RE: Do electrons exist?
April 6, 2019 at 10:17 am
(This post was last modified: April 6, 2019 at 10:27 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I don't have to watch any video to know that this is a very common misconception of what the term means.
It's not about "watching", it's not about us. Air coming out of a tire when you check the pressure is "the observer effect". Light hitting an object is "the observer effect". Any material interaction which necessarily alters a phenomena is "the observer effect". Any two particles interacting in this way, absent anyone or anything watching them, are "observing" each other.
Quote:In physics, the observer effect is the theory that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A commonplace example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire; this is difficult to do without letting out some of the air, thus changing the pressure. Similarly, it is not possible to see any object without light hitting the object, and causing it to reflect that light. While the effects of observation are oftentimes negligible, the object still experiences a change. This effect can be found in many domains of physics, but can usually be reduced to insignificance by using different instruments or observation techniques.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
An especially unusual version of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena (by changing the test apparatus and passively 'ruling out' all but one possibility), can actually change the measured result. A particularly famous example is the 1998 Weizmann experiment.[1] Despite the "observer" in this experiment being an electronic detector—possibly due to the assumption that the word "observer" implies a person—its results have led to the popular belief that a conscious mind can directly affect reality.[2] The need for the "observer" to be conscious has been rejected by mainstream science as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process,[3][4][5] apparently being the generation of information at its most basic level that produces the effect.
It's not about "watching", it's not about us. Air coming out of a tire when you check the pressure is "the observer effect". Light hitting an object is "the observer effect". Any material interaction which necessarily alters a phenomena is "the observer effect". Any two particles interacting in this way, absent anyone or anything watching them, are "observing" each other.
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