In his paper “Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam” Professor John Archibald Wheeler made the following comment with regards to the implications of the “Twin-Slit Experiment”:
“I want to pursue the double-slit experiment only a little further. Simple though it is in concept, it strikingly brings out the mind-bending strangeness of quantum theory. (It has been a touchstone for discourse about the implications of quantum theory for three-quarters of a century.) Imagine some object larger than a photon and smaller than a baseball—a large molecule, for instance. If fired at a barrier with slits, does it behave more like a photon or more like a baseball, more like a “pure” quantum object or more like a classical object? It could behave like either; it all depends on how we choose to examine it. If we subject it to no perturbing observations, its quantum properties can dominate. It can go through both slits at once, land at an unpredictable point, and reveal interference between one part of its cloud and another. Such behavior has been demonstrated for objects as large as whole atoms. If, however, we get overly curious, and follow it with observations along its path, it will respond by behaving classically. Then we cause its repeated “collapse” to certainty. By tracking it, we evaporate its cloud of uncertainty.”
This paper was published in 1998. I am intrigued to know what the late Professor Wheeler would have made of the work of Austrian physicist Professor Anton Zeilinger. In the quotation Wheeler writes “Imagine some object larger than a photon and smaller than a baseball—a large molecule, for instance” being fired at the barrier. Obviously at that time the largest “physical” objects that had shown wave-particle duality had been “large atoms”. Zeilinger and his team have now shown that large molecules such as the interestingly named C284.H190.F320.N4.S12 which consists of 800 atoms! This huge advance in the size of particles showing “duality” pushes the barrier between weird quantum behaviours of particles in two places at the same time, of quantum tunnelling and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, closer to the nice, safe world of Newtonian physics so beloved by the proselytisers of Scientism, closer towards a very interesting barrier … that of viruses. Watch this space because there is no reason why the growth in size of particles showing these “abilities” should not stop ….
Again before I am accused of making this up, or misinterpreting the science, check out the paper (by Sandra Eibenberger at the University of Vienna) for yourself: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8343 … Of course if you do not like this you can always close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and hum loudly. However this will not go away …..