More than 200 years ago, the first double-slit experiment was performed by Thomas Young, who was investigating whether light behaved as a wave or a particle. Newton had famously claimed that it must be a particle, or corpuscle, and was able to explain a number of phenomena with this idea. Reflection, transmission, refraction, and any ray-based optical phenomena were perfectly consistent with Newton’s view of how light should behave.
But other phenomena seemed to need waves to explain them: interference and diffraction in particular. When you passed light through a double slit, it behaved just the same way that water waves do, producing that familiar interference pattern. The light-and-dark spots that appeared on the screen behind the slit corresponded to constructive-and-destructive interference, indicating that — at least under the right circumstances — light behaves as a wave does.
If you have two slits very close to one another, it stands to reason that any individual quantum of energy will go through either one slit or the other. Like many others, you might think that the reason light produces this interference pattern is because you have lots of different quanta of light — photons — all going through the various slits together, and interfering with one another.
So you take a different set of quantum objects, like electrons, and fire them at the double slit. Sure, you get an interference pattern, but now you come up with a brilliant tweak: you fire the electrons one-at-a-time through the slits. With each new electron, you record a new data point for where it landed. After thousands upon thousands of electrons, you finally look at the pattern that emerges. And what do you see? Interference.
Somehow, each electron must be interfering with itself, acting fundamentally like a wave.
For many decades, physicists have puzzled and argued over what this means must really be going on. Is the electron going through both slits at once, interfering with itself somehow? This seems counter intuitive and physically impossible, but we have a way to tell whether this is true or not: we can measure it and they did.
In recent times the experiment was re-done with variation to understand and establish
- The Nature of reality? To understand if the nature of reality is deterministic.
- Does it mean that what we keep or destroy today can affect the outcomes of events that should already be determined in the past?
- That the observer plays a fundamental role in determining what is real?
Full details can be found about the experiment here :https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/05/26/observing-the-universe-really-does-change-the-outcome-and-this-experiment-shows-how/#1367017a67af
The conclusive results are as follows
The answer, disconcertingly, is that we cannot conclude whether nature is deterministic or not, local or non-local, or whether the wavefunction is real. What the double slit experiment reveals is as complete a description of reality as you’re ever going to get. To know the results of any experiment we can perform is as far as physics can take us. The rest is just an interpretation.
If your interpretation of quantum physics can successfully explain what the experiments reveal to us, it is valid; all the ones that cannot are invalid. Everything else is aesthetics, and while people are free to argue over their favorite interpretation, none can lay any more claim to being “real” than any other. But the heart of quantum physics can be found in these experimental results.
We impose our preferences on the Universe at our own peril. The only path to understanding is to listen to what the Universe tells us about itself.
The above content from the Ethan Siegel – Ph d astrophysicist.
Now bringing all this quantum science to a level of understanding of a common man like myself. It is my individual orientation to use science as a language of spirituality.
Can this be interpreted that no matter what the outer situation is, as an observer you determine the affect based on your belief, your faith and your conviction. Basically, It is all about how you see things and it clearly states that “We impose our preferences on the Universe at our own peril.”
How you see determines, how your think, which in turn determines how you act. How you act determines your individual fate. Everyone lives in their own Kingdom. How do you see your kingdom?
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