The Myth of the ‘Observer Effect’ in Quantum Physics
First the facts! (followed by some of my reflections)
You may have heard about the so-called ‘observer effect’ in quantum physics (QP). It is one of those many weird aspects of QP that has sparked so many speculations, conjectures, and controversies. Much too often I hear people saying that in QP the outcome of an experiment depends on the observer’s mind or consciousness. Some go even so far as stating that this supposedly demonstrates how reality comes into existence only because of our observations or, because of a conscious observer.
First of all, without going too much into the technical details, let us see what the facts are and what this ‘observer effect’ is really about.
In the microscopic world of QP, things have a strange and unintuitive indeterministic character. For example, according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, we can’t measure with absolute precision both the position and the momentum (the quantity of motion, just imagine the speed) of a particle. If you try to find out with increasing precision the position of a p…
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