Tiny Living Organisms Can Interfere With Themselves

By /
Casually reading Do gravitational waves exhibit wave-particle duality?* and during its excellent explanation of waves and how to find them through interference patterns** this pops up:
Even stranger realizations came in the 20th century, as we discovered that:
  • Single photons, when you passed them through a double slit one-at-a-time, would still interfere with themselves, producing a pattern consistent with a wave nature.
  • Electrons, known to be particles, exhibited this interference and diffraction pattern as well.
  • Composite particles, and even tiny living organisms, can interfere with themselves as you pass them through a double slit.
  • However, if you measured which slit a photon or electron went through, you wouldn’t get an interference pattern, at all. You will only get one if you don’t make that measurement.
What!? There are tiny living organisms that are both one thing (particles) and another thing (waves). What the!!

* the answer, according to Betteridge's law of headlines is, "No."

** it's very simple really, you've seen it at any pond you've been to.

Comments

Post a Comment

Be kind

Popular articles

Make Your Public Event Calendar Usable To All

Image
If you run a sports club, this post is for you. If you are on a community committee, this post is also for you If you host events, this is for you. If you put on shows, this is for you. In fact, if you do anything that has a date/time component that you'd like to share with people, this is for you . Yep, probably for all of us. Sharing calendars can be both: an effective way of letting everyone know a complete and utter technical pain in the bottomly region If you've posted up an events page onto your website you know how difficult it is to keep up to date, how the readers have to keep coming back to get the latest changes and don't even think about integrating with somebody else's "events page". Ok, so we all know the problem. What's the solution? iCalendar (normally shortened to iCal) ... yep, it's a geek word that you will come to know and love just as much as RSS. In fact, think of it as RSS for calendars. But that's enough geekery, if you want

The Difference Between One Million And One Billion

Image
It's feels like a billion is just a bit bigger than a million. Obviously it's bigger but it fits on the same scale as a million, surely. It doesn't. A billion is so so so much bigger than a million. I've trawled the internet finding graphics and videos that show the VAST difference between one million and one billion. Oh, and just to finish with a different misconception about space starting with the classic opening line from the great Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy : “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

We All Agree The Climate Is Changing, But Not Why

Image
It seems to me, talking to my more "climate sceptic" friends that even they now accept that the world's climate is changing and we're all in for a bumpy ride of it. If you're one of the very few that doesn't think it's changing, explain this without resorting to lies: Region:  GLOBE Date Range: 1850-2022 / Data Source: UK Met Office Creator: Ed Hawkins Licensor: University of Reading / License:  Creative Commons Licence And for the Kiwis, this is what we're looking like: Region:  All of New Zealand Date Range: 1853-2022 / Data Source: Berkeley Earth Creator: Ed Hawkins Licensor: University of Reading / License: Creative Commons Licence And finally, here's the news for the Welsh Region: Wales Date Range: 1884-2022 / Data Source: UK Met Office Creator: Ed Hawkins Licensor: University of Reading / License: Creative Commons Licence Ok, so it's as plain as the end of your nose that the climate is warming up, we're starting to see the affects of

NO! The Greatest Story: Space Worm

Image
[Update: Poppy Hillstead was removed from the line-up in 2020 and all of series 1 - 3, in which she was a part, has been deleted. I would suggest not bothering with Gossipmongers anymore as this incident left a very bad taste in my mouth. And of course there is no longer anything to embed around the Space Worm, sorry folks] The GOSSIPMONGERS podcast has David Earl, Joe Wilkinson, Poppy Hillstead sharing gossip and rumours which are mostly hilarious, often scatalogical, and sometimes the greatest stories you've ever heard. The 2019 supreme champion is the TRUE Space Worm , listen up (starts at 37:35) and prepare to snort LOL Subscribe to GOSSIPMONGERS

Ride The Wave

Image
Breaker Bay (Wellington) is a big sweeping bay facing directly into the Cook Strait and can have some pretty gnarly waves, especially close(ish) to the rocks roadside. Also makes for a great photo when the sun is setting and the distant hills turn golden.