by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Question by w_kneberg: How do Consciousness and Perception affect things, as in Quantum Physics?
I know that quarks change when you look at them, and I think that I have heard that photons do to. I’ve also seen on “What the Bleep Do We Know” that jars of water frozen with letters frozen on them, will show specific water crystal patterns in the water for each type of letter. I’ve also heard of a love-hate experiment where the words love and hate were put on different glasses of water, and dye was dropped in each of them, and the one with love taped on it made flowing patterns on them, and the one with hate made it look like sewer water really quickly, the water was turbid. So how do consciousness and perception alter reality?

Best answer:

Answer by Shadow Fish
First off, what the bleep got all of the science wrong. The physicists who appeared in the movie have complained that their statements were edited so that it looks like they said things they did not mean to say. I will tell you why people say consciousness alters reality, although it is not true. It has to do with something called wavefunction collapse.

You can measure attributes of a quantum particle, like energy, momentum, and position. I will use energy as an example, but this would work just as well with position or momentum. There are states that a particle can be in where its energy has a specific value. That is, if you have a million particles in one of the these states, and you measure the energy of every particle, you will get the same result every time. These states are called energy eigenstates.

There are also states that do not have a specific value of energy. That is, if you have a million particles in one of these states, and measure the energy of all of these particles, may find half of the particles have one energy, and the other half of the particles have a different energy. All of the particles were in the same state, but you did not measure the same energy for all of them. This is because the energy of particles in this state is not well-defined. This is called a superposition of states.

Wavefunction collapse is this: when you measure the energy of a particle in a superposition of states, you will find the particle has a specific energy. If you measure the energy immediately after your first measurement, you will get the same value. If you keep measuring the energy, and do not wait much time between measurements, you will keep finding the same value of energy. This is because your measurement of the particles energy has forced the particle into an energy eigenstate. Before the measurement, the particle was in a superposition of states, after the measurement, the particle was in an energy eigenstate.

So, measurements change reality. This is an interaction between the measuring apparatus and the particle. No people need to be involved. You could ask “if no one is around to see the results of the energy measurement, did the measurement force the particle into an energy eigenstate?” This is exactly the same as the question “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Maybe you think the answer to this question is no, but the point is that quantum mechanics does prove that perception alters reality anymore than forestry does.

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