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VII. The Uncertainty Principle Scientists have found that Man is, in some cases, a key component in the formation of the reality of the natural world. Although there are many phenomena that are strictly the result of natural causes such as the action of waves in shaping beaches or of rain and wind in shaping mountains, there are some which are not. One is the particle-wave duality of quantum physics.
In the 1920s,
experiments were carried out which demonstrated that the particle
and wave characteristics of electrons never manifest themselves together
at the In
1927, the German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg
published a The uncertainty of the position of an electron at a certain time will depend on the forces that bind it to the nucleus and on the influence of other electrons in the atom. These conditions determine a "probability pattern" which represents the electron's tendency to be in various areas of the atom at different times. Mathematically this is represented by the wave probability function, a quantity that is related to the probability of finding the electron in various places at various times. (The quantity of the probability is calculated by the 'wave equation', the fundamental equation of quantum physics formulated by Erwin Schrödinger. The symbol for the wave probability function is the Greek letter psi, the first symbol of the equation on the home page.) The actualization of a latent property of an electron by the act of observation, i.e., the transformation of a certain feature from potential to real, produces the collapse of the wave probability function. A good example is the classical case of a tree that falls in a forest. Will it make a sound if no one is there to hear it? The answer is that, when it hits the ground, it will generate sound waves but not sound 'per se'. The waves will become sound (by definition) only when they are 'heard' and for this to occur a hearing device - an ear - is necessary. It is the ear that turns sound waves into sound as it is the eye that turns light waves into vision.
The effect that observers have in converting latent features of subatomic
particles into There was once a man who
said: And the reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment
is odd. Yours faithfully, GOD."
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same time. Each of these features would show themselves separately
depending on which one the experimenter decided to study. In other
words, if the experimenter chose to study the electron as particle,
it appeared as particle by eliminating the wave features; if he decided
to study it as wave, it appeared as wave by eliminating the particle
features. To the Danish physicist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr
this unique characteristic meant that waves and particles, rather
than being contradictory and mutually exclusive features, were instead
complementary aspects of the same reality and that both were needed
for a complete understanding of the quantum world.
paper, the content of which was to become the most controversial and
arguably the most important aspect of subatomic physics. This feature
was so strange that even Albert Einstein could not accept it. Heisenberg
proved that it is not possible to determine simultaneously and with
accuracy the position and momentum (mass
x velocity)
of an electron. Before a measurement is taken only an approximate
calculation of the electron's position and momentum can be made. He
showed that if an experimenter attempts to measure the position of
an electron, the act of measurement will change its velocity and therefore
its momentum. Conversely, if the experimenter attempts to measure
its velocity, the measurement will change its position. This is because
the light waves produced in the process of measurement by the measuring
instrument will affect the electron. This fundamental reality, called
the principle of indeterminacy or Uncertainty Principle, implies that
the properties of particles do not manifest themselves until they
are observed. They are potential (latent), but do not become actual
(real) until an observation is made. 
real ones was given experimental validation by the French physicist
Alain Aspect and his collaborators collaborators in 1983. It
is known that two correlated photons, that is photons emitted by the
same excited atom, will possess polarization
(the direction of the electric field with which they are
associated)
+1 and -1. Classical
(Newtonian) physics holds that each photon keeps its individual polarization
independent of measurement because each is considered a separate and
independent entity. According to the Uncertainty Principle, however,
in the subatomic world, before a measurement is made, the polarization
of each photon remains uncertain. The experiment showed that when
a measurement is made, one of the photons acquires a specific polarization
while its associate automatically acquires the opposite, even though
it is separated by a large distance.
In the 1950s, the American theoretical physicist Hugh Everett
III was able to solve a particular problem in quantum physics
when the existence of other worlds was introduced into the equations.
Based on his work, in the 1970s two other
American theoretical physicists, Bryce S. De Witt and John
A. Wheeler, showed that there must be other observers in the Universe
who bring about the properties of matter at larger scales. The model
reveals that nothing in the Universe could exist without intelligent
observers and that order is brought about by the way the observations
are coordinated by all observers. Coordination of observations must
include all the observations made at any time everywhere in the Universe.
This requires the existence of an Ultimate Observer - a God - who
has immediate and simultaneous awareness of their occurrence and who
is in the end responsible for unifying the observations of the lesser
observers and thus for bringing the Universe into existence. In mathematical
terms, it is the last observation of the Ultimate Observer which collapses
the probability wave function of the Universe and ultimately makes
everything real.
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