New Quantum Theory Suggests that the Future May Be Influencing the Past
“If we don’t learn from our mistakes, we will be doomed to repeat them.” An age-old piece of advice, suggesting that our actions in the past will determine the contents of our future.
A recent study from the Chapman University Institute for Quantum Mechanic Studies has something rather different to say. In the study, the researchers examined retrocausality — a particle’s ability in the present to have an impact on the particle’s existence in the past. How?
Retrocausality seems to bend the laws of time symmetry. To state it more simply: The argument is being made that effect can happen before cause. Highly disruptive to popular theories (Bell’s Theorem and Kochen-Specker’s theorem, in particular), scientists may have just thrown a monkey wrench into our understanding of time and space.
By creating an experiment in time symmetry, scientists assume that all processes have the same probability. This is true whether they are traveling backwards or forwards in time. Because this would contradict our current understanding of quantum physics, the researchers are arguing that particles can have the same and different probabilities at the same time.