I should have been paying closer attention! Weeks ago now, Kathryn Cramer blogged on an experiment carried out by Dr Shahriar S. Afshar, which appears to offer solid evidence at last that the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is, in fact, rubbish: Afshar has been popping photons through a pair of pinholes, and, by means of a cunning arrangement of wires, has found that wave phenomena like interference persist even when he's measuring particle properties of the photons, like which pinhole they're passing through. The good news is that, according to the canonical Copenhagen Interpretation, this can't happen. The really good news is that I never liked the Copenhagen Interpretation anyhow, and it's one of the things (along with data analysis and sloppy maths) that drove me away from physics. It's aesthetically and intellectually wholly unsatisfying, unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for why wavefunctions should collapse and filled with dark and terrible suggestions that measurement by a conscious observer is somehow a priviliged act. It has no business corresponding to the physical world, and I for one will fiddle while it burns, if in fact these preliminary results are borne out. There will be papers out soon.

The Transactional Interpretation of the University of Washington's own John Cramer appears to survive this experiment unscathed, which is excellent, as I think the Transactional Interpretation is splendid. Aesthetically, I find it highly appealing, because of a much greater degree of time-symmetry: interactions are built not just of waves propagating forwards in time, but waves propagating backwards as well. And it makes me think of the universe as a vast spiderweb glistening with dew.

Good news at last, at a time when America's leadership seems bent on taking the country straight to the inner circles of Hell, without passing GO or collecting $200.