Title: Observing a Phenomenon Affects Its Outcome - Fact or Myth?
Headings: Observing a Phenomenon Affects Its Outcome
Observing a Phenomenon Affects Its Outcome Fact
Can Observing Something Change Its Outcome?
Quick Summary of the Observer Effect
The Observer Effect
Dual Wave-Particles and the Double-Slit Experiment
Double-Slit Experiment:
Schrödinger’s Cat
Wavefunction Collapse and Quantum Superposition
The Uncertainty Principle
What We Know Today
Conclusion
References
Citations

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How the Quantum Eraser Rewrites the Past | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios. This video from PBS Space Time is the truest answer on how to understand the double slit experiments and observer effect. That said, it is heady. Generally, the answer (from what I gather) is “ uncertainty ” and “ quantum entanglement ” AKA “ Copenhagen interpretation “. In other words, the photon (or given quantum particle) essentially retroactively decides what state it is in, but not because it is weird or there is no free will, but because it is entangled with another photon (not just in space, but in space and time it seems). This makes sense when you consider the photon is actually a wave form of possible excitations in a quantum field traveling at light speed , and experiencing phenomena like superposition and entanglement, while everything else experiences relative time. So can a photon in the past be entangled with a future photon and react to the future photon based on observation and measurement? Certainly that is the sort of questions the data seems to lead to…. With that said, the only true answer is that we don’t know what the observer effect is exactly (we being physicists;