Physicists snatch a peep into quantum paradox

[n2doc]

Measurement-induced collapse of quantum wavefunction captured in slow motion.

Eugenie Samuel Reich

It is the most fundamental, and yet also the strangest postulate of the theory of quantum mechanics: the idea that a quantum system will catastrophically collapse from a blend of several possible quantum states to just one the moment it is measured by an experimentalist.

In textbooks on quantum mechanics, the collapse is depicted as sudden and irreversible. It is also extremely counterintuitive. Researchers have struggled to understand how a measurement can profoundly alter the state that an object is in, rather than just allowing us to learn about an objective reality.

A new experiment1sheds some light on this question through the use of weak measurements — indirect probes of quantum systems that tweak a wavefunction slightly while providing partial information about its state, avoiding a sudden collapse.

Atomic and solid-state physicist Kater Murch of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues performed a series of weak measurements on a superconducting circuit that was in a superposition — a combination of two quantum states. They did this by monitoring microwaves that had passed through a box containing the circuit, based on the fact that the circuit's electrical oscillations alter the state of the microwaves as they pass through the box. Over a couple of microseconds, those weak measurements captured snapshots of the state of the circuit as it gradually changed from a superposition to just one of the states within that superposition — as if charting the collapse of a quantum wavefunction in slow motion.

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http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

[Mnemosyne]

1. Damn, no photos. nt

[xfundy]

2. This is consorting with th' DEVIL!

So called "science" might explain something realistically, so it must be crushed.

Praise the baby, never mind that he was most likely made up as a political weapon against Jews looking for a "savior." I SAID PRAISE THE BABY!

[greiner3]

3. So in other words;

The quantum waveform was 'tricked'; a measurement was taken without being taken.

Reminds me of the Asimov short story "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline";

"In Asimov's writing, thiotimoline is notable for the fact that when it is mixed with water, the chemical actually begins to dissolve before it contacts the water. This is explained by the fact that in the thiotimoline molecule, there is at least one carbon atom such that, while two of the carbon's four chemical bonds lie in normal space and time, one of the bonds projects into the future and another into the past."