The Double Slit Experiment -- What's going on?
I saw the following video on YouTube:
What follows is the result of my thought experiment on the matter.
In the double slit experiment, light going through the two slits forms a wave pattern on the screen behind, unless you try to measure what's going on, in which case it ceases to produce the wave pattern. It doesn't matter if you measure before or after the slits, the result is the same.
So we reach the conclusion of "wave particle duality" and there's talk of the photon "deciding" which to be based on whether you're looking or not.
What's going on? Does the photon know you're measuring it and deliberately confound you to mess with your head?
I don't think so.
I think you have to be mindful of relativity.
From our perspective it takes time for the photon to leave the source and travel to the destination, with various things that could happen along the way (such as being measured).
When we think of a journey and things happening along the way (such as being measured), we think in human terms -- you travel across the wilderness and meet with highway robbers along the way -- that meeting affects the rest of the journey but not what came before.
But a photon's "journey" is different because from the photon's perspective there is no time. From the photon's perspective, it is at the start of its journey, the end of its journey, and all places in between, simultaneously. Neither time nor space exist for a photon. It doesn't matter if the journey is a few inches or trillions of light years. It doesn't matter if the photon was produced a moment ago or billions of years ago. It doesn't matter because those notions only exist in our perspective. From the photon's perspective, it touched its source, its destination, and every point in between, simultaneously.
Including the point of measurement.
We know that any measurement, by its nature, affects that which is being measured. When the photon is measured anywhere along its journey, it is measured everywhere along its journey, because it visits the point of measurement at the same "time" that it visits the source, destination, and all other points along its "journey."
It's not a journey. It's a connection from the source to the destination that only appears to be a journey when viewed from our perspective, but is actually a single existence whose entire nature is defined by everything along the path. So the measurement, unlike highway robbery, does not affect only what comes later in the journey; it affects everything along the connection, from the source to the destination.
That's what's going on.
I think.
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