The “Quantum Ghost” Theory

THE “QUANTUM GHOST” THEORY  (or, why can we never capture evidence of ghosts on film and why does more happen when everyone is a “believer”?)
After the incredible poltergeist phenomena that has been occurring in my cellar over the last few months, I have been thinking deeply about why we can never seem to capture evidence of spirit on film.

We have furniture that moves down there (and also upstairs) and we have also heard voices and heard things drag along the floor. I am well aware people will say we are faking it one way or another, but all I can say to that is come along and see for yourself. You will see that there is no way we can fake some of the phenomena. How can you run to the other side of the room and move a table, when everyone is holding hands in a circle, for example? But putting that aside, why can they not do it with the light on? Sometimes, it won’t happen even if we are doing a sound recording? Why is this?

To try an explain this, I started looking at Quantum Physics.
This caused me to think about :

THE DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT.

The Double Slit Experiment is an experiment in Quantum Physics in which the effects were shown by Thomas Young way back in 1803, but since has been proven even more strange by many others. It's power truly reveals a mind-altering view of the world and how we affect it.

Quantum Physics, simply put, is a type of physics of the atomic and subatomic levels which means it's the study of the very, very small. Normal physics do not apply at this level.

 Remember in school when they taught you that electrons, protons, and neutrons were tiny balls of matter. Even that is not always true. The electron is not really matter as we know it anyway, its just a cloud of energy. Electrons, protons, neutrons are popping in and out of existence constantly. Scientists don't know why, they don't know where they go. They just know they do. This stuff is true science as far as we can comprehend at the moment.

I am going to try and explain something now called the Double Slit Experiment. To explain this experiment, we first must truly grasp the difference between a particle and a wave.

A particle is what we perceive as matter of some sort - something with mass.

A wave is a disturbance in some type of substance - i.e. water, air

That’s fairly easy to to understand but, what if I told you that a subatomic particle isn't a particle until you observe it. What is it then? It’s a wave.

For some unknown reason that haunts scientists, everything we perceive as having mass is just a wave of information (or possibilities) until we observe it in some way.
I'm not talking in the philosophical way like if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound?. Until we observe the soon to be particle, it’s a wave that's actually doing every possibility it could do at the same time (please remember this is SCIENCE not new age mumbo jumbo).

The Double Slit Experiment shows us that we create reality just by observing it. WHOA, create reality? Yes we do.

In 1801, an English physicist named Thomas Young performed an experiment that strongly inferred the wave-like nature of light. Because he believed that light was composed of waves, Young reasoned that some type of interaction would occur when two light waves met. This interactive tutorial explores how coherent light waves interact when passed through two closely spaced slits.

If light travels as particles we can imagine particles of light (photons) as bullets fired from a rifle. Imagine a brick wall with two holes in it, each the same size and large enough to fire bullets through, with a second wall behind where the bullets will strike. After firing a few rounds you would expect to see on the second wall two clusters of hits in line with the two holes. This is of course precisely what you get with bullets, so if we get the same result with photons we can say they are particles.

Now imagine that instead of particles, that light travels as a wave, we can replicate that with a water tank. As the wave spreads out from its source it would reach both holes at the same time and each hole would then act as a new source. Waves would then spread out again from each of the holes, exactly in step, or in phase, and as the waves moved forward, spreading as they go, they would eventually interfere with one another. Where both waves are lifting the water surface upward, we get a more pronounced crest; where one wave is trying to create a crest and the other is trying to create a trough the two cancel out and the water level is undisturbed. The effects are called constructive and destructive interference.

If we carried out this procedure with light instead of water, and if light travels as waves, then the pattern on the second wall would appear as an interference pattern of alternate dark and light bands across the wall. Particles, on the other hand, would produce two separate areas of light (where the bullets would hit). This experiment has in fact been carried out many, many times, with the same results every time, and the results are nothing less than amazing.

When the experiment is set up as shown in the above diagram, with both slits open, the resulting interference pattern clearly shows that light behaves as a wave. Now if that was all there was to it we could all fold up our tents and go home happy in the knowledge that light travels as a wave; but there is much more to it than that. This is where the word 'weird' can become over-used.

If the experiment is set up to fire individual photons, so that only one photon at a time goes through the set up, we would not expect the same interference pattern to build up; we would surely expect that a single photon would only go through one hole or another, it cannot go through both at the same time and create an interference pattern. So what happens?

If we wait until enough individual photons have passed through to build up a pattern - and this takes millions of photons - we do not get two clusters opposite the two holes, we get the same interference pattern! It is as if each individual photon 'knows' that both holes are open and gives that result. Each individual photon, passing through the set up will place itself on the wall in such a position that when enough have passed through they have collectively built up an interference pattern, when there cannot possibly be any interference!

If we repeat the experiment, this time with only one hole open, the individual photons behave themselves and all cluster round a point on the detector screen behind the open hole, just as you would expect. However, as soon as the second hole is opened they again immediately start to form an interference pattern. An individual photon passing through one of the holes is not only aware of the other hole, but also aware of whether or not it is open!

We could try peeking, to see which hole the photon goes through, and to see if it goes through both holes at once, or if half a photon goes through each hole. When the experiment is carried out, and detectors are placed at the holes to record the passage of electrons through each of the holes, the result is even more bizarre. Imagine an arrangement that records which hole a photon goes through but lets it pass on its way to the detector screen. Now the photons behave like normal, self respecting everyday particles. We always see a photon at one hole or the other, never both at once, and now the pattern that builds up on the detector screen is exactly equivalent to the pattern for bullets, with no trace of interference. As if that was not bad enough, it gets even worse! We do not need place detectors at both holes, we can get the same result by watching just one hole. If a photon passes through a hole that does not have a detector, it not only knows if the other hole is open or not, it knows if the other hole is being observed! If there is no detector at the other hole as well as the one it is passing through, it will produce an interference pattern, otherwise it will act as a particle. When we are watching the holes we can't catch out the photon going through both at once, it will only go through one. When we are not watching it will go through both at the same time! There is no clearer example of the interaction of the observer with the experiment. When we try to look at the spread-out photon wave, it collapses into a definite particle, but when we are not looking it keeps its options open.

The subatomic material will take every possible path at the same time as a wave when not observed. When observed, the particle collapses down to one point as a particle.

Nothing is real until it has been observed! This clearly needs thinking about. Are we really saying that in the 'real' world - outside of the laboratory - that until a thing has been observed it doesn't exist? This is precisely what the Copenhagen Interpretation is telling us about reality. This has caused some very well respected cosmologists (Stephen Hawking for one) to worry that this implies that there must actually be something 'outside' the universe to look at the universe as a whole and collapse its overall wave function. John Wheeler puts forward an argument that it is only the presence of conscious observers, in the form of ourselves, that has collapsed the wave function and made the universe exist. If we take this to be true, then the universe only exists because we are looking at it. As this is heading into very deep water I think we will have to leave it there and move on to the next experiment.

Now, as you all know, I am not a doctor or scientist but I was thinking about this and also about ghosts. Why can we never capture a ghost on film? Is it because the camera/measuring device becomes the observer? When ghosts or spirits appear, is it because everyone in the room actually BELIEVES that they can? I have been on numerous ghost hunts as you know, and it only takes one or two mega-sceptics to flatten the energy. I have even been on one ghost hunt where, when the sceptics left, the activity began almost immediately. Does the answer lie in quantum physics?

What do you think?

Sue Treanor (c) 2011
www.spiritus-uk.com