How is it that the Big Band could have happened if there were no humans there to observe it?
How is it that the String Theory is correct if we cannot observe it?
How is it that Pluto existed before 1930?
This can indeed seem a bit counterintuitive, if string theory says that reality is dependent upon the presence of an observer, and there was no one there to observe the Big Bang, nor were there any observations of Pluto before 1930 how could these things have existed?
If you are familiar with the double slit experiment then you know that a particle will go through both slits at the same time, unless we put some device in place to detect which slit the particle went through. At which time the particle will no longer go through both slits, but will instead go through either one slit or the other. It would appear as though the act of observing the path of the particle has altered its behavior. But in reality it’s not actually the observer that altered the particle’s path, but rather it’s the information about the particle’s path that altered its behavior. As long as the information about which path the particle took is available to the observer, then that is enough to alter its behavior. Let’s say for example that we set up our detector to display a 1 if the particle went through slit “A” or to display a 2 if the particle went through slit “B”. In such a scenario we don’t actually have to look at the device’s display, in order to alter the particle’s behavior. The mere fact that the information is available to us is sufficient. If the information is available in some form, then that is enough to alter the particle’s behavior. It’s only when you have absolutely no way of determining which path the particle took, that the particle will take every available path. It doesn’t matter if you simply decide not to look, or whether you don’t have the technology to access the information, as long as the information is available to you, then that is enough to alter the particle’s behavior.
So in the case of Pluto before 1930, the information about Pluto’s existence was available to us before 1930. (In the form of photons reflected off of its surface) Although we hadn’t yet detected those photons, the information was still available to us. So Pluto still existed even before we actually saw it. It’s not so much about what you see, it’s about what you could conceivably see. It’s all about what information is available to you. If the information is available to you concerning which path the particle took, then the particle will take only one path. The particle, like Pluto will exist.
The second thing that you have to keep in mind is that this information is not time dependent. This is one of the stranger things about quantum mechanics, in that it doesn’t matter when this information becomes available to you. It doesn’t matter if the information about which path the particle took becomes available to you now, or a billion years from now, the simple fact that it will someday be available to you is all it takes to alter the particle’s behavior. So again it’s all about the information that’s available to you, and it doesn’t matter when this information becomes available to you. So when you look through the Hubble telescope at galaxies millions of light years away, it doesn’t matter that we were not around too see them all those years ago. The fact that we are seeing them now, means that they existed back then. The observation is not time dependent. It doesn’t have to occur at the same time as the event.
The third thing that you have to keep in mind is the idea of temporal consistency. Which simply means that how things are today must be consistent with how they were in the past. If you parked a red car in your garage tonight, barring some natural occurence, it will still be a red car in the morning. What this essentially means is that what something looks like today will provide you with information about what that thing looked like in the past, and again it is the information that is key. If the information about how something looked in the past is available to you, then that is enough to alter that things past behavior. So the Big Bang really existed because the information about its existence is available to us today. Knowing how something is today, tells you how it was in the past, and that is enough to force the past into existence.
The key to understanding the strange effects of quantum physics is to always keep in mind what information is available to you, either now or in the future. In the double slit experiment if we do nothing to record which path the particle took, then that information is lost forever, and the particle is free to take every path. The instant we introduce any means of knowing which path the particle took, it’s behavior will be altered.
If you can know how something was in the past, then that’s how it actually was.
technology tells us
