Non-Locality

[Requia ☣]

Its exactly like an electron cloud.  (literally the same thing) You have the right idea.

[Telarus]

That's pretty much how I visualize it as well. With the double-slit experiment the fuzzy sphere passes through both slits, and thus creates an interference pattern with itself, which can be seen when the light strikes the sensor/wall after the slit.



When one of the slits is closed after the photon is fired but before it reaches the double-slit, the sensor/wall shows only a dot of light.

[Kai]

oh god that makes perfect sense, both visually and aesthetically.

So sosososo......how big is this photon probability cloud when it hasn't collapsed to a point. I mean, as far as comparison to other probability fields like the electron cloud of a hydrogen atom?

[Bu🤠ns]

Thanks, Kai, for running with this.  I've learned a bit since the beginning of this thread and I think it's because you're asking the right questions.

[rong]

oh god that makes perfect sense, both visually and aesthetically.

So sosososo......how big is this photon probability cloud when it hasn't collapsed to a point. I mean, as far as comparison to other probability fields like the electron cloud of a hydrogen atom?

i think, technically, probability clouds (in this sense) are infinitely large.  i.e. there is a chance (albeit small) that a given photon could be *anywhere*

to bound the size of the cloud, you'd probably (hehe probably) wan't to throw some sort of upper limit at the probability curve - i.e. how big of a cloud has a 99.9999% chance of containing the photon.  to do that requires a function that i don't know - but maybe someone else 'round these parts does.

[Triple Zero]

A photon's "size" depends purely on its wavelength, and therefore can be arbitrarily large. My friend does research on high energy* cosmic particles that hit our atmosphere all the time, when a cosmic particle hits some other particle in the high atmosphere it creates a chain reaction of all sorts of subatomic shizzle, which due to directional magnetic forces in the atmosphere separate into a positive and negative charged region, creating a current (?) between them and this generates an electromagnetic wave that can be several meters in size.

the question is not so much how big a photon can be, but more whether you still want to call it a photon if it's that big, or something.

*moar high than the stuff the LHC generates, btw.

[Kai]

A photon's "size" depends purely on its wavelength, and therefore can be arbitrarily large. My friend does research on high energy* cosmic particles that hit our atmosphere all the time, when a cosmic particle hits some other particle in the high atmosphere it creates a chain reaction of all sorts of subatomic shizzle, which due to directional magnetic forces in the atmosphere separate into a positive and negative charged region, creating a current (?) between them and this generates an electromagnetic wave that can be several meters in size.

the question is not so much how big a photon can be, but more whether you still want to call it a photon if it's that big, or something.

*moar high than the stuff the LHC generates, btw.

Sure, I'll call it a photon. Like I said, the image of a photon as like an electron cloud works so much better for me than as a discrete unit visually, because a photon is really just a vector of electromagnetic force, which to me doesn't make any sense to imagine as a little pebble zipping through space. Asking how big it is just means I get an idea of the scale, and that it can be variable in size means the scale depends on the context. So, radio photons are bigger than xray photons, due to the longer wavelength? That makes sense.

[Triple Zero]

yes.

except it's not an "electron cloud", cause electrons are particles in themselves. it's an electromagnetic wave. why or how this is different, i dunno.

[Kai]

yes.

except it's not an "electron cloud", cause electrons are particles in themselves. it's an electromagnetic wave. why or how this is different, i dunno.

As like an electron cloud, a field of probability. A simile, if you will. I understand electrons protons and neutrons are highly compacted energy ( matter) and are more discrete than photons.

[Triple Zero]

ok, I dont actually "understand", except that photons are this vague "thing" not made up of anything.

[Kai]

ok, I dont actually "understand", except that photons are this vague "thing" not made up of anything.

think fantasy. Think about the idea of nebulous energy balls. Sorta like that, except this photon is this little fuzzy package of energy that increases in size depending on its wavelength (which depends on its energy level).

Or something like that. Definitely thinking of them as these fuzzy balls of energy has made it possible to understand the double slit experiment. here I was thinking of them as more discrete. Now it makes sense.

[LMNO]

Are we talking about non-locality, or Heisenberg?  Choose one.

Quantum weirdness appears where the external world joins our perception of it. And it appears most dramatically in apparatus with two or more detectors. By choosing what to look for at one, you seem to influence what happens at the other through what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."

The thorny issue here is not that measurement influences events, but that the influence seems to extend everywhere instantly and therefore "unphysically." Einstein had shown in his earliest work on relativity that the order of separated events is ambiguous if they follow each other too quickly to be connected by a light ray.

This is the case with the correlated detector events in the EPR setup. Seen from different moving frames of reference a click at B could appear before, after, or at the same time as a click at A. In some frames the detector at B seems to "know in advance" how we would tune the detector at A. Even if we perceive this mysterious correlation through an autopsy of the data long after they are collected, it is still unsettling. It suggests a kind of pre-wiring of events at the microscopic level that vaguely conflicts with our notion of free will. How did B know to click exactly in the opposite channel of a detector at A even when we set the angle of A at the very last instant before hearing A's click? We can freely tilt A, but events at the distant B seem to know our choice immediately – even, in some relativistic sense, before we ourselves knew how we would set A.

The issue is much broader than merely a subtle correlation in a highly contrived experimental setup. Microscopic nature does not need observers or their experiments to trigger a mouse-trapping registration. Everything we can survey with our gross instruments as "the real world" is an aggregation of Standard Model pieces that fell into place in a process similar to the act of measurement.

Each large-scale object we examine can be regarded as a collection of Nature's own detectors. The vast number of particles, the randomness of their arrangement, and the complexity of their histories obscure any peculiarity that might have come from entanglement among the parts of the quantum wave function that described their genesis. But entanglement there must have been, given the origin of all material excitations in the strongly interacting environment of the Big Bang.

Mystics have expounded on this subtle connectedness among events, and compared it with an attitude toward reality found in some Asian cultural traditions. Nothing in those traditions, however, is comparable to the subtle machinery of quantum theory. Awareness of Asian philosophy does not help us understand the quantum behavior beneath reality, or vice versa.

[Triple Zero]

ok, I dont actually "understand", except that photons are this vague "thing" not made up of anything.

think fantasy. Think about the idea of nebulous energy balls. Sorta like that, except this photon is this little fuzzy package of energy that increases in size depending on its wavelength (which depends on its energy level).

Or something like that. Definitely thinking of them as these fuzzy balls of energy has made it possible to understand the double slit experiment. here I was thinking of them as more discrete. Now it makes sense.

yeah that's how I think of them too. I kind of hesitate to call it "understanding" though

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Are we talking about non-locality, or Heisenberg?  Choose one.

I chose Heisenberg, but then the question changed.   

[LMNO]

It's because you tried to find out how fast it was going!