avshalom

Description

For many years Prof. Elitzur have been devising quantum mechanical experiments, such as the Quantum Liar (Elitzur & Dolev, 2005), that challenge the mainstream Block Universe model and favor Becoming. Alas, results from recent collaborations (Aharonov et al., 2012a, 2012b) seem to indicate that a future choice, to be made by a human, can be encoded within outcomes of earlier weak measurements, even before the human knows what the choice will be. Prof. Elitzur demonstrates this feat with an EPR experiment where the particles are weakly measured prior to the final, strong measurements. Slicing the earlier weak outcomes reveals, by Bell's (1965) theorem, that they have somehow anticipated the choice of spin direction decided upon much later. A subtle form of censorship prevents paradoxical causal loops emerging from this anomaly. Nevertheless, Prof. Elitzur remains personally convinced that Becoming can eventually be reconciled with quantum retrocausation. From the "Do We Need a Physics of 'Passage'?" workshop, 10-14 December, 2012 Vineyard Hotel & Spa, Cape Town, South Africa