Thread: Consensus Reality

So there is a way to observe a star to make it where it went one way around a star as opposed the other way? Can I go outside right now and observe it in such a way that it went around the other side? How did Wheeler prove that the observation determines what happened millions of years ago? I want to look up his full explanation some time. Can I do something like that to the Sun and make where humans never existed? Or is it just the first observation that counts while the rest don't?

I want to get my hands on the drugs that guy was doing.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

So there is a way to observe a star to make it where it went one way around a star as opposed the other way? Can I go outside right now and observe it in such a way that it went around the other side? How did Wheeler prove that the observation determines what happened millions of years ago? I want to look up his full explanation some time. Can I do something like that to the Sun and make where humans never existed? Or is it just the first observation that counts while the rest don't?

I want to get my hands on the drugs that guy was doing.

Yeah, my explanation assumes that you will do some further reading; its clear from your interpretation that my explanation alone is not adequate in order to understand the concept. It would probably help if you saw a diagram of the apparatus that is suggested in order to test the proposition.

Here is the Wiki on the delayed choice experiment

Here is a page that explains the situation with a distant star pretty well

Here is the abstract for an article about the experimental verification of the phenomenon

Didn't you say that the observation determined how things happened millions of years earlier?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Didn't you say that the observation determined how things happened millions of years earlier?

Ahh, this is the real foundation of the disagreement I believe. The observation determines what happens. It only appears as though it happened millions of years earlier, when in reality something only happens in the present moment; at the time of observation. What it proves is that you can't even talk about what happened 'in the past' scientifically, since the actual happening only exists at the moment of observation which can only exist in the present.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Ahh, this is the real foundation of the disagreement I believe. The observation determines what happens. It only appears as though it happened millions of years earlier, when in reality something only happens in the present moment; at the time of observation. What it proves is that you can't even talk about what happened 'in the past' scientifically, since the actual happening only exists at the moment of observation which can only exist in the present.

Scientists agree that the star just passed the other one? They say that even though you are seeing the light of it from millions of light years away? If you asked a room full of prominent astronomers when a star that Bob discovered passed another one, they would say, "When Bob discovered the star."? What would they say about the fact that Bob saw the light of something millions of light years away?

The star just passed the who? The star isn't passing anything. The light from the star is being bent by a gravity well (a galaxy or black hole, or a very close star like the sun) so that photons coming from that star can either pass around the left or the right and still be observed at the earth. You can't observe the star as it was in the past, you can only observe photons from the star as they reach you in the present. How you choose to observe those photons is what dictates whether they came around one side of the gravity well or the other, or if they came around both sides. This is true even when looking at a single photon at a time.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

He even went as far to say that if one were to use the light coming from a distant star that past close enough to another star

Modifier ambiguity.

As for Wheeler's claim...