Anil Ananthaswamy

Science writer Anil Ananthaswamy Intro of surveys current theories: If nothing else, these experiments are showing that we cannot yet make any claims about the nature of reality, even if the claims are well-motivated mathematically or philosophically. And given that neuroscientists and philosophers of mind don’t agree on the nature of consciousness, claims that it collapses wave functions are premature at best and misleading and wrong at worst.Anil Ananthaswamy, “What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality?” at Scientific American One wants to ask, if we cannot make any claims about the nature of reality and there is no agreement about the nature of consciousness, how does Ananthaswamy know that claims about the role of consciousness are “premature,” “misleading,” Read More ›

 In a review of science writer Anil Ananthaswamy’s Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality, science writer Philip Ball captured the essence of the sheer oddity of quantum mechanics: What’s odd is that the interference pattern remains — accumulating over many particle impacts — even if particles go through the slits one at a time. The particles seem to interfere with themselves. Odder, the pattern vanishes if we use a detector to measure which slit the particle goes through: it’s truly particle-like, with no more waviness. Oddest of all, that remains true if we delay the measurement until after the particle has traversed the slits (but before it hits the screen). Read More ›