Alex McColgan

speaker

28,875 appearances 103 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 2d ago

Alex McColgan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 67 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.

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Astrum Space · What We Detected in the Strangest Quantum Experiments on Earth · 7 Sep 2026 podcast

Experimental techniques had improved in the last 100 years, and it was now possible to emit a single photon of light at a time. voice-verified

So, the double slit experiment was done again. voice-verified

This time, only a single photon would be sent through the slit, onto a detector on the far voice-verified

When this was done, the detector registered the arrival of the photon at just a single point. voice-verified

So, light was behaving like a particle again. voice-verified

But then, why had it interfered with itself in the previous version of the experiment? voice-verified

Scientists had an idea. voice-verified

They sent through multiple photons, one at a time, and plotted the result on the detector. voice-verified

And this is where the result became really strange. voice-verified

Once again, the detector started seeing the photons arriving at single points, one at a time. voice-verified

But bafflingly, the arriving photons started creating a pattern. voice-verified

It was the interference pattern. voice-verified

The proof that light behaved like a wave. voice-verified

But strangely enough, this was only occurring when a single photon was going through at a time. voice-verified

Somehow, the single photon, which was leaving the detector like a particle and was arriving at its destination as a particle, was apparently in some way travelling through both slits at once, enough to then interfere with itself on the other side like a wave. voice-verified

If light was just a particle, then when it went through the slits, you wouldn't see this pattern. voice-verified

You would only see two blobs of light, one for particles that went through the slit, and one for particles that went through the other one. voice-verified

Here was the interference pattern with its multiple lines of light disproving that. voice-verified

Scientists tried to pin light down. voice-verified

They set up the experiment, but this time with two more detectors at the slit, so that scientists could observe whether it was indeed passing through both at the same time. voice-verified

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