THE PHYSICS OF EVENT OBSERVATIONS


Heisenberg stated that it was impossible to know both a particle's location as well as its momentum at a given moment.

Since we must be an observer, we must therefore be at some distance of separation from the event. That distance cannot be traversed instantaneously by light (or even at a billion times the speed of light), without some amount of time elapsing between the occurrence of the event and the perception of that event by an observer. No matter how close that the observer is from the event, the observer can NEVER know what is happening at that exact site of that event (or at any other location other than there own specific location).

The idea of knowing a particle's position and momentum is an interesting problem. How could we ever know the exact position of anything in the present?


Either you are the event ... then you have nowhere to use as a reference system, or you are not the event - and you are separated from the event.... you cannot know the present.

You obviously could not be separated any distance from the event of particle in question, since any distance between you and the event would require some time to expire. Therefore, you would not be able to know what occurs at the event when it occurs since you are not there.

If somehow, we the observer, could be magically miniaturized and were able to actually, physically stand on a particle, then your head and therefore your eyes are still not at the particle surface and therefore are still a separated distance from the particle. If you then got down on your knees and held your head barely off the surface - still a distance of separation. Should you then put your eyeball in direct contact with the surface, then you still could not observe the eventat the moment of the event's occurrence.

Additionally, you would be on the surface of a sphere and not at some theoretical point. This sphere has dimension. Should your eyeball be at the surface of a sphere, then you would be unable to detect what was occurring on the opposite side. In fact, at best , you could only detect a single point of the sphere... the one to which you eyeball was touching. Even that single point, since it has no distance of separation, cannot be observed since your eyeball is actually the event in this case.

To continue, when does it officially become an observation? When a light signal reaches one of your eyes, or when it has reached both of your eyes, or when it has traveled from your eyes to your brain, or when your brain has been able to comprehend what it has seen? What exactly do we mean by an observation?

It would seem almost self evident that when we are separated from some specific point / event at the moment of its occurrence, at its unique location... that we cannot know what occurs at that exact event's moment in time.