The double slit experiment is generally accepted as being; and please excuse me if I am not totally accurate here (I am neither a highly educated nor particularly intelligent person)- when a photon behaves like a particle when the experiment is observed, and like a wave when it is not?
If my understanding above is correct, could you advise please if the consensus in the phyciscs community is genuinely that this is an as yet to be understood quantum element causing, what I believe has been termed as- the 'observer effect'?
Any real physicists out there willing to comment? I would honestly be very grateful for your help. Thank you
Sorry, I should add that there is a legitimately bizarre reason for me asking a legitimately bizarre question. It is more than mere personal curiosity.
I'm not a physicist but my understanding is that a photon is neither a particle or a wave; but when we observe it in one way it looks like a particle, and when we observe it in another way it looks like a wave.
Quantum reality (whatever that might be) doesn't translate to everyday experience or objects that we can relate to, but we still try to imagine quanta as something we're familiar with. If I understand correctly, the only real "view" of quanta is the mathematical one.
> The double slit experiment is generally accepted as being; and please excuse me if I am not totally accurate here (I am neither a highly educated nor particularly intelligent person)- when a photon behaves like a particle when the experiment is observed, and like a wave when it is not?
I'm a real physicist, although a rusty one!
Without an observer, I'm not sure what it is, but it's not an experiment!
Experiment means measurement which means an observer. I can't think of an experiment without an observer or measurement. Maybe somebody can correct me on that.
Detection (observation) is quantum - a single photon is detected once - it collapses the interference (wave) probability pattern to a single point (quantum).
When you detect lots of photons, all those single detections add up to something consistent with an interference pattern.
That's true even at low light levels where there's only one photon in the apparatus so the photon (particle) is interfering (wave) with itself.
I supposed the light could behave differently without an observer, but we will never know the unobserved!
A consensus might be that wave particle duality is weird, subtle and possibly complicated.
My understanding, which I'll happily admit is not that of a physicist (though I worked with them for many years), is that your first paragraph is as good an understanding of the topic as you can get without equations.
T.
Whether the wave actually exists is, I think, arguable, but as an abstract mathematical entity it gives you the probability of finding the photon in a particular place when you observe it.
> Whether the wave actually exists is, I think, arguable, but as an abstract mathematical entity it gives you the probability of finding the photon in a particular place when you observe it.
No. The wave is the photon.
It is a glitch in the Matrix
> No. The wave is the photon.
Probably depends on your interpretation of quantum theory.
> Sorry, I should add that there is a legitimately bizarre reason for me asking a legitimately bizarre question. It is more than mere personal curiosity ...
What's the reason for your question?
> No. The wave is the photon.
I don't think it's that simple.
The amplitude of the wave is the square root of the probability of observing the photon. A photon is observable. The wave isn't as you only ever detect a photon, or nothing.
>I don't think it's that simple.
'Simple'?! Quantum mechanics?
> The amplitude of the wave is the square root of the probability of observing the photon. A photon is observable. The wave isn't as you only ever detect a photon, or nothing.
The amplitude gives you the probability of observing the photon at that location at the time of measurement. That is a completely different concept to that of the probability of the photon actually 'being there' immediately before the act of measurement. Before the collapse of the wave function, the photon is everywhere.
I'm not sure the photon even exists before the wave function is collapsed by detection. I can't think of any evidence for photons other than detection. And the waves are never observed, only the photons appearing 1 by 1 in a manner* consistent with the existence of waves.
*when enough are observed to build up an interference pattern
Thank you Michael, I really like your take on this.
With that in mind, I do consider that some strange experiences may have been more than just tall tales, misidentifications, or hallucinations. That some people may have been affected by a side of reality beyond the ability for the human mind to adequately comprehend. I know how silly this makes me sound.
I have heard of experiments where exotic plasmas were produced and manipulated to try understand the hidden side of the coin.
Military experiments. With human victims.
Cuckoo, I know. But also very interesting.
Sounds like the usual pseudoscientific bollocks trying to sound respectable by having the word "quantum" arbitrarily attached to it.
> Thank you Michael, I really like your take on this.
> With that in mind, I do consider that some strange experiences may have been more than just tall tales, misidentifications ...
Just to repeat my earlier question: do you have a serious reason for your original posting here? Because this last comment of yours sounds a bit weird.
We can try to engage on the actual physics.
Don't bother listening to anyone here (including me) - get a copy of QED by Feynman and read the first chapter. All the nonse people are told at school about wave-particle duality is a kind of historical fig-leaf that tries to explain a fundamentally better and underlying theory in terms of incomplete and poorly understood obsolete concepts. If we just started with "the world isn't quite what it seems and everything is quantum" it would be a lot easier.
In modern physics "light" is treated with a bunch of different theories / models from ray, wave, scalar wave, Fourier optics, particle and quantum.
You asked about the consensus in physics: the consensus is that light is made of elementary particles (photons) which are discrete in nature but since they are quantum their wavefunctions give rise to the wave-like properties such as interference. In practice, we mix-and-match theories and concepts to suit circumstances.
Broadly speaking no one (physicists) struggles to get their head around this.
> Don't bother listening to anyone here (including me) ...
Definitely including the duchess ...
> The consensus in Physics is that light is made of elementary particles (photons) which are discrete in nature but since they are quantum their wavefunctions give rise to the wave-like properties such as interference.
The consensus in modern physics is that every particle - including photons - arises as an excitation in the underlying (and all-pervasive) quantum fields.
> u
> What's the reason for your question?
I followed the account of a guy who served in the military and who for decades has been fighting for official acknowledgement and an explanation of an incident he was involved in while on official duty. His health was damaged by it in such a way that no doctor, military or civillian, could explain the injuries to his heart, and because of this he very nearly died. He was eventually introduced to a declassified MOD document called the Condign Report and by using that document he managed to get his senator, who at the time was senator John McCain, to threaten the US DOD with opening a congressional hearing into the incident. The US DOD folded at that stage and awarded the guy damages and conducted an operation on his heart by a top heart surgeon under the direct supervision of the CIA's top medical officer. This literally saved his life. Spooky? That's not even the half of it. This guys medical records are classified with the remark from the CIA doctor being that there are only 2 other medical records on the same level of classification as his- Adolf Hitlers, and JFK's. This sounds like nonsense, right? Well unfortunatley it's not.
Anyways, I reached out to a retired filmmaker who used to make science programs and science documentaries for the likes of the BBC, National Geographic, and even NASA. And I convinced him to take a look at this guy and to the science likely involved in his incident. The guys medical condition is verifiable. His settlement is verifiable. The CIA doctor is verifiable. And the Condign Report document is verifiable. Long story short, the filmmaker who is genuinely a very serious and highly intelligent and extremely well connected science-based guy, was utterly astonished by everything I presented to him. He was actually visibly shaken by it. It was at that point I started getting a bit concerned myself.
I managed to connect this guy with this filmmaker and now a serious investigation is underway- and when I say that the limits of secret science is involved, I literally mean there is nothing else that I've ever heard of or read about that comes close to what may have beein going on, if what all of this suggests is actually real.
The most astonishing and exotic explanations are all being considered by persons with the relevant backgrounds and reputations. And as a layman I suppose I'm after a second opinioin on some of this stuff.
I have read A Brief History of Time... twice. But that's as far as my knowledge on such weighty scientific matters goes.
I don't know anything about this case, or about the 'Condign Report.' I wish you well - but I don't see any connection between this case, and your initial questions about quantum physics.
I too thought of Feynman and QED, to quote:
"I want to emphasize that light comes in this form - particles. It is very important to know that light behaves like particles, especially for those of you who have gone to school, where you were probably told something about light behaving like waves. I'm telling you the way it does behave - like particles. ...every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering the same thing: light is made of particles."
From your long post at 10.17 this evening--- An account of a guy who served in the military? Hitler and JFK's medical records? The Condign report? The limit of secret science is involved?
That's the biggest load of bo**ocks I have read for years. Why don't you keep it to yourself
> I don't know anything about this case, or about the 'Condign Report.' I wish you well - but I don't see any connection between this case, and your initial questions about quantum physics.
Apologies for that. The relation between my original question and this case is purely that the double slit experiment is, to me, the easiest to understand and explain side of exotic/cutting-edge theoretical scientific knowledge. And the matter of this case appears to relate to the practical application of such knowledge.
Bonkers stuff that occured around the start of the Strategic Defence Initative, and just before the Marconi Murders. Possibly involving laser induced plasmas excited by extremely powerful radar to produce quantum effects. Way above my head btw.
Before I get labelled a conspiracy theorist or suchlike, I'd rather not say any more than I already have on the specifics. Apologies for this too.
I'm a bit at odds as to whether or not I should continue to help elevate this guys case. I am in no way qualified on this sort of stuff. And it has taken a bit of time and effort to get it into the lap of the filmmaker.
Anyways, that's the skinny.
Superposition, entanglement, it's all a bit much for me.
A sort of temperature-check on the merits of the science by persons better qualified than myself would maybe help me decide if it's worth helping these guys further. And by 'help' I mean researching other similar incidents, contacting people who have conducted similar investigations, that sort of stuff.
It felt like a fun and an interesting hobby to begin with.
The interference pattern observed in the double slit experiment indicates light's wave like behaviour. The photoelectric effect on the other hand indicates the particle nature of light.
But not entirely sure what you mean by an observed experiment or not.
You might be thinking of Shrodinger's cat?
> From your long post at 10.17 this evening--- An account of a guy who served in the military? Hitler and JFK's medical records? The Condign report? The limit of secret science is involved?
> That's the biggest load of bo**ocks I have read for years. Why don't you keep it to yourself
I take it all at face value. Whether any of it is actually true, I've no idea.
The reaction of the filmmaker was unsettling though. He worked on things like the BBC Horizons series and the docu-drama Threads; not that any of this makes him any kind of authority. But the point is he worked on some weird legit stuff and his reaction after reviewing this guys case and associated documentation surprised me. I thought he might be interested. But he is all in. Fully committed.
You could be right. I hope you're right.
> The interference pattern observed in the double slit experiment indicates light's wave like behaviour. The photoelectric effect on the other hand indicates the particle nature of light.
> But not entirely sure what you mean by an observed experiment or not.
> You might be thinking of Shrodinger's cat?
Isn't it the case that when a camera or the naked eye observe the experiment in action that the result will show 2 distinct lines burned on the plate. But if the camera is switched off and nobody observes the experiment while it is happening, then the result is there will multiple lines burned on the plate?
Hence the observer effect?
> Sounds like the usual pseudoscientific bollocks trying to sound respectable by having the word "quantum" arbitrarily attached to it.
Or 'time dialation'.
I once read that a team of physicists successfully simulated a wormhole using a quantum computer.
Seems everyone throws these words around for clout.
Thank you elsewhere.
> Experiment means measurement which means an observer. I can't think of an experiment without an observer or measurement. Maybe somebody can correct me on that.
Would the measurement not be the lines burned on the plates? The experiment being that it is run while being observed, and then run while it is not being onserved? And the resulting pattern of lines burned on the 2 separate plates being the measurement of the experiement?
Sorry if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.
> Isn't it the case that when a camera or the naked eye observe the experiment in action that the result will show 2 distinct lines burned on the plate. But if the camera is switched off and nobody observes the experiment while it is happening, then the result is there will multiple lines burned on the plate?
No. A photographic plate, camera and eyeball all record the same interference pattern as long as the light level and optical resolution of the detection is sufficient to get an image.
> Hence the observer effect?
Observer means photon detection. No difference between living thing (eyeball), camera or lines on a photographic plate - it's the same interference pattern.
No observer means no photon detection and no information about what happened - the photons could have stopped, had a party and drank beer. But we assume they didn't as we have no information to say they did and it's not consistent with any optical observation.
Young's slits gives multiple lines. Which experiment gives 2 district lines?
.
Remember the story of the blind men and the elephant, the one feeling the leg said it was a tree and the one holding the trunk said it was a big snake.
Regardless of whether you are observing it, a photon is a lump of waviness.
Oddly enough.. even really "big" things like small molecules sometimes turn out to be wavy, it's not just photons.
The double slit shows you its wave character
Why are you trying to complicate this?
Don't you think observe is an unhelpful term. As I recall it sparked a rather futile debate about whether observation required consciousness and that perhaps these effects required consciousness to exist.
I think I'd tend toward measurement or detection as a term as it allows transformation of quantum effects into macro physics without an observer or consciousness - eg waved detected as photons causing a heating effect when they are absorbed by matter or an electrical effect when they reach an antenna.
In effect when the quantum world encounters matter it is "detected"
> it, a photon is a lump of waviness
I believe the door is still open to pilot wave theory, so I’m not sure you can definitively claim this.
Some interpretations are more popular than others - vehemently so within groups of professional physicists - but over a century in and we still don’t really know.
I'm really sorry elsewhere, I've made a bit of a mess at describing this.
Here's a guy at the royal institute who does a much better job-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ&t=405s
On the face of it, there is an as yet to be understood but apparently real side to reality which appears to us so strange that it is indistinguishable from magic (a nod to Arthurs C. Clarke).
Try reading this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics
and this:
https://iep.utm.edu/int-qm/#:~:text=Four%20kinds%20of%20interpretation%20ar....
Or, much more fun, watch this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p087gj19/devs
It's about whether the pilot wave or many worlds interpretation is right, including a couple of brutal murders and a great score. Extra points for spotting the Lakes climbing location.
Yes, that is a great little video. Thank you. I've watched this one quite a few times, along with a few others.
My interest and understanding of this is very casual as you might have guessed.
It just seems so wacky.
I'm a little less sceptical these days about the accounts given by some people of the bizarre experiences they've had.
There are always going to be people who make stuff up for attention etc, or who have been confused or tricked by a strange experience they've had.
With respect to the double slit experiment- I read somewhere before (and I think someone here commented as much) that the strange results from this experiment could actually have a mundane explanation whereby the apparatus used to detect the particle is having a direct physical influence on it, rather than some spooky goings on relating to consciousness or whatever.
Apologoies to all who feel I may have been a bit all over the place or even misleading with this. It was not intentional. I'm just not very intelligent. But I am genuinely interested to know the opinions of real people with the ability to understand it better than I ever could. It is the most fascinating subject I think I've ever encountered, and almost no one that I know has even heard of it.
> Or, much more fun, watch this:
Thanks Dave.
By the mere act of me clicking this link and pressing play, I will have commited a crime.
But I have watched Devs before and really enjoyed it.
This book is a quick and easy read and might help you get your head round the situation:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61263731-quantum-bullsh-t-how-to-ruin-y...
The interference pattern consisting of light and dark lines is observed in the double slit experiment, I would assume that the same pattern would be present if you were not observing the experiment.
To say there is a difference between observing and not observing comes perhaps from the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics however, I would have thought that the result of the slit experiment would not be affected by observing or not observing the experiment. You could equally say that you had bought a green car, but when no one was looking at it was pink.
Quantum mechanics is weird and wonderful and is in some way difficult to understand, it's probabilistic and to tell you the truth, I passed the exams but never truly got to understand it in depth.
> >I don't think it's that simple.
> 'Simple'?! Quantum mechanics?
Mathematically, yes it is. Considerably simpler than, say, fluid mechanics.
It's only when those awkward scientists get involved with their "experimental reality" that it gets complicated.
> I have read A Brief History of Time... twice. But that's as far as my knowledge on such weighty scientific matters goes.
This is your first mistake. Even Stephen Hawking thought that was wrong
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/19/stephe...
> The interference pattern consisting of light and dark lines is observed in the double slit experiment, I would assume that the same pattern would be present if you were not observing the experiment.
> To say there is a difference between observing and not observing comes perhaps from the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics however, I would have thought that the result of the slit experiment would not be affected by observing or not observing the experiment. You could equally say that you had bought a green car, but when no one was looking at it was pink.
> Quantum mechanics is weird and wonderful and is in some way difficult to understand, it's probabilistic and to tell you the truth, I passed the exams but never truly got to understand it in depth.
The result is affected by observing or not observing the experiment. If you run exactly the same experiment but also observe which slit the photons have actually passed through, then there is no interference pattern.
Does observing the photon mean the destruction of the photon so the slit is blocked and the single remaining slit produce single slit diffraction pattern?
I wonder if you amplified the photon then used a beam splitter could you simultaneously observe and transmit retaining 2 slits in operation. Not a very original idea so I doubt I've thought up anything profound.
> This is your first mistake. Even Stephen Hawking thought that was wrong
Haha, I can't do anything rite!
X D
Thanks Dago.
According to the gent in this video, the pattern will be changed by the mere act of having the detection device switched on or off-
> This book is a quick and easy read and might help you get your head round the situation:
That is one of the best book titles I think I've ever seen.
It would be worth buying this book even if just to display on the shelf behind you during zoom meetings!
I was tempted to get the paper edition for that reason, but ended up getting the Kindle version cos it was half the price.
It's a mildly amusing look at the basics of quantum mechanics, with regular reminders that pretty much any time you see a reference to quantum mechanics in normal life it will be total bullshit. With a lot of swearing.
This has been done. In Briane Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos (fabulous book, way easier than BHoT), he describes an experiment like this. A high energy photon can be split into two low energy photons. You send one through the slits and you're free to detect the second without impeding the first. The result is still the same. If you observe the second photon, you don't get interference. If you don't observe it, you do get interference. It gets even weirder. If you put the detector much further away, the first photon will hit the screen before the second one hits the detector (or doesn't). The result is still the same. The first photon forms a pattern on the screen, which depends on an event (whether or not you detect the second photon) that takes place after it has hit the screen.
Cheers! I'll have to look that up.
I think the thing to take away about quantum mechanics is that while as a set of mathematical recipes for working out what to expect when you do an experiment, it all works brilliantly and delivers astonishingly accurate results. So at that level, there is complete unanimity in the physics community about how to use the theory and complete confidence in its results.
Where there isn't any consensus at all, is about what it all means. The central problem is the one of measurement - the "collapse of the wave function". In the double slit experiment, it's the act of determining where the photon is that changes the situation from where it is described as a wave to one where it flashes up at a definite place in a digital camera or darkens a single grain in a photographic emulsion. That's the point at which it stops behaving like a wave and instead behaves like a particle.
One interpretation of this is that, at the point you make the measurement, the world splits into different versions, in each of which the photon is found in a different place. This "many worlds" theory is surprisingly popular amongst physicists, given how insane it might seem to argue that at any point in time, a vast number of different versions of the world are constantly being spawned. More fundamentally, there is a difference of view about whether quantum mechanics is telling you about how reality actually is, or whether it is telling you the limits on what it is possible to know about reality.
But given the importance of measurement as the act that collapses the wave function, there's a long history of people connecting this with the idea that consciousness is somehow involved. This is very far from a majority view, but it has been played with by some very distinguished physicists (such as Roger Penrose) so it's difficult to totally dismiss it.
But this line of thought has taken some people to some very weird places. When I was a graduate student in the Cavendish Lab, the figure of Brian Josephson would cut a lonely figure in the tea room and we'd sometimes sit with him for a chat. Josephson won the physics Nobel prize for inventing the Josephson junction (which underlies one of the main candidate routes to quantum computing), but he became convinced that quantum mechanics underlay all sorts of paraphysical phemonemon, like esp and telepathy. This was not a mainstream view or popular with his colleagues, I should add.
The Cold War was a weird time, and I've no doubt that all kinds of bizarre and often unethical scientific experiments were being carried out in secret then. We know now for example that in the 60's the CIA was experimenting with LSD, and the US defence research agency ARPA was investigating telepathy and "remote viewing". The combination of secrecy, the existential threat of a nuclear war, large sums of money and a lack of accountability took people to some dark places. But I'm very sceptical that any fundamental new science was discovered or new mysteries uncovered that has since been kept secret.
> But given the importance of measurement as the act that collapses the wave function,
I sometimes wonder if the tea room debates over the interpretation of wave function collapse would be a lot less fraught if we’d come to think of it as “information transfer” and not “measurement”. The wave function only collapses when the system receiving the information can’t receive it in a quantum state; quantum computing continues to push the physical and mass scales of systems that can receive information without wave function collapse. My view is that it’s a thermodynamic tipping point that’s only become confused with conscious measurement through imprecise language.
> This is very far from a majority few, but it has been played with by some very distinguished physicists (such as Roger Penrose) so it's difficult to totally dismiss it.
There’re fascinating hints at non trivial quantum effects in biology but I’m not sure Penrose’s stuff counts…
> I sometimes wonder if the tea room debates over the interpretation of wave function collapse would be a lot less fraught if we’d come to think of it as “information transfer” and not “measurement”...
I don't think I've thought about it enough/am clever enough to have a view I could strongly defend, but I do think thinking about it in information theory terms seems attractive.
> There’re fascinating hints at non trivial quantum effects in biology but I’m not sure Penrose’s stuff counts…
I agree, I don't buy the microtubule stuff at all. I'm sure coherent electron transport is important in photosynthesis, but I do think some of the quantum biology enthusiasm is a bit overcooked.
I always wondered that the way you observe a photon is by firing another photon at it. Scaled up it seems like obsedrving a bowling ball by throwing another bowling ball at it. In short the very act of observing will have an effect on the photon
My first encounter of the double slit experiment was this. It absolutely bent my head. As a total physics numpty I've no idea whether this is "science for the stupid" and whether it's just trying to bring a bit of sensationalism to a well understood phenomenon or not...
youtube.com/watch?v=x-BE8YkNzVg&
But I like the fact that it made me think a bit. It's awesome sometimes when you realise how little you actually know about the world around you and the nature of reality.
Id like to know from the more scientifically minded whether this is junk science, or handy beginner level stuff.
> I always wondered that the way you observe a photon is by firing another photon at it. Scaled up it seems like obsedrving a bowling ball by throwing another bowling ball at it. In short the very act of observing will have an effect on the photon
I think you've explained really well what I was thinking. You're not just really "observing" it passively are you. You're actually interfering with it... Right?
Dunno if someone has already said this or not but this wave/particle duality that we would have liked to think only applied to tiny things like photons actually applies to lot of bigger things to. You can take really huge molecules like C60 and fire them through slits one at a time and get an interference pattern. Nobody has yet done an experiment with objects you can see and touch like apples or Ford pickup trucks but there is every reason to believe that if we were able to, we would find out they were just waves like photos too.....
Which is completely insane and a good reason to stay as far away from physics as you can - it melts your brain.
Hi Richard, thank you so much for your response. I've read and watched a few pieces on Josephson before- how after being awarded the nobel prize he was shunned for his ideas. I remember the behaviour of some of his detractors feeling quite intimidating actually- a particular shame in his case. He comes across as a really nice peaceful human being, I felt really bad for him.
I have a book I've yet to begin reading called Mind Reach that covers some of Josephsons controversial ideas. One of the books authors- a guy called Hal Puthof, knows this injured serviceman I'm helping and encouraged him to try certain meditation techniques. But as he's a nuts and bolts kind of guy the serviceman didn't take the suggestion very seriously.
A Professor Garry Nolan at Stanford University is apparently intensely interested in this guys brain (and dna). He examined an MRI scan and says he discovered an anomoly in the caudate putamen; the theory now being individuals with this anomoly in the brain may be predisposed to experiencing/interacting with certain anomolous events. All very strange. Very fringe. But also taken very seriously at very high levels.
I appreciate your explanation and insight very much. It has helped a lot.
Kind regards, (also) Richard
> Does observing the photon mean the destruction of the photon so the slit is blocked and the single remaining slit produce single slit diffraction pattern?
Observing the photon doesn't block the slit, you don't get the get the wave like interference pattern but instead you get the two lines on the screen that you would have expected from particles passing through two slits and acting according to classical mechanics.
If the photon has a path then the observation must interfere with the path but maybe the photon does not have a path.
There are different ways you can detect which slit the photon has passed through, you could bounce another particle off the photon or you could set up a magnetic field and detect disturbances in the field as the photon passes through. You can set the slits up so they are polarised at 90 degrees to each other so that when you observe the screen you can tell which dots are from which slit.
If the photons are really particles following a path but unknown forces cause them to appear on the screen in a wave like pattern, then why does every different type of detection method at the slit cause the path to change in the same way that produces the classical two lines on the screen?
It can't be due to a physical disturbance of a path because if it was then the different ways of interfering with the photon's path would produce different patterns on the screen. It must be the fact of detection that has altered the behaviour of the photon.
The idea of a particle holding substance and moving along a definite path through space and time is a difficult idea to defend when you consider the implications of this.
> I wonder if you amplified the photon then used a beam splitter could you simultaneously observe and transmit retaining 2 slits in operation. Not a very original idea so I doubt I've thought up anything profound.
I'm glad Hooo answered this because it is more technical than I could cope with and Hooo's answer is truly profound because in the case given the interference pattern has broken because of an observation that hasn't happened yet. Whatever is going on, it cannot be unknown forces acting on classical particles. This experiment is reveals that at the fundamental level the world does not operate in the way we experience it.
> I'm glad Hooo answered this because it is more technical than I could cope with and Hooo's answer is truly profound because in the case given the interference pattern has broken because of an observation that hasn't happened yet. Whatever is going on, it cannot be unknown forces acting on classical particles. This experiment is reveals that at the fundamental level the world does not operate in the way we experience it.
I think you've summed it up nicely. Thank you.
> I think you've summed it up nicely. Thank you.
Just be careful not to confuse apparent weirdness with magic. Lots of bogus theories rely on pointing to a phenomena that seems very weird when compared to our everyday experience of the world, and then saying 'because x seems weird I can make up any old cobblers and it must be equally legitimate'.
Often the difference between what is going on at the micro scale and what we experience on the macro scale is just statistics. For example, if I ask you to pick a number at random between 1 and 1000 and I guess what it is, I would probably be pretty far wide of the mark. However, if I got you to do it a million times and add up all of your results, then my guess of '500 million' would be relatively speaking pretty close. If the differences between the micro and the macro are large enough, then macro-scale behaviour can seem normal and predictable, even if it is based on weird, random micro-scale behaviour.
On a not unrelated note - it's a bit like how water boils at 100°C (more or less), but how the floor I mopped earlier is dry, despite the fact I'm tight with the heating and keep my flat at about 17°C. It's not magic, it's not that the boiling point of water is wrong, it's just statistics.
> Just be careful not to confuse apparent weirdness with magic. Lots of bogus theories rely on pointing to a phenomena that seems very weird when compared to our everyday experience of the world, and then saying 'because x seems weird I can make up any old cobblers and it must be equally legitimate'.
Very good point. Thanks Green Porridge.
Nothing should be taken for granted.
On the flip side, I do feel a bit disappointed when I hear Neill Degrasse Tyson saying things like- due to the distance of the stars it is simply not possible for an alien intelligence to have visited earth. Really Neill? You are 100% sure we have reached the limits of what is physically possible already?
It was once said that human flight was impossible. And it was also once said that trips to the moon by rocketship was impossible.
History is full of these lessons.
And some of our most qualified authorities seem to be incapable of learning them.
: (
Well to be fair, the people who said that flight was impossible really didn't know what they were talking about. Heavier than air flight was obviously possible, because birds were doing it. But, when it comes to the limits set by the speed of light there has been a lot of research done and we are pretty bloody sure that it is a fundamental property of the universe.
> ...when it comes to the limits set by the speed of light there has been a lot of research done and we are pretty bloody sure that it is a fundamental property of the universe.
But doesn't quantum entanglement suggest that 'faster than light'-like results may be possible?
The short answer is no, it doesn't.
It does look like information is travelling instantly between the entangled particles, but nothing happens that defies relativity. All the theories and data show that it is impossible to actually transmit any information between the particles. So while they appear to affect eachother instantly, to all practical purposes they might as well be pre-set to match eachother at the point when they are entangled.
> and we are pretty bloody sure that it is a fundamental property of the universe.
Are we? Modern cosmology has a gaping hole or two in it, and realising an Alcubierre metric is not yet proven impossible, perhaps jut mind bendingly difficult.
All of modern physics rests atop an as yet unknown unified theory. FTL may be impossible or barely possible in our current theories, but we know they’re not complete or fundamental.
> ...to all practical purposes they might as well be pre-set to match eachother at the point when they are entangled.
Yikes!
Are you saying that rather than showing us FTL-like effects could be possible, what entanglement actually shows us is that fate/predeterminism could be real?
TBH I don't know what is going on with entanglement (does anyone?). But like the double slit example I quoted where it appears that a particle is influenced by a future event, this is one of those weird quantum effects that appears to show time travel or FTL, but it's actually just an illusion.
That is a good point. I'd forgotten about that. We don't actually need to violate relativity, we can build a warp drive instead. We just need a few tonnes of negative mass. So maybe a sufficiently advanced civilization has done this.
> That is a good point. I'd forgotten about that. We don't actually need to violate relativity, we can build a warp drive instead. We just need a few tonnes of negative mass. So maybe a sufficiently advanced civilization has done this.
I never thought I’d see this on UKC, but this is a fine post! Have a like.
For accuracy shouldn't we be saying something like- while we fail to explain these observations then yes, the possibility of a FTL influence and time travel does exist?
That depends on how you define accuracy...
For a lot of quantum effects you can assume time runs in either direction and everything works out fine. Some things have a simpler explanation if you run time backwards. So you could say it's accurate to describe time as running in either direction. But this doesn't apply to the "real world". You can't run time backwards in any real sense, it's just a mathematical construct that explains the data (like all physics...).
The trouble with saying this to people who don't understand physics is that they just hear the "time running backwards" bit and assume that it makes time travel possible. It most definitely does not. And so we end up with the situation like your military guy, who starts believing that some weird quantum effect is responsible for his condition.
> TBH I don't know what is going on with entanglement (does anyone?). But like the double slit example I quoted where it appears that a particle is influenced by a future event, this is one of those weird quantum effects that appears to show time travel or FTL, but it's actually just an illusion.
Illusory perhaps only within our realm of experience and expectation. I rather suspect that, just as relativity did for gravity, sooner or late the next big leap will do for time. Right now we've identified and verified some properties of time, notably in relation to speed and mass, but we seem still to be a long way from a proper understanding of its essence, and potentially its non-linearity.
> The trouble with saying this to people who don't understand physics is that they just hear the "time running backwards" bit and assume that it makes time travel possible. It most definitely does not. And so we end up with the situation like your military guy, who starts believing that some weird quantum effect is responsible for his condition.
I agree except for the bit about the military guy.
His injuries were caused by THz radiation. And the source of that radiation is suspected to have been either a form of plasma or a piece of equipment or material used in a plasma experiment.
This was deduced not by the military guy himself but by people with the relevant knowledge of plasma who read his medical report and heard his testimony.
But also, Project Condign- an official MOD study of anomolous aerial objects in the UK, refers directly to this incident and names plasma as the most likely explanation for it.
But where does the 'quantum' element come into all of this?
Well, based on the defacto admission by the MOD and DOD that the incident happened and that the injuries suffered were of an unconventional/exotic nature, then the testimonies of the guy involved and the others who were either directly involved or simply witnessed the incident must be considered more seriously than say the testimonies from other similar incidents. And because of the strangeness of their testimonies, quantum effects are being considered as a possible explanation.
There's a guy called Paul Devereux who for decades has studied and written fairly extensively on earthlights and he states that forms of plasma can sometimes appear without explanation and which have quantum effects- one being that an observer may be able to see the plasma but an observer on the opposite side may not.
I read a book by an astrophysicisit named Andrew Pike and I did a little research on an account he said he stumbled across. It was from someone who as a child in the mid 1800's in Surrey observed with his friends a ball of light moving through a field. And when they approached this light it disappeard. But when they moved back, it reappeared. So some of the kids stayed back while the others moved in and to the one's who stayed back the ball of light remained visible, while to the one's who moved in it disappeared again.
Interesting? Idiotic?
I'm presently leaning towards interesting.
You need to put some serious effort of studying the concept of Entropy.
All will be revealed 😂
> You need to put some serious effort of studying the concept of Entropy.
> All will be revealed 😂
Hey, don't shoot the messenger 🤪
Well there's nothing particularly surprising about a tale of someone in the military being injured in an experiment and it being hushed up. High energy high frequency energy can have some weird effects, so if the military were doing experiments with THz radiation it's not surprising that someone received injuries of a kind no one had seen before. However, I can't see anyone who knows what they're talking about attributing this to mysterious quantum effects. The whole thing about quantum effects is that they only manifest at tiny scales.
May I respectfully suggest that if you want to get anywhere with understanding this mystery, you first gain an understanding of the basics of quantum mechanics. There are many very accessible books that will give you enough to go on. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be able to make your own judgement. On the other hand, if you go looking to cherry pick any bits from quantum theory that seem to support the story you want to believe, you'll just end up going down a rabbit hole and before long you'll be setting fire to mobile phone masts...
Thank you. I've read the basics on quantum mechanics, and on plasmas (electrons separate from their atoms). The next subject I think could be interesting to look at is quantum biology.
As I am not 'in the field' with these subjects myself and know of no-one who is, it's nice that people who are or at least have a better knowledge than me have offered their insights. It's really appreciated.
This guy was not believed by anyone outside the tin-hat club for a good few decades until his injuries almost killed him. Now though, there are scientists working on his case because, as it turns out, what happened to him was real. The guy is a father and his kid may have had more years left with his dad if he had received treatment earlier. Instead though he was poo-poo'd.
Good old quantum mechanics, ends up with everyone tying themselves in knots.
Quite a few injuries from THz radiation can be anticipated by putting on sun-block. Through my life I've neglected this, occasionally on glaciers and it has some painful after effects. A bit of a problem when your nearest star bathes you in these radiations constantly during daytime
Sunblock is no use against THz radiation, it's only effective when you start getting up to PHz frequencies. Tin foil is pretty effective though 🙂
It has recently come to my attention that various governments since the early 20th Century have been forcing radio manufacturers to put picofarads into sets without the public's knowledge. This is an absolute outrage and proves that politicians cannot be trusted
It's a bit of a classic " here are two things I don't really understand: therefore they must be connected " fallacy.
> It's a bit of a classic " here are two things I don't really understand: therefore they must be connected " fallacy.
What must be connected with what sorry?
The exploration of ideas must be connected with the declaration of a belief?
Hmmm, ball lightning, terahertz radiation, plasmas, injuries from secret military experiments, let's see what might connect them...
Ball lightning is one of those mysterious phenomenon for which there are enough credible accounts to make one think there's probably something out there, but for which there isn't really enough evidence to discriminate between half a dozen vaguely plausible causes. Plasmas may or may not have something to do with it.
Terahertz radiation is only obscure because it's technically quite hard to produce. It's just electromagnetic radiation falling in the gap in frequency/wavelength between high frequency/short wavelength microwaves and far (i.e. long wavelength) infra-red - terahertz frequencies, wavelengths hundreds of microns or more. It's not strongly absorbed by matter so has been of interest in new imaging technologies for security scanners and such like. You could probably use it at high energy to produce a plasma.
Relatively low energy/low pressure plasmas are quite easy to produce by RF irradiation of a gas. Oxygen plasmas are very widely used in technology to treat surfaces - it's essentially a very strong oxidising agent that will for example completely remove any organic contaminant from a surface. If you want to produce an atomically clean surface (for example in microelectronics) an oxygen plasma is a good (and safer) alternative to some of the chemical etches that people use - notably the mixtures of concentrated sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide that are called "piranha etch" in the trade.
The name suggests what happens if you drop some on your skin! I expect you'd get similar results from contact with an atmospheric pressure oxygen plasma. But this is chemistry rather than anything mysteriously quantum mechanical.
> It's just electromagnetic radiation falling in the gap in frequency/wavelength between high frequency/short wavelength microwaves and far (i.e. long wavelength) infra-red - terahertz frequencies, wavelengths hundreds of microns or more. It's not strongly absorbed by matter so has been of interest in new imaging technologies for security scanners and such like.
A lot of allosteric effects are associated with frequencies in the THz region, and now we're starting to see papers published using THz spectroscopy to probe them. If there's enough interaction at some frequency range to enable spectroscopy, it's clear that bad things can happen if the probing power is turned up enough in those frequencies. To be clear, exposure to THz radiation in normal life is so low that it seems highly unlikely to be an issue, but if I was still working near research grade THz sources I'd be taking a cautious approach...
I've been researching an allosteric inhibitory pathway this last week. I raised a glass to a mutual acquaintance and wished I'd been able to discuss it with them. Such a fascinating area and one they had so much enthusiasm for; the way nature and evolution has embraced the thermodynamic noise it's embedded within, to solve problems in a way so orthogonal to the binarised, driven-to-saturation approach that underpins our digital logic technologies.
As you say, these fall between microwaves and IR; we know that enough energy at either of those frequencies will cause harm. Given the way structure and resonance emerges across the orders of magnitude of physical scale, it would a be a surprise if too much THz radiation didn't have the potential for some ill effects; but again this is at a power level far beyond that of consumer electronics or background exposure.
Then there's the research over long wavelength IR and Alzheimer's in model organisms where the skull is thin enough for the radiation to reach the brain. So many questions...
If a tree falls over in a forest but nobody hears it, does it still make a sound?
If a photon passes through a double slit but nobody observes it, does it still form an interference pattern?
Yes, and yes.
> I've been researching an allosteric inhibitory pathway this last week. I raised a glass to a mutual acquaintance and wished I'd been able to discuss it with them. Such a fascinating area and one they had so much enthusiasm for; the way nature and evolution has embraced the thermodynamic noise it's embedded within, to solve problems in a way so orthogonal to the binarised, driven-to-saturation approach that underpins our digital logic technologies.
Yes, it was very sad news about Tom (pretty sure that's who you're talking about!)
To explain this a bit more for the OP and anyone else interested, allostery is the name given to the phenomenon by which the enzymatic activity of a protein molecule can be turned off and on by the binding of a third molecule. This is really important because it's the fundamental basis for the way that biology does computing. It means that a protein molecule can act as a logic gate, and a network of such molecules can carry out computations where the information is conveyed, not by electrons, but by signalling molecules. It's how a bacteria can detect a source of food and swim towards it - and, at the lowest level, it's how all biological information processing works, including ultimately our brains (nervous systems are more complicated as they involve electric fields too, but ultimately it's all about subtle molecular changes in response to changes in the environment).
Tom McLeish (who died, at the age of 60, of pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago) was a theoretical physicist who showed that the mechanism by which this worked wasn't a simple mechanical shape change; it's the fact that the pattern of random wobbles of the protein molecule are changed by a small molecule binding to it. There's a fundamental randomness to this, because the wobbles are driven by the omnipresent Brownian motion that you get in a watery environment at room temperature. That's why biological operations (including thinking) are fundamentally not deterministic.
This randomness isn't directly related to the randomness of quantum mechanics, though. (Actually at a deep level I think they are connected but that's another story).
Apologies for a bit of a digression from the original subject.
> Terahertz radiation is only obscure because it's technically quite hard to produce. It's just electromagnetic radiation falling in the gap in frequency/wavelength between high frequency/short wavelength microwaves and far (i.e. long wavelength) infra-red - terahertz frequencies, wavelengths hundreds of microns or more. It's not strongly absorbed by matter so has been of interest in new imaging technologies for security scanners and such like. You could probably use it at high energy to produce a plasma.
Thank you Richard, I really appreciate your comments. Wonderful stuff!
The incident in question is quite famous, but unfortunately a science-based analysis has been minimal for reasons perhaps of national security, protection of proprietary information etc.
Does the name Ron Haddow ring any bells with you?
Bit of a long shot
If it's a famous incident, how about some links?
> If it's a famous incident, how about some links?
Apologies, here you are-
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/21672773.medical-payout-ufo-mystery-airman-foll...
https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-happened-at-the-rendelsham-forest-i...
It's a classic UFO sighting story, all the required elements are there: strange lights, marks on the ground, strange injuries - all of course with a mundane explanation if you want to find one.
But what does it have to do with quantum mechanics?
> It's a classic UFO sighting story, all the required elements are there: strange lights, marks on the ground, strange injuries - all of course with a mundane explanation if you want to find one.
> But what does it have to do with quantum mechanics?
High energy physics experiments were happening nearby. There were several installations in that area with at least one; the Black Beacon at Orfordness, confirmed to have been receiving it's power directly from Sizewell B nuclear power station.
You also have the Cobra Mist over the horizon radar facility nearby which was closed due to a mysterious intereference affecting it's operatoin. The investigation of this interference lead to the American scientists from Stanford Research Institute being sent, not back home to the states, but to nearby Bentwaters/Woodbridge airforce base (where these incidents occured) to continue their work/investigation.
And then you have the experiences of the many people involved in the incidents- military and civilian- American and British. And you look for the science which might help explain them. And so you inevitably look at quantum mechanics.
On a side note- very few people know this, but it may tickle your imagination. The deputy base commander who witnessed part of these incidents, Charles Halt, was also stationed at USAF base in Belgium during the Belgium UFO wave- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave
Also of interest is that base commander Gordon Williams lost all memory of his time at Bentwaters/Woodbridge due to a medical incident.
There are many many coincidences that the public are completely unaware of when it comes to these incidents.
You have the Bawdsey Manor Radar research facility, Orfordness Cobra Mist/Black Beacon facility, Martlesham Heath BT Research facility, all forming a triangle in the middle of which is Bentwaters/ Woodbridge. So it could be that, due to a freak of nature, these effects were produced unintentionally.
But again, with regards to any links with quantum mechanics- it's simply just a line of enquiry.
Wow, you must really want to believe in this, to pull out such tenuous-sounding links and present them as being meaningful.
> Wow, you must really want to believe in this, to pull out such tenuous-sounding links and present them as being meaningful.
Sorry John, I don't believe any of it is linked. I'm not sure what happened of course.
But could I just ask- why would you ignore that information and at the same time use such a disrespectful tone?
Yes; it was Tom I was thinking off; one of the kindest and most helpful academic scientists I've ever met.
> and, at the lowest level, it's how all biological information processing works,
I'm not convinced by the "all" - "most" for sure. I think the IP3R mediated Ca²⁺ triggered release of Ca²⁺ from the endoplasmic reticulum is capable of forming a complete if stochastic gate set. The opening of the IP3R is a bulk conformal change powered by ATP consumption, although I'm sure allostery is involved.
I don't think my tone is disrespectful, just honest. And I think most of what your last post described sounded like the kind of information that could be selectively pulled out from any significantly sized operation were there to be a desire to create a vaguely credible sounding case out of nothing.
> ... a desire to create a vaguely credible sounding case out of nothing.
A physicist who first began investigating this angle in the 1980's was threatened and wouldn't discuss it further. An investigator who received information about a Royal Navy ship being parked just off the coast and having some kind involvement in these incidents, was also threatened.
The place where it happened. The proximity to these installations. The observations made, and the injuries sustained. And that objects were detected on radar prompting fully armed US service personnel to venture onto British public land in violation of the status of forces agreement to investigate. It was obviously a very serious matter at the time and perhaps even still to this day.
It all sounds bizarre.
By using the old adage "follow the money" you'll end up looking into the murky world of the Strategic Defence Initiative and high energy physics. Plus the time and place is a good match.
But all of this is by-the-by really with regards to this thread which was created to take a temperature check of sorts on quantum mechanics. Apologies for straying onto swampland.
> Also of interest is that base commander Gordon Williams lost all memory of his time at Bentwaters/Woodbridge due to a medical incident.
"Medical incident"...
Apparently it wasn't Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith but encephalitis, as mentioned in the second-last paragraph of his bio here-
https://supersabresociety.com/biography/williams-gordon-e/
He confided in one the victims of the 1980 incident that he also was injured by it. I mean, I know that's a general statement for him to make but so be it. It's all cuckoo stuff.
> And then you have the experiences of the many people involved in the incidents- military and civilian- American and British. And you look for the science which might help explain them. And so you inevitably look at quantum mechanics.
Really? I have to say that's not where I'd be looking.
Quantum mechanics is a fascinating subject that is mind bending to dip into. Just remember what Feynman said - "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics". Every time you look a bit deeper into an aspect of it, you just come to realise how little you understand. For this reason alone it's a worthwhile trip. But, I really can't see any way that it's going to help you understand what happened in this incident. For that, you're going to need evidence, and whatever evidence there is available in the public domain has clearly been swamped by a vast amount of nonsense. So good luck picking it out.
If I'm going to speculate on this, I'd say your man was hit by a beam of powerful microwaves from one of these mysterious military establishments. Possibly up towards THz frequencies if you like - where did the idea that it was THz come from anyway? That would explain the injuries, and possibly the people seeing lights and stuff.
> If I'm going to speculate on this, I'd say your man was hit by a beam of powerful microwaves from one of these mysterious military establishments. Possibly up towards THz frequencies if you like - where did the idea that it was THz come from anyway? That would explain the injuries, and possibly the people seeing lights and stuff.
Thanks Hoo.
I believe it was stated in a medical paper produced as a result of the victims claim for medical benefits from the US veterans agency. Don't quote me, but it may have been authored by Dr Christopher Green of CIA fame-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10696303/Military-officers-suffere...
Well I wouldn't normally soil my browser history by clicking on a Daily Mail link, but I did this time and skimmed through. Predictably, there's a lot of nonsense in there, but I spotted something that backs up my theory so I'm going to cherry-pick it 🙂
There's a bit that says the injuries are consistent with high energy RF exposure. So there you go, zapped by microwaves. Hushed up by the perpetrators leaving the guy mystified as to the cause of his symptoms.
> Well I wouldn't normally soil my browser history by clicking on a Daily Mail link, but I did this time and skimmed through. Predictably, there's a lot of nonsense in there, but I spotted something that backs up my theory so I'm going to cherry-pick it 🙂
> There's a bit that says the injuries are consistent with high energy RF exposure. So there you go, zapped by microwaves. Hushed up by the perpetrators leaving the guy mystified as to the cause of his symptoms.
Spot on Hooo. Apologies for sullying your browser.
I've been privvy to some info not in the public realm- and I'm not saying I'm special or anything like that so please be gentle. I was just involved in a very peripheral way by introducing the victim to someone who could assist in his efforts to better understand what happened to him, with the additional purpose of him assisting other service personnel injured in similar incidents to win fair compensation.
But the whole quantum thing did tickle my curiosity. It sounds to me like quantum mechanics is beyond the boundary of what humans are capable of understanding- like expecting a fish to understand a flat-pack wardrobe from Ikea sort of situation.
And get this. Professor Garry Nolan at Stanford University is very interested in the victims DNA and brain structure. He believes the victim is evidence of a shadow biosphere. Wowsers-trousers! Just, wow. For someone like him to come out with something like that. I mean, what do you reckon to that? I'm flummoxed.
it's all fields...
I Googled Garry Nolan and had a look at his Wikipedia page. There's an interesting point in the section on UFOlogy. He examined the brains of people who suspected they were damaged by UFO exposure. He found characteristics that appeared at first to be damage, but then came to the conclusion that they were characteristics that the subjects had had since birth. These were unusual in the general population, and played a role in intelligence and planning. So maybe these people had a naturally unusual brain structure, that gave them intellectual advantages that enabled them to succeed in certain roles in the military? So their brains weren't changed by the incident, they were present at the incident because of their unusual brains. Just speculation on my part, but seems more plausible than UFOs causing brain damage?
> So maybe these people had a naturally unusual brain structure, that gave them intellectual advantages that enabled them to succeed in certain roles in the military? So their brains weren't changed by the incident, they were present at the incident because of their unusual brains. Just speculation on my part, but seems more plausible than UFOs causing brain damage?
I could definitely get on board with that.
The suggestion has been that their brains act like an antenna making them able to receive/perceive frequencies/anomolies the rest of us cannot.
Garry Nolan believes through the analysis of this victims DNA he has discovered evidence of a shadow biosphere which if proven true would turn our world upside down.
I've talked to this victim at length and I can tell you he is a very down to earth guy. A salt of the earth type person; genuine and painfully honest. But he struggles with the attention he gets from these people and with the things that they have told him. By these people I mean guys like Garry Nolan, Hal Puthoff, Eric Davis, and other leading scientists.
It could be he is merely an unwitting participant in an extremely sophisticated psychological operation- the purpose of which must be to confuse the Russians and the Chinese?
Or he is genuinely one of the most unique human beings on the planet.
Like him though, I remain uncommitted on the subject.
Surely the conventional use of the term 'aliens' is a bit of a misnomer these days? It seems this topic has evolved from, suspicions of interactions with beings from elsewhere to, suspicions of interactions with a sentience that exists under our very noses.
Our ability to perceive actual reality is not up to the task. I'm sure that is a scientific fact? So admitting that a credible persons crazy experience could be beyond our ability to understand it should not be so controversial.
Just my tuppence worth
I do remember looking at a horrible manual for our old mainframe computer operating system back in the 90s and there was a whole subsection dedicated to the processing and handling of "Alien data" (verbatim quote).
Don't scoff. ESA have just fired off a big rocket looking for aliens at Jupiter. Apparently there's a big black square thing out there.
Just a moment... just a moment
> It seems this topic has evolved from, suspicions of interactions with beings from elsewhere to, suspicions of interactions with a sentience that exists under our very noses.
Is that an 'evolution' or just a drift away from the relatively recent fad of extraterrestrial 'aliens' back to more traditional tropes? (Albeit with a sprinkling of quantum woo.) Ghosts, spirits, fairies and small gods. There's nothing new under the sun.
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