The only thing that matters is whether or not the photons are detected or interacted with in any way prior to or after passing through the slits.... This has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. If it does how?
Mad Giant,
The experiments PROVE that not only is human observation and planning ALONE the determining factor, but also time and distance is irrelevant:
"But now let’s destroy our ability to measure the which-way paths of the s photons, but without interfering with them in any way. We can do this by placing a polarizing window in the path of the other photon P, far away. This plate will stop the second detector from registering coincidences. It’ll measure only some of the photons, and effectively scramble up the double-signals. Since a coincidence-counter is essential here in delivering information about the completion of the twins’ journeys, it has now been rendered thoroughly unreliable. The entire apparatus will now be uselessly unable to let us learn which slit individual photons take when they travel along path S because we won’t be able to compare them with their twins – since nothing registers unless the coincidence counter allows it to. And let’s be clear: We’ve left the QWPs in place for photon S. All we’ve done is to meddle with the p photon’s path in a way that removes our ability to use the coincidence counter to gain which-way knowledge. (The set-up, to review, delivers information to us, registers “hits,” only when polarity is measured at detector S AND the coincidence counter tells us that either a matching or non-matching polarity has been simultaneously registered by the twin photon at detector P). The result:
They’re waves again. The interference pattern is back. The physical places on the back screen where the photons or electrons taking path s hit have now changed. Yet we did nothing to these photons’ paths, from their creation at the crystal all the way to the final detector. We even left the QWPs in place. All we did was meddle with the twin photon far away so that it destroyed our ability to learn information. The only change was in our minds. How could photons taking path S possibly know that we put that other polarizer in place — somewhere else, far from their own paths? And QT tells us that we’d get this same result even if we placed the information-ruiner at the other end of the universe.
(Also, by the way, this proves that it wasn’t those QWP plates that were causing the photons to change from waves to particles, and to alter the impact points on the detector. We now get an interference pattern even with the QWPs in place. It’s our knowledge alone that the photons or electrons seem concerned about. This alone influences their actions.)
Okay, this is bizarre. Yet these results happen every time, without fail. They’re telling us that an observer determines physical behavior of “external” objects. Could it get any weirder? Hold on: Now we’ll try something even more radical – an experiment only first performed in 2002. Thus far the experiment involved erasing the which-way information by meddling with the path of p and then measuring its twin s. Perhaps some sort of communication takes place between photon p and s, letting s know what we will learn, and therefore giving it the green light to be a particle or a wave and either create or not create an interference pattern. Maybe when photon p meets the polarizer it sends s an IM (instant message) at infinite speed, so that photon s knows it must materialize into a real entity instantly, which has to be a particle since only particles can go through one slit or the other and not both. Result: No interference pattern.
To check out whether this is so, we’ll do one more thing. First we’ll stretch out the distance p photons have to take until they reach their detector, so it’ll take them more time to get there. This way, photons taking the S route will hit their own detectors first. But oddly enough, the results do not change! When we insert the QWPs to path S the fringes are gone; and when we insert the polarizing scrambler to path P and lose the coincidence-measuring ability that lets us determine which-way info for the S photons, the fringes return as before. But how can this be? Photons taking the S-path already finished their journeys. They either went through one or the other slit, or both. They either collapsed their “wave function” and became a particle or they didn’t. The game’s over, the action’s finished. They’ve each already hit the final barrier and were detected – before twin p encountered the polarizing scrambling device that would rob us of which-way information.
The photons somehow know whether or not we will gain the which-way information in the future. They decide not to collapse into particles before their distant twins even encounter our scrambler. (If we take away the P scrambler, the S photons suddenly revert to being particles, again before P’s photons reach their detector and activate the coincidence counter.) Somehow, photon s knows whether the “which-way” marker will be erased even though neither it, nor its twin, have yet encountered an erasing mechanism. It knows when its interference behavior can be present, when it can safely remain in its fuzzy both-slits ghost reality, because it apparently knows photon p — far off in the distance — is going to eventually hit the scrambler, and that this will ultimately prevent us from learning which way p went.
It doesn’t matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge or lack of it is the only thing that determines how these bits of light or matter behave."
.
.
So, since the facts show that the mind itself is creating the measurable reality .....I would argue that it is doing so in the image and likeness of its Creator. Our bodies obviously cannot exist outside of space / time confinements, but science is now showing that our minds/soul/spirit certainly does; just as our Creator does. And furthermore, the universe is designed for this very purpose at levels we are just now beginning to understand from a scientific point of view.
"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he"
