when
nobody looks?“.
Quantum entanglement
Another founder of
quantum physics, Niels
Bohr never really endorsed the view that an observer would cause
the collapse of the wave function, later this was even denounced as
mystical and anti-scientific by Albert
Einstein et al in the infamous EPR
thought experiment. They combined the measurement problem with
another pillar of quantum physics called 'quantum
entanglement' which basically says that two particles, once
correlated, will always stay entangled even after having been
separated by arbitrarily large distances. When a measurement of one
of the pair's quantum numbers (e.g. spin, momentum or polarization)
is performed you immediately gain information about the corresponding
quantum number of the other member of this entangled pair - no matter
how far they were separated.
Here is a very simplified
example: you have a pair of particles A and B that have been created
together out of energy in the particle accelerator at CERN.
Both A and B have a property called 'spin' which can have a value of
either +1 or -1. Through the act of being created together the two
particles are 'correlated'. Scientists at CERN measure the total spin
of the pair to be equal to zero.
Now you separate the two
particles, particle A is beamed to K-Pax at the other end of the
galaxy, particle B stays at CERN. According to the law of spin
conservation the sum of spins of both particles has to be zero at
all times. Yet due to
the laws of quantum mechanics you cannot know which spin each of
these particles has individually: each one can have +1 or -1, in fact
here we encounter the super position of possible states again. The
wave function of each particle is a sum of +1 and -1, both with 50%
probability. Remember, as long as you don't measure the spin of each
particle is in an undefined state.
Finally
our alien science colleagues on K-Pax perform a measurement on
particle A and measure its spin to be +1. As the initial spin of the
correlated pair was zero, they correctly conclude that the spin of
particle B on the opposite end of the galaxy must be equal to -1.
Note that nobody touched
particle B, nobody has performed a measurement on particle B. The
really mind-numbing observation is that the measurement of the spin
of particle A must have caused the instantaneous collapse of the wave
function of particle B on the other end of the galaxy without any
measurement on particle B - otherwise its spin wouldn't be -1 but
still a super position of +1 and -1.
To cut a long story short:
through a measurement on the spin property of particle A one obtains
immediate information about the spin property of the partner
particle B on the other end of the galaxy. The information seems to
have travelled 100,000 light years in no time, but even more
important: the measurement of particle A caused the immediate
collapse of the wave function of particle B. Einstein was not
happy about that “spooky action at a distance“at all, to say the
least.
Another way of looking at
this thought experiment is to say that actually no information
travelled at all as the two particles still behave as being in fact
one correlated or 'entangled' pair.
Imagine that during the
big bang all energy and consequently all matter was created in one
big event – doesn't that mean that all particles, all
the stuff we are made of, are still entangled?
With
the EPR
thought experiment.Einstein and friends wanted to prove that
quantum entanglement violates special relativity (no transport of
information faster than the speed of light), hence quantum mechanics
cannot be a complete description of reality. But the quantum
entanglement is theoretically coherent and has been verified
experimentally thousands of times.
Still there is some
debate about the underlying
mechanism that enables this entanglement to occur and its
implications for the basic characteristics of nature.
These discussions
led to all kinds of attempts to replace the probabilistic view of a
collapsing wave function with a classical deterministic view, yet
none of those new approaches (see the introduction of hidden
variables or the many-world
theories) could be verified experimentally.
Although we don't
understand how it really works, the quantum world behaves in a
probabilistic and highly correlated way with the observer being
central to the outcome of a quantum experiment.
The next post will deal
with how that can be demonstrated in terms of the double-slit
experiment.
Comments
But now more and more questions keep popping up in my mind:
-So there isn't really anything 'out there' outside of my own mind as long as I don't measure it? But what does that mean for my every day life?
-And each time I close my eyes the world I've gotten used to so dearly in the last 3 decades may be there, or may not be there? To be honest, I don't like it...
-And,if all of us were entangled, and all and everything, wouldn't that mean that each of my actions - and non-actions for that part - mattered? Scary though...
I sure hope the next blog will be posted swiftly so I'll gain back at least some of my peace of mind... ;)
The whole quantum thing is totally counter intuitive as it defies our daily experience: rocks or trees seem solid, they are at only one place at a time, they don't fall through the ground etc.
In the world of atoms things aren't that easy. Yet quantum physics doesn't say that there is nothing out there when you don't look, it rather says that the "real" state of the microscopic world is very much different from what we measure.
life-enthusiast.com/.../...
You might also like this one:
www.istpp.org/.../
When you say that the mechanism by which the act of measurement is actually linked with the consciousness of the observer is not understood at all to the present day.
We create the world by our projections, what we see 'out there,' is nothing but our own creation, so when we think observe something and alter it by our observing it, all we are doing really is defining the result of the measurement with our intellect, again just the product of mind. You cannot work this out intellectually, the same as you cannot understand a zen koan with the intellect.
Are there already some “technologies” or s.th. like this, which are using the theory of quantum physics?
I don’t know, for example super-computers , communications- systems....
- It's a quite materialistic approach, but since Mr. Spock & Captain Kirk I'm looking forward to "be beamed" some day....
- our body
- sun light
- photosynthesis
- microprocessor
- much of the microelectronic devices we have
- super high resolution microscopes such as STM (Scanning tunnelling microscope)
- laser
- ultraprecise thermometers and clocks
- cryptography
As you are saying in one reply “The whole quantum thing is totally counter intuitive as it defies our daily experience, rocks or trees seem solid, they are at only one place at a time, they don't fall through the ground etc..”
So we could apply this to our body, too?
And what would be the "quantum view", if the body is not solid and not only at one place at time etc.?
But on the other hand each atom, each sub-atomic particle (not only in our bodies but in every physical object) is actually nothing but a residual effect of virtual particles super-rapidly popping in and out of existience due to quantum fluctuations.
It's a bit like seeing appearances or solid objects as a "frozen" state of a very dynamic and "fluid" reality.
Would you know where I can find a good discussion about the issue of "is the moon really there?".
ps: Is it possible that there is an absolute reality and, simulteaneously , our own approach of it? (as an individual observer, at least while we're equipped with individual measurement equipment (like one body in time and space).
Here is a pretty scientific discussion on this topic:
N. Davin Mermin: "Is the moon there when nobody looks? Reality and the quantum theory" (1985)
The relation between absolute and relative reality is discussed in length in Buddhist treaties. However it is not so easy to adopt this to your question because it is said that you cannot perceive absolute reality with your 6 senses. Yet it is exactly those senses that a quantum measurement involves.
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