Improve Your Life with the Quantum Zeno Effect

• published: 03 Oct 2015
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http://www.realityshifters.com - How can you make the most of the "quantum watched pot" effect in your life? Most of us are familiar with those situations where it seems that the more we stare at a given situation, waiting for a momentous phase change to occur, the less likely it seems we'll see much of anything interesting transpire. You might have heard your mother cluck, "A watched pot never boils," suggesting you find something more productive to do. What your mother might not have known and probably didn't tell you is that the "watched pot" phenomenon is backed up by some pretty interesting scientific studies in quantum physics that show considerable promise for helping improve our way of life. We might envision the possibilities of being able to freeze-frame a given situation--such as a life-threatening experience--in order that we can best address whatever needs to be handled. Some people, including me, have had such moments where we could have sworn that time slowed to a stop--and the Quantum Zeno Effect can go a long way toward explaining what's going on when that happens. The Quantum Zeno Effect While Alan Turing has been acknowledged as having first mentioned the basic principle behind the Quantum Zeno Effect in the form of a paradox in 1954, physicists Baidyanaith Misra and George Sudarshan were the first to write a paper in 1977, hypothesizing that if a quantum system is measured often enough, it's state will be unable to progress, and this hypothesis was tested and proven to be true in a 1989 experiment involving laser-cooled ions trapped in electric and magnetic fields. Subsequent tests further confirmed that the Quantum Zeno Effect works, and in 2013, researchers moved a step closer to building quantum computers by demonstrating that objects as large as diamonds can exhibit the Quantum Zeno Effect. [Reich 2013] It's a big leap to move from the realm of the microscopic to something large enough that humans can directly see, feel and work with, such as diamonds. In addition to the Quantum Zeno Effect that effectively freezes a system into a given state, there also exists an anti-Zeno Effect, which moves a system quickly out of a given state. In 2014, a team of physicists led by Y.S. Patil at Cornell University successfully demonstrated that rapid repetitive measurements can effectively freeze a system in place. The potential implications of this are huge, as the paper asserts, "The techniques demonstrated here... ... augur intriguing prospects of realizing novel many-body interactions such as a measurement- induced dynamic coupling between the internal, motional and topological states of a quantum many-particle system." [Patil 2014] DrWhoWeepingAngelBlinkWeeping Angels If you're a fan of the science fiction TV show, Dr. Who, you might remember the Blink episode featuring some nefarious beings that look like statues. Dr. Who warned his friends, "Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels. The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy." Dr. Who advised how best to prevent being zapped to the past with some additional advice, "Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and DON'T blink." While we likely won't have much need to freeze Weeping Angels, there are times when some of us experience a need for time to slow to a stop, and some of us have experienced that phenomena, as once happened to me when I was walking through the Lausanne train station in Switzerland where we living at the time, behind my husband and daughter. My husband and I were both carrying suitcases in both hands--and he was also carrying our daughter perched up on his shoulders, holding on tightly to his hair. I watched in alarm as I saw my daughter raise her hands up in the air, letting go of her father's hair and bouncing along happily with each large step he took. I'm quite sure I didn't blink as I kept watching as her back arched and her head came down toward the granite floor. At this point, I heard and saw time seem to slow to a stop, as what had been the high-pitched frequency of women's high heeled shoes lowered down to a deep, slow roar. I was able to cover a great deal of distance very quickly, just in time to catch my daughter while she was falling head-first toward the hard floor. [Larson 2011] You can read the entire blog post on this topic at: http://wp.me/pbqQk-L9