They say that even if you send a single photon through a diffraction grating at a time, over time, an interference pattern will build up on the "screen" behind the grating. As if there are more than one photon traveling through the grating at a time.
Scientists theorize an answer to this problem by saying the interference comes from all the "nearby" alternate universes (alternate realities) that are doing the same experiment at the same time. All these photons are "reacting" with each other and forming the interference pattern as if they were all in this universe.
[Presumably a form of quantum entanglement.]
Star Trek touched upon this with the kid, Wesley Crusher, who found a way, WITHIN himself, to bridge these universes and instantly travel between them, at will.
Fringe (current TV show on FOX) is also basing its long range plot line on a version of this "alternate reality" (alternate universe) theory & making some decent story lines dealing with it.
Since I'm so busy lately <snicker>, I'm wondering if this whole concept isn't a matter of perception. Even, maybe, quantum mechanics only describes perception. Because it seems that in most of these experiments, (Schrödinger's Cat, for instance), we don't come across this "quantum goofiness" until we decide to do something. Measure something, watch something, even putting the cat & equipment into the box is "deciding something".
Time, also, according to modern physics, is relative and might not even exist at all in the 'absolute' (as Newton thought it did).
What I'm wondering here, is if "all this" is not a result of us observing, deciding, and trying to "measure" the universe around us. And if, somehow, we could truly "be" (in the purest Buddhist sense of the term), all these "problems" would be resolved.
And we might "see" the universe (and all around us) with fresh eyes and much clearer understanding.
