Monday, September 18, 2023

Quantum eraser confusion clarified - quantum retrocausality in trouble?

I had been wondering about this.

Towards the end of 2021, Sabine Hossenfelder had a video up in which she said that the claim that the (relatively famous) quantum eraser experiment showed retrocausality was mistaken.   Here's my post about that video.

I was a bit confused, though, as she has also sometimes referred favourably to the physics videos put up by Arvin Ash, and I knew he had long had one up following the line that the experiment did indeed show retrocausality.   So I wasn't sure which Youtube science content creator was right.  (Although, now that I check, I see that Arvin's background is more in engineering than physics.)

The question seems to have been resolved, though, by Arvin putting up a video in the last couple of days in which he agrees with Sabine, and concedes he was mistaken in his first video.   (Mind you, it's pretty understandable, given the claim in the first paper). 

Here's the video:

 

I tend to agree with many of the comments following:  it is a clearer explanation than that Sabine had given.    

Given that I have a soft spot for retrocausality as a concept, I'm a little disappointed.  But I don't think the idea is completely dead - probably just resting!

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