However, the lab experiments have eliminated many potential loopholes that I don’t think were addressed in this experiment….

Start with the double slit experiment… we all know that if you shoot a beam of photons at a double slit, you get an interference pattern on a screen placed on the other side of the slits. Even more interesting, if you turn down the light intensity so that only one photon at a time is sent through, you will still get that interference effect. Each individual photon must be passing through both slits to interfere with itself. You can say to yourself ‘well, yes,there are individual photons, but we also know that light is a wave so sure it is weird, but not that weird…”

Now you repeat the experiment with electrons, or Protons, or neutrons… you still get an interference pattern, even if you send the particles through one at a time.

Ok, you say, that’s really weird, but it seems to indicate that matter, just like light is both a particle and a wave.

You don’t believe matter can be a wave…you decide to be clever… “Aha, I will design an experiment where I measure wwhich slit the electron goes through” so you set up the experiment again, you put a sensitive detector at one or both of the slits to determine which slit the electron goes through…. and the interference pattern goes away…you simply get two stripes created by the electron PARTICLE going through one slit or the other.

To double check, you turn off the detectors at the slits, the interference pattern reappears. It seems the act of observation forces the electron to choose to be a particle.

So you are forced to accept that matter is both a particle and a wave, and the act of observation collapses the wavefunction and forces the electron to be a particle. No matter how you design the detector at the slit, no matter how little it might influence the electron, the very act of measurement forces the electron to be a particle, simply turn off the detector at the slit, and it suddenly becomes a wave.

This was known long before Wheeler’s thought experiment… it is counter-intuitive to our classical understanding of reality, but it is real and is the result of quantum mechanics.

Here is where Wheeler decided to try and trick the universe…”what happens if we design an experiment where we measure which slit the photon, or electron goes through, but we ensure that the decision to measure which slit it went through happens AFTER the particle or wave would hit the screen? There is no way that the pattern at the screen could be influenced by the measurement… what happens then?”

It was a long time before the experiment could be done, but lo and behold, if the detection of which slit it went through is made – even if that decision to detect happens after the light or electron would hit the screen the interference pattern disappears.

This experiment has been done many times with many variations to eliminate possible loopholes, the results are the same. It is as if a measurement in the future can force the electron to be a particle or a wave IN THE PAST. Wheeler predicted this would be the case, and years later he was proven to be correct.

But he didn’t stop there, all these experiments have been done in the small confines of a lab, but the same result should apply on the cosmic scale.

Take a quasar 10 billion light years away… let’s say between us and the quasar is a galaxy cluster 2 billion light years away gravitationally lenses the quasar such that it creates two images of the quasar- astronomy has found MANY such cases of gravitational lenses. This double image is effectively our double slit on a cosmic scale, light from the quasar can take two possible paths to get to us…

If we set up an experiment to determine which path a photon took around the galaxy cluster 2 billion years ago we are effectively forcing the photon to be a particle instead of a wave 2 billion years before we even decided to do the experiment. When the light passes around the galaxy cluster, it has no idea that which path it took would be measured, so it should take both paths as a wave. But somehow, our decision 2 billion years later forces it to behave instead as a particle.

This retrocausality is counter-intuitive in the extreme, it seems to violate Einstein’s theory of relativity, but it is reality. The quasar experiment has yet to be done, it would be EXTREMELY challenging… but quantum mechanics and the experiments in the lab assure us the results will be the same…

The act of observation can affect the past… be it nanoseconds in the past in the lab, or billions of years in the past on cosmic time scales.

This is reality… this is physics….what it ultimately means, for now, is philosophy.

Nature does not change from our observations, in my opinion. But each observation changes how we observe. Each interpretation changes how we interpret.

It may be bullshit, or not- or it may capture only a tiny slice of the nature of reality…. I am hesitant to share it because it will sound like I am on heavy drugs- I assure you I am not- my employer has me randomly tested…

Imagine you are at a dinner party, a fairly lame one as dinner parties go, but stick with me here…

To alleviate the boredom someone suggests a game, the rules are as follows:

One person is sent out into the hall, all the other guests decide on an object or concept together, once they agree on the secret object or concept the exiled player is allowed to come back in and rejoin the party.

The player can ask ‘yes or no’ questions of various other party members and the goal is to see if the player can deduce what the secret object or concept is…

(I didn’t say this was a great party, or a fun game, its just the goddamn analogy, so stick with me here….)

After a few rounds the party members are getting bored… sometimes the player gets it right in 5 questions, other times it can take 30 or more… the game is boring for all involved…

So finally, it is Tom’s turn to go into the hall- no one likes Tom- I mean, really- who would?… So some of the party gets the idea to change the rules of the game.

Tom goes into the hall, and some party member suggests a change to the rules….

“Let’s change the game and NOT decide on an object or concept beforehand- when Tom comes in we will let him ask each of us questions, but we will almost randomly answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with the ONLY restriction being that our yes or no answers must be consistent with the answers that have been given before”

In this variant of the game the ‘reality’ at the start is undefined, but with each yes or no answer the realm of possible answers – possible realities- gets narrowed down.

Tom comes back in and starts asking questions… the first answer is chosen at random, the second answer is also chosen at random, except it cannot conflict with the implications of the first answer…

Given enough questions Tom will narrow the possible realities down to a single possibility- uncertainty is dispelled with and all players have to admit, given the long chain of yes or no answers, there is no ambiguity left- there is only one answer possible, even though at the start of the game to screw with Tom there were INFINITE possibilities, the rules of the game required that with enough yes or no questions a single reality must emerge.

From MY PERSONAL understanding of Wheeler’s philosophy – we are constantly playing this game… defining reality as we observe the universe. The fact we exist to ask these questions dramatically restricts the possible answers at the start, every observation we make defines reality and restricts the laws of nature a bit more- the only constraint is that everything be mathematically self consistent.

The basic concepts that are critical to understand are:
1) reality requires an observer
2) The observations of that observer have to be consistent with previous observations…by that observer or previous observers
3) Everybody hates Tom…

that is it- we exist in a cloud of possibility, our observations diminish that cloud for us… in other words OBSERVERS establish the laws of the universe, the laws are ambiguous until observed.

Do I believe this is the way the multiverse operates? I am not sure- there is lots of ‘evidence’ – or more accurately ways to interpret evidence for this interpretation – but its implications are that its likely impossible to find evidence to disprove it. If it is true, then nothing changes… the best we can maybe hope for is in a hundred years we prove there are alternate realities we will never interact with…

Treat this as the musings of a tired man staying up too late

I myself believe that Wheeler’s views are closer to the reality of existence, but that reality is almost certainly even weirder than is dreamt of by Wheeler’s philosophy… but all this is WAY outside of my field and training, so my opinions on this matter should be given little credence. Effectively my beliefs on this issue are ONLY beliefs based on my superficial understanding of the underlying physics, and are little better than someone’s statement’s on their religion… except I freely admit my ‘religion’ could be wildly wrong and has little factual basis beyond controversial philosophical interpretation of the physical data and I would eagerly change my ‘religion’ if better facts become available that disprove it.