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[SOLVED] Evidence that Atoms Have Bizzare Wisdom
The old two slit experiment has replicable evidence of bizarre particle wisdom.
The old two slit experiment has replicable evidence of bizarre particle wisdom.
A gun is able to fire one atom every hour at a plate with photographic emulsion on its surface. If an atom hits the plate it makes a spot on the film. If a solid plate is placed in front of the back emulsion film, any atom striking the front solid plate is stopped and seen no more. If the atom happens to pass through the slit on the front plate it continues to the photographic emulsion.
When only one slit is open, the gun continues to fire one atom an hour and a large number of spots accumulate on the emulsion and one can notice the expected fuzzy diffraction pattern. Now if the first slit is closed and the second slit is opened in the front solid plate, the repeated atom firings produce the same pattern but offset by the distance that separates the the two slits. The atoms are producing the diffraction pattern characteristics of waves passing through a narrow harbor opening.
Now when both slits are opened and again the gun fires one atom at a time the individual atoms no longer land randomly within the usual diffraction pattern. Instead they fall only within the specific "allowed' regions where the light bands of the interference pattern appear and never in the dark band regions. Seems reasonable doesn't it?
But wait! This cannot be. A single atom was fired at a time. There is no other atom, be it wave or particle with which to interfere and cancel each other. Yet the interference pattern occurs and the dark bands appear. A single particle can only go through one of the slits. Already noted that atoms going through the single slit falls everywhere with the diffraction pattern with none of the alternating light and dark bands that result from the interference of waves at the emulsion screen. Although both slits are open, and still firing only one atom at a time,it must travel to only one of the two slits and go through that slit. If the other slit is closed it lands anywhere within the diffraction pattern. If the other slit is open, it never lands in the dark (forbidden) regions originally seen in the interference pattern which developed when there were two slits open.
The atom is a single entity, with a fixed locality. In its passage through one slit, why should opening or closing the other slit have any effect upon its passage? How can it "know' if the second slit is open or closed? But it does know! Somehow the atom is aware of its environment.
The identical results are obtained with firing single photons. Photon particles of light that travel at the speed of light, the now considered maximum speed attainable in our universe. Even if the photon is infinitely extended, in the time it travels from the photon gun to the open slit it cannot have 'felt' the second slit, check to see if that second slit was open or closed, communicated that information to the portion passing through the first slit and then decided where on the screen it was permitted to land and where it was forbidden. There was no time for the feeler to make the round trip.
This is bizarre.
Attribution: Gerald Schroeder, Ph.D. physics department MIT.