Professor Jim Al-Khalili: "The double slit experiment is the central mystery of quantum mechanics"Fire individual atoms at a screen with two slits, one at a time. Each atom hits the screen as a localized particle. Yet over time they build an interference pattern as if each one went through both slits at once, behaving like a wave.When you add a detector to observe which slit each atom goes through, the interference vanishes and you get two simple bands like classical particles. Unplug the detect

Is an electron a particle or a wave?⁠⁠In this conversation, physicist Sean Carroll explores some of the deepest mysteries in quantum mechanics: the famous double-slit experiment, wave function collapse, the Many Worlds interpretation, entropy and the arrow of time. ⁠Watch the full interview here:

Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics stating that a physical system can exist in a combination of multiple states simultaneously. Rather than being confined to a single definite outcome, the system exists as a wavelike "cloud" of probabilities until it is observed or measured. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]The Core Concept: Like Overlapping WavesAt the atomic and subatomic levels, particles like electrons and photons behave like waves. Just like ocean waves that overlap and