Posted: Oct 06, 2017 10:52 am
GrahamH wrote:I think 'the observer effect' could just as well be termed 'the measurement effect'.
Which in turn can just be called wavefunction collapse due to interaction. At no point can it be demonstrated that it is necessary for an observer to come along and read a graph on a display on some measuring apperatus that interacted with some quantum system, in order for that interaction to collapse a wavefunction.
It doesn't even have to be an apperatus at all. When waves of ultraviolet light hits the surface of some obscure rock nobody has laid eyes on, on the surface of venus, that very interaction collapses the wavefunction of the electron in an atom in the rock, and the wavefunction of the photon. We know this because extended exposure to UV radiation slowly degrade materials by destroying chemical bonds between atoms. It's why things exposed to sunlight lose their color and become faded, why plastics and paint etc. fade over time, become brittle and fall apart and so on and so forth.