SydPhilers suffering from seminar withdrawal tomorrow -- and relieved of picketing duties, due to the cancellation of the strike at USyd -- may like to join us for the following talk.
H. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Evans <[email protected]> Date: Sep 14, 2009 11:35 AM Subject: [SydFoP] This Wednesday's FoP Seminar To: [email protected] Hi All, For our next FoP seminar this Wednesday the 16nd of September at 11:30am in the philosophy common room, Main Quad we have David Miller presenting a talk entitled: “Support from weak measurements for a retrocausal account of quantum mechanics”. Abstract: Firstly some new results are given for weak measurements (WMs): a WM on a spin rotates it through an angle which depends on the angle between the original spin direction and the direction defined by WM apparatus, weak measurements on an entangled pair can violate the Bell inequalities and the entanglement of an EPR pair and the WM apparatus is also considered. The main point of the talk is that the first result provides a way of demonstrating quantitatively the merits of the retrocausal ("zigzag") account of the Bell-EPR experiment. As other have pointed out, the zigzag account of the correlations between entangled systems is a way of understanding the transfer of quantum information across a spacelike interval. More generally, it is shown how an explicitly retrocausal account can always be derived from the standard quantum mechanical expressions applying to any experiment. The result is applied to the two-slit experiment and it is argued that it gives a more plausible picture of how interference comes about and of how a quantum system can be (in human terms) at two places at once. The retrocausal account described here is similar to the proposal of Sinha and Sorkin (1998) and also has some points in common with Cramer's transactional account, Costa de Beauregard's original "zigzag" idea and other retrocausal approaches to quantum mechanics. Hope to see you all there, Pete --- Peter Evans Centre for Time University of Sydney _______________________________________________ SydFoP mailing list [email protected] http://lists.arts.usyd.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/sydfop -- ARC Federation Fellow & Challis Professor of Philosophy Centre for Time Department of Philosophy Main Quad, A14 University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia T: +61 2 9351 4057 F: +61 2 9351 3918 W: http://www.usyd.edu.au/time/ _______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://sydphil.info 879 subscribers now served. To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://sydphil.info
