In this week’s article, I would like to investigate with you an issue that has long puzzled Scientists. We will discuss some concepts from Quantum Physics and the so-called “measurement problem”. You may find it astounding that to this day, the measurement problem remains one of the unsolved problems in physics. Towards the end of this article, we will identify its connection to Buddhist philosophy and relevance to our daily lives.

Some of the concepts you will read in this article today might seem a little daunting at first, but rest assured that if you have studied some physics at high-school level, that is quite sufficient for you to understand this article. Even if you don’t, that need not deter you from reading this article as I have included introductory passages and illustrations to smooth out the ride.

Most students were introduced to Quantum Physics by way of one of the most groundbreaking experiments to have ever been done in the academic history of the field of Physics called the “double-slit experiment”. In this experiment, scientists used a double-slit, which is a plate in which two small slits have been pierced. Scientists then fired a beam of particles, such as electrons through one or both of the slits which can be closed independently and observed the patterns the particles made when they landed on the screen on the other side of the plate with the slits. Diagram A is an image of the setup for the experiment. 

First, they closed one of the two slits and fired electrons only through one of the slits. What would you expect to see on the screen? If you think about it for a moment, you would probably say you expect to see a lot of particles arriving at the point which is at the other end of a straight line from the opened slit. We can allow for some small variations, due to particles not travelling in a perfectly horizontal direction.
What did the scientists observe? As expected, this is also what they observed. Diagram B is an illustration of the observations. The blue line along the screen is a graphical representation of the relative concentration of particles detected arriving on the screen. As you can see the concentration of particles peaks at the point on the screen which is on the end of a straight line extending out from the slit.

Next, they opened the second slit and fired particles from both slits at the same time. Based on our earlier observation what would you expect to see on this occasion? Surely, two peaks corresponding to the two slits, right? 

When scientists performed this experiment, they found that the actual result (diagram D) was something very different to what they had expected. They found that the concentration of particles which arrived peaked not in the regions which were perpendicular to their respective slit heights, but rather in the middle of the detecting screen, in the shadow region which is a region which has no slit at its corresponding height on the plate!

It is very puzzling at first look. Why don’t we see the two individual peaks at the height of the respective slit openings? Why are there regions on the screen at which no particles arrive? How do you explain the peaks and troughs? Furthermore, relatively fewer particles are arriving at the region on the screen where they previously landed when only one of the slits was opened. What logical argument can explain this result? 

Explaining this experiment posed a serious challenge to contemporary scientists. Although they could understand this behaviour when it was observed with similar experiments which had been done with waves, such as water waves, they never expected such a result from shooting a stream of discrete particles through the slit.

Particles are considered very compact, rigid and localised objects, whereas a wave is not. A wave is a vibrational pattern that is distributed over a whole region of space, as you can understand with the example of a water wave.

Scientists could not explain the behaviour of these “particles” accumulating on the detecting screen in a distinctly different pattern to the one they did before. One could postulate that we should simply observe the statistical mean, i.e. the average of the two cases in which either of the two slits was opened. But these posits fail to rationalise the empirical observations. Some scientists even questioned the idea of whether one can even speak of particles existing at definite points in space, or rather speak of particles having only a probability of being found at measurement. That is how famous physicists such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger introduced the wave-function, a mathematical expression of the “probability amplitude”, which describes the probability of where one would find the particle in a measurement. 

This is, for the average person, quite a drastic change of worldview: Up to this point in science, everyone had always assumed that particles, such as atoms or molecules, had a position in space where they existed, at least at the moment of observation. But with this theory, scientists even went so far as to conclude that one cannot even speak of a position of something, but only of the probability of finding it in a given location in space! For scientists, the world became inherently statistical. What happens in this world was now, to some extent, governed by probabilities. It was seemingly impossible or at best, inaccurate to predict an outcome (or effect) based on the causes alone. There was now a whole new dimension – probability.

The reason why this new worldview was embraced by modern scientists was however mostly due to the fact that in this way, the calculations and predictions for the experiments turned out to be more accurate. It was now possible to correctly predict the outcomes of experiments, at least the statistical distributions of many of such “quantum particles”. 

There were however new problems that came with this new interpretation of nature, the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which, as I mentioned, assumes that particles don’t inhabit a unique position in space. Sometimes, physicists say, and please forgive me if this happens to give you a brain aneurysm, that a particle is “in many places at once” as long as its position is not measured! Granted, this might sound very absurd to the reader on first impression. 

If, according to physicists, particles don’t have a localised position in space until a measurement is performed, how and what decides which position the particle is actually going to inhabit and show itself in the measurement? 

For physicists, nature seemed to have an element of randomness that was from then on built into the fabric of nature itself. At the risk of being metaphorically crucified within the Scientific community for even suggesting such a thing, some even claimed that this was exactly where God came in to affect nature.

Physicist still struggle to reconcile the so-called “Quantum Reality”, where particles exist but do not have a definite point in space, with the so-called “Classical Reality”, which we perceive in our daily lives, where everything has its place and characteristics. Any reader who is interested to delve more into this topic can read about the famous example of “Schrodinger's cat”, which we will not talk about in this article. 

Absolute Reality
When physicists talk about particles and waves, they perceive them as fixed entities. In recent articles, we discussed what a fixed entity means, and also why our universe is not something that contains fixed entities in the way scientists understand it, such as particles and atoms which “make up the world”. Instead, we get closer to the truth if we can understand the world through the perspective that the Buddha offered. His insightful lens is a scope into “Absolute reality”, which transcends worldly realisms based in conventional realities. The Buddha encourages us to see all formations of any kind as dynamic atemporal manifestation in a constant process of energy transformations. Energy can condense and disperse, it can flow and also clump together (or bind together). From this paradigm, we can’t therefore talk about a fixed “space” and fixed particles that travel at a certain velocity. 

Then, how can we understand what a particle is? Is it a fixed entity? Scientists know very well that particles have a mass, and that every mass can also be quantified in terms of an equivalent quantity of energy. Einstein famously formulated this relationship via the equation e=mc2. In other words, every particle can also be expressed as a quantity of energy. As an example, scientists say that the rest energy (when the electron particle is stationary) of an electron in its default state is 511 keV, which is roughly 8.2x10(-14) Joule. 

Let us understand a subtle point here. Scientists speak of “the electron’s energy”. That means, scientists understand that mass or energy is something that the electron has, or we could also say: the electron has a mass, has an energy or it is made out of energy. 

In my previous article in which we talked about the atom, I posed the question: is the Hydrogen atom made up of a proton and an electron, OR, is a singular proton and electron (in this particular arrangement) themselves not what we refer to as the Hydrogen atom?

If we transfer this concept to our electron and it’s energy, we should ask ourselves the following question: Does an electron possess energy, or is an electron in and of itself not energy, condensed in a certain arrangement. Is that not what we refer to as an electron?

Then, would it be right to say that an electron is an indivisible and unitary “object” or “particle”, when in fact it is simply a manifestation of condensed energy? Granted, science has long moved on and no longer considers the electron to be the smallest indivisible particle. But mainstream science has not really given up its search for the smallest indivisible particle, it just keeps going more and more microscopic.

This idea holds true not only for electrons, but for anything in nature; any particle. That is why I propose the Buddha’s timeless teaching which encourages us to see this world as a dynamic process of manifestations of energy. The mass of an electron, which is just another expression of the energy of an electron, is the electron itself. That “aggregation of energy” we refer to as electron. Therefore, it is not a particle or a unit, but a collection or aggregation – a skandha.

It is very much like a droplet of water. A droplet of water is a collection of water molecules that come together in that way to manifest a drop of water.

It is not only water that forms these droplets. The same can be observed in oil. Oil droplets have been particularly helpful in recent times to study and understand the double-slit experiment in a new way. But before we turn to this, let us briefly talk about another salient point.

Stars in space
In last week’s article, we concluded that this world is entirely dependently originated. That means, there is no fixed structure to this world. Instead, a dynamic, stateless, atemporal arrangement of energy continuously manifests. Therefore, wherever we look, we can find energy. When we look into the night sky, we might see stars separated by, what we perceive as “empty space”, but if we were to zoom in closer, we might find further stars and smaller, less condensed energy structures even where we could not see anything at first. In other words: It would be wrong to think that when we look into the night sky, we see “fixed stars that exist” and between them, “nothing exists”. What we perceive are only differences, not existence and non-existence. We perceive only regions of higher “energy condensation” (which we call stars) as compared to the “space in the universe”, which simply contains energy that is more fluid and less condensed as compared to the stars themselves.

That example can help us in understanding the double-slit experiment in a very intuitive way.

Bouncing droplets
Recently, scientists have been experimenting with oil-droplets. Simply spoken, one can take a petri dish of oil and create small droplets by stirring the oil a little bit with a stirring stick. Usually, the droplets that are created by stirring will quickly dissipate back into the mass of oil. However, with the petri dish placed on a vibrating diaphragm these oil-droplets can be set up in a way that they become “bouncing droplets”. A layer or air in between the surface and the droplets prevent the oil-droplets from returning back to the big oil mass at the bottom and keep it bouncing on the surface and thereby to retain its bond. As these oil-droplets land on the surface, they create waves that travel throughout the oil-mass. 

Interestingly, these waves itself can also alter and direct the droplet itself. We could therefore think of the waves of the underlying oil-mass as the guiding “field” that lead the droplets as they bounce and move around. Using our understanding of anicca, we understand that even “space itself” is a manifestation of energy. Here, we can understand it as an “ocean of energy”. The next picture can give you an idea of that. It shows the droplet, but also visualises the “wavy” sea of oil from where it came originated, but from which it is temporarily separated. 

Most interestingly, scientists have found these oil droplets exhibit the same measurement pattern in slit-experiments as the electrons and particles I mentioned at the beginning of this article. 

Using our understanding of anicca, we have now been able to understand why we should not think of electrons or particles as fixed entities but rather of quantities of energy that are only temporarily separated from the vast ocean of energy. This vast ocean of energy, which scientists do not see, is simply a scale of energy that is much less bound than the particle itself. A very liquid form of energy. The interaction of these two explains to us the behaviour of the double-slit experiment.

The oil-bath provides a great analogy to understand the concept of anicca. There are no fixed structures made out of oil which travel around. If we substitute oil with energy, we begin to understand our universe in a very new way. It is also very liberating, because when we  understand the world around us in this way, there is nothing that is inherently “lacking” anything. It is a hidden paradise that unveils in front of you, once you come to see the world according to the phenomenon of cause and effect. The Absolute Reality that always was, but it was hidden to us due to our misunderstanding, and our perception of fixed entities. 

So what is the connection to our life in all of this? True, you don’t need to understand all these scientific ideas to attain Nibbana, to be unconditionally happy. But appreciating the world through the lens of science can help convince ourselves of the truth behind the Buddha’s words, to see that science and Buddha Dhamma are in many ways very similar. It is by acquiring a solid understanding of anicca that we can understand the profound wisdom of the Buddha and his mission to help us become “truly happy”. 

The self illusion
We perceive a fixed entity called we feel as the “self”. This entity, so we think, is distinct and unique in its essence, and it “exists” and travels through time and space. If, however, in nature there is only energy in different arrangements, we will have to consider the whole idea of a “separate existence” to be flawed. Therefore, we can understand that the feeling of a “separate existence” is not based in truth, but in delusion or wrong-views. This is in essence what is referred as “sakkaya ditti” in Buddhist philosophy. The perceived world of entities is not the real world. In our perceived world, we suffer because of how attachment to perceived entities. We feel incomplete and unsatisfied, we are afraid to die, and try to achieve happiness by pleasing our “self”. The Buddha advised us, to understand the reality of the world, to come out of Ignorance, and to achieve real happiness by giving ourselves up. But ultimately, is it ourselves that we must give up or the perception of a self? Your turn!