Quantum weirdness; time in both directions? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, February 09, 2015, 18:26 (3363 days ago) @ dhw

In delicate experimentation time seems to run in both directions in the quantum state, and the future seems to affect the past:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150209083011.htm-"Even if you know everything quantum mechanics can tell you about a quantum particle, said Murch, an assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, you cannot predict with certainty the outcome of a simple experiment to measure its state. All quantum mechanics can offer are statistical probabilities for the possible results.-"The orthodox view is that this indeterminacy is not a defect of the theory, but rather a fact of nature. The particle's state is not merely unknown, but truly undefined before it is measured. The act of measurement itself that forces the particle to collapse to a definite state.-"In the Feb. 13 issue of Physical Review Letters, Kater Murch describes a way to narrow the odds. By combining information about a quantum system's evolution after a target time with information about its evolution up to that time, his lab was able to narrow the odds of correctly guessing the state of the two-state system from 50-50 to 90-10.-"It's as if what we did today, changed what we did yesterday. And as this analogy suggests, the experimental results have spooky implications for time and causality -- at least in microscopic world to which quantum mechanics applies."-This is where Kastner's two levels of reality helps to understand it. The results can be a loop in quantum reality without regard to 'our' time. I think she showed us that the interconnection of the quantum state does not need time.