DaveInNYC comments on [SEQ RERUN] Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MinibearRex 03 April 2012 01:42AM

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Comment author: DaveInNYC 07 April 2012 01:48:54AM 0 points [-]

In a previous post in this series, it was stated that if you shot the particles towards the mirrors at different times, but that difference was vanishingly small, then you would still see the same results, except for there would be a correspondingly vanishingly small chance that you would see both detectors register a single particle, since configurations were "smudgy". Why would not the same apply to two electrons that were distinguishable, but their differences were vanishingly small?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 09 April 2012 10:13:50AM 0 points [-]

This would work only if the configurations were smudgy along the dimension on which the particles were different, so that the smudges could overlap.