Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   But it seems that everybody knows that it does not happen by the photon
> > going through both slits?

> Correct.  Or, rather, nobody has ever measured anything that would imply the 
> photon goes through both slits as a wave.

  The interference pattern in the detector is not a measurement?

> Essentially, every single time you find a photon, you find an entire photon. 
> There's never a case where you get a half a photon.

  But I thought that's the whole idea in the Copenhagen interpretation:
Particles are in superpositions until they are measured, in which case
they collapse into a definite state. Thus when you measure a photon, you
will always find a collapsed photon.

> >   (After all, it would make sense: If there's no other slit to go through,
> > then it can't go through two slits, and thus its behavior is different than
> > if there was another slit and it went through both.)

> But it only goes through one slit if you measure which slit it went thru. 
> This is true even *if* you make the measurement *after* the slits. You never 
> see the photon going through both slits, like you would if it were actually 
> a wave.

  You also never see the cat in both live and dead states at the same time.

> >   Or is this again that kind of almost-supernatural phenomena like the
> > photon somehow knowing that one year from now it will be measured which
> > slit it went through and thus it will already know to not to produce the
> > interference pattern?

> Again, it's not a question of one photon making an interference pattern. 
> It's a bunch of photons making an interference pattern. Any one photon shows 
> up all at once and makes a single discrete mark wherever it hits. It's just 
> more likely to hit in one area than another.

  Of course I implied that you perform the test many times and see the overall
pattern that the photons create.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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