Let’s make this perfectly clear. You cannot build a gun which you can point at a photodetector, pull the trigger, and get a single click at the photodetector. Hasn’t been done. Can’t be done. There are no pea-shooters for photons. And there are no pea-shooters for electrons either. ~Marty Green
I’ve always had serious doubts about quantum mechanics.
I’m willing to accept that I’m the one in error but it’s very hard to prove to myself when the answers I get boil down to arguments from authority and deeply esoteric detail quibbling.
Let me break down why one famous experiment strikes me as a huge scam. Whether it is or not I leave to you but I’m telling you how I feel and why no amount of googling helps the feeling.
First of all notice how there isn’t any critical perspective in that wiki at all. That should strike everyone as extremely suspect. Everything, especially in science, is subject to doubt. Every entry needs a criticism section imo.
Anyway, in order for this experiment to work things have to be assumed.
Like the electron gun is actually firing single electrons. Look what happens when someone questions that.
https://www.quora.com/How-do-scientists-shoot-one-electron-at-a-time
The answer apparently to how this is done is confirmed by a detector.
But the experiment supposedly proves that the whole concept of “single” is questionable. Particles apparently move as waves and interfere with themselves. How is that compatible with the notion of a single electron? If you just attacked singularity itself then doesn’t that attack the experiment since a critical part of it is the assumed ability to fire single things?
And what if the detector is wrong?
What if we’ve basically closed the loop and created a new religion? By that I mean what if our faith in one of the steps is misplaced and the whole system built on it has become faith based?
Like a tower of perfect logic built on a bad premise. What if our assumptions are basically correct by chance but our detection equipment isn’t detecting anything but our own expectations and biases? Hell, QM itself assert that observation produces external real world changes. Doesn’t that negate the whole notion of objective external reality?
If the mere act of seeing changes external reality then in what substantive way are we separate events?
We obviously can’t see the single electron. Indeed if the experiment is true “single” (a concept that requires assumptions in and of itself about the nature of time for example) electrons apparently can’t even exist. So we use a machine to see it for us. What if we’re misunderstanding what the machine is telling us?
The answer usually boils down to “we aren’t, trust me, I’ve got a degree.” That’s insufficient when getting the degree is contingent on accepting the faith based results in the first place. It’s like taking a vote in a monastery. Never mind that a vote doesn’t change reality. Or does it? If one person seeing has an impact then wouldn’t two people seeing have some approximation of twice that impact? I’m reminded of prayer experiments all of the sudden.
Please stop praying for my grandpa u are making him too strong. He broke out of the hospital & cops say their tasers don’t work on him 🙁
— wwwdmmmffnn (@woodmuffin) January 9, 2013
Ok so maybe observation effects don’t work that way, but how exactly DO they work and how is it even possible to do experiments if looking changes things?
What if it’s not possible to send out single electrons? How would we ever know if we built the detector assuming it was? If we assume it’s possible, then build a machine to detect what we assume, we’ll only see what we expect.
Until I hear something new I’m going to agree with Marty Green.
There Are No Pea-Shooters for Photons and everything claiming to have been learned from the assumption that there are is suspect.
Update:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/132007/quantum-entanglement-an-illusion-based-on-a-wrong-assumption/224262
I love how all the questions which attack these assumptions are “protected” or locked in the various communities. Questions are so much easier to deal with when you ban asking or answering them.
Update:
This one isn’t.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/239455/spdc-and-single-photon-production