In nature, one cannot observe any relation. No pictures of relations have ever been shot.
Ricardo Manzotti in The Spread Mind [1]

Is it possible to observe relationships? How can a relationship be observed if the observation immediately changes both the object and the observer? This can only be done indirectly.

And what about isolation? Is complete isolation conceivable? A particle in isolation knows no space and time. Is it even there when there are no relationships? When a particle interacts, it is apparently there. But only then? Or is everything in constant relationship with each other?

What if……

• any event that could have been different is information…
• information is physical….
• all information in the universe is preserved….

……. then information must be physically transferred with each event. We know the transfer of information from the collapsing of entanglements. Is everything in the universe connected?

Experiments with photons
Experiments have been devised to find out whether photons, particles of light, behave as a particle or as a wave function. Or as both. Look at the famous ‘double-slit experiment’ and the ‘delayed choice experiment’ [2] [3]. Both experiments demonstrate that photons either behave as a particle or as a wave function, but never as both. Exact repetitions of these experiments consistently lead to the same results. However, an interim observation in order to covertly observe how the photons behave during the experiment will lead to different behavior of the photons and therefore generate different end results. Hence, the covert observation changes the end result. How is this possible?

Wave-particle duality
There is an informative animation that shows what happens when you add an observer to the double-slit experiment.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWave-particle_duality.ogv

What if the elements are entangled?
When discussing the experiments, it is tacitly assumed that all elements are isolated. But what if the elements are entangled? Take a look at Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment. What if every interaction with mirror, beam splitter or observer changes the entanglements of the photon? Then that will change the behavior of the photon. The photon can behave in two ways. As long as the photon can interfere with itself, a wave function can be seen. When this possibility is blocked, only a particle effect become visible.

When inserting an extra interaction, the entanglements change. The end result has been altered by this addition. Consequently, the whole experiment has changed.

Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment (source: Wikipedia)

If a single photon is emitted into the entry port of the apparatus at the lower-left corner, it immediately encounters a beam-splitter. Because of the equal probabilities for transmission or reflection the photon will either continue straight ahead, be reflected by the mirror at the lower-right corner, and be detected by the detector at the top of the apparatus, or it will be reflected by the beam-splitter, strike the mirror in the upper-left corner, and emerge into the detector at the right edge of the apparatus. Observing that photons show up in equal numbers at the two detectors, experimenters generally say that each photon has behaved as a particle from the time of its emission to the time of its detection, has traveled by either one path or the other, and further affirm that its wave nature has not been exhibited.

If the apparatus is changed so that a second beam splitter is placed in the upper-right corner, then part of the beams from each path will travel to the right, where they will combine to exhibit interference on a detection screen. Experimenters must explain these phenomena as consequences of the wave nature of light. Each photon must have traveled by both paths as a wave, because if each photon traveled as a particle along just one path then the many photons sent during the experiment would not produce an interference pattern.

The image above is a graphic representation of Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment. The outcome of the first experiment, as seen in the upper part of the image, is a particle effect. The outcome of the second experiment, as illustrated in the lower part of the image, is a wave effect.

In a third experiment, which is not depicted above, a polarizing plate is placed on one of the routes, adding an extra interaction. This is called path encoding. As a result, the photon no longer behaves as a wave, but only as a particle. The added interaction changes (the behavior of) the particle. We will elaborate on this in part 2.

Are larger objects entangled too?
And what about the devices that are used to conduct the experiment? Are they also entangled with their environment? That seems like a fair assumption. This is, however, not verifiable in these experiments because these devices are large and stable. The effects of entanglement of larger objects with their environment are also described as a heat bath. Similar to an object adoptng the temperature of its environment by exchanging heat, it also exchanges quantum information with its environment. This phenomenon is called decoherence. It is briefly explained in the figure below. A more detailed explanation can be found on the Wikipedia page ‘Quantum decoherence‘ [4].

In classical scattering of a target body by environmental photons, the motion of the target body will not be changed by the scattered photons on the average. In quantum scattering, the interaction between the scattered photons and the superposed target body will cause them to be entangled, thereby delocalizing the phase coherence from the target body to the whole system, rendering the interference pattern unobservable.

bron: Wikipedia

Macroscale entanglement
A common view about entanglements of objects at the macro level is that they are irrelevant, because the entangled information would leak into the environment, as happens in the heat bath mentioned above. In our daily lives entanglements are hardly noticeable, but by employing a trick it is possible to see Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’. In their article Macroscale entanglement and measurement in Science [5], Hoi-Kwan Lau and Aashish Clerk demonstrate that entanglement at the macro level is recognizable and measurable. In an experiment they entangled two aluminum drums (two membranes of 70 picograms, about a trillion atoms after all), thereby demonstrating the effect of the entanglement: both drums exhibited the same behavior at a distance simultaneously! Lau and Clerk succeeded to prevent the random leakage of entanglements. But what happens at the macro level ‘in the wild’? In other words: how can the effects of coherence be recognized in our daily lives?

Coherence versus isolation
Language serves as a great real-life example to demonstrate the difference between isolation and coherence. Take the word ‘bank’. The Cambridge Dictionary provides us with 9 meanings for this word: five nouns (an organization where people and businesses can invest or borrow money, sloping raised land, a pile or mass of earth or clouds, a row of similar things and a place that stores these things for later use) and four verbs (to keep or put money in a bank, to win a particular amount of money, to fly an aircraft with one wing higher than the other when turning, and to collect in or form into a mass). Hence, isolated, i.e. devoid of context, the word ‘bank’ has either no meaning or nine meanings at once. You could say that the word ‘bank’, when isolated, is in superposition. When context is added, the superposition collapses and the word takes on its meaning.

Is language too abstract to serve as an example? Do you prefer an example from the ‘physical’ world? Then imagine a particle again in complete isolation. Being completely isolated, the particle does not know time and space. And if there are no other particles, meaning that is has no relationship with other particles, then it is also devoid of properties like mass, electrical charge and temperature. These properties only have meaning when our lonely particle operates in a context with other particles, after all. Do particles in complete isolation have any properties at all? In classical physics, the relations with other particles that give rise to mass and charge are called gravity and electromagnetic force. Could these forces, which are essentially relations, be entanglements?

Let’s have a look at another example from the ‘physical world’: body weight. Weight in isolation has no meaning. Someone weighs 170 lb. What does that say? Is this a lot or a little? In other words: how do you value this information? However, when this number is seen in conjunction with height and other characteristics of that person, it acquires more substance and detail. In Chapter 4, we discussed the significance of weight in relation to a person’s health and the relationships between body weight and factors, such as genetic predisposition, environment, diet, exercise, hormones, et cetera. All these factors combined influence a person’s body weight and health. The mere fact that a person weighs 170 lb doesn’t tell us anything about his or her health. Nor can you change weight or health by simply turning a switch. The entire context is involved.

Do as philosophers do
Particles are central to our everyday thinking. They interact with each other and change as a result of these interactions. What if we turn the tables and focus on the relations between ‘particles’? Think of it as the front and back of an embroidery. When you’re facing the front of the embroidery you can see the particles, but when looking at the back you will see the relations between these particles. They cannot exist without each other.

What do you think about isolation now? Does complete isolation exist? Do particles exist without relations with other particles? Or is isolation a theoretical concept that is necessary to be able to think in models and reduction? And if there are relations, what are those relations exactly? And what are forces such as gravity and electromagnetic force from this point of view?