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Here's a new theory on the universe and how events might be largely predetermined...
Many have heard of the double slit experiment in quantum mechanics. If you shine a light through a screen containing two vertical slits far enough apart, the photons of the light behave as though they go through both slits at the same time as though light were a wave (creating a wave interference pattern on the wall - i.e., after going through the slits). This interference pattern is well-known in wave patterns since certain bands of the pattern are bright and certain bands are dark.
What is not as well-known is the same experiment performed with electrons. Electrons are easier to control and detect as individual particles than individual photons. We can better know when we shot one electron (with an electron gun) at a screen and we can measure the spot at which the electron hits the screen. As expected, shooting one electron through a screen with double slits allows us to detect *one* specific electron on the screen. If you shoot the electron, there is no wave interference pattern.
However, if you keep firing electrons something strange happens on the screen where you detect the arriving eletrons. As the process of detecting electron after electron we start to see a pattern emerge, this pattern is - surprise, surprise, the wave interference pattern as if all the electrons we fired were somehow grouped together as a wave and went through both double slits, the same final result as shining a light through the double slit screen. It's as if the electrons 'know' where to land on the screen such as if they all went through the screen as a wave.
There are different interpretations on what this means exactly, however with all the talk of the universe being a quantum phenomena it raises the question, is each 'event' that happens in the universe part of a 'wave' of events. And, these waves are probability distributions, with the more likely events having higher probability to occur and the lower probability event having less probability from occurring. Some possible events interfere with other possible events, thereby making those two sets of possibilities 'dark bands' or impossible to happen, whereas other events becoming predestined in that they are part of the 'light band' and cannot be held back from occurring by interfering 'event-waves'.
Our universe, of course, appears to occur over time (versus all at once), hence the the reason to bring up the electron double slit interfence experiment. I would guess, this experiment a better metaphor as to how our universe evolves. That is, like the electron our events can happen one at a time, however the event-wave interference pattern, using this metaphor, forms as an accumulation of those events, doing it according to the wave function of the universe (i.e., predetermined events).
That doesn't mean we know exactly where each event ('electron') will 'hit the wall', however we if we know the wave function, then we know where the event is more likely to occur. All future events, would all be part of this pattern, a pattern that has already started to form since the big bang.
I think what this theory implies is that God exists. If God is seen as the 'law' that requires certain events to occur and in certain manner (i.e., as a wavefunction of the universe), then we are just one particle of the whole event-wave packet. What some see as meaningless 'electrons' flying in all directions over time, is actually a quite specific pattern that emerges.
The question then becomes, what part of the 'wall' is our life going to strike. The most intense part of the wave pattern, or the area closest to darkness part of the wave?
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