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Posted on Dec 22, 2020 in Physics, quantum physics, Science

If quantum mechanics hasnt profoundly shocked you , you havent understood it yet, said physicist Niels Bohr. The more we delve into the cosmic weirdness of quantum mechanics the stranger the world becomes. A state of quantum superposition is being in more than one place, or more than one state, at the same time a single event can be happening both here and there, or both today and tomorrow. Caltechs great theoretical physicist, Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, was fond of noting that the paradox of quantum mechanics is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be.

Questions Our Very Understanding of Space and Time

Quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of subatomic particles, challenges common sense. Waves behave like particles; particles behave like waves. Its like sneaking a look at Gods cards, said the Italian physicist Giancarlo Ghirardi.

Superpositions, however, are hard to create say scientists from EPFL, MIT, and CEA Saclay, as they are destroyed if any kind of information about the place and time of the event leaks into the surrounding and even if nobody actually records this information. But when superpositions do occur, they lead to observations that are very different from that of classical physics, questioning down to our very understanding of space and time.

New research from the international team using a very short laser-pulse to trigger a specific pattern of vibration inside a diamond crystal demonstrates a state of vibration that exists simultaneously at two different times, and evidence this quantum superposition by measuring the strongest class of quantum correlations between light beams that interact with the vibration.

The Experiment Classical vs Quantum

In their experiment, they reported that each pair of neighboring atoms oscillated like two masses linked by a spring, and this oscillation was synchronous across the entire illuminated region. To conserve energy during this process, a light of a new color is emitted, shifted toward the red of the spectrum.

This classical picture, however, is inconsistent with the experiments. Instead, both light and vibration should be described as particles, or quanta: light energy is quantized into discrete photons while vibrational energy is quantized into discrete phonons (named after the ancient Greek photo = light and phono = sound).

The process described above reports the Ecole Polytechniqe Federale de Lausanne, should therefore be seen as the fission of an incoming photon from the laser into a pair of photon and phonon akin to nuclear fission of an atom into two smaller pieces. But it is not the only shortcoming of classical physics. In quantum mechanics, particles can exist in a superposition state, like the famous Schrdinger cat being alive and dead at the same time.

Even More Counterintuitive

Even more counterintuitive supporting Feynmans observation of a quantum reality: two particles can become entangled, losing their individuality. The only information that can be collected about them concerns their common correlations. Because both particles are described by a common state (the wavefunction), these correlations are stronger than what is possible in classical physics. It can be demonstrated by performing appropriate measurements on the two particles. If the results violate a classical limit, one can be sure they were entangled.

Entangled Light and Vibration

In the new study, EPFL researchers managed to entangle the photon and the phonon (i.e., light and vibration) produced in the fission of an incoming laser photon inside the crystal. To do so, the scientists designed an experiment in which the photon-phonon pair could be created at two different instants. Classically, it would result in a situation where the pair is created at time t1 with 50% probability, or at a later time t2 with 50% probability.

The Trick Bridges Our Daily Reality and Quantum Mechanics

But here comes the trick played by the researchers to generate an entangled state. By a precise arrangement of the experiment, they ensured that not even the faintest trace of the light-vibration pair creation time (t1 vs. t2) was left in the universe. In other words, they erased information about t1 and t2. Quantum mechanics then predicts that the phonon-photon pair becomes entangled, and exists in a superposition of time t1 and t2. This prediction was beautifully confirmed by the measurements, which yielded results incompatible with the classical probabilistic theory.

By showing entanglement between light and vibration in a crystal that one could hold in their finger during the experiment, the new study creates a bridge between our daily experience and the fascinating realm of quantum mechanics.

Source: Santiago Tarrago Velez, Vivishek Sudhir, Nicolas Sangouard, Christophe Galland. Bell correlations between light and vibration at ambient conditions. Science Advances 18 December 2020, 6: eabb0260.

The Daily Galaxy, Jake Burba, via Ecole Polytechniqe Federale de Lausanne and Science

Image credit: Shutterstock License

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Superpositions The Cosmic Weirdness of Quantum Mechanics - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Safe Deposit. Symbol of cryptocurrency safety. The man puts a physical bitcoin in small Residential ... [+] Vault. Toned soft focus picture.

Theres a lurking fear in cryptocurrency communities about quantum computing. Could it break cryptocurrencies and the encryption that protects them? How close might that be? Do the headlines around quantum supremacy mean that my private keys are at risk?

The simple answer: no. But lets dive deeper into this phenomenon and really try to understand why this is the case and how quantum computing will interact with cryptocurrencies.

To start off with, lets define quantum computing and the classical computing were all used to, and seeing where the terms compare and contrast with one another. Quantum computing can be roughly placed in the same paradigm as classical pre-1900s physics and modern physics which comprises Einsteins insights on relativity and quantum physics.

Classical computing is the kind of computers weve grown used to, the extensions of Turings theories on computation, the laptops or mobile phones that you carry around with you. Classical computing relies heavily on the manipulation of physical bits the famous 0s and 1s.

Quantum computing relies on qubits, bits that are held in superposition and use quantum principles to complete calculations. The information captured or generated by a quantum system benefits from the ability of qubits to be in more than one physical state at a time (superposition), but there is information decay in capturing the state of the system.

One point that will be immediately relevant to the discussion is that quantum computers are not universally better than classical computers as a result. When people speak about quantum supremacy, including reports from Google GOOG and/or China, they really mean that a quantum computer can do a certain task better than classical computers, perhaps one that is impossible to do in any reasonable timeframe with classical computers.

We can think of this in terms of time scales from a computing perspective there are some, but not all functions, that go from being impossible to accomplish in any meaningful human-level time period to ones that become slow but manageable with a large enough quantum computer.

In a way, you can think of Turing tests and quantum supremacy tests in much the same way. Designed at first to demonstrate the superiority of one system over another (in the case of Turing tests, artificial language generation vs. human language comprehension, in the case of quantum supremacy tests, quantum computing systems vs classical computers), theyve become more gimmick than substance.

A quantum computer has to perform better at some minute and trivial task that might seem impressive but completely useless in much the same way a Turing test of machine-generated English might fool a Ukrainian child with no fluency in the language.

This means that we have to narrow down to a function that quantum computers can be better on that would materially affect cryptocurrencies or the encryption theyre built on in order for quantum supremacy to matter.

One area of specific focus is Shors Algorithm, which can factor large prime numbers down into two smaller ones. This is a very useful property for breaking encryption, since the RSA family of encryption depends on factoring large prime numbers in exactly this manner. Shors Algorithm works in theory with a large enough quantum computer and so its a practical concern that eventually, Shors Algorithm might come into play and among other things, RSA encryption might be broken.

On this front, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already started gathering proposals for post-quantum cryptography, encryption that would operate and not be broken even with much larger quantum computers than the ones were currently able to build. They estimate that large enough quantum computers to disrupt classical encryption will potentially arrive in the next twenty years.

For cryptocurrencies, a fork in the future that might affect large parts of the chain, but it will be somewhat predictable there is a lot of thought being placed on post-quantum encryption technology. Bitcoin would not be one of the first planks to fall if classical encryption were suddenly broken for a number of reasons. Yet, a soft fork (as opposed to a hard one) might be enough to help move crypto-assets from suddenly insecure keys to secure post-quantum encryption.

Even an efficient implementation of Shors Algorithm may not break some of the cryptography standards used in bitcoin. SHA-256 is theorized to be quantum-resistant.

The most efficient theoretical implementation of a quantum computer to detect a SHA-256 collision is actually less efficient than the theorized classical implementation for breaking the standard. The wallet file in the original Bitcoin client is using SHA-512 (a more secure version than SHA-256) to help encrypt private keys.

Most of the encryption in modern cryptocurrencies are built on elliptic curve cryptography rather than RSA especially in the generation of signatures in bitcoin which requires ECDSA. This is largely due to the fact that elliptic curves are correspondingly harder to crack than RSA (sometimes exponentially so) from classical computers.

Thanks to Moores law and better classical computing, secure RSA key sizes have grown so large so as to be impractical compared to elliptic curve cryptography so most people will opt for elliptic curve cryptography for performance reasons for their systems, which is the case with bitcoin.

However, quantum computers seem to flip this logic on its head: given a large enough quantum computer with enough qubits, you can break elliptic curve cryptography easier than you might break RSA.

Both elliptic curve cryptography are widely used in a bunch of other industries and use cases as well RSA-2048 and higher are standards in the conventional banking system to send encrypted information, for example.

Yet, even with a large enough quantum computer, you would still have to reveal or find somebodys public keys so they could be subject to attack. With cryptocurrency wallet reuse being frowned upon, and a general encouragement of good privacy practices, the likelihood of this attack is already being reduced.

Another area of attack could be Grovers algorithm, which can exponentially speed up mining with a large enough quantum computer though its probable that ASICs, the specialized classical computers mostly used to mine bitcoin now, would be faster compared to the earliest versions of more complete quantum computers.

This poses more of a stronger threat when it comes to the state of cryptocurrencies: the ability to mine quickly in a sudden quantum speedup could lead to destabilization of prices and more importantly control of the chain itself an unexpected quantum speedup could, if hidden, lead to vast centralization of mining and possible 51% attacks. Yet the most likely case is that larger systems of quantum computing will be treated like any kind of hardware, similar to the transition for miners between GPUs, FGPAs and ASICs a slow economic transition to better tooling.

Its conceivable that these avenues of attack and perhaps other more unpredictable ones might emerge, yet post-quantum encryption planning is already in process and through the mechanism of forks, cryptocurrencies can be updated to use post-quantum encryption standards and defend against these weaknesses.

Bitcoin and even other cryptocurrencies and their history are filled with examples of hardware and software changes that had to be made to make the network more secure and performant and good security practices in the present (avoiding wallet reuse) can help prepare for a more uncertain future.

So quantum computers being added to the mix wont suddenly render classical modes of encryption useless or mining trivial quantum supremacy now doesnt mean that your encryption or the security of bitcoin is at risk right at this moment.

The real threat is when quantum computers become many scales larger than they currently are by which point planning for post-quantum encryption, which is already well on the way would come to the fore, and at which point bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can soft fork and use both decentralized governance and dynamism when needed in the face of new existential threats to defeat the threat of quantum supremacy.

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Here's Why Quantum Computing Will Not Break Cryptocurrencies - Forbes

Newswise Throughout2020, Argonne answered fundamental science questions and provided solutions for the world.

Throughout the year, scientists and engineers from the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory conducted groundbreaking research to tackle the nations most pressing challenges. Here are eight ways Argonne research made a difference in2020.

More than80research groups from across the country used the Advanced Photon Source (APS), aDOEOffice of Science User Facility at Argonne, to study the SARS-CoV-2virus that causesCOVID-19. Researchers logged more than10,000hours of time at theAPS, discovering among other things the ways the virus camouflages itself inside the human body. This pivotal discovery was published inNature Communications.

One of the most influential contributions theAPSmade to theCOVID-19vaccines can be traced back to work done at the facility between2009and2013. Scientists at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) discovered a technique that helps the human body generate more effective antibodies against a disease called respiratory syncytial virus, orRSV. Years later, those same scientistsadapted that technique to fight SARS-CoV-2,and their innovation is included in five of the announced vaccine candidates, including those developed by Pfizer and Moderna.

Using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing resources, Argonne researchers areexamining the dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2spike proteinto determine how it fuses with a human host cell, which could advance the search for new medications. In November, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded its firstACMGordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-BasedCOVID-19Research to a multi-institutional research team that included Argonne. The team showed how the SARS-CoV-2virusinfiltrates the human immune system, setting off a viral chain reaction throughout the body.

Argonne researchers developedCityCOVID, a large-scale agent-based epidemiological model that tracks the movements of millions of simulated individuals, or agents, as they go about their daily activities to predict how disease will spread and the impact of preventive measures, such as mask use. Powered by supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, aDOEOffice of Science user facility, this model has informed decision making by officials from Chicago, Cook County and Illinois, since early in the pandemic, and was also nominated as a finalist for theACMGordon Bell Special Prize.

Thethermal energy storage system, orTESS, can quickly store heat and release it for use when needed, surpassing conventional storage options in flexibility and efficiency. The introduction ofTESS, announced on April7, can capture and storeheat from concentrated solar power facilities and is suitable for various commercial applications, including desalination plants, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, industrial processes and heavy-duty trucks.

Researchers have demonstrated thatTESScan operate in temperatures over1,292F. Its high-energy density makes it smaller and more flexible than commonly used heat storage tanks. Being able to recover and use heat can raise efficiency and cut costs by extracting more energy from the same amount of fuel.

After a year-long collaboration between Argonne andAT&T to forecast risks from a changing climate in the Southeastern region, the partnership announced in September that they wereextending their analysis to cover the contiguous United States. Researchers are projecting the impact of climate at regional, local and neighborhood scales, using high-resolution models and a wide range of statistical methods for estimating uncertainty.

AT&T, in turn, uses these insights as input for its Climate Change Analysis Tool so it can forecast how changes in climate will impact company infrastructure and operations for up to30years into the future. As it did with the initial Southeastern pilot,AT&T also will make Argonnes data free to the general public, which could inspire new scientific applications that could benefit communities at large.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), aDOEEnergy Innovation Hub led by Argonne, made significant strides with solid-state batteries as promising successors to todays lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Researchers at the University of Waterloo, one of18JCESRpartners, published research in June onenhancing the mobility of Li-ions in solid-state batteries using the paddlewheel effect, which is the coordinated motion of atoms.

In addition, knowing how different ions move through different electrolytes will help researchers figure out how to create batteries that best fit their specific uses. In a breakthrough discovery announced Dec.3, a group of scientists demonstrated a combination oftechniques that allows for the precise measurement of ions moving through a batteryduring operation.

Funding is vital to such battery-related research andsix innovative battery manufacturing projectsled by Argonne were awarded funding in August throughDOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The projects, which span a range of essential components for energy storage, are among13battery manufacturing projects at national laboratories that earned combined funding of almost $15million over three years.

Then in September, Argonne completed itsexpansion of the Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF),a now28,000-square-foot facility, where50scientists, engineers and support staff develop scalable manufacturing technologies for advanced energy materials and chemicals that can be difficult to manufacture.

In a multidisciplinary study, scientists at Argonne, along with collaborators from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, announced on April29that they had developed an approach to prevent plaque formation in Alzheimers disease by engineering ananosized devicethat captures the dangerous peptides before they can self-assemble.

Alzheimers, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, affects people who have a specific type of plaque, made of self-assembled molecules called -amyloid (A) peptides, that build up in the brain over time. Researchers are studying ways to prevent the peptides from forming these dangerous plaques to halt development of Alzheimers disease in the brain.

Catalysts speed up chemical reactions and form the backbone of many industrial processes. For example, they are essential in transforming heavy oil into gasoline or jet fuel. A research team, led by Argonne in collaboration with Northern Illinois University, said in August that they discovered anew electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into ethanolwith very high energy efficiency and at a low cost. Ethanol is a desirable commodity because it is an ingredient in nearly all U.S. gasoline and is widely used as an intermediate product in the chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

BecauseCO2is a stable molecule, transforming it into a different molecule is normally energy intensive and costly. Argonnes process would electrochemically convert theCO2emitted from industrial processes, such as fossil fuel power plants or alcohol fermentation plants, into valuable commodities at reasonable cost.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy andDOEannounced August26the creation of five new Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers led byDOEs national laboratories, includingQ-NEXT, led by Argonne. Q-NEXT brings together nearly100world-class researchers from three national laboratories, nine universities and10leading U.S. technology companies with the single goal of developing the science and technology to control and distribute quantum information. In August, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation andDOEannounced more than$1billion in awardsto establish12AIand quantum information science (QIS) research institutes. Of the $1billion,DOEawarded $625million to Argonnes Q-NEXT, Brookhaven, Fermi, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories.

This followsDOEs unveiling ofa reporton July23that provided a strategy for the development of the national quantum internet that will include all17national laboratories, including Argonne. They will serve as the backbone of the coming quantum internet, which will rely on the laws of quantum mechanics to control and transmit information more securely than ever before.

Argonne increased the supply ofCopper-67(Cu-67),a promising medical radioisotope that could lead to new drug discoveries and clinical studies in the fight against cancers, such as neuroendocrine tumors, prostate cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Through support of theDOEIsotope Program,Argonnes Radioisotope Research and Production Programdeveloped a new method to produce large quantities of this desirable radioisotope during its first full year in operation.

There is a pressing need for new radiopharmaceuticals to advance personalized medicine, coupling diagnostic and therapeutic agents to tailor the treatment to the patients individual response. Diagnostic agents enable doctors to visualize tumors and determine the best method of treatment. Therapeutic agents then provide doctors the ability to treat the disease. Cu-67is called atheragnostic radioisotope that couples the ability to visualize tumors with the ability to treat the disease in a single radioisotope. The use of this single agent may result in fewer injections and fewer patient visits to the hospital, along with reduced costs.

About Argonnes Center for Nanoscale MaterialsThe Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the fiveDOENanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by theDOEOffice of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located atDOEs Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about theDOENSRCs, please visithttps://science.osti.gov/User-Facilities/User-Facilities-at-a-Glance.

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facilityprovides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energys (DOEs) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, theALCFis one of twoDOELeadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), aDOEEnergy Innovation Hub, is amajor partnershipthat integrates researchers from many disciplines to overcome critical scientific and technical barriers and create new breakthrough energy storage technology. Led by theU.S. Department of Energys Argonne National Laboratory, partners include national leaders in science and engineering from academia, the private sector, and national laboratories. Their combined expertise spans the full range of the technology-development pipeline from basic research to prototype development to product engineering to market delivery.

About theAdvanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Sciences Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the worlds most productive X-ray light source facilities. TheAPSprovides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nations economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than5,000researchers use theAPSto produce over2,000publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility.APSscientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at theAPS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S.DOEOffice of Science User Facility operated for theDOEOffice of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No.DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, under contract numberDEAC0206CH11357. This research used resources of the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), aDOEOffice of Science User Facility.

Argonne National Laboratoryseeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nations first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance Americas scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than60nations, Argonne is managed byUChicago Argonne,LLCfor theU.S. Department of Energys Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energys Office of Scienceis the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visithttps://energy.gov/science.

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Eight ways Argonne advanced science in 2020 - Newswise

Photographs are omnipresent in our daily lives. From social media and advertising to family photos hanging on your wall. Images are used for identification and as evidence, as well as informing us at a cultural level about who we are.

Photographs are both bookmarks and timestamps. When we want to see who we were, who we are, and how far weve come, our story can be told quite simply in a photographic history.

Photographs can also act to subjectively portray the world through an art context. We are presented with the ability to take photographs anytime, all the time, and most of us do! Theres a good chance theres a camera in your pocket or on your table right now; your phone. We have replaced notetaking and manual documentation with the simple snap of a photo.

So what does it literally mean to take a photograph? And what are the processes involved in the production of a photograph? What part does the photographer play at the quantum level? Is there an invisible dynamic at work between who is capturing and what is being captured?

Im here to argue that on the quantum level, the presence of a photographer and camera alter the scene that is being viewed and photographed. This can be explained through the observer effect on a social, physical, and philosophical level.

The observer effect is most commonly linked to the realm of science, more specifically the field of quantum physics. This phenomenon refers to the idea that the very act of observing changes the way the world around us operates.

The famous double-slit experiment found that electrons shot through two slits and projected onto a photosensitive surface produced an interference pattern much like a wave. At the same time, when the electrons were observed, they produced a particle pattern (two lines). This experiment provided evidence for wave-particle duality the idea that quantum objects can be both a wave and a particle dependent upon whether or not they are observed.

What this means is that the simple act of observation dictated how the electrons behaved.

Much like electrons at the quantum level, until we observe it (it being the subject thats photographed), we dont know what the outcome will be. The very act of observing the event changes the outcome.

A camera is a powerful tool; a tool whose sole purpose is to observe and record. Recall the common visual scenario of the oblivious individual and their sudden change in behavior when they realize they are being observed. The idea of being viewed can make anyone hyper-aware of their behavior, sometimes making them change the way they act completely. This phenomenon is most commonly referred to as reactivity in psychology.

For some, a camera is an excuse to perform, and for others, its a cue to hide. Either way, its undeniable that the sheer presence of camera and photographer alter the people who are aware of its presence. It calls into the validity of a double-blind experiment. This is the social layer to the observer effect.

A camera can be like a social shield, allowing the photographer to distance themselves from the scene, but it can also act as an excuse to participate and intervene in the scene such as in giving instructions to a model or bypassing someones personal space as a street photographer. Our worldviews are shaped by things such as the culture we are raised in, the language we speak, the race we are, and the gender we identify as. These differences can show up in what and how photographers choose to capture their subjects.

Physically, there are so many different things happening at a quantum scale when a photo is captured. The camera in and of itself is like a double-slit experiment; a source of light shown through an opening and captured onto a photosensitive material. Those photons are captured on the sensor of the camera and are thus being absorbed or taken. In the act of taking a photograph, we are literally taking photons away from the scene.

On the same note, the photographer and camera are also adding light to the scene that is being captured. Of course, this light I speak of is not visible to us, but it is light nonetheless.

As stated in Kathryn Shaffers book titled What the What, Light is produced any time that charged particles move back and forth, move erratically, or jump from one place to another. By that definition, the charged particles that make up your body and are moved or accelerated when you yourself move or accelerate in any direction produce light.

Even if you were to stand still, the very act of being alive produces light in the form of heat.

The photographer, and the moving mechanics inside of the camera, produce a light of their own at the same time that the light is being taken from the scene and interpreted by the camera. A photograph is both an additive and subtractive process of light. A dynamic push and pull.

Quantum field theory states that everything is connected, but not in a pseudoscience way of understanding connection. As context, the photographer and camera which occupy a location impact the physical space around them on a quantum scale. For example, everything that has mass has its own gravitational field associated with it. These fields, which are everywhere, are constantly vibrating and interacting with each other.

The photographer changes a scene on a gravitational, electromagnetic, sound, temperature, and light level.

You can think of the photographer as a disruptor to the field around them, constantly sending out waves that interact with other waves much like a swimmer disrupts and displaces water as they move through it, creating and sending out the proverbial ripples in the water. This may not be obvious to the eye or even seen later in a printed image, but at a quantum level, these changes are measurable.

The French ready-made artist Marcel Duchamp famously said that art was completed by the viewer. Duchamp believed that before the art was observed, it didnt exist,

All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. Marcel Duchamp in The Creative Act

You could argue that a photograph both exists and does not exist until the moment it is observed much in the way that quantum objects can both exist and not exist simultaneously. A photograph, unlike other mediums such as painting, is often interpreted as evidence.

Take, for example, crime scene photography in a courtroom they are often presented as an index, a record, proof of what was there. According to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in Image Studies, a photograph has four phases if you will:

What is profound about image making is that a photograph can be both a direct representation of what it captured while also containing no sense of reality whatsoever (phase 1 vs phase 4). A photograph is undoubtedly linked to the scene that it captured while also having no relation to the scene at all. The camera is a device that can be used to create a photograph, but it is not limited to or defined by the presence of a camera, but instead, photography relies on light being permanently recorded onto a light-sensitive medium. Cameraless examples in photography include solarization, the rayograph, and the similar photogram process.

But what remains the same in all photographic mediums and techniques is its inherent indexicality. Semiotics and photography are closely intertwined, if not the same. The symbol wouldnt exist without the meaning we bring to it. In other words, the symbol is expressed through the observer, and without the observer, the symbol would not only cease to exist, but there would be absolutely no need for it to exist because symbols only find meaning in what the observer brings to it.

This applies to art, language, religion, culture, etc, but not to the universe in general. Semiotics would not exist without the universe, but the universe exists without semiotics.

The steps involved in taking a photograph provide a perfect metaphorical explanation of the observer effect on a social, physical, and philosophical level. Although the very act of taking a photograph is not a study in quantum physics, metaphorically speaking it allows us to understand more easily the mystery of the observer effect on a quantum scale.

The idea of the photographer being removed from the scene because they are behind the camera holds no truth in this context.

At the social level, we are talking about the dynamic between the consciousness of the subject matter and the consciousness of the photographer. These fields of consciousness are interacting and overlapping with each other all the time. This dynamic can be overt or totally covert, but it is occurring nonetheless.

On a physical level, when a photographer sets up their tripod or raises their viewfinder to their eye, they are undeniably impacting the scene. The actual mechanical process of taking the photograph is both an additive and subtractive transaction and measurable at the quantum level.

At the philosophical level, the observer effect only happens when there is an observer. Much like photography and art in general, it takes an observer to complete the work. But the difference between art and the quantum realm is that the quantum observer does not need to be a conscious one.

About the author: Max Depatie is a photographer and artist who is currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of Depaties work on his website and Instagram.

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Matter Deconstructed: The Observer Effect and Photography - PetaPixel