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Last I read about this was years and years ago, and the claim at the time from the source I learned about it from was that the cause of this behavior is unknown. Is it known now?
I vaguely remember an explanation that whatever device/mechanism is actually used to “observe” the experiment was affecting the behavior of the light. Boiling it down to “observation changed the outcome” makes you picture something that changes depending on whether you look at it with your eyes, but there’s a lot more moving parts to the whole thing.
Exactly. The apparatus used to take measurements slightly alters the thing being measured. It's not the act of looking at it with our eyes that causes any change.
An analogy that I find easier to understand is the tool used to measure tire pressure releases a small amount of air, thus changing the tire pressure (albeit negligible).
Idk, but you might find the answer to that question from one of these
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuqavL7RN4jjdioivWm-Jwa6IoGG2_8Nr
Its source is known. Unfortunately, it requires a different way of looking at everything. (It's all waves, even if it looks like a particle most of the time). Wrapping this up as simple pop science, that can be digested by most laymen, is difficult.
What we don't actually know is why everything is made of waves. We know the rules it follows, but not the underlying cause. Figuring that would would likely require an understanding of quantum relativity, something we only have a very weak handle on.
Depends on what you mean by unknown. The meme (and a lot of common understanding) doesn't know what it means to be observed. There is a leading theory, the Copenhagen interpretation. The biggest theory in opposition would be multi-world.
It's just proof that light behaves as a wave, because it generates an interference pattern like the first picture. The second picture is how it would theoretically behave if it was (only) a particle, which it isn't. The proof that light acts like a particle comes from a second experiment proposed by Einstein dealing with the photoelectric effect.
This article is meant for kids but it explains things pretty plainly. The duality is unexplained, but the experiment is well understood.
It actually does behave like a particle in this experiment if you use a measuring device to see which slit it went through. It's also enough to turn the heat up in the room. Then random air molecules take on the role of a measuring device.
Yeah, if you alter the experiment to try and prove duality then of course you can do that because light is both. The classic double slit experiment, as commonly understood and illustrated above, just proves the wave part though. You’re not going to see just two lines from shining a flashlight through a couple holes.
The illustration above explicitly shows someone "looking" at the slits, implying the use of a measuring device.
Eyes are a measuring device and using them here would not result in two lines. Using a different measuring device produces a different result. Nothing I’ve said is counter to anything you’ve said. The image is a joke, not a real experiment.
This topic can get so convoluted so quickly... I just deleted a testament cause I got carried away (and now proceeded to write a new one).
So the recap on the experiment is that an interference pattern shows when shining light through two slits, but it'll also show up when firing single particles through as well. When we try to see through which slit each particle went through, magically there's no more interference pattern and we only get 2 lines.
Short-ish answer: we sorta know why the pattern disappears when observed. It's the very simple fact that we cannot take a precise measurement without interacting with the system and, thus, affecting the outcome. Think about it, we're trying to know information about a single particle. The only way to get any information about it is to interact with it. Once we do, something changes that ends up preventing the interference pattern from showing up.
What we don't know for sure is why the interference pattern happens in the first place. There's a plethora of theories and interpretations, but we end up being forced to admit a probabilistic and extremely unintuitive, almost magical nature in quantum physics. It's something that many were uncomfortable with at first, hence Schrodinger's cat, and yet, the model of quantum physics that has resulted from these observations has stood the test of time, correctly predicting or explaining nearly everything thrown its way with the most notable exception being gravity. For everything else, what we now know as Quantum Field Theory, alongside the standard model, is the most accurate representation of quantum physics we have, even if it's not the last one we'll ever have. It's hard not to keep going because every sentence could become a rabbit hole on its own.
Little addendum now that I've wasted your time: my knowledge goes as far as YouTube allows. I'm a webdev with a morbid fascination with this subject. Fact check me, I prolly fucked up my explanation multiple times.
Do check out the channel called "history of the universe" on YouTube. Few videos are as educating and mesmerizing as the videos from that channel.