Atomic Choice

I know an update is long overdue, I’m sure the random person or two who occasionally check this site are wondering how my epic vacation went. I promise I’ll spill the beans soon. Right now however, I am thinking about this article and how it reminds me of the human free-will and God’s predestination/foreknowledge/omniscience conundrum. Incidently, some time ago Dan Price, jimi, Luke and I had a discussion that had Dan, jimi and I coming to a conclusion strikingly similar, albeit phrased in three distinctly different ways. Read from the article for yourself:

Last week a conference at Oxford University explored the idea that every time a subatomic system reaches a decision point—to undergo radioactive decay or not, say—it chooses both possibilities: in this world the particle decays, while in a parallel world it does not. Some physicists buy this “many worlds” interpretation because the alternative is even more unpalatable: that quantum systems choose one possibility or another only when an observer looks. Einstein loathed the idea that reality is created by observers.

New studies suggest, however, that it is possible to measure something without affecting it. The key is doing the experiments, well, gently. Anyone with a vague memory of Physics 101 knows that if you shine a light on what you want to measure, or stick a thermometer in it, you alter it. Taking the temperature of a steak with a cold thermometer, for instance, cools it as heat is transferred from meat to glass. You don’t know what the temperature “really” was before you jabbed in the thermometer—a notion enshrined as the uncertainty principle. To circumvent this rule, Israeli physicist Yakir Aharonov got the idea of making “weak measurements,” akin to waving your hand over the steak to feel its heat. That’s not very precise with meat, but it works with quantum measurements: if you make enough weak measurements, the average comes impressively close to the actual value, experiments are showing. “Weak measurements let you lift the veil of secrecy imposed by the uncertainty principle,” says Paul Davies of Arizona State University.