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Steve B

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  • Does Quantum probability collapse imply FTL information travel ?

    Take the classic double slit experiment with single photon's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experimen... Consider a detector screen placed at an angle and a long way from the slits. At any position prior to the detector screen, the photon exhibits 'wave like' behaviour with it's 'position' spread out in a 'probability' distribution across the expanding 'wave front'.

    When PART of the wave front hits the part of the screen nearest the slits, the probabilities must start to change (either the photon 'arrives' in which case the probabilities 'evaporate' OR if it does not 'arrive' then the probabilities must change to reflect the fact that it is now 'more probable' it will arrive at some other point on the screen further away).

    Since a single photon can only arrive at a single point, this must imply FTL adjustments to the probability wave front are taking place ?

    4 AnswersPhysics10 years ago
  • How is it possible for light (photons) to be Refracted?

    We aim a laser at a glass block. The beam strikes at an angle, and is Refracted or 'bent' (ignoring the part that is reflected). The 'classical' explantion for this effect (see wikipedia) treats light as a 'wave' .. well in a light 'beam' from a laser we have billions of photon's & so it's not unreasonable to claim that all these photon's interact with one another, so treating the beam as a 'wave' is a reasonable representation ..

    Now, let's reduce the intensity of light emitted by our laser - does the 'beam' still get 'bent' ? = well, yes, of course you say ...

    At some point the intensity of the beam is reduced to the point where we are emitting individual photons .. now, why are they still 'bent' ? (no cheating - you can't claim 'group interation' or 'intergate' over 'the whole stream' because I can arrange this experiment to fire just photon one into the glass .... watch it 'bend' and then stop ...)

    3 AnswersPhysics1 decade ago