Hi All, Our next Foundations of Physics seminar is Wednesday the 30th of September at 11:30am in the philosophy common room, Main Quad. We will have Tarek Halabi who is visiting us from UCSF presenting a talk entitled "The double slit experiment and the fire alarm".
Abstract: When both slits of the double slit experiment are open, closing one of the slits increases the detection rate at some points on the detection screen. This very feature underlies Feynman's famous pessimistic quote on getting lost in dark alleys when thinking about this experiment. Having heard a fire alarm, there are two trajectories the universe can take into a past in which an unintended fire had started. One, in which a fire drill strangely coinciding with the unintended fire triggers the alarm, and another whereby NO fire drill was scheduled and the unintended fire triggers the alarm. These two trajectories into a past in which an unintended fire had started are analogous to the particle trajectories through the two slits into a future in which the aforementioned detection occurs. When trajectories involving a scheduled drill are ruled out, the probability of the unintended fire rises (through Bayesian inference), much as the detection probability rises when one of the slits is closed. The enigmatic feature of the double slit experiment may therefore be merely a feature of a time reversed thermodynamic arrow, whereby future probabilities are computed using Bayesian inference methods used to compute probabilities of past events when the arrow was not reversed. This is one of many items in a list we present convincing the reader that resolution of the measurement problem hinges on closer attention to subtleties of the arrow of time. Hope to see you all there! Pete --- Peter Evans Centre for Time University of Sydney
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