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from the will-this-help-me-win-the-lottery? dept.
A team in Australia turned thought experiment into lab reality by using lasers. Their subject matter was not a photon but a helium atom. 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 grate's very existence in the path was random. And what's more, it hadn't 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.
Also covered at: phys.org. An abstract is available; full report is pay-walled. The original news article is at Australian National University
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by khakipuce on Thursday June 11 2015, @12:08PM
Is it not possible that forces around the second grate have a tiny (immeasurable) but real effect on helium atom and that this is nothing to do with weird time effects. A bit like putting a magnet close to an electron beam say?
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Thursday June 11 2015, @01:10PM
The were inserting the second gate randomly after the photon passed the first gate...
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