Penrose Interpretation - Physical Consequences

Physical Consequences

Accepting that wavefunctions are physically real, Penrose believes that things can exist in more than one place at one time. In his opinion, a macroscopic system, like a human being, cannot exist in more than one place for a measurable time, as the corresponding energy difference is very large. A microscopic system, like an electron, can exist in more than one location forever, unless the energy difference becomes large enough.

In Einstein's theory, any object that has mass causes a warp in the structure of space and time around it. This warping produces the effect we experience as gravity. Penrose points out that tiny objects, such as dust specks, atoms and electrons, produce space-time warps as well. Ignoring these warps is where most physicists go awry. If a dust speck is in two locations at the same time, each one should create its own distortions in space-time, yielding two superposed gravitational fields. According to Penrose's theory, it takes energy to sustain these dual fields. The stability of a system depends on the amount of energy involved: the higher the energy required to sustain a system, the less stable it is. Over time, an unstable system tends to settle back to its simplest, lowest-energy state: in this case, one object in one location producing one gravitational field. If Penrose is right, gravity yanks objects back into a single location, without any need to invoke observers or parallel universes.

Penrose speculates that the transition between macroscopic and quantum states begins at the scale of dust particles (the mass of which is close to a planck mass). Dust particles could exist in more than one location for as long as one second, a time that is easily measurable with standard equipment. He has proposed an experiment to test this theory, called FELIX (Free-orbit Experiment with Laser Interferometry X-Rays), in which an X-ray laser in space is directed toward a tiny mirror, and fissioned by a beam splitter from tens of thousands of miles away, with which the photons are directed toward other mirrors and reflected back. One photon will strike the tiny mirror moving en route to another mirror and move the tiny mirror back as it returns, and according to conventional quantum theories, the tiny mirror can exist in superposition for a significant period of time. This would prevent any photons from reaching the detector. If Penrose's hypothesis is correct, the mirror's superposition will collapse to one location in about a second, allowing half the photons to reach the detector.

However, because this experiment would be difficult to arrange, a table-top version using millions of reflections between two mirrors has been proposed instead.