As in, are there some parts of physics that aren’t as clear-cut as they usually are? If so, what are they?

  • FlowVoid@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Well, if the second photon is in a new, weird superposition then the first photon must also be in the same new, weird superposition. Again, I don’t that’s compatible with Copenhagen given that the first photon no longer exists.

    Note by the way that 50% y+ and 50% y- is how all photons start. So if that’s also the final state then there is no reason for it to prefer any detector over the others.

    • TauZero@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      50% y+ and 50% y- is how all [electrons] start

      Yeah, but when you start with a 50% z+ / 50% z- electron, and you measure it and get say z+, it is now 100% z+, right? If you measure it again, you will always get z+. And then you give a bunch of them to your buddy with an identical lab and an identical Stern-Gerlach apparatus and and they say “hey, I measured your electrons that you said were 100% z+, and I’m getting 50% z+ 50% z-”. And you say “dude! your lab is in China! your z+ is my y+! you have to do coordinate rotation and basis substitution! if you look at my pure electron in your sideways basis, it’s in superposition for you”.

      When the first photon hits the screen, the basis is the screen basis. Each position on the screen - 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, etc - is an eigenvector and the first photon collapses to one of those eigenvectors. The second photon collapses too, but you are wrongly equating the positions on the screen and positions on paths A/B as if they are in the same basis. They are not! You were just misled to think they are the same basis because they are both named “position”, but they are as different as the z+ axis in America is different from z+ axis in China.

      The second photon collapses into the screen basis eigenvector 1.5 but that 1.5 does not correspond to any single location on path A or path B. If you do the basis substitution from screen basis into path basis, you get something like 80% path A and 20% path B (and something weird with the phases too I bet). Does that sound accurate?