I think I'll start off by saying I'm only a freshman in college, who has only had a brief introduction to the craziness of quantum mechanics. I'm writing a paper about the phenomenon of Bilocation (being in two places at once) in my Philosophy class. I'm using quantum mechanics as an example of a hypothesis set forward to explain how certain individuals have been seen at two places at the same time.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, it would probably help me understand a few things much better.

Observation collapses the wave function, as I understand it. The only reason we never experience turning into a wave function is because we are conscious, which is the ultimate form of observation. So let's say there are 3 people in the world. X is unconscious, sleeping in his room. Y walks in, sees X sleeping, then leaves to.. do homework. X then "turns into" a probability wave (forgive my terminology). Z is in a faraway place. Could Z "observe" X, according to quantum mechanics? The implication of this would be that X was "at two places" at "the same time", or at least at a time interval that was so small that he would have traveled at the speed of light, etc.

Again, forgive my wording, it all made sense in my head.

Any other thoughts on the probability of bilocation, or at least apparent bilocation?

Thanks.

Why do unobserved buildings not collapse? Because they don't turn into wavefunctions just because nothing is observing them.

Rumraket wrote:Why do unobserved buildings not collapse? Because they don't turn into wavefunctions just because nothing is observing them.

I don't actually believe that a tree isn't in my backyard just because I don't see it. But according to quantum mechanics, it very well might be gone if I'm not looking. My question was way more hypothetical; I'm only wondering if a possibility at all exists that an individual could be at two places at once if he is unconscious.

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all? --The Firesign Theatre.

Anyway, look. The collapse of the wavefunction is only a feature of some quantum interpretations, and none of the interpretations sis scientifically indistinguishable from another. That is, there is no experiment that you can do to distinguish between them.

Everett’s MWI is based on the notion that the wavefunction represents something real. Many physicists don’t abide by this notion. They consider that the wavefunction is only a mathematical tool to allows the calculation of expectation values. Other than that, and there have been many interpretations of the wavefunction over the years, they are just speculations.

One of the other issues that needs to be addressed is precisely what constitutes an observer. The real reason that macroscopic objects are not seen to be bilocated is that they are made up of microscopic entities, each of which, in this context, constitutes an observer.

There have been known exceptions, not least in the recent experiment that demonstrated superposition in a macroscopic object, and there is certainly nothing in QM that prohibits bilocation of macroscopic entities, but it is highly improbable.

4 example: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ble-object

Ah, I see. Thanks everyone for your input. Maybe I'll read up a little on such topics over winter break. Interesting stuff.