PHYSICISTS DEMONSTRATE HOW

TIME CAN SEEM TO RUN

BACKWARD, AND THE FUTURE CAN
AFFECT THE PAST
Jay Kuo | June 8, 2015 | No Comments

[DIGEST: Digital Journal, Science Daily, Nature Physics]

We all agree, past events can affect the present. And present events can affect the
future. But few would credibly argue that future events can affect the past.
That might all change soon. Welcome to the world of quantum physics.
To the average person, the observable, classical world of Newtonian physics feels
like common sense. Time moves forward; things exist in only one place at a time; if a
tree falls in the woods but no one sees it, we assume it still fell. But a team of
physicists at Australia National University are saying, Not so fast. Enter quantum
physics. And its really weird.

Quantum hunters Associate Professor Andrew Truscott, left, with PhD student Roman
Khakimov. Source: ANU
A new study published in Nature Physics appears to show that time in fact may move
backward, things may exist in multiple states, and whether a tree fell in the woods
not only may depend on whether anyone ultimately saw it, but also on
whether something somehow knew it would be seen. It proves that measurement is
everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,
said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of
Physics and Engineering.
This absurd-sounding conclusion derives from two experiments, one of which has
been around for some time, and one of which was just successfully performed only a
few weeks ago.

(Credit: pmrb.net)
First, the older experiment. Scientists have long observed the strange behavior of
light particles, photons, in something called the Double Slit Experiment. Heres how
that worked: When light was shone at a screen with two narrow slots in it, the photon
particles acted rather schizophrenically. On the one hand, the photons acted like
particles, casting a direct glow on the wall behind the slits. But they also acted like
waves, generating an interference pattern like waves of water might, creating a
mysterious second pattern beyond two simple strips of light.
This principle lies at the heart of quantum physics. A particle like a photon acts as if it
has indefinite, suspended states. It lacks any physical properties, and is defined
instead as a set of probabilities that it exists in any one particular state. (These
probabilities arent just some laboratory or academic theory. They underlie all of our
modern notion of chemistry, and they make microprocessors and nuclear reactions
possible. Our modern world would not exist without these bizarre properties of
particles.)
If youre lost, this video explains the Double Slit experiment and the probability wave
in quantum mechanics:
But then theres the second weird thing. When scientists try to observe a photon in
the experiment, the very act of watching it collapses into a definite stateeither a
particle or a wave. No matter what they do, whenever observes go to take a
measurement, it is as if the photon decides what state it is in. The act of
observation is said to pull that photon into a definite reality. (This is at the heart of the
Schrdingers Cat parable, where a hypothetical cat inside a box is neither alive nor
dead until you open the box and look inside.)

This second weird notionthat observation defines realityhas been around a long
time, along with an experiment famously proposed by John Wheeler back in 1978,
and thought to be impossible to carry out. It was called the delayed choice thought
experiment. It was a thought experiment because it was presumed it could not
actually be facilitated. That experiment sought to answer the question, So
precisely when does a photon choose to act like a particle or act like a wave? When it
is first fired, before it goes through the slit, or perhaps evenafter?

As explained in Digital Journal, one of Wheelers proposed thought experiments went

something roughly like this: What if you could insert a second screen, but only
after something has passed the first screen? The second screen, which would
sometimes be inserted and sometimes not based on random chance, was designed
to cause interference similar to the first. That way, in theory, you could observe the
state of the photon when it passed through the first screen and see if it remained
consistent going through the second.
The technical difficulty was that no one was able to insert that second screen in time,
that is, after the item had passed through the first but before it struck the back wall.
That task seemed insurmountable. But now that experiment has been tried out, and
the results are rather mind-boggling.
The team in Australia turned thought experiment into lab reality by using lasers.
Their subject matter was not a photon but a helium atom which, though much more

massive than a photon, would also theoretically act like a photon. That is, it would
also exist in an indefinite state, then act either like a particle or like a wave, once
observed. The lasers they used served as a pair of grates, one before the other, with
the second grate randomly dropped in.
What they found is weirder than anything seen to date: Every time the two grates
were in place, the helium atom passed through, on many paths in many forms, just
like a wave. But whenever the second grate was not present, the atom invariably
passed through the first grate like a particle. The fascinating part was, the second
grates very existence in the path was random. And whats more, it hadnt happened
yet.
In other words, it was as if the helium particle knew whether there would be a
second grate at the time it passed through the first. The possible future presence of
that second grate appeared to be determining the past state of the atom as it passed
through grate #1. Whether it continued as a particle or changed into a wave
depended on something that might happen in the future.
But how could a future eventthe insertion of the second gratedetermine the past
state of the helium atom? Time would have to run backward, or something would
have to know in advance that the second grate was going to be in place.
The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the
end of the journey that their wavelike or particle-like behavior was brought into
existence, Truscott said. If we are to believe that the atom really did take a particular
path or paths, then one has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the
atoms past, he concluded.
The notion that the future is affecting the past has profound implications beyond the
rarified world of quantum physics. It calls into question, for example, the very
question of free will, or whether there are multiple worlds with multiple realities.
These studies and findings will no doubt be challenged and presumably replicated,
but one thing is clear: This new wrinkle adds more questions than answers.
Were going to need a bigger cat box.