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Random Thoughts
Quantum
Consciousness & Entanglement,
India & United States � Part One
by
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
 Consciousness derives from Com
(with) + Scio (knowledge). It is a much debated and controversial topic
and an unresolved mystery. One simple test of consciousness
(self-awareness) is the ability of a being to recognize its image in a
mirror and act appropriately. A lion in front of a mirror fails to
recognize its image in a mirror and treats it like another hostile lion
and attacks it. Even monkeys fail and only the apes (chimpanzees,
gorillas) pass the test and that too slower than a human child. A more
complex test is to anesthetize a great ape, put some removable
non-irritant paint on the forehead and when it wakes up, confront it
with a mirror and see if it attempts to rub off the paint on its own
forehead (not on the mirror image) when faced with a mirror. A success
on the test shows consciousness extending to self-awareness.
I am going to apply the same criteria to subatomic particles and give
details of physics experiments and analogies which are from Brian
Greene�s excellent book �The Fabric Of The Cosmos�. If we take a source
of light like a laser beam or any ordinary light and place a solid
obstacle with a single slit in front of it and a screen behind the
obstacle, we will see a single slit image on the screen. This is like
firing a machine gun in front of the slit. Those bullets that are
aligned with the slit will pass through and hit the screen in the shape
of the slit. If we were to cut a second slit close to and parallel to
the first slit in the obstacle and fire the gun, the bullets will strike
along the shape of the two slits on the screen and will have a two slit
distribution. If we do the same thing with the laser, what we see
instead is an interference pattern (alternate light and dark bands)
covering the area between and slightly beyond the two slits. This was an
early experiment that proved that light travels in the form of a wave.
Similar configurations are seen in a body of water when two propagating
waves collide and form a series of single waves and troughs where the
two waves are in phase and out of phase respectively. This is the
science behind the Bose earphones available in the market today to block
other noises.
The problem is that when Davisson and Gerner fired a beam of electrons
through a double slit they got the same interference pattern. Electrons
are supposed to be particles and yet they can behave like waves too. In
another experiment with lasers, others turned down the firing intensity
of a laser beam till it was emitting single photons at measurable time
intervals and yet the interference pattern was seen. This proves that
subatomic particles like photons, electrons etc. can behave either like
particles or waves. It gets even worse. Many of you must have seen a
wall consisting of a half silvered mirror. It is used in focus groups
and by police for a party or person to observe the focus group or
identify a crime perpetrator by a victim from a line-up. In physics such
a contraption is called a beam splitter. It allows half the photons to
pass through and reflects the other half in a random fashion Any single
photon can either pass through or be reflected. The photon beam is shone
and the reflected photons hit another mirror and are then redirected in
such a way as to meet the photons that passed through and then via the
slits to the screen. Once again we see an interference pattern.
The light or laser is dimmed so much that it emits only single photons
at an interval of few seconds. Any single photon can either pass through
or be reflected. One would expect than the two light beams would behave
like the two streams of machine gun bullets. If we now put a photon
detector in front of the beam splitter mirror which will detect every
photon that doesn�t pass through it and is reflected and carry out the
experiment, the image on the screen changes from the interference
pattern to two slits as in the machine gun experiment as the photons now
choose to behave like particles and not waves. It has been made
complicated by placing a detector in front of one or both slits (further
down the path from the beam splitter). Even if one or both detectors are
turned on only after the photon has traveled beyond the beam splitter,
the interference pattern is replaced by two slit images. The photons
behave like particles and seem to know in advance that the experimenter
would turn on the detectors. If you can know that they behaved like
particles they will do so. If that knowledge is hidden they will behave
as waves. If they know that you know, they alter their behavior in a
predictably consistent fashion.
Subatomic particles have a property called spin (which maybe clockwise
or anti-clockwise). One can make the experiment more complex by placing
a tagging device in front of the slit that alters the spin of a photon
to a specific direction. The screen can be devised such that the impacts
of photons with a specified spin can be identified. If this is done then
the image seen is two slits and not the interference pattern. If tagging
devices are placed in front of each slit, such that the photons passing
through either slit have identical spins and cannot be distinguished by
their impact on the screen, the interference pattern reappears. If spin
modifying devices are placed behind the slit but in front of the screen
so that both streams of photons have the same spins and spin direction
ceases to be an identifying marker, once again we get the interference
pattern. For even more complicated and bizarre experiments and results
using down converters splitting photons and their more complicated paths
and the use of detectors leading either to a double slit or interference
pattern image depending on switching detectors off and on you need to
read the book. The conclusion is that the subatomic particle switches
from a particle to wave form by having the ability to know how the
experimenter is going to modify the experiment or is able to go back in
time and modify its behavior to suit the experimenter. Surely this
denotes a form of conscious self-awareness in the particle about itself
and its environment.
�� Continued
July 26,
2009
Image under license with
Gettyimages.com
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