The sea of possibilities



Experiment 3 - the hemisphere shield

(Known as the Mauritius Renninger’s Negative Result Experiment, developed in the early 1950’s.)

A particle resides in the centre of a sphere of arbitrary size. Half of the sphere (a hemisphere) consists of material that will flash when hit by a photon. The other half of the sphere is missing; just open space there. Then the particle emits a photon. As viewed from the outside the photon splits into an infinite amount of virtual photons, every photon going in one another direction. Each photon lives in an other world, they don’t see each other. Viewed from the outside they form a spherical interference pattern.



Then the interference pattern hits the hemisphere shield. The hemisphere splits in as many worlds as there are possible different flashes on its inner surface. Any place on the hemisphere that can flash will indeed do that in one specific world. And there is the world of the residual interference pattern. That is the world consisting of the interference of all those worlds where the photon missed the hemisphere shield. In that world the number of places where the photon can be is halved. The interferencepattern of a hemisphere of photons not seeing each other, half a sphere of photons, is propagating then through space.