The Universe Damaged By Observation? 521
ScentCone writes "The Telegraph covers a New Scientist report about two US cosmologists who suggest that, a la Schrodinger's possibly unhappy cat, the act of observing certain facets of our universe may have shortened its life . From the article: 'Prof Krauss says that the measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the decay of the void to zero — back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving was falling rapidly.'"
Amen (Score:1, Interesting)
You can postulate anything but unless you can present an experiment, you are no more plausible than any shaman.
Already Proposed (Score:3, Interesting)
with all due respect (Score:1, Interesting)
There was a time when physicists were very concerned with the measurement problem, that quantum states evolve in a certain deterministic way aside from the times when a measurement is made, at which point the quantum state collapses into a singular state corresponding to the value which was measured.
In the last 30 years we know better, which is that the strange features of quantum states, like superposition in the case of Schrodinger's Cat or entanglement in the case of EPR 'action at a distance', rapidly vanish when the quantum system comes into contact with a macroscopic temperature resevoir --- the mathematics of QFT+Thermo has been worked out to show how temperature fluctuations cause the collapse. This solution to the measurement problem is called decoherence.
The only people left who say the measurement problem has to do with the conciousness doing the measuring seem to want the universe to be bizzare, but this desire is not enough when ho hum decoherence predicted by current theories is sufficient to account for our observations.
Quarantine by Greg Egan (Score:4, Interesting)
Quarantine [wikipedia.org] by Greg Egan [wikipedia.org]...is a great book which explores the idea that the wave function collapse caused by observation is something specific to the human brain, and the rest of the universe is starting to get a bit upset about humans carving up the universe by observing it.
Its a great read, and a good way to get a better understanding of (at least Egans' idea of) quantum mechanics.
Copenhagen interpretation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On first glance... (Score:3, Interesting)
To observe something, it must be interacted with. The most common form of interaction involves a photon bouncing off of something, or being generated by something.
This involves a small energy transfer and/or a series of reactions between the "thing" used for observation and the observee. This is why observation causes a solidification of state, and/or change.
Re:consciousness does not... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's a consistent phenomenon in quantum physics, it supports the "simulated reality" hypothesis, i.e., that the universe is a simulation on someone's computer. Hear me out:
If someone were to run a simulated reality, they would (as we observe in known simulated reality) take steps to minimize computational resources. Where possible, if a computation doesn't effect future states, and they can feasibly exclude it, they won't perform the calculation. Therefore, instead of running through the full laws of physics for the whole simulated universe, they would only "pick a state" of some subsystem once it becomes coupled to rest of the universe and therefore "has to" perform the computations necessary to make it appear consistent -- exactly the quantum phenomenon you describe.
It further implies that we could find lower bounds on the computational power of the simulator running the universe if there is one: just find the minimum necessary to consistently generate our current observations. If we want to crash the universe, then we just have point our observation equipment in such a way that rapidly increases the necessary computations required to continue "fooling us". This would most likely include observing the initial state of as many highly-predictable deterministic subsystems as we can, waiting, and then "checking" a random one -- that forces the universe's computer to run through all of them, just to be sure it's consistent for the one that we check.
Of course, if we crash the universe, we all "die".
[/padded room]
2 problems with this... (Score:2, Interesting)
the first is, as someone already stated, we aren't sending out photons to these distant objects to observe them. The photons come to us so the common way of observing something (hitting it with a photon) isn't being done in this case and in fact the opposite is occurring which means we aren't affecting it.
Second, (this is a long one) I'm currently reading "Decoding the Universe" by Charles Seife and he discusses information theory and how it relates to quantum and relativity theory. An interesting thing he discusses is decoherence and how a cat can't be in superposition but an atom can.
The problem is that decoherence happens too fast for us to measure the superposition for a cat compared to an atom. To prevent decoherence from happening you have to prevent something in the environment from interacting with it, that is to put the object in a complete vaccuum and cool it to absolute zero. This slows down and minimizes the chance of a particle interacting with the object you want in superposition. The bigger and warmer the object the harder it is to cool it, put it in a vaccuum, and prevent any atomic particle from hitting it. That's why cats and anything else on the macroscopic scale can't be in superposition.
Seife states that observing particles can actually slow radioactive decay because the observation continually resets its superposition but sometimes it will still decay. What makes it decay? Nature is making measurements too using vaccum flutuations (at the quantum level). Sometimes during the observation of the vaccuum flutuation the superposition collapses in a way to make the atom split (decay). Finally, my conclusion is that if Nature is making observations then the fact that we are observing supernovae shouldn't affect them anymore than Nature is already affecting them and the universe as a whole.
Psht (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:On first glance... (Score:1, Interesting)
Wouldn't that just basically be the anthropic principle though? The thought that events don't occur unless it is witnessed by a human? I would think in that case it's simply relegated to the domain of philosophy, not physics.
"Observation" at the quantum level requires interacting in such a way that you alter the system by actively meddling in things. In that case, yes you're collapsing a quantum state to a single outcome. But observing light emitted by events that have already been collapsed? Only if it's entangled and SAAD takes effect when you intercept each photon, collapsing the state of each one and influencing its entangled partner at the original event.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with physics to tell you how often that might happen, and if it would be a statistically great enough frequency to influence something as huge as a star, nova, or supernova.
Re:The phrase (Score:2, Interesting)
Scientists seem to be having problems understanding the complexity of reality and are turning to mysticism. Any conclusion that depends on mysticism is automatically suspect in my book. It's back to the primitive practice of inventing a god or demon to account for things we don't understand.
What next? Prayers and holy water before observations?
Re:So if I stop looking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes me lend some credence to the "infinite universes" theory. We actually destroyed some other universe, not our own.
Of course, it's more likely I'm just being dense and not understanding the theory involved here, and the universe is just set to collapse a few trillion years before it otherwise would have.
This assumes, of course, that human beings are the only objects in the universe observing such things. Will some other intelligence step up and accuse Humanity of universicide? Or will they observe similar things and bring our universe to a crashing halt?
Re:That's stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
In many-worlds theory quantum systems never really collapse - they just branch new universes. In the classical Copenhagen interpretation the wave-function collapses. There's also 'many minds' interpretation (which states that universe exists because it's being observed by conscious observers) and so on.
Underlying math does not depend on your favorite interpretation. And so they are outside of scope of the science at the moment. However, there's a hope that there might be falsified some time later.
quantum suicide (Score:2, Interesting)
This whole thing is non-sense. Single photons, like electrons, are mostly statistical objects, like public opinion. Human observation can, indeed, extract a small amount of energy more than was being lost to non-human (some would say inanimate) observation and destablize an ambiguous balance. Large groups of photons, however, are not so easily destabilized by such a small extra extraction of information/energy.
If dark matter exists in the masses we are talking about, the universe is itself observing the dark matter, and one thousand relatively small telescopes here could not alter that.
Looking towards another interpretation, our observation could definitely alter our _perceptions_ concerning the stability of the universe. (In our fear of the metaphysical, we assume far too much in favor of stability.)
joudanzuki
Re:On first glance... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's all wellandgood, but here's the twist. They inserted the detectors, and disconnected the outputs from any sort of meter or display device. Therefore the detectors "observed," but no conscious knowledge could be gained.
The interference pattern went away, and they got a classical distribution.
IMHO, the wave "collapses" when the potential error exceeds Heisenberg's limit, and that constitutes "observation." Most any other answer makes a special place for consciousness in the universe, and cascades into telepathy, clairvoyance, the Force, etc.
Wish I could remember the reference.
Re:Crap, crap, crap (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't confuse unfalsifiable interpretations with testable hypotheses.
Interaction vs. observation (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is how complex is complex enough? The only criteria we know is enough, is interaction with an intelligent observer, a.k.a. observation. Because observation is the only way we can determine the outcome.
What happens to a system when it is not observed is anyway philosophy, not physics.
Re:So if I stop looking? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, global warming is caused by ascended alien cyborg pirates observing the earth from a high vibrational dimension! It is so simple. Why the scientists don't even want to do studies on this??? Because of the secret alien-government hybrid cloning cover-up!
Re:So if I stop looking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Faster than light interaction does not require faster than light transfer of information. All attempts to use faster than light interaction to cause transfer of information have failed to date.
Positing that particles behave differently when being 'observed' would require you to provide a testable definition of 'observation' whic I don't think you can.
The theory that nothing can travel faster than light is just that, a theory. The theory that particles behave the same whether or not they are under experimental conditions is an essential precondition for science.
All experiments are to a degree a measurement of the phenomena under test and the experimental apparatus. But saying that the decision to observe by itself changes the outcome is bad metaphysics.
All QM tells us is that it is impossible to set up an experiment that measures two complimentary variables at the same time. The interaction necessary to measure one will disrupt the other. QM does not tell us that the decision to record the results of an experiment changes the outcome.