- #1
john taylor
- 24
- 1
Bohmian mechanics claims that although it is deterministic, randomness emerges from the fact that we cannot know the initial conditions of the particle due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. However this experiment can put that to the test and determine whether randomness in quantum mechanics is due Heisenberg's uncertainty principle(not being able to know the position and momentum of the particle at the same time).The experiment is a variation of the double slit experiment, except for before the particles pass through the slit they travel through a type of detector which detects it's position, as it continues traveling it travels to another detector, where again its position is detected. From the time it took to get from first detector to the second, it could then be deduced the momentum at which the particle was traveling when it went through detector number 1. Now at that instance both the position and momentum of the particle were known when it was traveling. This would be repeated as the particles travel through the double slit. Once the experiment has finished, one could calculate trajectories using bohmian mechanics of the particle and determine whether bohmian mechanics was able to predict accuratley where the particles would land on the detector screen. As this experiment gets repeated more and more one would be able to determine whether the retroactive calculations made from bohmian mechanics are more accurate than the already accurate quantum mechanics. It would also be best to perform this experiment in a vaccum, and calculations could be made before the particle lands by potentially a computer if it was fed the data and the particle was traveling at slow speeds. Would this experiment work conceptually?