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Hurray, it’s a thing!

Scientists Reveal What a Single Photon Really Looks Like for the First Time
On ZME Science: Physicists have now visualized the shape of a photon — the smallest unit of light — using a novel theoretical model. These findings offer new insights into how light behaves, potentially paving the way for innovations in nanophotonics and quantum technology.

So, the photon is apparently a ‘thing’ because we can visualize it. But when you read the publication of the phycisists of the Birmingham University a little more careful you will realize that they created a mathematical model, which is not a thing. Their model yields an intensity distribution (or worded differently ‘a probability distribution’) predicting the most probable location where the photon interacts with atoms. As usually happens, the authors of ZME Science confuse a mathematical model with reality, thingness. A very common mistake.

This reminds me of the now obvious mistake of Claudius Ptolemy who, because he wanted to keep the earth in the centre of everything (geocentrism), devised in 150 CE a mathematical model in which the earth (the blue circle in the animation below) was static and the sun and planets moved around it like the attractions in an amusement park. His mathematical model was – despite its wrong basic assumption – an extremely accurate predictor of planet positions, at least as seen from Earth.

Comparison of Ptolemaic model (right) with a model with the sun in the centre (left). Earth is the blue dot. The yellow bigger dot is the sun. Both models predict the same position of the planets as seen from Earth.

Claudius did have an excuse. There were no observations in his time that showed the shortcomings of his model. The telescope had not yet been invented. The authors of the article in ZME Science do not have that mitigating circumstance. They have not realized that the non-material existence of the photon has been demonstrated many times experimentally and that a Nobel Prize has even been awarded for some of those experiments. The photon is not a greenish little thing, it is non-material. And it responds to our observation by adjusting its wave behavior.

Reality doesn’t exist

“Everything is empty in the sense of doesn’t not having an intrinsic reality.” exclaims Carlo Rovelli – quantum gravity physicist – in a YouTube broadcast at 16:04. Quite a statement, especially because everyone has its own – usually not all too clearly defined – idea of what reality is. Which reminds me of a statement we hear so often from Near Death Experiencers: “It was more real than real”. When we believe that everyday material reality is the only reality there is and also that a Near Death Experience is not essentially different from a dream or hallucination, that is, in that light, a remarkable statement.

“More real than real”. Not something I would express after a dream, even though the dream was very real like and impressive. But as soon as you move away from the idea that the daily material world is the only reality, the meaning of Rovelli’s statement also changes. In that light, it is certainly worthwhile to list a number of experiments that, taken together, justify the statement that nothing is having an intrinsic reality. This could shake up your idea of ‘reality’ if you still believe in there-is-only-matter. All these experiments have been described and discussed in great detail in my book, but now it’s a good time, I think, to present them together in a single blog. They confirm each other, without exception.

Einstein’s recoiling slit thought experiment

In the early decades of the 20th century, Einstein was already quite doubtful of the implications of the – at that moment in history – still burgeoning quantum mechanics. He devised a double slit thought experiment with an extra recoiling slit, in which, according to quantum mechanics, and depending on our knowledge of the path taken by the photon, the quantum wave should adapt to this knowledge. That adaptation would have a noticeable effect on the interference pattern produced by the double slit. In his opinion was the idea that our knowledge would influence the quantum wave so utterly absurd that it gave him an argument against quantum mechanics as good sound physics. In his thought experiment he assumed the physical existence of the photon. He had argued its phyical existance himself in his explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Effect of our knowledge of the recoiling slit. The photon passing the first slit changes its direction up- or downward if it wants to pass a slit of the double slit. The moving slit recoils from the impact, which we can – in principle – measure. Now we can deduce from the measured recoil of the first single slit which slit of the double slit the photon passed. In that case there is – logically – only one single wave going through only one of the two slits – the slit we know that was passed – speeding to the screen. There is no longer an interference pattern because that requires at least two synchronous waves.

The first – confused – ideas in the beginning of the 20th century about the quantum behaviour of the photon were that it was a real particle of energy, but guided in someway by an immaterial quantum wave. Einstein’s thought experiment was based on that idea. In that way of thinking one could imagine the photon traveling a path. On detection – measurement – the wave would then collapse and start expanding anew from the location where it was discovered. Knowing the path of the photon through the slit means a detection of the short presence of the photon in the slit. From this slit – the place where the photon was measured to be at a certain moment in its path – a totally new single quantum wave would start on its way to the screen. I hope you understand the implications for interference. There is none, a wave has to meet another wave for interference just as you need two hands for clapping.

There is a simpler way to look at this. The quantum wave does not collapse but just reduces itself to one of the slits when our set-up is able to reveal which slit is passed. Why the wave behaves that way in accordance with our knowledge is of course the real question here. Anyhow, when we don’t know which slit was passed, the behaviour of the quantum wave will not reduce to one of the two slits. The result is then two waves, each one going through a slit, meeting and interfering with each other producing interference fringes.

So if there is no way to obtain knowledge about the path of the photon, Einstein said, quantum mechanics predicts that the interference fringes will (re)appear. In the figure below is the same set-up depicted as above but now hermetically closed from inspection by a box, save one small aperture where the photon can leave the box and travel to the screen.

But if the photon gun plus recoiling slit is hermetically sealed from inspection inside with the exception of a small opening where the photons can leave the box, we no longer have knowledge – via the moving slit – of which slit the photon passed. So now it is free to choose between both slits – as a wave it is able to pass though both – which now enables the appearance of the interference fringes again.

This was a thought experiment to which Bohr actually did not have a good answer, because Bohr then also assumed the physical existence of the photon. Only later did he state in the Copenhagen interpretation that the quantum object does not exist before the measurement, thereby pronouncing the quantum wave to be something not physical.

The real recoiling slit experiment (2014)

Einstein’s thought experiment remained a thought experiment until in 2014 an international team actually succeeded in conducting the recoiling slit experiment in reality. They did it by hitting oxygen molecules with X-ray photons and comparing the quantum physically predicted interference pattern with their result when they could obtain either or not information about which of the two oxygen atoms of the molecule was hit .

Interference caused by an oxygen molecule when hit by a (quantum) wave. The interference pattern is 100% similar to that of a double slit.

Einstein was right, our knowledge of the passed slit (or which atom was hit) influences the interference pattern in a noticable way. So, quantum mechanics is correct in its predictions and Einstein incorrect in denying its implications. The effect is only possible if the photon is an intangible immaterial wave before the measurement (before it hits the detector). The photon therefore does not exist before detection. See the experimental result below.

Left: the actual result of the moving slit experiment of 2014. Right: the quantum mechanical prediction. Above: no knowledge which of the atom of the oxygen molecule was hit. Below: knowledge of which of the two atoms was hit by the X-ray photon. No interference to be seen. Experiment and quantum theory are consistent.

Conclusions: the immaterial quantum wave is reduced by our knowledge and the photon does not exist on its way to the screen. We are intrinsically connected the the world we observe.

The first delayed choice Maryland experiment (1982)

In 1982, a specially designed double slit experiment was conducted at the University of Maryland to expose what happens when we irrevocably destroy the knowledge of the chosen path of the photon after the photon should have passed the double slit already. Unfortunately the experimental set-up was somewhat flawed, it had a design error and the final result cannot be used as evidence for the materialization of the foton on measurement. Despite this flaw, the outcome confirmed Einstein’s insight. When we have knowledge of the passed slit, the interference fringes are not shown. We only see a spread-out spot fading out to the edges.

The result of the – flawed – Maryland quantum eraser experiment of 1982 when the experiment yielded knowledge about the passed slit. Clearly no interference dringes. The curve describes the intensity pattern of a spread-out spot that shows the highest intensity in the middle.

Conclusion: Photons travel all te way to the detector as a non-material wave, not as real things. These waves respond to our knowledge of the path traveled.

Delayed quantum eraser experiment with slow moving atoms

Because also atoms show wave behaviour according to quantum physics, interference effects can also be demonstrated using atoms. Because they do not move at the speed of light like photons, there is better opportunity to irrevocably destroy the knowledge about the path that it followed before the atom reaches the detector. In 2015, Australian physicists managed to conduct a so-called Mach-Zehnder delayed choice experiment with slow-moving helium atoms. The result confirmed that as soon as we have knowledge of the path that is traveled, the interference (red line in the figure below) disappears (blue horizontal line).

For a more detailed description of this experiment, see elsewhere on this site.

The result of the atomic Mach-Zehnder when various phase shifts in the quantum wave of the helium atom are applied. These phase shifts are shown along the horizontal axis, the hit rate on detector | 0 > at the output of the Mach-Zehnder is shown vertically. When no phase shift is applied detector | 0 > receives all hits, the detector at the other output of the Mach-Zehnder receives nothing. When the phase shift is 180o (1 rad) the other detector receives all hits. The phase shift does however not affect the hit rate when the information about the path that the atom traveled through the Mach-Zehnder is not erased – which is the blue line. There is no interference – like the red curve shows clearly – anymore.

Conclusion: before detection the atom exists as an immaterial wave, not as a thing.

The second and correct delayed choice Maryland experiment (2007)

In Maryland, a retake of the flawed delayed choice experiment from 1982 was conducted in 2007 with more up-to-date techniques, apparently this time succesfull. They used entangled photon pairs for which one of such an entangled pair – the idler – carried the information about the other’s path – the signal. The irrevocable destruction of that information by the idler had indeed – now experimentally soundly demonstrated – the effect that the interference pattern of the signal photon disappeared. Even after it had already passed the double slit. Clearly a confirmation of wave behavior up to the time of the physical measurement.

Quantum eraser result in hits per 400 seconds – black squares – when passed slit information of signal photons, carried by the idler photons, was preserved. No interference.
Quantum eraser result in hits per 400 seconds – blue circles – when passed slit information of signal photons, carried by the idler photons, was erased. Clearly the result of double slit interference.

So here also no material photons before the measurement by the detectors. Watch the timeline of both situations – either erasure or preservation of path information – very carefully.

You can see from the picture above that the so-called retrocausality – an effect that would change the past – is very probably an effect caused by the experience of the observer observing the results of the experiment. It is not only matter that doesn’t exist before observation, it’s also history that exists from the moment of observation on, not before. For a more detailed description of this experiment, see elsewhere on this site.

Thirteen Bell-type experiments (1972 – 2016)

The Bell-type experiments are too complex to explain here briefly. In short, the entanglement of photons, which says that the physical properties they showed on measurement would be instanteneously correlated, was investigated. But despite a lot of criticism from the scientific community on these experiments, or perhaps because of that criticism, the experiments were carried out better and ever less and less rebuttable over the years. So, it has been confirmed now with considerable certainty that the photons

  • did not exist materially before detection and showed their correlated properties at the moment of detection, or
  • that they did exist materially and were in contact with each other through spooky faster-than-light communication in order to correlate their properties.

In the Delft experiment in 2016, all possibilities for unintended influence of the entangled photons (loopholes) were ultimately excluded, as a result of which the result should be accepted worldwide. Choose for yourself which of the two possibilities is the most likely. Be aware anyhow that a Nobel Prize is awarded to three of the experimenting physicists “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

Photons are definitely not material things

So, too bad for the editors of ZME Science. No hurray for the thing-like properties of the photon. Incidentally, the scientists at the University of Birmingham did not make it a secret that their model is intended to make mathematical predictions about the reactions of light to matter to atomic scale. So, a typical case of reification of an abstract mathematical model by phycisists and by popular science media. Which happens regularly. There is an increasing number of – mostly young – physicists who are aware of that.

Highly recommended

Unfortunately for those who do not like to give up their idea of a there-is-only-matter world. But perhaps good news for the more spiritual-thinking minds who have seen that matter, space and time are only an illusion. Incidentally, I would like to point out that an illusion does not have to be inferior to the so-called concrete reality. An illusion is not something that would render the world we experience less valuable. On the contrary. The possibilities and opportunities for ‘real’ and valuable experiences in an ‘illusional’ environment are vastly more impressive.

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The unbelievably careful quantumfield

The widespread message about the universe that we live in, is that it is almost empty, cold and indifferent and that life is only accidental, brutish and hard. I have a completely different opinion thanks inter alia to quantum physics. The universe is by no means indifferent to us, on the contrary. A study of the behavior of the quantum field, that the universe actually is, shows us that it responds very carefully to what we think, know and expect. In its manifestations, the quantum field even takes into account our possible future actions plus the contents of our consciousness. These conclusions can be drawn from the results of certain experiments that can even be understood by the non-physicist, if in possession of an open mind and willing to think a little bit harder than usual.

The quantum field – as recognized by the most physicists at the moment – is a non-local ubiquitous, not directly measurable, and intangible field from which all matter and energy manifests itself on measurement. Replace right away the word measurement here with observation. Many physicists are already doing that. Accepting that, the observer gets an important participating role in this manifestation of matter and energy. In other words, the quantum field is the invisible source from which everything we experience arises, which is by the way very reminiscent of the TAO. Many have already noticed that agreement.

Until the middle of the last century, a field in the physicists sense of the word was a state of space through which objects that are sensitive to that field, experience forces depending on their position in that field. A field, in that sense, is the way physicists try to deal with forces at a distance that are exerted through empty space. Examples are the gravitational field, the electromagnetic field, the Higgs field. A field is therefore essentially non-material. The nature of those field forces is still a mystery, although we can calculate and predict their effects. The quantum field is even another step less physical, it does not exert forces but is the source from which the matter and energy appears – and disappears into it. Most likely, the quantum field is also the source of space and time itself, but I will not go into that now.

The observer matters, literally

The properties of the quantum field can be described mathematically despite that intangible capacity. The Schrödinger equation is a good example of this. The Schrödinger equation solution describes a complex wave. Complex means that the described values cannot be expressed in easily imaginable numbers. Imaginary values, numbers whose square is negative – something that does not fit within our frame of mind – play an essential role. Fortunately, those imaginary values dissappear if we want to use the wave function as a an amazing efficient predictor of the probability of finding an object in our measurements. It is important here to remember that this wave does not describe the effect of the observation, the measurement. Without observation, the immaterial wave of possibilities would continue forever. The observer plays an essential role in the matter and energy emerging from the quantum field.

The effect of the observation is that the infinite collection of possibilities, which moves through the quantum field as a wave, results in a concrete experience, the so-called quantum collapse. I think that collapse is actually an unfortunate term. The term quantum collapse suggests a breakdown of something material where only one element remains. However, the quantum field is not material, not even a small bit. A term that better expresses what is happening is the ‘reduction of the quantum wave‘. The quantum wave can be reduced by our information to a smaller wave containing fewer possibilities. The final reduction is then to that of a single possibility, which is then 100% probable and is therefore the observed manifestation. That’s the bright spot on the screen when a photon hits, for example. The picture evoked by the term ‘reduction of the quantum wave’ helps us a lot better in our attempts at understanding.

Delayed choice quantum eraser and conscious observation

This ultimate reduction as a result of observation is called the observer effect in quantum physics, something that is still hotly discussed. The big question is whether it is the physical measurement, or whether it is the observer and his consciousness, which produces the effect, the reduction (or collapse) nof the quantum wave. That is a subtle problem for which no experiment seems to be configurable to answer this. Measurements without observation seem obviously worthless. As long as we are not allowed to observe the result, we cannot use the outcome, of course. A clear catch-22 situation. But there is an important experiment that seems to come very close to measuring without direct observation. I would like to describe this experiment here in such a way that its consequences will become clear and understandable.

That is the two-slit quantum eraser experiment with delayed choice. The delayed choice concerns the effect of whether or not to irrevocably erase measurement information before it has arrived in an observer’s consciousness or is registered – on the computer hard disk for example – so that conscious observation is still possible, albeit at a later moment.

The quantum eraser experiment is a two-slit experiment that is designed in such a way that we can detect and register the slit through which the wave went. The effect of this erasure is that the quantum wave then ‘magically’ reduces to one of the two slits. We can then see, because there exists now only a single wave between the slits and the screen, that the wave will no longer interfere with itself. We then no longer see the typical double-slit interference pattern of dark and light bands, the result is a single spread-out spot. Einstein already realized in around 1920 that mere observation of the slit would evoke this strange quantum effect and devised a notorious thought experiment with which he hoped to falsify quantum mechanics. His thought experiment was much later technically realized and the disappearance of the interference pattern on observation has been confirmed. Einstein thus played the role of devil’s advocate in his brilliant way, thereby contributing much to quantum physics.

The law of conservation of information

We can see this quantum behavior as the result of information in motion. The more information we receive, the more the information in the quantum wave will be reduced. This is because that information reduces the – infinite – number of possibilities in the quantum wave by moving that information to a location accessible to our consciousness. The more we know, the fewer probabilities there will be to realize. That is an effect that we can experience daily, such as in using a public transportation planner to avoid surprises with our planned trips. The more information, the fewer surprises. We can therefore also consider the quantum field as a universal information field. Physicists have thus discovered a new conservation law relevant to that quantum field, the law of conservation of information. When we can capture more information about the measured object, that means that the information in the quantum field moves to a location accessible to us, but always still within that field. The wave of possibilities is thereby reduced. The information is of course still within the quantum field, but now in a location where we have access to.

Let’s now visualize this in some diagrams. It may then become easier to understand what happens in a quantum eraser experiment. We will first look therefore at the basic implementation of a double-slit experiment. A single wave arrives at the two slits at the same time. The two slits then become sources of synchronous – simultaneously moving – waves. Those waves meet after the slits again and reinforce or extinguish each other in certain locations. These locations of reinforced motion form then contiguous curved lines. This creates – with light waves – the familiar interference pattern of dark and light fringes. With sound waves of a single tone (monochromatic sound) you will get areas of loudness and silence. You can do a double-slit experiment with sound at home with two simple speakers and a tone generator. With a distance between the speakers of 50 cm and a frequency of 800 Hz, the effect is easy to hear.

The basic double-slit experiment. The result is due to interference of the two waves coming from the two slits.

Quantum information collections pictured in Venn diagrams

We can use a Venn diagram to show how the information of an experiment gets distributed in the quantum field. The Venn diagrams then represent collections of quantum information. The ubiquitous quantum information field is then the set that contains all information in the universe, and all other collections are subsets of it. In anticipation of what will be argued further, I distinguish between:

  • The set of information provided by the experiment (green).
  • The set of information that the experiment yields and that has already been observed and incorporated into consciousness (yellow).

The yellow set is therefore a subset of the green one. For example, the information in the green set that is not in the yellow one may contain information that is already stored on a hard disk but has not yet been observed by anyone. When observing the contents of the hard disk, that information moves from somewhere in the green set to the yellow set of observed and in consciousness stored information. Because we are ultimately also collections of information, you could also consider the yellow set as representative of ourselves, the observers of the universe.

When we now organize the experiment in such a way that we can determine the slit through which the quantum wave travels, we will get the picture below. Now try to understand the following well. Remember that the quantum wave represents the sum of all probabilities of finding the object upon observation. If we can know which slit the wave is passing, that’s the slit where the sum of all probabilities is 100 %. Then it is undeniably clear that the wave travels through only one slit. I hope you understand that. For the other slit, there is no chance, no possibility, left for the object to manifest there. An observation that is usually interpreted – and unnecessarily – as that the object existed actually in one of the slits. That interpretation is the result of the confusing dual wave-particle image that is so often presented in the media about quantum physics.

As soon as we have information about how the wave travels the slits – not necessarily consciously observed – the interference dissappears and the result is a spread-out spot
Just as an aside. In the usual descriptions of the double-slit experiment, there is usually talk of an object – a photon, an electron, a molecule, a virus – that passes through the slit. As if that object appeared temporarily in the slit and then happily continued as a wave again. You will also find this description in my first book. Frankly, that's an unprovable and unnecessary assumption. It is never the case that the object is observed going through the slit in its passage. The image of a wave that is reduced to one slit is a lot simpler and therefore, in my opinion, better. It explains the disappearance of the interference pattern just as well, with fewer assumptions and is therefore preferred.

In a Korean experiment, the effect of information on the quantum wave has been beautifully demonstrated. The more information we have about one of the paths the wave can go, the stronger the wave on the other path is reduced. This relationship can be described by a simple algebraic formula that is very similar to the Pythagorean formula for the sides of a right triangle: a2 + b2 = c2. The left leg of the mannikin then represents the information we have about one path and the right leg represents the probablity to find the particle on the other. In the extreme positions (of the legs) the path information is maximal and the probability to find the particle on the path corresponding to the other leg is reduced to zero. Or the other way around.

The Venn diagram below shows that the information in the quantum information field, which relates to the object, moves to the green set when measured, which is the information we obtained from the experiment. So no information is added in the quantum field of the universe, it only moves to another location and has therefore an effect on the observed world. The interference pattern disappears. The result is now a spread-out spot.

The erasure of information has consequences for what we observe

In the previous diagram I placed the information about the object in the green set – ‘The information from the experiment’ – but not in the ‘Consciously perceived information’. This relocation of information, despite the fact that we have not yet consciously processed it, has the experimentally demonstrated effect of the disappearance of the interference fringes. But if this information has not yet entered an observing consciousness – the yellow set – then it is still possible to radically erase this information with the result that it can no longer end up in our consciousness.

The observable effect of erasing that not yet observed information is – surprisingly – the return of the interference pattern. This is the quantum eraser experiment in which – for example via semi-permeable mirrors – the information is randomly and unpredictably erased or not, before it can be registered. So, erasing is actually moving information to a location that is no longer accessible by us in the quantum field.

Quantum eraser destroys the informatuin on the quantum wave passing the slits. The interference fringes return.

The conclusion that can be drawn from the return of the interference pattern is astonishing as far as I am concerned. It means that the quantum wave even responds to information that is not yet in our consciousness but could end up there in the future. This also means that the quantum wave changes retroactively since the erasure is always in time after the passage through the slits. That’s why it’s called delayed.

Would you have become curious about the technical details of all mentioned experiments, especially the delayed choice ones, they are described in detail in my book 'Quantum Physics is NOT Weird' available at Amazon in the US and also at BookMundo in the UK.

Future-proof behavior

The quantum field therefore also takes our possible future actions and content of consciousness into account. It cannot and should not be the case that the interference does not disappear and that therefore the wave must have went through both slits, but that then at some point in the future we observed the result that was waiting for us on the hard disk, and that we then have to conclude that we then know which slit the wave passed and consequently not the other one. Which irrevocably impossible means that we should not have observed interference in the experiment, while we remember we did. Perhaps we published it already. A severe violation of our remembered history or of the laws of nature that would radically overturn everything we assumed as real. Luckily, the recorded completed past is irrevocable. Nice indeed.

Tat Vam Asi

The astonishing conclusion is therefore that the reduction of the quantum wave to a single slit, which destroys the interference pattern, is not the direct result of the physical measurement, but depends on the possibility whether that result can be observed now or in the future. The quantum field is therefore very strongly connected to our consciousness and its future. Perhaps the field and our (greater) consciousness are identical, which aptly corresponds to the Tat Vam Asi (You Are the Absolute) of the Upanishads.

In any case, for me this means a mind-bogglingly intelligent and careful universe that is constantly making adjustments in its quantum field, so that we, conscious beings, have the experience of a universe that usually conforms to the laws we have established and therefore behaves in a predictable way for us. Very accommodating that. The quantum field therefore behaves like the intelligent director of a mind-bogglingly rich and complex play with an unimaginably careful attention to everything that takes place on the stage. Call it love.

In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Bob Dylan
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The Universe is IN US

In the Dutch version of my book ‘Quantum Physics & the Mind’ I close the Crash Course chapter with a highly condensed summary of what I discovered in my study of what quantum physics seems to tell us since already more then hundred years: we are the universe. So, time to share it with you here.

I’m a phycisist, therefore I love summaries.
  • Physicists have discovered – now already a century ago – that all objects in the universe – matter, energy, light – arise from the so-called quantum field.
  • This ubiquitous quantum field is a non-material field of vibrations and waves. The best way to imagine it is to evoke in your mind the surface of an endless ocean, not only extended in space, but also in time.
  • The crests of the waves of this non-material ocean in space and time indicate that, in that location in space and time, it is most likely that objects can be observed.
  • The quantum field is therefore an oceanic field of possibility, of potentiality.
  • An observer is required to manifest those objects by observation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a human observer.
  • An observation is the appearance of material objects from that immaterial ocean of possibilities as experiences arising in an observing mind.
  • By that we actually say that observers make the intangible become material. Better said, they make an intangible potential becoming a conscious material experience.
  • Observers must therefore also have an intangible core, which is most likely their consciousness because that is the place where experiences arise.
  • In that case, this means that all observers must have consciousness. It is not only man that is an observer in this universe. An observer does not even have to be material herself. In that case they are / have consciousness without a material body. In other words, they can be pure ‘mind’.
  • Material observers therefore should also have a non-material conscious component. Any living organism is a material observer of the universe. With that insight we immediately have a very probable definition of life.
  • The “spirit”, the “mind”, in a living observing organism is also the observer of the material part of that organism, of its physical body.
  • That material part of the organism of an observer, its body, therefore also arises from that intangible quantum field, as an experienced observation of a material body.
  • An observer is not passive in his perception of matter but is creative. Everything that the observer already ‘knows’ and expects has an effect on what is observed and therefore also has an effect on the vibrations and waves in the universal quantum field.
  • The universe, the cosmic quantum field, the intangible source of everything that can be observed, must therefore also be aware of the observer’s knowledge and expectations. The universe is also an observer.
  • Therefore, the universe cannot be different from us, but is in us, in every conscious being. The universe is within us. We are the universe.

All this can be deduced by a meticulous, and as unbiased as possible, study of the double slit experiments, in particular the delayed choice experiments. But a study of delayed choice experiments is not absolutely necessary. Study of ancient wisdom shows that in some form these insights have already long existed. The Neo-Confucianists from around 800 AD in ancient China , even without double slit experiments, already knew this and described the ripples of the ordering principle of the Li in the TAO. It is becoming clear to me that the TAO and the quantum field are the same. Both are principles of potentiality.

From 'The Web of Meaning' by Jeremy Lent:
"The Neo-Confucianists recognized that all patterns of the universe ultimately influence each other, as do multiple ripples on a lake that intersect and create new patterns. The ultimate pattern of all patterns, they realized, containing all the Li ripples in the universe, was the Tao."

In another form we encounter the continuous and continuously ordening quantum field in perpetual motion, the TAO in other words, in some exceptional experiences. Read therefore this poetic magic description of the experience of the TAO by a Near Death (NDE) experiencer (Jen W):

"This is like a rock thrown into a pond, each ripple then becomes a wave that pushes little pebbles up onto the shore, to where a bird might find it, using it to aid their digestion, while they fly over a barren land, dropping small seeds along with that pebble in a field, growing flowers for the bees later in the summer."
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Experimental Metaphysics

Experimental metaphysics has become viable, and almost nobody is aware of that. But first, what is metaphysics? The first publisher of Aristotle’s writings (the philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes – 1st century BC) literally named the books that followed the books on physics: ‘ta meta ta physics’, meaning ‘ that which comes after the physics books’. Aristotle did not use the term metaphysics himself, but spoke merely of ‘the first philosophy’.

Wikipedia: Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental basic structure of reality. Do not confuse this with the examination of the aspects of reality that are open to our sensory or instrumental observation, that’s what physics does.

The suggestion of this metaphysics icon is that it’s something of the physical brain. It’s not however.
And this is not a befitting image representing metaphysics either.

In other words, Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the deep foundations of the world: the nature of space, time, causation and existence, the foundations of reality itself.

Metaphysics is therefore not about sensory experience, which is ultimately the way every aspect of reality enters our consciousness, but about the basis of reality. Not how it works but what it IS. It should be the mother of all philosophy, but from the 19th century on it became a branch of philosophy that was no longer considered really that important since the hugely successful department of physics was considered the branch of science that would from then on deliver all answers about how the world works and why. Which is something that is still is professed and believed by many. Metaphysics is often relegated to the same dubious department as the occult as can be inferred from the following statement from Nobel laureate for Medical Physiology Charles Richet (1850-1935) where he also points to the hopefull possibility of experimental metaphysics:

Metaphysics is not yet officially recognized as science. But that will change... In Edinburgh I was able to confirm to a hundred physiologists that our five senses are not the only way through which knowledge can be acquired and that part of reality is sometimes in other ways reaches consciousness... Just because a fact is rare doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If something is difficult to investigate, is that a reason not to want to understand it?... The people who have taunted metaphysics as occult science, will be just as ashamed as those who protested vehemently against chemistry because seeking the philosopher's stone would be an illusion... As a principle of investigation, only the starting point of Lavoisier, Claude Bernard and Pasteur should apply: to work experimentally always and everywhere. Let us therefore welcome the new science, which will change the direction of human thinking.

One reason that, despite Richet’s emphatic plea, experimental metaphysics didn’t really take off at the time is that the assumptions about the ground of reality were considered untestable. Physics would not have the necessary resources to do metaphysical tests. At about the time of the turn of the 20th century, however, it was gradually becoming clear that metaphysics was indeed beginning to play the role Richet hoped for. We became able to put our metaphysical assumptions to the test.

Bell experiments and spacetime ideas – experimental metaphysics for a Nobel Prize

The Bell experiments that were carried out at the second half of the past century and into this century, and for which in 2022 a Nobel Prize has been awarded, are in their deepest nature metaphysical experiments. The experiments performed with gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity are also ultimately metaphysical experiments. Measuring and demonstrating gravity waves means that the spacetime fabric – what is it? – is elastic and can carry waves. What is measured there is the effect of these waves on material objects, not the waves themselves, nor the spacetime fabric. If the theory of relativity is correct, and all experiments have confirmed it so far, then causality, that’s cause and effect and its order, is no longer an objective fundamental reality but a consequence of the observer’s individual perspective. The same is true for space and time, they are not as fundamental as we supposed. So, these theories and objective experiments have already clearly a metaphysical tenor. With the Bell experiments quantum physics also starts to offer the opportunity for in-depth metaphysical experiments. That’s the topic I want to discuss here.

The Bell experiments answer a deep question about the nature of reality. The question is whether that reality matches our intuitions. Those intuitions put to the test in these experiments are, to be exact, our inherent assumptions about locality (the assumption that things separated in space cannot influence each other instantaneously) and about realism (that things exist without having to be measured. The Bell experiments have shown already that at least one of those two assumptions is not true. That such an experiment made many physicists uncomfortable is evident from the fact that when John Clauser conceived the idea to setup a Bell experiment, and consulted John Bell about it, the latter asked concerned whether Clauser had a tenured post.

In the meantime, metaphysical experiments are back on the agenda through these questions and experiments and the first performers of these experiments, Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger, were awarded a joint Nobel Prize in 2022. That is well considered a Nobel Prize for experimental metaphysics.

From left to right, John Clauser, Anton Zeilinger en Alain Aspect – Nobelprize 2022 (experimental meta-)physics © Quantamagazine

Testing alternative realities

Another experiment of this type, published in 2019, has, unfortunately, received little attention. It is a variation on Eugene Wigner’s thought experiment. In that experiment, Wigner’s friend conducts a quantum experiment in which the observation of that friend causes a quantum collapse – a positive or negative polarization of a photon, for example. However, outside the laboratory stands Wigner who has not yet observed what happens in the laboratory. The door is not opened yet. For Wigner, who stands outside, his friend and his experiment are quantum entangled and there is therefore no quantum collapse yet. In Wigner’s reality, the quantum collapse on observation only happens when he opens the door of the laboratory. Wigner’s thought experiment is in itself is already a metaphysical thought experiment about how the universe manifests itself with multiple observers.

A,B: Two seperate Wigner’s friend experiments.
C: Alternative realities tested with two entangled Wigner’s friend experiments.

But this 2018-19 experiment goes a step further than a single Wigner’s friend experiment and tests whether several observers in two entangled Wigner’s Friend experiments always observe the same result. It is going too far here to describe the experiment in detail, but the results of the experiment answers the metaphysical question whether the next three assumptions about reality also all three are true:

  • Locality (no instantenious remote action, mutual effects with maximally the speed of light)
  • Freedom of choice for each experimenter
  • Absoluteness of observed events (everyone always observes the same outcome)

The result of the experiment – provided that we accept that the detectors used here can be considered as observers – is with a great certainty that at least one of these three metaphysical assumptions is not true. The road to metaphysical experiments without an occult label being immediately affixed to it seems open.

If detectors and other instruments can be considered as observers in quantumphysics is a topic for a next blog, but consider this. All our senses can be considered as instruments feeding experience in our consciousness. Instruments are just extensions to our physical senses and their purpose is the same, evoking ultimately the experience of observation in our consciousness. So, every observation has to end in consciousness and is only experienced there. So, it’s not really about what observers are, it’s about experiencing in the end. We always observe the universe through physical instruments, be it your eyes, ears, fingertips or a proton accelerator. Consciousness is required for experience which is always the product of observation.

For those who want to know the ins and outs of experimental metaphysics, I refer them to the Quanta Magazine article ‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality’ or watch the Essentia Foundation YouTube movie ‘Experimental metaphysics with first-person perspectives, by Dr. Eric Cavalcanti’.

Or read further on this website:

The consensus problem in quantum physics
Nobel Prize physics for demonstrating non-local quantum entanglement
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Conscious agents and the emergence of space-time

A proof of reality by reductio ad absurdum

Earlier on this website I wrote already about professor Donald Hoffman – cognitive psychologist – and about his book ‘The Case Against Reality. How evolution hid the truth from our eyes.‘ When reading that book for the first time, a few years ago, I had some objections to the way he came to the counterintuitive conclusion that reality is not what it seems and that our physical senses have not evolved to represent reality. This was because he arrived at his conclusion, by implementing the neo-Darwinist evolution theory of the survival of the DNA of the better fitted carrier thereof. And, as I have argued before, I am not a fan of this materialistic neo-Darwinist theory, although Hoffman’s final conclusion was in line with the conclusions I drew from quantum physics.

Reductio ad absurdum is the best proof there is and also the finest

But I was wrong. What I didn’t realize is that Hoffman shows that the neo-Darwinist hypothesis ultimately, through the application of game theories based on it, evolutionary games, ends up in a logical paradox. By performing a good many computer simulations, evolution games, based on the neo-darwinistic evolution theory, he showed experimentally that the neo-darwinistic hypothesis shoots itself ultimately in the foot. Evolution games, based on the reproduction of the fitter organism for survival, consistently delivered the result that evolution always chooses to adapt our sensory processing in a way that costs the least energy but is effective. A truthful internal representation of reality costs way more than a simple but effective representation that does not have to be truthful.

The delicious juicy apple you observe therefore does not have to be exactly that in reality. If your action – pick it and and eat it – is beneficial for your organism, that’s enough. So it is precisely the case that if neo-darwinism were correct, your image of reality would not. That’s pretty absurd, isn’t it?

Neurons are not the source of consciousness

Hoffman then goes further and says that the image we have formed of physical brains and neurons is also absolutely incorrect. His next step is then to reject the hypothesis that your neurons are the source of your consciousness. It cannot be because the image of material brains and neurons that our physical senses produce cannot correspond to reality. Furthermore, the real hard – and not even approximately solved – question is how physical neurons would produce consciousness. These physical neurons are only just there when we turn our attention to them.

Which is precisely what I conclude from the now well-known observer effect in quantum physics. When we see that the observer, simply by observing, can influence reality – think for instance of the experimentally confirmed changed behavior of the quantum wave if we can know the slit that the electron traverses. That change of the immaterial quantum wave cannot be accomplished by your supposedly physical neurons. Such an assumption would be a fairly absurd one. So Hoffman and I reach the same conclusion, but along different lines.

A network of ‘Conscious Agents’

Hoffman therefore assumes – just like me and many others – that consciousness must be primary. Together with his team he created an already fairly complete mathematical theory, describing a network of interacting consciousness units, Conscious Agents (CAs). His extensive article ‘Objects of consciousness’ of 2014 is easy to find on the internet. In it he shows mathematically, among other things, that several interacting CAs form together a larger and more complex CA. The mathematical description of the simplest CA appears – very surprising – to be identical to the quantum physical description of a free particle. So every conscious organism is a complex CA with several layers of complexity.

Each complex organism is then such a complex CA. Each multicellular organism is made up of billions of cells, where each of them in is a complex CA. And so on. At the very bottom we find particles acting as CAs.

A Virtual Reality game

The interaction of the entire network of interacting complex CAs then ultimately yields spacetime as we experience it. This spacetime is therefore an illusion that is experienced by those complex CAs. Hoffman often uses the virtual reality metaphor of a VR game in which the players present themselves as action figures, named avatars. He often makes the comparison of our senses – not only the eyes – with virtual reality goggles or glasses. What we experience as an object or person is, in that case, not very much different from a set of pixels generated by the VR system at the moment we look there. When we are not looking, those pixels do not have to be generated and are therefore not there.

This also explains the observer related elasticy of space and time as it emerges from special relativity. If space and time are a by a VR system generated experience, we can, in that case, understand that elasticy better.

Note: A pixel is the smallest unit of presentation in an image on a computer screen. Everything you see on a computer screen is made up of pixels.

Pixels – enlarged

What is not observed does not exist

Thus, Hoffmans idea fits seamlessly into the findings of quantum physics that the observed object does not exist before it is observed. The object – the set of pixels – is generated when we focus our attention on it and thus experience it. André Duqum’s interview with Donald Hoffman below – a full two hours – is very interesting and easy to follow because Hoffman explains very patiently. But be advised to take a quiet do-not-disturb moment for viewing the whole interview.

NB: The term ‘Markovian kernel’ is often mentioned in the interview. A Markovian kernel is a mathematical concept used in Hoffman’s CA model. Translate that, for an easy understanding of the concept, into the two-way filter that any communication combination of sense and expression capability actually is. It’s just a highly technical word for what is exchanged and what is suppressed in experiencing and responding.

So, we live in a VR Game. A rather absurd looking conclusion. But that’s no reason to take the game idea not seriously. Perhaps a good reason to just enjoy it without much fear but more in wonder and admiration of the presentations.

Proof That Reality Is An ILLUSION: The Mystery Beyond Space-Time – Donald Hoffman
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Coherence, decoherence and the observer of the state wave

The state wave is a probability wave

The state wave in quantum physics is the solution of the Schrödinger equation, it is thus a mathematical object. This mathematical object predicts the probability of an object, to which that state wave relates, to be found at a given time and location when doing a measurement. Because it is a wave, its medium, whatever that is, should be coherent. The coherence of this state wave plays an important role in quantum physics. When a measurement takes place, the state wave ends abruptly and the object is observed. The end of that wave is often called the decoherence of the state wave. An understanding of what is meant by coherence and decoherence is therefore important for a better understanding of quantum physics.

A coherent phenomenon

In order to exhibit wave behavior, a form of cohesion of the medium is required plus a force that strives for the middle position. In water, this cohesion results from the direct physical connection and attraction of the water molecules. It is gravity that returns the medium to the middle position, the rest position of the water surface. Gravity thus ensures the return to the middle position of the wave. The physical connection, the coherence, of the water molecules ensures that the movement is propagated in the medium.

Surface wave in a liquid. The liquid particles perform a circular movement. So there is no liquid transported by the wave in the direction of the wave.

With a sound wave in air, the air pressure is the force that strives for the middle position. This ambient pressure ensures a return to the middle position. In the middle position, the pressure is therefore equal to the ambient pressure. The coherence of the medium transporting sound waves in air stems from the continuous collision of air molecules, through which they constantly exchange their energy. A sound wave is therefore a coherent phenomenon. This means that the air provides coherence, just like with a liquid.

No air molecules are transported in a sound wave, only areas of high and low pressure. Switching on the sound system does not lower the pressure in the room by transporting air molecules out of the room.
© ar.inspiredpencil.com

With electromagnetic waves, EM waves, such as light, the coherence is ensured by the fact that a changing magnetic field also causes a changing electric field. And vice versa. These changes are therefore closely related and evoke each other. The force that makes the EM wave return to the middle position is a bit more difficult. Electric and magnetic fields tend to extinguish gradually when there is no electrical or magnetic charge nearby. Only their mutual dynamics keep them moving. The force to the middle position is therefore a result of the tendency of an oscillating field to lose its energy. This is again a result of the tendency of an electric or magnetic field to spread in space at the speed of light in all directions, so that the local strength must quickly decrease. That an electric or magnetic field spreads in space in this way is a fundamental but also an unexplained phenomenon. We still don’t even know what it is. We only know very well how it behaves.

EM wave. The electric (E) and the magnetic (B) field forces are perpendicular to each other. The change in electric field strength causes a change in magnetic field strength .. and vice versa. This only functions well if the wave moves at the speed of light.

The quantum state wave and the observer

The quantum physical state wave is somewhat more difficult. As far as we can judge and know, it is a wave of potential, of possible observations, in which the probabilities of position and movement, more exactly the probabilities of showing these properties when measured, alternate. This is thus a wave of potential. Potential is clearly immaterial. The object – before its measurement – is not. Position and movement do conflict with each other. If the position changes then that is clearly movement. As soon as there is movement, the position becomes more variable, so it becomes more uncertain. But as soon as the position is more certain, the movement decreases.

In short, standstill is the absence of movement, movement is the absence of standstill. That is therefore also a form of coherence between these two phenomena, position and movement, in which wanting to know position and/or movement is the driving force. In this wanting to know, we immediately, hopefully, recognize the observer’s influence on his observation, which is just having an experience, and perhaps understand a bit more of the non-material nature of the state wave.

Yin and Yang. Standstill is the absence of movement, movement is the absence of standstill

Loss of coherence?

So, can you still speak of a collapse? Can something that is not material, so is not really there in the sense that we are assigning to the idea of materiality, collapse? We never see such a sudden loss of cohesion in all the waves that we can observe unless we take very special measures. Such as the sudden removal of the medium in which the wave propagates. There is then no longer any sound propagating in that vacuum. In an analogous way would a measurement then suddenly annihilate the medium in which the state wave propagates. The appearance of the measured object from nothing is even more mysterious.

Citing decoherence as a cause of the loss of coherence that is the end of the state wave is a tautological trick. Using the description of the event, the name we give it, as a logical explanation is a tautology. It rains because it rains. The wave disappears because the wave disappears. Decoherence is just a label and very probably a misnomer.

An immaterial wave of potential

Now back to the, in my opinion most likely, cause of the transition from the state wave, that wave of potential, to the observed object. This, the transition from potential into realization, happens in our experience, which is the becoming aware of what is observed. It is here that we see the influence of the observer. This is not to say that the awareness of the act of observing something, inexorable means that the observed objects then materially concrete exist. Just think of what we observe in our dreams.

Why are we convinced that the quantum state wave exists when we cannot observe it? That’s because of all these double-slit experiments, the result of which can only be explained as the result of a wave phenomenon. The overwhelming evidence of it.

I have said already a lot about the influence of the observer on what is observed elsewhere. That is something that Einstein saw very early on already as a consequence of quantum mechanics and he did not like it at all. So, he used the predicted effect, the observation of the slit influencing the outcome of the experiment, which is the dissappearance of the fringes, therefore as an argument for his deep suspicion that quantum mechanics could not be a complete theory. Complete in the sense that its predictions were in all circumstances correct. But he was proved right in a way by various experiments that indeed demonstrated the observer effect he had predicted. Quantum mechanics was therefore right in its predictions. Too bad for Einstein.

I refer those who still have doubts about the reality of the observer effect to this fascinating interview with Professor Donald Hoffman below who makes a very convincing argument for the case of primary consciousness. He aasumes a network of a multitude of conscious agents. For an article by him on this, just google for ‘Objects of Consciousness’ or click here for the pdf.

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Entangled Neurons?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Btub.jpg
Microtubuli in a fixated cel

If you look closely, quantum entanglement can be found almost everywhere. Quantum entanglement says that objects, however small or big, that were once in contact with each other, share a common state wave and that the observation of one of those objects has an immediate effect on the state wave of the other objects. Can we encounter quantum entanglement in everyday life? Good question. I think so.

Microchimerism in mothers

In the Scientific American of 2013, I come across an article that says that the unborn child’s cells can enter the mother’s body through the placenta to live there for many years. There is no immune response by the mother’s body to this. The phenomenon has been given the name microchimerism. The SA article describes in detail how neuronal brain cells can enter the mother’s brain and then live on for decades. However, the researchers are in the dark about the biological reason for this phenomenon.

‘In this new study, scientists observed that microchimeric cells are not only found circulating in the blood, they are also embedded in the brain. They examined the brains of deceased women for the presence of cells containing the male “Y” chromosome. They found such cells in more than 60 percent of the brains and in multiple brain regions. Since Alzheimer’s disease is more common in women who have had multiple pregnancies, they suspected that the number of fetal cells would be greater in women with AD compared to those who had no evidence for neurological disease. The results were precisely the opposite: there were fewer fetal-derived cells in women with Alzheimer’s. The reasons are unclear.’

White blood cells love playboy girls

Then I jump to an at first sight unrelated topic. I will discuss therefore briefly the controversial research of Cleve Backster, a top specialist in the use of the polygraph. In a playful mood, Backster hooked a polygraph up to a plant to see if the polygraph would show anything when he watered the plant. This gave no discernible response. But when he considered burning a leaf of the plant with his lighter, the polygraph, and therefore the plant, responded violently. His interest was immediately piqued and he continued to do polygraph experiments with all kinds of living organisms throughout his further career. In one of his later experiments, he collected white blood cells from a subject’s mouth, and hooked these somehow up to the polygraph. The subject then leafs – in the meantime – through a Playboy lying on the table next to him and hits on the centre fold picturing Bo Derek. The polygraph responded immediately with a maximum swing of the writing stylus. Apparently the white blood cells , though not physically linked to the subject’s body, were still linked to the subject emotions!

Polygraph result showing the reaction of white blood cells, taken from the subjects’ mouth, to the subject viewing the Playboy Bo Derek centrefold. From ‘The secret life of Plants’.

This is in my opinion entanglement in action.

Entangled living cells

When I connect those two stories – neural cells of their children in mother brains and white blood cells that respond to an emotional event that takes place in the organism they have come from –, then the reason for the microchimerism in mother brains should become clear. If there is a reaction to an alarming situation in the child’s brain, the “entangled” neurons in the mother brain will also fire. The mother receives thus a signal that something serious is going on with her child and that she must intervene quickly. The reports about such maternal instinctive red flag actions are countless. You may still remember stories by your own mother.

Quantum entanglement and information transfer

Now I have spoken here about entangled neurons that apparently can fire in response to each other. That is actually information transfer through quantum entanglement. That’s something Einstein protested vehemently as it would violate his laws of relativity. ‘Spooky Action at a Distance‘. Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated convincingly and repeatedly by many Bell experiments, however, and is now widely accepted. It is even an essential feature used in quantum computing. The Bell experimenters have even been awarded a Nobel Prize. However, quantum physicists explicitly state that quantum entanglement cannot be used for data transfer because the collapse of the quantum state by a measurement (the quantum collapse) is fundamentally unpredictable. We can’t influence the unpredictable outcome of the measurement on the entangled objects.

Descartes again?

Drawing by Descartes how the immaterial mind connects to the pineal gland

The quantum observer effect has also been investigated in parapsychological experiments. The question there was whether people can influence the results of a quantum experiment. The outcome in many of these experiments is affirmative, often with a significance that is even higher than the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs particle. So, this could answer the question that has been asked since Descartes: can an immaterial mind influence matter – the body – and vice versa. Such an influence however goes against generally accepted scientific dogmas, notably the conservation laws of energy. A reason for many to reject Cartesian dualism.

But if we were to allow that possibility, interesting new perspectives would open up in the study of consciousness. Move your index finger and then wonder how it is possible that this movement is created by your thought. The classic orthodox answer to that question is the computer metaphor that is used by neuroscientists. According to them, your brain is an extremely complex advanced parallel processing computer that also generates your consciousness and thus your thoughts. So also the nerve signal to your index finger. Problem solved. Oh yeah, really?

The observer effect has been demonstrated

However, this vision of neuroscience is strongly contradicted by the observer effect in quantum physics. Matter does not exist prior to observation. This has been confirmed by multiple Bell type and Delayed Choice experiments. These confirm that an observation is required for the materialization of matter in a measurement. Since the observer is needed for the manifestation of matter, it is unlikely that matter will produce conscious observers and then manifest itself recursively.

If we can recognize the possibility that the observing mind can also influence the reduction of the state wave – the quantum collapse – then perhaps we can apply the Orchestrated Objective Reduction hypothesis of Penrose and Hameroff where consciousness is a product of the quantum collapse in microtubules (microscopic structures in living cells) in our neurons, but then in the reversed direction. Consciousness is then able, through the influence of the quantum collapse in these microtubules, to control the firing or the not firing of the neuron.

Thus moves my thought my index finger. And mothers are warned that their child is in danger. Magnificent.

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Consciousness, the next dimension?

Consciousness is becoming a hot topic in the media

In the quantum physics and awareness courses that I give regularly, I show my audience that primary consciousness holds the best cards for an explanation of the ‘weird’ effects in quantum physics, like the observer effect and entanglement. No hard evidence, of course, but we will never get that in our laboratories. Hard evidence is only applicable for mathematical theorems. We also have no hard evidence for the Big Bang and yet it seems generally accepted as an acceptable scientific explanation for the universe we are currently observing. It suits the current paradigm.

That many people just refuse to even consider primary consciousness was showed excellently by a student who argued on the subject of the near-death experience (NDE) with me on the last day of the course. I support the view that the NDE shows that the mind survives death. Any reported NDE can be explained excellently with the assumption of primary consciousness. The same assumption explains also any quantum phenomenon, like the observer effect, very well. So, it explains effects in entirely different domains, which makes the idea of primary consciousness much stronger. Primary means that consciousness cannot be a product of that bundle of neurons in your skull. Well, according to this student, it was proven sufficiently that the NDE would be a neurological phenomenon. He could, very understandable, not provide the evidence so readily, but nevertheless he remained adamant. In the end, we agreed we disagreed friendly. In any case, the phenomenon of consciousness creates a lot of discussion these days. Even in the regular media appear nowadays articles on consciousness.

So, consciousness seems to enter these days into the spotlights. Especially in combination with AI. If physical neurons can become aware, transistors probably can too. So, what if such a collection of transistors becomes conscious, will we have then created a slave? A conscious aware slave who will eventually rebel against his masters? Not my idea, nor my fear.

The last guest in a podcast series on consciousness broadcasted by the NRC, one of the more important and rather science oriented Dutch papers, was cognitive neuroscientist Jacob Jolij, a fervent reseacher of consciousness. After having abandoned the idea of the neural source of consciousness, he brought his most recent idea forward in the podcast that consciousness is just another dimension. We have three dimensions of space and one for time. Consciousness should, according to him, be the next dimension. As far as I am concerned, this proposal is still the idea of a material thinker. I will explain this further.

What is consciousness actually? A tantalizing search from neurobiology to parapsychology. Dutch edition only.

So, at the present stage of his research, Jacob Jolij has arrived at the conclusion that consciousness is not a product of your neurons – I agree totally there – but that it is probably a dimension such as time and space. I disagree there. All things considered, that is of course far from being an explanation. You will not begin to understand consciousness more by putting a new label on it. It seems even a step back to Descartes’ ‘Res Cogitans’. According to Descartes there exists matter – in the familiar three dimensions – and there exists consciousness, two substances that cannot be traced back to each other. One is physical, the other is definitely not. They exist in fundamentally different domains. Such an idea of separate domains is plain dualism. The main objection to Descartes’ idea is that the interaction between those two domains (dimensions?) cannot be explained physically. For physical interaction you need the transportation of energy, which is in the same domain as matter. So, interaction between the two domains is impossible. This objection is based on the – unproven, rather dogmatic – assumption that every physical action always has a physical cause. Forget the Big Bang for a moment.

Dimension as label for unexplained phenomena

As far as Jacob Jolij is concerned, the question of consciousness is then solved with the word dimension, satisfying because consciousness becomes – seen that way – an element of the physical world, just as time and space are. Then perhaps the interaction between matter and energy on the one hand and non-material consciousness can become understandable. This solution to the hard problem of consciousness reminds me somewhat of the ether, the element that was supposed to act as a transporting medium for electromagnetic waves because waves as we know them need a transporting and coherent medium. The ether was already in the 19th century proved to be unsustainable.

So, it is actually a play of words that is done here. Replace Descartes’ ‘Res Cogitans’ with a word from the conceptual framework of physics and you seem to have found an explanation. Watch your way of thinking carefully! You are avoiding acknowledging the mystery.

Are dimensions fundamental?

I would also like to point out that time is not a fundamental dimension of nature. Einstein already showed that clock time also depends on the observer’s situation. Space too, because space and time are one weave. What is experienced as time for one observer can be experienced as space by another. In quantum physics, time and space appear in the becoming aware of an observation of the appearance of a material object. That’s the so-called quantum collapse, the reduction of the quantum wave happening on our observation. The collapse is the name physicists use for the disappearance of the non-material quantum wave and the simultaneous appearance of the object upon observation. The object is manifested including its history, which is therefore also retroactively recorded with the act of observation, and thus becomes ‘true’. Before that, the object did not exist materially, there was only an intangible wave of potentiality. This is the so-called observer effect. An effect that caused and still causes headaches for a lot of materialistic thinking physicists, which is reflected in rather unsatisfactory and vague explanations of the quantum collapse in – in a lot of other ways excellent – books on quantum physics.

Let’s not make it harder than it is.

A dimension is not some fundamental physical element, it is a concept, something that therefore belongs in the same category as a thought. As a result, a dimension is not something that contains the mind, it is clearly the other way around. Attaching the label dimension to the mind doesn’t add anything to our understanding. It obfuscates only the mystery.

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Subject, object and synchronicity

The inner and the outer world

In the ‘Quantum Physics & the Mind’ course that I lecture at the Academy of Humanities in Utrecht, The Netherlands, the study assignment is an essay about which insights quantum physics has yielded for the student. In one such an essay, a student wrote that she could well understand the interference pattern that results in the double slit experiment, but that she did not get clear why, as soon as one of the slits is observed, the interference pattern disappears. Musing about the small but important difference between those two experiments, I realized that the problem for many may be found in our usual subject-object stance.

Observing the slits destroys the interference fringes because the quantum wave must then reduce to one of the slits.

The ordinary double slit experiment – where it is not observed through which slit the object or quantum wave goes – is a clear example of how we usually do experiments. We are not physically involved and observe the results from a third person perspective. That is the way we observe the world, as we have been used to do so from childhood, as if the perceived world is not part of our inner world.

As an aside, I assume that it is the quantum wave and not the materialized object that passes through one of the slits. That explains the observed loss of interference just as well and does not contain the additional unnecessary assumption that the object materialized for a moment in the slit even though it was not directly observed there. The assumption that the object materializes in the slit originates probably from the preference we have for the idea of the permanence of matter. The assumption that the state wave is a probability wave as long as it is not observed is sufficient to explain the phenomena without anything materializing anywhere on its path to the detector. If the state wave reduces itself to just one slit, the probability that we would have found the particle there, if we had actually observed there in the slit, is indeed 100%. However, a 100% probability is only just a number in our mind and not the same as a material presence. Probability is not matter.

But as soon as we notice that our mere observation has an effect on the result in the experiment – the state wave changes its behavior, even retroactively, to pass only through one of the two slits – we ourselves become a part of the experiment. Our knowledge, our spiritual inner world, becomes entangled, literally, with the perceived material outer world. Which is absolutely something we are not used to. The intellect – that is the way we interpret the world – no longer understands what happens and backs away. Confusion arises.

The illusion of separate inner and outer worlds

How can this confusion be resolved? The logic is in itself simple and correct. Einstein saw it as early as 1920 (and he was very opposed to what it implied). If you can determine in some way the slit that the particle has passed, it is no longer possible that the outcome is that it has passed through both slits, even if this happens in the form of a probability wave. The probability in one of the slits should become 100%, zero in the other. Those outcomes, passing two slits and passing only one of the slits, are logically and mutually exclusive. The wave therefore conforms clearly its behavior to our knowledge of the world. At that crucial moment, the intellect realizes a violation of its deeply ingrained stance of “I am in here and the world is out there and they are both independent of each other“. Which results in confusion and not being able to understand. I think the only solution to understand this is to let the logic come in through quiet introspection. Ask yourself if you are really sure – from positive experience – if the inner and outer world are separate worlds. The acceptance of the idea that the inner world and the outer world are strongly connected and influence each other must take time. Be patient.

The usual interpretation is that the object materializes in the slit when it is observed and then continues again as quantum wave on its way to the detector. See insert aside above. The result – the disappearance of the interference pattern – is indistinguishable from the expected effect of the reduction of the wave to one slit. In the first case, the observer’s inner world has a slightly different effect on the outer world, materialization of the object in the slit instead of the reduction of the wave. Does the difference matter? Not a bit really.

Who now manifests the object when our inner worlds are separated?

Synchronicity explained

In other words, the outer world is a part of the world of the mind. Which would explain the phenomenon of synchronicity excellently. Synchronicity becomes something that should be expected. How it is possible that we – each aware individual – have an inner world that is not separate from the outside world, is then made understandable by assuming that that seeming individuality, de personal inner world, ultimately is also an illusion, a special form of a constrained perspective. This also sheds light on the consensus question that was an insurmountable problem for Eugene Wigner.

No separate inner and outer world.

How to actually observe the slits

‘Observing’ the slits is a metaphorically intended expression in these experiments. We only need to be able to determine by measurement the slit through which the object went. This is usually done by using two entangled photons, where one of them is sent through the slits and the other one provides us the information about its twin sister.

The principle of ‘observing’ the photon passing the slits. A high-energy photon is split into two photons that fly in two directions, the signal and the idler. The signal photons pass through a double slit and will normally show an interference pattern at X1. The idler photon also carries the path information of the signal photon because of their entanglement. If that information is recorded, the interference at X1 disappears. For more information on this experiment and its results I refer to another page on this website.

Doing three-slit experiments

Wavelike behavior diminishes with increase of information

The question of what happens when ‘observing’ only one of the three slits in a three-slit experiment is of course also interesting here. This question comes up often when I’m giving my course on quantum physics and the mind. With three slits where only one of them is ‘observed’ we have some information, but not enough to know each time which slit the object went through. If we don’t observe the object’s passing – a probability of 2:3 – the state wave will pass through the other two slits. Interference of these two synchronous waves will then occur.

But, if we do ‘observe’ an object passing the observed slit, which means that the probability wave is reduced to the observed slit, then there will be only a single wave coming from the ‘observed’ slit, so no interference. The pattern of fringes, which becomes discernible when we fire a large enough amount of photons, becomes less distinct. The clear fringes and the spread-out spot become superimposed. The less information we can have about the path followed, the stronger the wave behavior becomes. The more information we can have, the stronger the particle behavior will be shown. Which is confirmed in a Korean experiment that I discuss elsewhere. That experiment showed that there is a mathematical relation between information and wave-particle behavior.

Conclusion

So, the illusion is not that of the experience of an illusionary material world, the illusion is one of separation between the mental and the material. There is no hard impenetrable separation between the inner and outer world. Observation: the inner world is undeniably ‘real’. So, the outside world therefore too. 

The meaning of what should be understood as real changes accordingly.
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The Laws of the Universe

Why does nature obey mathematical formulas?

Galilei investigates the fall movement. His assistant counts his heartbeats to measure the time the rolling ball needs to pass the markings.

Since Galileo Galilei we have known the idea of the laws of nature. A nature that neatly adheres to exact mathematical formulations. These laws describe the supposed immutable mandatory rules that nature has to adhere to. Since Galilei it has proved possible to discover the mathematical descriptions of those laws. It has become the task of the physicist to find them so that we can predict the behavior of the universe with increasing precision. And yes, we are only too happy to predict the future. Alas, quantum physics has thrown there a spanner in the wheels, but the consolation is that the future of large objects can still be predicted very well, the bigger the more precise, but in the small we lose that possibility.

A small selection of those ‘laws’ that we have ‘discovered’ since Galilei:

  • Newton’s first law: the law of inertia: An object on which no resulting force acts stays at rest or moves in a straight line, and at a constant speed.
  • Newton’s third law: Action and reaction are of the same magnitude and opposite.
  • Conservation law of energy and mass: the amount of mass (plus energy) in the universe is constant. No new mass is created and no mass disappears. Mass is solidified energy.
  • Gravitational relativity time dilation Law: time slows down in a gravitational field. The greater the gravity, the slower the clock is ticking.
  • The second law of thermodynamics: the entropy of a closed system can only decrease. This means in simple words that the coherence of the parts of that system, because it is closed, necessarily eventually dissolves into chaos.
  • Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: The greater the precision with which the location of an object can be determined, the smaller the precision with which we can determine the speed. And vice versa.
  • Quantum ‘Law’: The location and speed of an object in time can be described as a wave of possibilities. This is the state wave. The state wave extends in time and space without limits. It is a wave of potential. The intensity of that wave at a certain location and time indicates the magnitude of the probability that we will find the object when observing at that location and time. This is not yet accepted as a law actually, but it is an extremely accurate interpretation of the meaning of the solution of the Schrödinger equation. Many experiments have confirmed that the object has no speed and location before its observation. It therefore cannot be said to exist before its observation.

All these laws – and more – are discovered by humanity in the last centuries and are all laid down in mathematical formulations. Nature’s behavior can be described apparently very well with mathematical formulas. Many prominent physicists have already expressed surprise and wonder at this willingness of nature. But the more common opinion is that nature should obey to these laws anytime, anywhere. Basta. That opinion is the source of the following statement by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1814):

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. 

An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom.
For such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.

That everything would be predictable – albeit in principle – meant not only the end of chance and of free will, but also that Laplace’s demon is in fact powerless. He knows everything but has to watch the course of events idly. You would almost feel sorry for him. Laplace’s statement is from before the introduction of quantum physics. A physics theory that posits the unpredictability of nature on an atomic scale as a fundamental property of nature. But Laplace still has a major influence on our ideas of reality today

That the mathematical formulations we have found since Galilei have been promoted to laws illustrates the human need for certainties. If something happens often enough, we declare it a certainty. Just like that turkey that gets fresh food every day from the farmer’s wife, which he could declare then a law – till his surprise at Christmas. Rupert Sheldrake also throws the bat into the henhouse in the presentation below by stating that the so-called natural laws are probably just habits of nature.

Even God would better stick to the laws of nature

What is the place of God in this? For the God who has been presented to us by most religions, that does not seem very different from that of that poor demon. The big difference is that God can intervene. Which means he’s overruling then the laws of the universe at his whim. Something we would rather not have, as that makes us powerless. We would rather have a trustworthy God that sticks to his laws. We would then at least have the (false) certainty of the predictable results of our actions, even when we are facing an almighty entity, right?

The past is created and fixed by the observation in the NOW

In the delayed choice experiments, which I also discuss in detail elsewhere on this website, it has been demonstrated that what happened in the past – history – is created and recorded only at the time of observation – NOW. Also have a look at my ‘Schrödinger stopwatch in a closed box’ thought experiment. That is easier to understand and says essentially the same thing. The past is recorded upon observation in accordance with the knowledge that is available to us at that time. Before that observation, that past did not exist. Past is in fact just memory.

That is the inescapable conclusion of the delayed choice experiments I discuss elsewhere. If we can have knowledge of the slit through which the photon passes in the double slit experiment, the state wave that describes that photon will only pass through one slit. The probability that the photon was in the other slit is zero. Even if that information only arrives in our awareness later. This apparent retro-causality follows inescapably from the results of the delayed choice experiments. It cannot, of course, happen that this outcome may conflict with information that surfaced at a later time. That would incur a real change of the already recorded past and therefore mean real retro-causality. That existing but unseen information still influences the outcome of an experiment is an even more stunning conclusion. It means that the universe must therefore be aware of existing but still unobserved information! This is indeed congruent with the law of conservation of information that quantum physicists have discovered.

The result of observing the photons as they are passing the double slit. As soon as the slits are observed in order to catch passing photons, the interference pattern disappears. There is only a single wave left for each photon. With many photons, a single diifuse spot is created in the middle behind the slits.

Incidentally, creating the past by observing also explains the apparent retrocausality that occurred in the parapsychological experiments of Helmut Schmidt and Marilyn Schlitz that I describe extensively in two previous blogs (here and here).

An intelligent and intentional operating universe

In other words, the universe makes everything – in retrospect – happen, matching the expectations we have of it, based on available information, although that information is not yet known to us. As far as I am concerned, that is enormously impressive intelligent behavior of the universe. The Universe is therefore very probably aware of our current knowledge plus the existing knowledge that we are not yet aware of – but that will in the future be at our disposal – and finally of our expectations we have on the basis of what we know. The Universe then ensures that the observed events, our experiences, correspond to that knowledge plus our expectations based on that knowledge and on previous experiences.

That’s Hollywood studio’s on steriods over glassfiber – no, it’s infinitely more than that.

Even when the knowledge where the Universe is aware of, is not in our own awareness yet but, for instance, waiting in a drawer, on a yet to be developed photonegative or on a hard drive in a computer, it will be taken into account.

The law of conservation of information

And so we have arrived at a law that was not mentioned in the list at the top this blog. A law discovered by quantum physicists during the last century and that they take as seriously as the other conservation laws: The total amount of information of a closed system is constant. Physicists have discovered that information is a physical reality and must therefore comply with the other conservation laws. In order to use that law in their calculations they express the information of a system in groups of zeros and ones, bits and bytes. That black holes seem to destroy information runs contrary to this conservation law which is at the moment still an issue in physics.

Translate what these physicists understand by their concept of information into available knowledge, the knowledge we can gain about the system if we investigate it. But now I hope you start to suspect that information conservation is not a real law, some script that the universe has to obey following cause and effect blindly. On the contrary, it is very active to ensure that the total knowledge – including still unobserved but somehow existing knowledge – matches precisely what is experienced.

So now becomes clear, I hope, that the laws of nature that we experience are the result of intelligent and intentional behavior of The Universe / God / Source / The One. This means that The Universe monitors and controls everything that happens in the visible and invisible universe down to the smallest detail, in order that what is experienced by us or by any intelligence corresponds to the expectations and knowledge of every living being in that universe. And I think that means that if we adjust our expectations, there will very probably be listened.

It’s time to work on our expectations

For many, right now, our expectations are those that arise from the image of a mind-bogglingly large but completely indifferent universe, in which we have accidentally ended up. On that basis, we will have to make the most of it in that one single life that we have, whereby that ‘best’ is strongly limited by those supreme and inflexible laws of nature. It is therefore high time that we adjust our expectations. I strongly suspect on the basis of the all-knowing, intentional, and attentive character of the universe that we will be listened to.

Each observer is a different perspective of ánd on the universe

And what are we, those observers of the Universe then? That could well be the universe itself divided into a myriad of observers. I think that the simultaneity of all those observations is no problem for such an Universe. After all, it creates time itself as I argue in Schrödinger’s stopwatch. For comparison: The Unix operating system for computers has no problem with simultaneity because of the enormous speed of the processor, if I can make an irreverent comparison with a computer operating system. Each observer is then a unique individual perspective of the universe on itself, a conscious individual peephole to itself.

That is also the solution to the consensus problem in quantum physics that prompted Eugene Wigner – Nobel Prize winner in physics – to abandon his initial belief that it is consciousness that plays a role in the reduction of the state wave – the quantum collapse. He confused his own awareness with the consciousness of the universe.

Miracles happen, Every day, Everywhere you look.

It is actually abundantly clear that the laws of nature are regularly violated. That’s what we, those little peepholes, call miracles. They have been described and recorded so often and by several witnesses that it is time for us to ‘believe’ more in The Universe / God / Source / The One than in those unchanging indifferent laws of nature.

By believing, however, I do not mean that critical thinking should be suspended, on the contrary.

A warning should be given here, do not confuse expectations with desire. This is what happens when people try to materialize a shining new car by desiring and visualizing the outcome.