Prof. Brian Cox takes on Deepak Chopra; Chopra out of his depth in both physics and language

[DetlefK]

2. His Huffpost-article is weird and shows misconceptions.

Quote:
"If the observer makes the difference between a wave and a particle, and if the universe displays itself to us as matter (which is all particles)..."

Perhaps Chopra should go back to reading first-semester physics-textbooks. "Wave" and "particle" are points of views that depend on HOW the observer interprets reality, not WHETHER the observer interprets reality. "Particle" is the classical mechanic along the lines of Newton and Bohr. "Wave" is the quantum-mechanics along the lines of Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Classical mechanics and quantum-mechanics are mathematically connected by the so-called "correspondence-principle": If you play with the natural constants of your theory, the theory smoothly turns into another theory. For example, in classical mechanics light-speed is infinite (it really is not) and Planck's quantum is zero (it really is not, it's just really small). It is entirely possible to describe a classical system, e.g. a rolling ball, with quantum-mechanics. We don't do that because quantum-mechanics would inject way too many details into the description and it would be a mathematical nightmare, way too complicated for everyday problems.

And maybe Chopra should read an introduction to quantum-mechanics. If a photon hits an atom, that atom is the oberserver. There is no need for consciousness. And the collapse of the wave-function is no observation: It's a statistical method to compare "before" and "after".