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"Illusion" is an interesting choice of words. To acquire the kind of understanding I think you're after, let's back up a bit and see if we can excavate the foundation of this question. Let me start with a quote. “The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust An examination of the double-slit experiment will give us a good introduction to the mystery you have singled out. But to make that examination worthwhile, we need to make sure that we are familiar with an important effect known as interference. [i]Interference applies universally to all interacting waves. A water wave, for instance, can be described as a disturbance in the shape of the water’s surface. This disturbance produces regions where the water level is higher and regions where it is lower than the undisturbed value. The highest part of each ripple is called a peak and the lowest part is called a trough. Typically waves involve periodic succession, peak followed by trough followed by peak and so on. In general, we can define a wavelength as the distance between identical parts of adjacent waves. Measurements from peak to peak, or trough to trough, for example, give the same value for wavelength.Figure 1 Peaks and troughs of wavesWhen waves interact in a medium, they interfere. For example, if we drop two rocks into spatially separated parts of a pond, their waves will interfere when they cross. (Figure 2) When a peak of one wave and a peak of another wave come together, the height of the water rises to a height equal to the sum of the two peaks. Similarly, when a trough of one wave and a trough of another wave cross, the depression of the water's surface dips to the sum of the two depressions. And when a peak of one wave crosses with a trough of another, the (at least partially) cancel each other out. The peak of one wave contributes a positive displacement while the trough of the other wave contributes a negative displacement. If the two waves have equal magnitude, then there will be perfect cancelation and the water's surface will be flat, just as it was before any wave existed.Figure 12-2 Constructive and destructive interference Keeping these rules of interference in mind, let’s turn our attention to light. If we take a laser emitting a single wavelength—a single color, and shine it on a screen that has a slit etched into it (Figure 3), what image should we expect to see on the wall behind the screen? [ii] Classically speaking, we would expect to see a stripe of light on the wall. (Classically means according to our four-dimensional intuition, or the rules of Euclidean geometry.) It turns out that this is what we see. In this sense light’s behavior correlates perfectly with our Euclidean intuition.Figure 12-3 Expected single slit projectionWhat image should we expect to see on the wall if we etch a second slit on our screen and cover the first slit with a black piece of tape? Well, our classical intuitions tell us to expect a line of light projected on the wall, just like we did before, except this line of light should be offset from the first. Again, this is exactly what we see when we perform the experiment. So far all of this is straightforward and conceptually trivial. But as it turns out, we are only one step away from a profound mystery. We discover this mystery by removing the piece of tape. To understand the impact of this mystery, ask yourself: What sort of projection do we expect to see on the wall when both slits are open?Classical intuition tells us that we should see two parallel bands of light on the wall (Figure 4).Figure 4 Expected double slit projectionBut this is where our classical training (our Euclidean intuition) lets us down. This is also where classical mechanics breaks down. When we perform this experiment, something completely counterintuitive happens, contradicting our Euclidean intuitions. A distinct interference pattern is projected on the wall (Figure 5).Figure 5 Actual double slit projection The bright and dark bands produced in this double-slit experiment are telltale signs that light propagates as a wave. [iii] Interference patterns are key signatures of waves. The problem is that this wavelike characteristic directly clashes with our observations of light’s particulate behavior. After all, photons are always found in point-like regions rather than spread out like a wave, and individual photons are always found to have very discrete amounts of energy. When measuring a wave, you would expect to find its energy spread out over a region instead of being concentrated in one location. So how are we supposed to make sense of this observation? What is going on?These diametrically opposed properties of light are verified facts. Contradictory as they may seem, they are here to stay. They have forced us to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that light is both a wave and a particle. But how can this be? How can it be both? Although many scientists have found thewave-particle duality of light to be conceptually vague and schizophrenic, this description has persisted. In fact, after the wave-particle concept was adopted as an accurate description of light, it was extended to describe electrons and, eventually, all of matter. This transition was nothing short of a revolution.Up until 1910, atoms were simplistically viewed as miniature solar systems with the nucleus making up the “central star” and orbiting electrons being “planets”. [iv] The wave-particle duality of light and matter rejected this view and pointed to a signNowly different architecture for atoms. Of course, this conceptual transition did not take hold over night.In 1924, Prince Louis de Broglie found that in addition to their particle like character, [v] electrons also possessed a wavelike character. In 1927, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer followed this up by firing a beam of electrons at a piece of nickel crystal, which acted as a barrier analogous to the one used in the double-slit experiment. A phosphor screen recorded the resultant pattern of electrons. [vi] When they examined the screen, they observed an interference pattern just like the one produced in the double-slit experiment, showing that even electrons have wavelike properties.These experiments shook the foundation of physics by threatening the structure of classical mechanics and destroying humanity’s intuitive framework of reality. But it didn’t stop there. The next step was to tune the beam of electrons down so that the electron gun fired just a single electron at a time. Similar experiments were later used with lasers wherein individual photons were fired seconds apart from each other. The results were mind-bending.Completely against expectation these experiments also produced interference patterns over time as the collection of electrons (or photons) continued to build (Figure 6).Figure 12-6 Over time individual photons construct an interference patternThese observations only added to the confusion. Waves are supposed to be a collective property—something that has no meaning when applied to separate, particulate ingredients. (A water wave, for example, involves a large number of water molecules.) So how can a single electron, or a single photon, be a wave? Furthermore, wave interference requires a wave from one place to interact with a wave from another place. So how can interference be relevantly applied to a single electron or photon? While we are considering such questions, we should also ask, if a single electron or photon is a wave, then what is it that is “waving”? [vii]To answer these questions, Erwin Schrödinger proposed that the stuff that makes up electrons might be smeared out in space and that this smeared electron essence might be what waves. If this idea was correct then we would expect to find all of the electron’s properties, spread out over a distance, but we never do. Every time we locate an electron, we find all of its mass and all of its charge concentrated in one tiny, point-like region. Max Born came up with a different idea. He suggested that the wave is actually a probability wave. [viii] Einstein tinkered with a similar idea when he hypothesized that these waves were optical observations that refer to time averages rather than instantaneous values. Inserting a probability wave (also called a state vector, or a wave function) as a fundamental aspect of Nature delivers another blow to our common-sense ideas about how things truly operate. It suggests that experiments with identical starting conditions do not necessarily lead to identical results because it claims that you can never predict exactly where an electron will be in a single instant. You can only define a probability that we will find it over here, or over there, at any given moment. Two situations with the same probabilistic starting conditions, say of a single particle, might not produce the same results, because the particle can be anywhere within that probability distribution. From a classical perspective, the discovery that the microscopic universe behaves this way is absolutely baffling. Nevertheless, it is how we have observed Nature to be.This leads us to a rather interesting precipice. It seems that the map we have been using to chart physical reality somehow dissolves when we look closely at it. The rules of four-dimensional geometry simply fail to accurately map Nature when we examine the smallest scales. Nature doesn’t strictly behave as our old Euclidean map dictates. Stumbling upon this discovery forces us to face a vital question. Is Nature ultimately and fundamentally probabilistic in a way that we may never understand, as many modern physicists have chosen to believe; or, is this probabilistic quality a byproduct of our reduced dimensional representation of Nature?After pondering these questions long and hard, some physicists have come to believe that the tapestry of spacetime is analogous to water: that the smooth appearance of space and time is only an approximation that must yield to a more fundamental framework when considering ultramicroscopic scales. As far as I can tell, however, up until now this point has only been entertained abstractly. Geometrically resolving a molecular structure for space might resolve our greatest quantum mechanical mysteries, but as of yet, no one has taken that final step. No one has developed a self-consistent picture from this geometric insight. No one has moved beyond the mathematical suggestion that spacetime is analogous to water, or interpreted the theoretical quanta of space as being physically real. Consequently, a framework that enables conceptualization of what is meant by the “molecules” or “atoms” of spacetime has not been developed.Eight decades of meticulous experiments have confirmed the predictions of quantum mechanics based on this wave function, or probability wave, description with amazing precision. “Yet there is still no agreed-upon way to envision what quantum mechanical probability waves actually are. Whether we should say that an electron’s probability wave is the electron, or that it’s associated with the electron, or that it’s a mathematical device for describing the electron’s motion, or that it’s the embodiment of what we can know about the electron is still debated.” [ix]Although quantum mechanics describes the universe as having an inherently probabilistic character, we don’t experience the effects of this character in our day-to-day lives. Why is this? The answer, according to quantum mechanics, is that we don't see quantum events like a chair being here now and then across the room in the next instant, because the probability of that occurring, although not zero, is absurdly miniscule. But what exactly makes the probability for large things to act, as electrons do, so small? At what scales do such effects become important? And, why should the macroscopic universe be so different from the microscopic universe?As if these newly uncovered characteristics of reality weren’t obscure enough, quantum physicists conceptually fuddle things further by suggesting that without observation things have no reality. They claim that until the position of an electron is actually measured the electron has no definite position. Before it is measured, the position exists only as a probability, and then suddenly, through the act of measuring, the electron miraculously acquires the property of position.Einstein acutely recognized the absurdity of this claim. When approached with this conjecture, he famously quipped, “Do you really believe that the moon is not there unless we are looking at it?” [x] To him everything in the physical world had a reality independent of our observations. Measurements that suggested otherwise were mere reflections of the incompleteness by which we currently map and comprehend physical reality. To many quantum physicists, however, the unobserved Moon’s existence became a matter of probability. To them, a discoverable, complete map of physical reality, with the ability to resolve an underlying determinism, became nothing more than a myth—a romantic dream.The mathematical projection of quantum mechanics can be statistically matched with our four-dimensional observations, but when it comes to a conceptual explanation of those observations, it completely lets us down. Intuitive explanations cannot be gleaned from a framework of physical reality that is assumed to be fundamentally probabilistic. By definition, randomness blurs causality. This vague description of physical reality keeps us from grasping a deeper truth by allowing what should be the most basic of concepts to drip into a realm of nonsense.As an example of the confusion that stems from swallowing the standard quantum mechanical interpretation “guts, feathers, and all,” consider the fact that a probabilistic treatment of quantum mechanics leads us to the conclusion that the double-slit experiment can be explained by assuming that a photon actually takes both paths. We can combine the two probability waves emerging from both slits to statistically determine where a photon will land on a screen. The result mimics an interference pattern.According to this, we can explain interference patterns by assuming that one photon somehow always manages to go through both slits, but is this really what is going on? Does a photon really travel along both paths? Can this count as an explanation if we have no coherent sense of what it means? You might notice that if we were to design our experiment with three slits, then we would have to consider whether or not the photon really travels all three routes. This question can be extended for as many slits as you like, but the fundamental conceptual problem remains the same.In order to solve this mystery, you may suggest that we place detectors in front of the slits to determine if the photons are actually going through both slits, or just one. When we do this, we always find that individual photons pass through one slit or the other—never both. But, when we measure the position of individual photons we no longer get an interference pattern and so the question retains its ambiguity. Some have taken this to mean that the act of observation forces wave properties to collapse into a particle, but how and why this theoretical collapse occurs still lacks explanation.Because probability waves are not directly observable and because photons (and electrons) are always found in one place or another when measured, we might be tempted to think that probability waves might not be real—that they were never really there. If that is true, then how are the interference patterns created? Surely these probability waves exist, but in what sense? What are they referencing? Why is it that whenever we know which path the photon takes, we get a classical image instead of an interference pattern? How does the detection of a photon, or an electron, change its behavior?To date, these questions have yet to be resolved. In fact, more clever experiments designed to solve these questions have only deepened the mystery. For example, let’s perform the double-slit experiment again, but this time let’s place devices in front of the slits, which mark (but do not stop or detect) the photons before they pass through the slits. This marking allows us to examine the photons that strike the screen and subsequently determine which slit they passed through. Thus we only gain knowledge of which path the photon takes after the path has been completed. For some reason, however, when we do this we find that the photons do not build up an interference pattern. They form a classical image (Figure 4).Once again, it seems that “which-path” information inhibits us from probing these ghostly waves. But is it really the fact that we gain the ability to determine which path a photon goes through—independent of when we gain that information—that disrupts the interference pattern? Or does our marking of the photon somehow disrupt its interference potential?To explore this question, we perform what’s known as the quantum eraser experiment. We start with the same set up we just described. Then we place another device between each slit and the screen, which completely removes the mark from the photon. We already know that the marked photons project a classical image. Will an interference pattern reemerge if we remove the effects of this mark—if we lose the ability to extract the which-path information?When we perform this experiment the interference pattern does return (Figure 7). Does this mean that photons somehow choose how to act, based on our knowledge of them? Or does it imply something even stranger—that the photons are always both particles and waves simultaneously? How are we to understand either conclusion?Figure 12-7 An interference pattern Another curiosity of Nature is known as the photoelectric effect. Philipp Lenard first discovered this effect through controlled experiments in 1900. When light shines on a metal surface, it causes electrons to be knocked loose and emitted. Knowing this, Lenard designed an experiment that allowed him to control the frequencyof the incoming light. During the experiment, he increased the frequency of the light—moving from infrared heat and red light to violet and ultraviolet. Greater frequencies caused the emitted electrons to speed away with more kinetic energy. After discovering this, Lenard reconfigured his experiment to allow him to control the intensity of the incoming light. He used a carbon arc light that could be made brighter by a factor of 1,000.Because both experiments involved increasing the amount of incoming light energy he expected to have identical results. In other words, because the brighter, more intense light had more energy, Lenard expected that the electrons emitted would have more energy and speed away faster. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the more intense light produced more electrons, but the energy of each electron remained the same. [xi]In response to these experiments Einstein suggested that light is composed of discrete packets called photons. Under this assumption, light with higher frequency would cause electrons to be emitted with more energy, and light with higher intensity, that is, a higher quantity of photons, would result in emission of more electrons—just as we observe.The problem with this solution (a solution that is now universally accepted among physicists) is that it doesn’t provide us with a clear description for what the light quanta are. Why does light come in quantized packets? Near the end of his life Einstein lamented over this problem in a letter to his dear friend Michele Besso. He wrote, “All these fifty years of pondering have not brought me any closer to answering the question, what are light quanta?” [xii] It’s been another fifty years and we seem as confused as ever over how it is that light is quantized into little discrete packets called photons.In the midst of these enigmas lies the uncertainty principle, which states that knowledge of certain properties inhibits knowledge of other complimentary properties. For example, the more accurately we determine the position of an electron, the less we can determine its momentum, and vise versa.Heisenberg tried to explain the uncertainty principle by appealing to the observer effect; claiming that it was simply an observational effect of the fact that measurements of quantum systems cannot be made without affecting those systems. [xiii] Since then, the uncertainty principle has regularly been confused with the observer effect. [xiv] But the uncertainty principle is not a statement about the observational success of current technology. It has nothing to do with the observer effect. It highlights a fundamental property of quantum systems, a property that turns out to be inherent in all wave-like systems. [xv] Uncertainty is an aspect of quantum mechanics because of the wave nature it ascribes to all quantum objects.If our current description of quantum mechanics is fundamental, if there is nothing beneath the state vector—a claim that defines the heart of the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics—then this uncertainty principle may be a sharp enough dagger to kill our quest for an intuitive understanding of physical reality. The corrosive power of the uncertainty principle, when mixed with our current paradigm, is poignantly illustrated by an old story involving Niels Bohr. According to the story, Bohr was once asked what the complementary quality to truth is. After some thought he answered—“clarity.” [xvi] Unlike classical mechanics, which describes systems by specifying the positions and velocities of its components, quantum mechanics uses a complex mathematical object called a state vector (also called the wave function [xvii]) to map physical systems. Interjecting this state vector into the theory enables us to match its predictions to our observations of the microscopic world, but it also generates a relatively indirect description that is open to many equally valid interpretations. This creates a sticky situation, because to “really understand” quantum mechanics we need to be able to specify the exact status of and to have some sort of justification for that specification. At the present, we only have questions. Does the state vector describe physical reality itself, or only some (partial) knowledge that we have of reality? “Does it describe ensembles of systems only (statistical description), or one single system as well (single events)? Assume that indeed, is affected by an imperfect knowledge of the system, is it then not natural to expect that a better description should exist, at least in principle?” [xviii] If so, what would this deeper and more precise description of reality be?To explore the role of the state vector, consider a physical system made of Nparticles with mass, each propagating in ordinary three-dimensional space. In classical mechanics we would use Npositions and N velocities to describe the state of the system. For convenience we might also group together the positions and velocities of those particles into a single vector V, which belongs to a real vector space with 6N dimensions, called phase space. [xix]The state vector can be thought of as the quantum equivalent of this classical vector V. The primary difference is that, as a complex vector, it belongs to something called complex vector space, also known as space of states, or Hilbert space. In other words, instead of being encoded by regular vectors whose positions and velocities are defined in phase space, the state of a quantum system is encoded by complex vectors whose positions and velocities live in a space of states. [xx]The transition from classical physics to quantum physics is the transition from phase space to space of states to describe the system. In the quantum formalism each physical observable of the system (position, momentum, energy, angular momentum, etc.) has an associated linear operator acting in the space of states. (Vectors belonging to the space of states are called “kets.”) The question is, is it possible to understand space of states in a classical manner? Could the evolution of the state vector be understood classically (under a projection of local realism) if, for example, there were additional variables associated with the system that were ignored completely by our current description/understanding of it?While that question hangs in the air, let’s note that if the state vector is fundamental, if there really isn’t a deeper-level description beneath the state vector, then the probabilities postulated by quantum mechanics must also be fundamental. This would be a strange anomaly in physics. Statistical classical mechanics makes constant use of probabilities, but those probabilistic claims relate to statistical ensembles. They come into play when the system under study is known to be one of many similar systems that share common properties, but differ on a level that has not been probed (for any reason). Without knowing the exact state of the system we can group all the similar systems together into an ensemble and assign that ensemble state to our system. This is done as a matter of convenience. Of course, the blurred average state of the ensemble is not as clear as any of the specific states the system might actually have. Beneath that ensemble there is a more complete description of the system’s state (at least in principle), but we don’t need to distinguish the exact state in order to make predictions. Statistical ensembles allow us to make predictions without probing the exact state of the system. But our ignorance of that exact state forces those predictions to be probabilistic.Can the same be said about quantum mechanics? Does quantum theory describe an ensemble of possible states? Or does the state vector provide the most accurate possible description of a single system? [xxi]How we answer that question impacts how we explain unique outcomes. If we treat the state vector as fundamental, then we should expect reality to always present itself in some sort of smeared out sense. If the state vector were the whole story, then our measurements should always record smeared out properties, instead of unique outcomes. But they don’t. We always measure well-defined properties that correspond to specific states. Sticking with the idea that the state vector is fundamental, von Neumann suggested a solution called state vector reduction (also called wave function collapse). [xxii] The idea was that when we aren’t looking, the state of a system is defined as a superposition of all its possible states (characterized by the state vector) and evolves according to the Schrödinger equation. But as soon as we look (or take a measurement) all but one of those possibilities collapse. How does this happen? What mechanism is responsible for selecting one of those states over the rest? To date there is no answer. Despite this, von Neumann’s idea has been taken seriously because his approach allows for unique outcomes.The problem that von Neumann was trying to address is that the Schrödinger equation itself does not select single outcomes. It cannot explain why unique outcomes are observed. According to it, if a fuzzy mix of properties comes in (coded by the state vector), a fuzzy mix of properties comes out. To fix this, von Neumann conjured up the idea that the state vector jumps discontinuously (and randomly) to a single value. [xxiii] He suggested that unique outcomes occur because the state vector retains only the “component corresponding to the observed outcome while all components of the state vector associated with the other results are put to zero, hence the name reduction.” [xxiv]The fact that this reduction process is discontinuous makes it incompatible with general relativity. It is also irreversible, which makes it stand out as the only equation in all of physics that introduces time-asymmetry into the world. If we think that the problem of explaining uniqueness of outcome eclipses these problems, then we might be willing to take them in stride. But to make this trade worthwhile we need to have a good story for how state vector collapse occurs. We don’t. The absence of this explanation is referred to as the quantum measurement problem.Many people are surprised to discover that the quantum measurement problem still stands. It has become popular to explain state vector reduction (wave function collapse) by appealing to the observer effect, asserting that measurements of quantum systems cannot be made without affecting those systems, and that state vector reduction is somehow initiated by those measurements. [xxv] This may sound plausible, but it doesn’t work. Even if we ignore the fact that this ‘explanation’ doesn’t elucidate howa disturbance could initiate state vector reduction, this isn’t an allowed answer because “state vector reduction can take place even when the interactions play no role in the process.” [xxvi] This is illustrated by negative measurements or interaction free measurements in quantum mechanics.To explore this point, consider a source, S, that emits a particle with a spherical wave function, which means its values are independent of the direction in space. [xxvii] In other words, it emits photons in random directions, each direction having equal probability. Let’s surround the source by two detectors with perfect efficiency. The first detector D1should be set up to capture the particle emitted in almost all directions, except a small solid angle θ, and the second detector D2 should be set up to capture the particle if it goes through this solid angle (Figure 8).Figure 8 An interaction-free measurement When the wave packet describing the wave function of the particle signNowes the first detector, it may or may not be detected. (The probability of detection depends on the ratio of the subtended angles of the detectors.) If the particle is detected by D1 it disappears, which means that its state vector is projected onto a state containing no particle and an excited detector. In this case, the second detector D2will never record a particle. If the particle isn’t detected by D1 then D2 will detect the particle later. Therefore, the fact that the first detector has not recorded the particle implies a reduction of the wave function to its component contained within θ, implying that the second detector will always detect the particle later. In other words, the probability of detection by D2 has been greatly enhanced by a sort of “non-event” at D1. In short, the wave function has been reduced without any interaction between the particle and the first measurement apparatus.Franck Laloë notes that this illustrates that “the essence of quantum measurement is something much more subtle than the often invoked ‘unavoidable perturbations of the measurement apparatus’ (Heisenberg microscope, etc.).” [xxviii] If state vector reduction really takes place, then it takes place even when the interactions play no role in the process, which means that we are completely in the dark about how this reduction is initiated or how it unfolds. Why then is state vector reduction still taken seriously? Why would any thinking physicist uphold the claim that state vector reduction occurs, when there is no plausible story for how or why it occurs, and when the assertion that it does occur creates other monstrous problems that contradict central tenets of physics? The answer may be that generations of tradition have largely erased the fact that there is another way to solve the quantum measurement problem.Returning to the other option at hand, we note that if we assume that the state vector is a statistical ensemble, if we assume that the system does have a more exact state, then the interpretation of this thought experiment becomes straightforward; initially the particle has a well-defined direction of emission, and D2records only the fraction of the particles that were emitted in its direction.Standard quantum mechanics postulates that this well-defined direction of emission does not exist before any measurement. Assuming that there is something beneath the state vector, that a more accurate state exists, is tantamount to introducing additional variables to quantum mechanics. It takes a departure from tradition, but as T. S. Eliot said in The Sacred Wood, “tradition should be positively discouraged.” [xxix] The scientific heart must search for the best possible answer. It cannot flourish if it is constantly held back by tradition, nor can it allow itself to ignore valid options. Intellectual journeys are obliged to forge new paths.So instead of asking whether of not wave-particle duality is an illusion, perhaps we should ask whether wave-particle duality implies that the state vector is the most fundamental description of a quantum mechanical system, or if a deeper level description exists? That's an open question, and at the moment there are many possible answers — interpretations of quantum mechanics that are equally aligned with the empirical evidence. What's your answer?For more on this topic, and to discover how pilot-wave theory is elucidated by the assumption that the vacuum is a superfluid, see Einstein's Intuition, available in black and white softcover, full color softcover, full color hardcover, an iBook, and as an audiobook.[i] The discussion on interference and the double-slit experiment that follows is further developed by Brian Greene, (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. New York: Knopf, pp. 84–84. Greene’s discussion was used as a general guide here.[ii] In order to show diffraction (a fuzzy border of light on the projected image) the slit must have a width that does not greatly exceed the wavelength of the color of the light that we have chosen.[iii] Light’s wave nature was first revealed in the mid-seventeenth century through experiments performed by the Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi, and was later expanded upon by experiments performed in 1803 by the physician and physicist Thomas Young. (1807). Interference of Light; Alan Lightman. A Sense Of The Mysterious. pp. 51–52, 71.[iv] Before the “planetary model” of the atom, physicists pictured the atom being a plum-shaped blob (the nucleus) with tiny protruding springs that each had an electron stuck to its end. When the atom absorbed energy it was thought that these electrons would jiggle (oscillate) on the ends of their springs. Consequently, any atom that was above its ground state of energy was understood to be an “excited atomic oscillator,” This depiction of the atom wasn’t overthrown until 1900. At that point in history the physical existence of atoms was still controversial. It was replaced by the planetary model, which in turn was replaced by the electron cloud model we use today—a model that was initiated in 1910 and was secured by 1930. Gary Zukav. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, pp. 49–50.[v] Electrons can be individually counted and you can individually place them on a drop of oil and measure their electric charge. Richard Feynman. (1988). QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press, p. 84.[vi] According to de Broglie’s doctoral thesis all matter has corresponding waves. The wavelength of the “matter waves” that “correspond” to matter depends upon the momentum of the particle. Specifically, , which falls into an important group of equations along with Planck’s equation ) and the ever famous . (λ, pronounced “lambda,” stands for wavelength, h is Planck’s constant, and pronounced ‘nu’ represents the frequency of a photon) From this equation we are told to expect that when we send a beam of electrons (something we might traditionally think of as a stream of particles) through tiny openings, like the spacing between atoms in a piece of nickel crystal, the beam will diffract, just like light diffracts. The only requirement here is that the spacing between the atoms of the material must be as small, or smaller, than the electron’s corresponding wavelength—just like the slits in our double-slit experiment. When we perform the experiment, diffraction and therefore interference, occurs exactly as wave mechanics predicts.[vii] Part of the problem here is that in keeping with our four-dimensional intuition we tend to assume a particle aspect in the double-slit experiment without accounting for nonlocality. By doing this we are technically violating Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and missing the bigger picture.[viii] M. Born. (1926). Quantenmechanik der Stossvorgänge. Zeitschrift für Physik 38, 803–827; (1926). Zur Wellenmechanik der Stossvorgänge. Göttingen Nachrichten 146–160.[ix] Brian Greene. (2004), p. 91.[x] Albert Einstein quoted in Einstein by Walter Isaacson.[xi] Walter Isaacson. Einstein, pp. 96–97.[xii] Ibid.[xiii] Werner Heisenberg. The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, p. 20.[xiv] Masano Ozawa. (2003). Universally valid reformulation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle on noise and disturbance in measurement. Physical Review A 67 (4), arXiv:quant-ph/0207121; Aya Furuta. (2012). One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead. Scientific American.[xv] L. A. Rozema, A. Darabi, D. H. Mahler, A. Hayat, Y, Soudagar, & A. M. Steinberg. (2012). Violation of Heisenberg’s Measurement—Disturbance Relationship by Weak Measurements. Physical Review Letters 109 (10).[xvi] Steven Weinberg. Dreams Of A Final Theory, p. 74.[xvii] For a system of spinless particles with masses, the state vector is equivalent to a wave function, but for more complicated systems this is not the case. Nevertheless, conceptually they play the same role and are used in the same way in the theory, so that we do not need to make a distinction here. Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 7.[xviii] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. xxi.[xix] There are 6N dimensions in this phase space because there are N particles in the system and each particle comes with 6 data points (3 for its spatial position (x, y, z) and 3 for its velocity, which has x, y, zcomponents also).[xx] The space of states (complex vector space or Hilbert space) is linear, and therefore, conforms to the superposition principle. Any combination of two arbitrary state vectors and within the space of states is also a possible state for the system. Mathematically we write where & are arbitrary complex numbers.[xxi] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 19.[xxii] Chapter VI of J. von Neumann. (1932). Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin; (1955). Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press.[xxiii] It might be useful to challenge the logical validity of the claim that something can “cause a random occurrence.” By definition, causal relationships drive results, while “random” implies that there is no causal relationship. Deeper than this, I challenge the coherence of the idea that genuine random occurrences can happen. We cannot coherently claim that there are occurrences that are completely void of any causal relationship. To do so is to wisk away what we mean by “occurrences.” Every occurrence is intimately connected to the whole, and ignorance of what is driving a system is no reason to assume that it is randomly driven. Things cannot be randomly driven. Cause cannot be random.[xxiv] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 11.[xxv] Bohr preferred another point of view where state vector reduction is not used. D. Howard. (2004). Who invented the Copenhagen interpretation? A study in mythology. Philos. Sci. 71, 669–682.[xxvi] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 28.[xxvii] This example was inspired by section 2.4 of Franck Laloë’s book, Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 27–31.[xxviii] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 28.[xxix] T. S. Eliot. (1921). The Sacred Wood. Tradition and the Individual Talent.

Yes, it is admissible in court under section 65B Indian Evidence Act, provided that the originality and the authenticity of the recording is free from doubt. This has been explained by the courts in several cases. Some of the points to take into consideration are :-The conversation is relevant to the matters in issue.The accuracy of the tape recorded conversation is proved by eliminating the possibility of erasing the tape record.There is an identification of the voice. The voice of the speaker in the recording must be duly recognized by the people who was making the recording or the voice of the speaker in the recording whose admissibility is in question must be recognized by anyone involved in the case.The recording in question must be authentic and this has to be proved by the person presenting the evidence through sufficient means.The whole conversation will have to be presented before the court. No tampering or erasing of even a microsecond is admissible. The court looks into the whole conversation as one and decides according to it only.The said statements must be relevant and in accordance with the facts of the case.The recorded device in which the voice recording is stored must be sealed and kept in safe custody.Voice should be clear and without any disturbance.

Warning: Wave-particle duality gave birth to the mind-numbing world of quantum mechanics. Understanding it may mean upturning everything you believe about the world so that you are free to climb to a different perspective where it all makes sense. If you're willing to take that challenge on, then keep reading.“The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel ProustAn examination of the double-slit experiment is a great place to start. To make that examination worthwhile, we need to make sure that we are familiar with an important effect known as interference. [i]Interference applies universally to all interacting waves. A water wave, for instance, can be described as a disturbance in the shape of the water’s surface. This disturbance produces regions where the water level is higher and regions where it is lower than the undisturbed value. The highest part of each ripple is called a peak and the lowest part is called a trough. Typically waves involve periodic succession, peak followed by trough followed by peak and so on. In general, we can define a wavelength as the distance between identical parts of adjacent waves. Measurements from peak to peak, or trough to trough, for example, give the same value for wavelength.Figure 1 Peaks and troughs of wavesWhen waves interact in a medium, they interfere. For example, if we drop two rocks into spatially separated parts of a pond, their waves will interfere when they cross. (Figure 2) When a peak of one wave and a peak of another wave come together, the height of the water rises to a height equal to the sum of the two peaks. Similarly, when a trough of one wave and a trough of another wave cross, the depression of the water's surface dips to the sum of the two depressions. And when a peak of one wave crosses with a trough of another, the (at least partially) cancel each other out. The peak of one wave contributes a positive displacement while the trough of the other wave contributes a negative displacement. If the two waves have equal magnitude, then there will be perfect cancelation and the water's surface will be flat, just as it was before any wave existed.Figure 12-2 Constructive and destructive interference Keeping these rules of interference in mind, let’s turn our attention to light. If we take a laser emitting a single wavelength—a single color, and shine it on a screen that has a slit etched into it (Figure 3), what image should we expect to see on the wall behind the screen? [ii] Classically speaking, we would expect to see a stripe of light on the wall. (Classically means according to our four-dimensional intuition, or the rules of Euclidean geometry.) It turns out that this is what we see. In this sense light’s behavior correlates perfectly with our Euclidean intuition.Figure 12-3 Expected single slit projectionWhat image should we expect to see on the wall if we etch a second slit on our screen and cover the first slit with a black piece of tape? Well, our classical intuitions tell us to expect a line of light projected on the wall, just like we did before, except this line of light should be offset from the first. Again, this is exactly what we see when we perform the experiment. So far all of this is straightforward and conceptually trivial. But as it turns out, we are only one step away from a profound mystery. We discover this mystery by removing the piece of tape. To understand the impact of this mystery, ask yourself: What sort of projection do we expect to see on the wall when both slits are open?Classical intuition tells us that we should see two parallel bands of light on the wall (Figure 4).Figure 4 Expected double slit projectionBut this is where our classical training (our Euclidean intuition) lets us down. This is also where classical mechanics breaks down. When we perform this experiment, something completely counterintuitive happens, contradicting our Euclidean intuitions. A distinct interference pattern is projected on the wall (Figure 5).Figure 5 Actual double slit projection The bright and dark bands produced in this double-slit experiment are telltale signs that light propagates as a wave. [iii] Interference patterns are key signatures of waves. The problem is that this wavelike characteristic directly clashes with our observations of light’s particulate behavior. After all, photons are always found in point-like regions rather than spread out like a wave, and individual photons are always found to have very discrete amounts of energy. When measuring a wave, you would expect to find its energy spread out over a region instead of being concentrated in one location. So how are we supposed to make sense of this observation? What is going on?These diametrically opposed properties of light are verified facts. Contradictory as they may seem, they are here to stay. They have forced us to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that light is both a wave and a particle. But how can this be? How can it be both? Although many scientists have found the wave-particle duality of light to be conceptually vague and schizophrenic, this description has persisted. In fact, after the wave-particle concept was adopted as an accurate description of light, it was extended to describe electrons and, eventually, all of matter. This transition was nothing short of a revolution.Up until 1910, atoms were simplistically viewed as miniature solar systems with the nucleus making up the “central star” and orbiting electrons being “planets”. [iv] The wave-particle duality of light and matter rejected this view and pointed to a signNowly different architecture for atoms. Of course, this conceptual transition did not take hold over night.In 1924, Prince Louis de Broglie found that in addition to their particle like character, [v] electrons also possessed a wavelike character. In 1927, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer followed this up by firing a beam of electrons at a piece of nickel crystal, which acted as a barrier analogous to the one used in the double-slit experiment. A phosphor screen recorded the resultant pattern of electrons. [vi] When they examined the screen, they observed an interference pattern just like the one produced in the double-slit experiment, showing that even electrons have wavelike properties.These experiments shook the foundation of physics by threatening the structure of classical mechanics and destroying humanity’s intuitive framework of reality. But it didn’t stop there. The next step was to tune the beam of electrons down so that the electron gun fired just a single electron at a time. Similar experiments were later used with lasers wherein individual photons were fired seconds apart from each other. The results were mind-bending.Completely against expectation these experiments also produced interference patterns over time as the collection of electrons (or photons) continued to build (Figure 6).Figure 12-6 Over time individual photons construct an interference patternThese observations only added to the confusion. Waves are supposed to be a collective property—something that has no meaning when applied to separate, particulate ingredients. (A water wave, for example, involves a large number of water molecules.) So how can a single electron, or a single photon, be a wave? Furthermore, wave interference requires a wave from one place to interact with a wave from another place. So how can interference be relevantly applied to a single electron or photon? While we are considering such questions, we should also ask, if a single electron or photon is a wave, then what is it that is “waving”? [vii]To answer these questions, Erwin Schrödinger proposed that the stuff that makes up electrons might be smeared out in space and that this smeared electron essence might be what waves. If this idea was correct then we would expect to find all of the electron’s properties, spread out over a distance, but we never do. Every time we locate an electron, we find all of its mass and all of its charge concentrated in one tiny, point-like region. Max Born came up with a different idea. He suggested that the wave is actually a probability wave. [viii] Einstein tinkered with a similar idea when he hypothesized that these waves were optical observations that refer to time averages rather than instantaneous values.Inserting a probability wave (also called a state vector, or a wave function) as a fundamental aspect of Nature delivers another blow to our common-sense ideas about how things truly operate. It suggests that experiments with identical starting conditions do not necessarily lead to identical results because it claims that you can never predict exactly where an electron will be in a single instant. You can only define a probability that we will find it over here, or over there, at any given moment. Two situations with the same probabilistic starting conditions, say of a single particle, might not produce the same results, because the particle can be anywhere within that probability distribution. From a classical perspective, the discovery that the microscopic universe behaves this way is absolutely baffling. Nevertheless, it is how we have observed Nature to be.This leads us to a rather interesting precipice. It seems that the map we have been using to chart physical reality somehow dissolves when we look closely at it. The rules of four-dimensional geometry simply fail to accurately map Nature when we examine the smallest scales. Nature doesn’t strictly behave as our old Euclidean map dictates. Stumbling upon this discovery forces us to face a vital question. Is Nature ultimately and fundamentally probabilistic in a way that we may never understand, as many modern physicists have chosen to believe; or, is this probabilistic quality a byproduct of our reduced dimensional representation of Nature?After pondering these questions long and hard, some physicists have come to believe that the tapestry of spacetime is analogous to water: that the smooth appearance of space and time is only an approximation that must yield to a more fundamental framework when considering ultramicroscopic scales. As far as I can tell, however, up until now this point has only been entertained abstractly. Geometrically resolving a molecular structure for space might resolve our greatest quantum mechanical mysteries, but as of yet, no one has taken that final step. No one has developed a self-consistent picture from this geometric insight. No one has moved beyond the mathematical suggestion that spacetime is analogous to water, or interpreted the theoretical quanta of space as being physically real. Consequently, a framework that enables conceptualization of what is meant by the “molecules” or “atoms” of spacetime has not been developed.Eight decades of meticulous experiments have confirmed the predictions of quantum mechanics based on this wave function, or probability wave, description with amazing precision. “Yet there is still no agreed-upon way to envision what quantum mechanical probability waves actually are. Whether we should say that an electron’s probability wave is the electron, or that it’s associated with the electron, or that it’s a mathematical device for describing the electron’s motion, or that it’s the embodiment of what we can know about the electron is still debated.” [ix]Although quantum mechanics describes the universe as having an inherently probabilistic character, we don’t experience the effects of this character in our day-to-day lives. Why is this? The answer, according to quantum mechanics, is that we don't see quantum events like a chair being here now and then across the room in the next instant, because the probability of that occurring, although not zero, is absurdly miniscule. But what exactly makes the probability for large things to act, as electrons do, so small? At what scales do such effects become important? And, why should the macroscopic universe be so different from the microscopic universe?As if these newly uncovered characteristics of reality weren’t obscure enough, quantum physicists conceptually fuddle things further by suggesting that without observation things have no reality. They claim that until the position of an electron is actually measured the electron has no definite position. Before it is measured, the position exists only as a probability, and then suddenly, through the act of measuring, the electron miraculously acquires the property of position.Einstein acutely recognized the absurdity of this claim. When approached with this conjecture, he famously quipped, “Do you really believe that the moon is not there unless we are looking at it?” [x] To him everything in the physical world had a reality independent of our observations. Measurements that suggested otherwise were mere reflections of the incompleteness by which we currently map and comprehend physical reality. To many quantum physicists, however, the unobserved Moon’s existence became a matter of probability. To them, a discoverable, complete map of physical reality, with the ability to resolve an underlying determinism, became nothing more than a myth—a romantic dream.The mathematical projection of quantum mechanics can be statistically matched with our four-dimensional observations, but when it comes to a conceptual explanation of those observations, it completely lets us down. Intuitive explanations cannot be gleaned from a framework of physical reality that is assumed to be fundamentally probabilistic. By definition, randomness blurs causality. This vague description of physical reality keeps us from grasping a deeper truth by allowing what should be the most basic of concepts to drip into a realm of nonsense.As an example of the confusion that stems from swallowing the standard quantum mechanical interpretation “guts, feathers, and all,” consider the fact that a probabilistic treatment of quantum mechanics leads us to the conclusion that the double-slit experiment can be explained by assuming that a photon actually takes both paths. We can combine the two probability waves emerging from both slits to statistically determine where a photon will land on a screen. The result mimics an interference pattern.According to this, we can explain interference patterns by assuming that one photon somehow always manages to go through both slits, but is this really what is going on? Does a photon really travel along both paths? Can this count as an explanation if we have no coherent sense of what it means? You might notice that if we were to design our experiment with three slits, then we would have to consider whether or not the photon really travels all three routes. This question can be extended for as many slits as you like, but the fundamental conceptual problem remains the same.In order to solve this mystery, you may suggest that we place detectors in front of the slits to determine if the photons are actually going through both slits, or just one. When we do this, we always find that individual photons pass through one slit or the other—never both. But, when we measure the position of individual photons we no longer get an interference pattern and so the question retains its ambiguity. Some have taken this to mean that the act of observation forces wave properties to collapse into a particle, but how and why this theoretical collapse occurs still lacks explanation.Because probability waves are not directly observable and because photons (and electrons) are always found in one place or another when measured, we might be tempted to think that probability waves might not be real—that they were never really there. If that is true, then how are the interference patterns created? Surely these probability waves exist, but in what sense? What are they referencing? Why is it that whenever we know which path the photon takes, we get a classical image instead of an interference pattern? How does the detection of a photon, or an electron, change its behavior?To date, these questions have yet to be resolved. In fact, more clever experiments designed to solve these questions have only deepened the mystery. For example, let’s perform the double-slit experiment again, but this time let’s place devices in front of the slits, which mark (but do not stop or detect) the photons before they pass through the slits. This marking allows us to examine the photons that strike the screen and subsequently determine which slit they passed through. Thus we only gain knowledge of which path the photon takes after the path has been completed. For some reason, however, when we do this we find that the photons do not build up an interference pattern. They form a classical image (Figure 4).Once again, it seems that “which-path” information inhibits us from probing these ghostly waves. But is it really the fact that we gain the ability to determine which path a photon goes through—independent of when we gain that information—that disrupts the interference pattern? Or does our marking of the photon somehow disrupt its interference potential?To explore this question, we perform what’s known as the quantum eraser experiment. We start with the same set up we just described. Then we place another device between each slit and the screen, which completely removes the mark from the photon. We already know that the marked photons project a classical image. Will an interference pattern reemerge if we remove the effects of this mark—if we lose the ability to extract the which-path information?When we perform this experiment the interference pattern does return (Figure 7). Does this mean that photons somehow choose how to act, based on our knowledge of them? Or does it imply something even stranger—that the photons are always both particles and waves simultaneously? How are we to understand either conclusion?Figure 12-7 An interference pattern Another curiosity of Nature is known as the photoelectric effect. Philipp Lenard first discovered this effect through controlled experiments in 1900. When light shines on a metal surface, it causes electrons to be knocked loose and emitted. Knowing this, Lenard designed an experiment that allowed him to control the frequency of the incoming light. During the experiment, he increased the frequency of the light—moving from infrared heat and red light to violet and ultraviolet. Greater frequencies caused the emitted electrons to speed away with more kinetic energy. After discovering this, Lenard reconfigured his experiment to allow him to control the intensity of the incoming light. He used a carbon arc light that could be made brighter by a factor of 1,000.Because both experiments involved increasing the amount of incoming light energy he expected to have identical results. In other words, because the brighter, more intense light had more energy, Lenard expected that the electrons emitted would have more energy and speed away faster. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the more intense light produced more electrons, but the energy of each electron remained the same. [xi]In response to these experiments Einstein suggested that light is composed of discrete packets called photons. Under this assumption, light with higher frequency would cause electrons to be emitted with more energy, and light with higher intensity, that is, a higher quantity of photons, would result in emission of more electrons—just as we observe.The problem with this solution (a solution that is now universally accepted among physicists) is that it doesn’t provide us with a clear description for what the light quanta are. Why does light come in quantized packets? Near the end of his life Einstein lamented over this problem in a letter to his dear friend Michele Besso. He wrote, “All these fifty years of pondering have not brought me any closer to answering the question, what are light quanta?” [xii] It’s been another fifty years and we seem as confused as ever over how it is that light is quantized into little discrete packets called photons.In the midst of these enigmas lies the uncertainty principle, which states that knowledge of certain properties inhibits knowledge of other complimentary properties. For example, the more accurately we determine the position of an electron, the less we can determine its momentum, and vise versa.Heisenberg tried to explain the uncertainty principle by appealing to the observer effect; claiming that it was simply an observational effect of the fact that measurements of quantum systems cannot be made without affecting those systems. [xiii] Since then, the uncertainty principle has regularly been confused with the observer effect. [xiv] But the uncertainty principle is not a statement about the observational success of current technology. It has nothing to do with the observer effect. It highlights a fundamental property of quantum systems, a property that turns out to be inherent in all wave-like systems. [xv] Uncertainty is an aspect of quantum mechanics because of the wave nature it ascribes to all quantum objects.If our current description of quantum mechanics is fundamental, if there is nothing beneath the state vector—a claim that defines the heart of the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics—then this uncertainty principle may be a sharp enough dagger to kill our quest for an intuitive understanding of physical reality. The corrosive power of the uncertainty principle, when mixed with our current paradigm, is poignantly illustrated by an old story involving Niels Bohr. According to the story, Bohr was once asked what the complementary quality to truth is. After some thought he answered—“clarity.” [xvi] Unlike classical mechanics, which describes systems by specifying the positions and velocities of its components, quantum mechanics uses a complex mathematical object called a state vector (also called the wave function [xvii]) to map physical systems. Interjecting this state vector into the theory enables us to match its predictions to our observations of the microscopic world, but it also generates a relatively indirect description that is open to many equally valid interpretations. This creates a sticky situation, because to “really understand” quantum mechanics we need to be able to specify the exact status of and to have some sort of justification for that specification. At the present, we only have questions. Does the state vector describe physical reality itself, or only some (partial) knowledge that we have of reality? “Does it describe ensembles of systems only (statistical description), or one single system as well (single events)? Assume that indeed, is affected by an imperfect knowledge of the system, is it then not natural to expect that a better description should exist, at least in principle?” [xviii] If so, what would this deeper and more precise description of reality be?To explore the role of the state vector, consider a physical system made of N particles with mass, each propagating in ordinary three-dimensional space. In classical mechanics we would use N positions and N velocities to describe the state of the system. For convenience we might also group together the positions and velocities of those particles into a single vector V, which belongs to a real vector space with 6N dimensions, called phase space. [xix]The state vector can be thought of as the quantum equivalent of this classical vector V. The primary difference is that, as a complex vector, it belongs to something called complex vector space, also known as space of states, or Hilbert space. In other words, instead of being encoded by regular vectors whose positions and velocities are defined in phase space, the state of a quantum system is encoded by complex vectors whose positions and velocities live in a space of states. [xx]The transition from classical physics to quantum physics is the transition from phase space to space of states to describe the system. In the quantum formalism each physical observable of the system (position, momentum, energy, angular momentum, etc.) has an associated linear operator acting in the space of states. (Vectors belonging to the space of states are called “kets.”) The question is, is it possible to understand space of states in a classical manner? Could the evolution of the state vector be understood classically (under a projection of local realism) if, for example, there were additional variables associated with the system that were ignored completely by our current description/understanding of it?While that question hangs in the air, let’s note that if the state vector is fundamental, if there really isn’t a deeper-level description beneath the state vector, then the probabilities postulated by quantum mechanics must also be fundamental. This would be a strange anomaly in physics. Statistical classical mechanics makes constant use of probabilities, but those probabilistic claims relate to statistical ensembles. They come into play when the system under study is known to be one of many similar systems that share common properties, but differ on a level that has not been probed (for any reason). Without knowing the exact state of the system we can group all the similar systems together into an ensemble and assign that ensemble state to our system. This is done as a matter of convenience. Of course, the blurred average state of the ensemble is not as clear as any of the specific states the system might actually have. Beneath that ensemble there is a more complete description of the system’s state (at least in principle), but we don’t need to distinguish the exact state in order to make predictions. Statistical ensembles allow us to make predictions without probing the exact state of the system. But our ignorance of that exact state forces those predictions to be probabilistic.Can the same be said about quantum mechanics? Does quantum theory describe an ensemble of possible states? Or does the state vector provide the most accurate possible description of a single system? [xxi]How we answer that question impacts how we explain unique outcomes. If we treat the state vector as fundamental, then we should expect reality to always present itself in some sort of smeared out sense. If the state vector were the whole story, then our measurements should always record smeared out properties, instead of unique outcomes. But they don’t. We always measure well-defined properties that correspond to specific states. Sticking with the idea that the state vector is fundamental, von Neumann suggested a solution called state vector reduction (also called wave function collapse). [xxii] The idea was that when we aren’t looking, the state of a system is defined as a superposition of all its possible states (characterized by the state vector) and evolves according to the Schrödinger equation. But as soon as we look (or take a measurement) all but one of those possibilities collapse. How does this happen? What mechanism is responsible for selecting one of those states over the rest? To date there is no answer. Despite this, von Neumann’s idea has been taken seriously because his approach allows for unique outcomes.The problem that von Neumann was trying to address is that the Schrödinger equation itself does not select single outcomes. It cannot explain why unique outcomes are observed. According to it, if a fuzzy mix of properties comes in (coded by the state vector), a fuzzy mix of properties comes out. To fix this, von Neumann conjured up the idea that the state vector jumps discontinuously (and randomly) to a single value. [xxiii] He suggested that unique outcomes occur because the state vector retains only the “component corresponding to the observed outcome while all components of the state vector associated with the other results are put to zero, hence the name reduction.” [xxiv]The fact that this reduction process is discontinuous makes it incompatible with general relativity. It is also irreversible, which makes it stand out as the only equation in all of physics that introduces time-asymmetry into the world. If we think that the problem of explaining uniqueness of outcome eclipses these problems, then we might be willing to take them in stride. But to make this trade worthwhile we need to have a good story for how state vector collapse occurs. We don’t. The absence of this explanation is referred to as the quantum measurement problem.Many people are surprised to discover that the quantum measurement problem still stands. It has become popular to explain state vector reduction (wave function collapse) by appealing to the observer effect, asserting that measurements of quantum systems cannot be made without affecting those systems, and that state vector reduction is somehow initiated by those measurements. [xxv] This may sound plausible, but it doesn’t work. Even if we ignore the fact that this ‘explanation’ doesn’t elucidate howa disturbance could initiate state vector reduction, this isn’t an allowed answer because “state vector reduction can take place even when the interactions play no role in the process.” [xxvi] This is illustrated by negative measurements or interaction free measurements in quantum mechanics.To explore this point, consider a source, S, that emits a particle with a spherical wave function, which means its values are independent of the direction in space. [xxvii] In other words, it emits photons in random directions, each direction having equal probability. Let’s surround the source by two detectors with perfect efficiency. The first detector D1should be set up to capture the particle emitted in almost all directions, except a small solid angle θ, and the second detector D2 should be set up to capture the particle if it goes through this solid angle (Figure 8).Figure 8 An interaction-free measurement When the wave packet describing the wave function of the particle signNowes the first detector, it may or may not be detected. (The probability of detection depends on the ratio of the subtended angles of the detectors.) If the particle is detected by D1 it disappears, which means that its state vector is projected onto a state containing no particle and an excited detector. In this case, the second detector D2 will never record a particle. If the particle isn’t detected by D1 then D2 will detect the particle later. Therefore, the fact that the first detector has not recorded the particle implies a reduction of the wave function to its component contained within θ, implying that the second detector will always detect the particle later. In other words, the probability of detection by D2 has been greatly enhanced by a sort of “non-event” at D1. In short, the wave function has been reduced without any interaction between the particle and the first measurement apparatus.Franck Laloë notes that this illustrates that “the essence of quantum measurement is something much more subtle than the often invoked ‘unavoidable perturbations of the measurement apparatus’ (Heisenberg microscope, etc.).” [xxviii] If state vector reduction really takes place, then it takes place even when the interactions play no role in the process, which means that we are completely in the dark about how this reduction is initiated or how it unfolds. Why then is state vector reduction still taken seriously? Why would any thinking physicist uphold the claim that state vector reduction occurs, when there is no plausible story for how or why it occurs, and when the assertion that it does occur creates other monstrous problems that contradict central tenets of physics? The answer may be that generations of tradition have largely erased the fact that there is another way to solve the quantum measurement problem.Returning to the other option at hand, we note that if we assume that the state vector is a statistical ensemble, if we assume that the system does have a more exact state, then the interpretation of this thought experiment becomes straightforward; initially the particle has a well-defined direction of emission, and D2 records only the fraction of the particles that were emitted in its direction.Standard quantum mechanics postulates that this well-defined direction of emission does not exist before any measurement. Assuming that there is something beneath the state vector, that a more accurate state exists, is tantamount to introducing additional variables to quantum mechanics. It takes a departure from tradition, but as T. S. Eliot said in The Sacred Wood, “tradition should be positively discouraged.” [xxix] The scientific heart must search for the best possible answer. It cannot flourish if it is constantly held back by tradition, nor can it allow itself to ignore valid options. Intellectual journeys are obliged to forge new paths.So instead of asking whether of not wave-particle duality is an illusion, perhaps we should ask whether wave-particle duality implies that the state vector is the most fundamental description of a quantum mechanical system, or if a deeper level description exists? That's an open question, and at the moment there are many possible answers — interpretations of quantum mechanics that are equally aligned with the empirical evidence. My intuition is that a deeper level description of reality exists (something like Bohmian Mechanics yet deeper—like Superfluid vacuum theory).*This response is a modified excerpt from my book 'Einstein's Intuition'. Page on einsteinsintuition.com[i] The discussion on interference and the double-slit experiment that follows is further developed by Brian Greene, (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. New York: Knopf, pp. 84–84. Greene’s discussion was used as a general guide here.[ii] In order to show diffraction (a fuzzy border of light on the projected image) the slit must have a width that does not greatly exceed the wavelength of the color of the light that we have chosen.[iii] Light’s wave nature was first revealed in the mid-seventeenth century through experiments performed by the Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi, and was later expanded upon by experiments performed in 1803 by the physician and physicist Thomas Young. (1807). Interference of Light; Alan Lightman. A Sense Of The Mysterious. pp. 51–52, 71.[iv] Before the “planetary model” of the atom, physicists pictured the atom being a plum-shaped blob (the nucleus) with tiny protruding springs that each had an electron stuck to its end. When the atom absorbed energy it was thought that these electrons would jiggle (oscillate) on the ends of their springs. Consequently, any atom that was above its ground state of energy was understood to be an “excited atomic oscillator,” This depiction of the atom wasn’t overthrown until 1900. At that point in history the physical existence of atoms was still controversial. It was replaced by the planetary model, which in turn was replaced by the electron cloud model we use today—a model that was initiated in 1910 and was secured by 1930. Gary Zukav. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, pp. 49–50.[v] Electrons can be individually counted and you can individually place them on a drop of oil and measure their electric charge. Richard Feynman. (1988). QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press, p. 84.[vi] According to de Broglie’s doctoral thesis all matter has corresponding waves. The wavelength of the “matter waves” that “correspond” to matter depends upon the momentum of the particle. Specifically, , which falls into an important group of equations along with Planck’s equation ) and the ever famous . (λ, pronounced “lambda,” stands for wavelength, h is Planck’s constant, and pronounced ‘nu’ represents the frequency of a photon) From this equation we are told to expect that when we send a beam of electrons (something we might traditionally think of as a stream of particles) through tiny openings, like the spacing between atoms in a piece of nickel crystal, the beam will diffract, just like light diffracts. The only requirement here is that the spacing between the atoms of the material must be as small, or smaller, than the electron’s corresponding wavelength—just like the slits in our double-slit experiment. When we perform the experiment, diffraction and therefore interference, occurs exactly as wave mechanics predicts.[vii] Part of the problem here is that in keeping with our four-dimensional intuition we tend to assume a particle aspect in the double-slit experiment without accounting for nonlocality. By doing this we are technically violating Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and missing the bigger picture.[viii] M. Born. (1926). Quantenmechanik der Stossvorgänge. Zeitschrift für Physik 38, 803–827; (1926). Zur Wellenmechanik der Stossvorgänge. Göttingen Nachrichten 146–160.[ix] Brian Greene. (2004), p. 91.[x] Albert Einstein quoted in Einstein by Walter Isaacson.[xi] Walter Isaacson. Einstein, pp. 96–97.[xii] Ibid.[xiii] Werner Heisenberg. The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, p. 20.[xiv] Masano Ozawa. (2003). Universally valid reformulation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle on noise and disturbance in measurement. Physical Review A 67 (4), arXiv:quant-ph/0207121; Aya Furuta. (2012). One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead. Scientific American.[xv] L. A. Rozema, A. Darabi, D. H. Mahler, A. Hayat, Y, Soudagar, & A. M. Steinberg. (2012). Violation of Heisenberg’s Measurement—Disturbance Relationship by Weak Measurements. Physical Review Letters 109 (10).[xvi] Steven Weinberg. Dreams Of A Final Theory, p. 74.[xvii] For a system of spinless particles with masses, the state vector is equivalent to a wave function, but for more complicated systems this is not the case. Nevertheless, conceptually they play the same role and are used in the same way in the theory, so that we do not need to make a distinction here. Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 7.[xviii] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. xxi.[xix] There are 6N dimensions in this phase space because there are N particles in the system and each particle comes with 6 data points (3 for its spatial position (x, y, z) and 3 for its velocity, which has x, y, zcomponents also).[xx] The space of states (complex vector space or Hilbert space) is linear, and therefore, conforms to the superposition principle. Any combination of two arbitrary state vectors and within the space of states is also a possible state for the system. Mathematically we write where & are arbitrary complex numbers.[xxi] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 19.[xxii] Chapter VI of J. von Neumann. (1932). Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin; (1955). Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press.[xxiii] It might be useful to challenge the logical validity of the claim that something can “cause a random occurrence.” By definition, causal relationships drive results, while “random” implies that there is no causal relationship. Deeper than this, I challenge the coherence of the idea that genuine random occurrences can happen. We cannot coherently claim that there are occurrences that are completely void of any causal relationship. To do so is to wisk away what we mean by “occurrences.” Every occurrence is intimately connected to the whole, and ignorance of what is driving a system is no reason to assume that it is randomly driven. Things cannot be randomly driven. Cause cannot be random.[xxiv] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 11.[xxv] Bohr preferred another point of view where state vector reduction is not used. D. Howard. (2004). Who invented the Copenhagen interpretation? A study in mythology. Philos. Sci. 71, 669–682.[xxvi] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 28.[xxvii] This example was inspired by section 2.4 of Franck Laloë’s book, Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 27–31.[xxviii] Franck Laloë. Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics?, p. 28.[xxix] T. S. Eliot. (1921). The Sacred Wood. Tradition and the Individual Talent.

What is your review of Osho? I’ve thought about this question on and off for over twenty-five years. Now I mostly see him as a tragic figure, a man of immense talent who fell victim to the fruits of his own abilities.I think he was seduced by the dark side of his power, and many of the fruits of his labor turned to poison.Lots of people make a big deal out of the sex thing. Osho was very ‘sex-positive’ and there was a tremendous amount of sex happening at his ashrams. By current [2019] San Francisco standards this kind of behavior is ‘so what?’, or ‘who cares?’ His attitudes about sex didn’t work so well for him in Pune, then they didn’t work for him in Montclair, NJ, and they definitely didn’t work well in rural Oregon. But, again, so what?He obviously had tremendous presence, and something about his energy had a huge impact on people around him. It seems likely that he had some spiritual awakening. He definitely had siddhis. He was a tremendous charmer, and could sit down and talk ‘off the cuff’ (unprepared) for hours and keep an audience spell-bound. An amazing talent. His books and lectures have inspired thousands of people to pursue spiritual goals.It wasn’t until years later that I went back and re-read many of his books and realized how careless he was with facts, how many things he said were wrong (even about religion and philosophy) [2] and how extensively he slammed or talked down anyone who could remotely be considered a rival or competitor.I was quite taken aback when I found out about his decades of extensive, personal, recreational drug use (nitrous oxide) and his addiction(?) to valium. I found his obsession with expensive baubles (exotic watches and Rolls Royces) very disturbing. As far as I can tell, he insisted that the community spend money on these when the money was badly needed for other things - like lawyers.Many people claim that Osho was extremely perceptive, and could effectively read the minds of people around him. How then was it that he missed the numerous plots by his senior disciples, all of which was happening within yards of him. For example, the senior sanyassin plotted to murder at least three people:US Attorney Charles H. Turner - Wikipedia;Osho's caretaker and girlfriend, Ma Yoga Vivek; andOsho’s personal physician, Swami Devaraj (Dr. George Meredith).How could Osho not know about the laboratory at Rajneeshpuram where some of the sannyasin cultured the salmonella bacteria that was used to poison 751 people? This is all a matter of public record, and court testimony. You can read about it on wikipedia - 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack - Wikipedia. While Osho steadfastly denied that he had any knowledge of the illegal activities taking place at Rajneeshpuram, some of his students testified otherwise. There is court testimony about a tape of a conversation between Sheela and Osho, that tape was played for the senior sannyasin, this is what the listeners believed it said:And the gist of Bhagwan's response, yes, it was going to be necessary to kill people to stay in Oregon. And that actually killing people wasn't such a bad thing. And actually Hitler was a great man, although he could not say that publicly because nobody would understand that. Hitler had great vision." [2]I’ll close with a quote from American neuroscientist and philospher Sam Harris - Wikipedia.He [Osho] was by no means the worst that the New Age had to offer. He undoubtedly harmed many people in the end—and, perhaps, in the beginning and middle as well—but he wasn’t merely a lunatic or a con artist as many other gurus have been. Osho always seemed like a genuinely insightful man who had much to teach, but who grew increasingly intoxicated by the power of his role, and then finally lost his mind in it. When you spend your days sniffing nitrous oxide, demanding fellatio at 45-minute intervals, making sacred gifts of your fingernail clippings, and shopping for your 94th Rolls Royce… you should probably know that you’ve wandered a step or two off the path. Sam HarrisFootnotes, etc.[1] According to court testimony by Ma Ava (Ava Avalos), a prominent disciple, [Ma Anand] Sheela played associates a tape recording of a meeting she had had with Rajneesh about the "need to kill people" in order to strengthen wavering sannyasins resolve in participating in her murderous plots: "She came back to the meeting and […] began to play the tape. It was a little hard to hear what he was saying. […] And the gist of Bhagwan's response, yes, it was going to be necessary to kill people to stay in Oregon. And that actually killing people wasn't such a bad thing. And actually Hitler was a great man, although he could not say that publicly because nobody would understand that. Hitler had great vision."[2] Academic assessments of Rajneesh's work have been mixed and often directly contradictory.Uday Mehta saw errors in his interpretation of Zen and Mahayana Buddhism, speaking of "gross contradictions and inconsistencies in his teachings" that "exploit" the "ignorance and gullibility" of his listeners. [222]The sociologist Bob Mullan wrote in 1983 of "a borrowing of truths, half-truths and occasional misrepresentations from the great traditions"... often bland, inaccurate, spurious and extremely contradictory".[223]Hugh B. Urban also found Rajneesh's teaching neither original nor especially profound and concluded that most of its content had been borrowed from various Eastern and Western philosophies.[171]Rajneesh - Wikipedia - Appraisals by Scholars of ReligionIf you would like to learn more, here are three places to start. Many of Osho’s senior students have written books about their experiences with him, documenting both the good and the bad.25 years after Rajneeshee commune collapsed, truth spills out -- Part 1 of 5Rajneesh - WikipediaPromise of Paradise: : A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh by Satya Bharti Franklin. She was a sannyasin and student of Osho’s for decades. Franklin left for what was intended to be a three-week visit to India. Instead, it was the beginning of her intimate involvement with the Bhagwan Rajneesh, one of the most infamous spiritual teachers of recent decades. In this extraordinary and passionate memoir, Franklin provides an insider’s view of the manipulation, sexual exploitation, and internecine struggles, as well as the more publicized joys and ecstasies, that characterized one of the most talked-about religious experiments of the 20th century.

Electronic voting in IndiaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigation Jump to searchThis article is about the voting machines used in India. For general information on EVMs, see Electronic voting.VVPAT used with Indian electronic voting machines in Indian ElectionsControl unit in EVMElectionic Voting Machine India ballot UnitElectronic Voting is the standard means of conducting elections using Electronic Voting Machines, sometimes called "EVMs" in India.[1][2]The use of EVMs and electronic voting was developed and tested by the state-owned Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics in the 1990s. They were introduced in Indian elections between 1998 and 2001, in a phased manner. The electronic voting machines have been used in all general and state assembly elections of India since 2004.[3][2][4]Prior to the introduction of electronic voting, India used paper ballots and manual counting. The paper ballots method was widely criticized because of fraudulent voting, booth capturing where party loyalists captured booths and stuffed them with pre-filled fake ballots. The printed paper ballots were also more expensive, requiring substantial post-voting resources to count hundreds of millions of individual ballots.[2][1]Embedded EVM features such as "electronically limiting the rate of casting votes to five per minute",[1]a security "lock-close" feature, an electronic database of "voting signatures and thumb impressions" to confirm the identity of the voter, conducting elections in phases over several weeks while deploying extensive security personnel at each booth[1]have helped reduce electoral fraud and abuse, eliminate booth capturing and create more competitive and fairer elections.[5][2]Indian EVMs are stand-alone machines built with once write, read-only memory.[6]The EVMs are produced with secure manufacturing practices, and by design, are self-contained, battery-powered and lack any networking capability. They do not have any wireless or wired internet components and interface.[7]The M3 version of the EVMs includes the VVPAT system.[6]In recent elections, various opposition parties have alleged faulty EVMs after they failed to defeat the incumbent.[8][9]After rulings of Delhi High Court, the Supreme Court of India in 2011 directed the Election Commission to include a paper trail as well to help confirm the reliable operation of EVMs.[9][10]The Election Commission developed EVMs with voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system between 2012 and 2013. The system was tried on a pilot basis in the 2014 Indian general election.[11][12]Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and EVMs are now used in every assembly and general election in India.[13][14]On 9 April 2019, Supreme Court of India ordered the Election Commission of India to use VVPAT paper trail system in every assembly constituency and verify these before signNowing the final results. The Election Commission of India has acted under this order and deployed VVPAT verification for 20,625 EVMs in the 2019 Indian general election.[15][16][17]The Election Commission of India states that their machines, system checks, safeguard procedures and election protocols are "fully tamper proof". A team led by Vemuri Hari Prasad of NetIndia Private Limited has shown that if criminals get physical possession of the EVMs before the voting, they can change the hardware inside and thus manipulate the results.[18]The Prasad team recommended a VVPAT paper trail system for verification.[18]The Election Commission states that along with VVPAT method, immediately prior to the election day, a sample number of votes for each political party nominee is entered into each machine, in the presence of polling agents. At the end of this sample trial run, the votes counted and matched with the entered sample votes, to ensure that the machine's hardware has not been tampered with, it is operating reliably and that there were no hidden votes pre-recorded in each machine.[19]Machines that yield a faulty result have been replaced to ensure a reliable electoral process.[20][21]Contents1 History 1.1 EVM and Indian judiciary 1.2 Electronic voting2 Design and technology3 Procedure to use4 Benefits5 Limitations6 Security issues 6.1 2019 allegations7 Voter-verifiable paper audit trail8 Exports9 See also10 Further reading11 References12 External linksHistoryIndia used paper ballots till the 1990s. The sheer scale of the Indian elections with more than half a billion people eligible to vote, combined with election-related criminal activity, led Indian election authority and high courts to transition to electronic voting.[2][22]According to Arvind Verma – a professor of Criminal Justice with a focus on South Asia, Indian elections have been marked by criminal fraud and ballot tampering since the 1950s. The first major election with large scale organized booth capturing were observed in 1957.[22]The journalist Prem Shankar Jha, states Milan Vaishnav, documented the booth capturing activity by Congress party leaders, and the opposition parties soon resorted to the same fraudulent activity in the 1960s.[23]A booth-capture was the phenomenon where party loyalists, criminal gangs and upper-caste musclemen entered the booth with force in villages and remote areas, and stuffed the ballot boxes with pre-filled fake paper ballots.[24][25]This problem grew between the 1950s and 1980s and became a serious and large scale problem in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,[2][22]later spreading to Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal accompanied with election day violence.[26]Another logistical problem was the printing of paper ballots, transporting and safely storing them, and physically counting hundreds of millions of votes.[1][22]The Election Commission of India, led by T.N. Seshan, sought a solution by developing Electronic voting machines in the 1990s.[22][27]These devices were designed to prevent fraud by limiting how fast new votes can be entered into the electronic machine.[22]By limiting the rate of vote entered every minute to five, the Commission aimed to increase the time required to cast fake ballots, therefore, allow the security forces to intervene in cooperation with the volunteers of the competing political parties and the media.[2][22][5]The Commission introduced other features such as EVM initialization procedures just before the elections.[7]Officials tested each machine prior to the start of voting to confirm its reliable operation in the front of independent polling agents. They added a security lock “close” button which saved the votes already cast in the device's permanent memory but disabled the device's ability to accept additional votes in the case of any attempt to open the unit or tamper.[2][19]The Commission decided to conduct the elections over several weeks in order to move and post a large number of security forces at each booth. On the day of voting, the ballots were also locked and then saved in a secure location under the watch of state security and local volunteer citizens. Additionally, the Election Commission also created a database of thumb impressions and electronic voting signatures, open to inspection by polling agent volunteers and outside observers.[2]The EVMs-based system at each booth matches the voter with a registered card with this electronic database in order to ensure that a voter cannot cast a ballot more than once.[2][5]According to Debnath and other scholars, these efforts of the Election Commission of India – developed in consultations with the Indian courts, experts and volunteer feedback from different political parties – have reduced electoral fraud in India and made the elections fairer and more competitive.[5]EVM and Indian judiciaryEVM and electronic voting have been the subject of numerous court cases in Indian courts including the Supreme Court of India. The first case was filed in the 1980s even before EVMs were used in any election. The AC Jose vs. Sivan Pillai case was a case seeking a stay order on the use of EVMs for Kerala election.[28]The case was reviewed by the Supreme Court. It ruled on March 5, 1984, that the extant laws of India – in particular, Sections 59–61 of the Representation of People Act 1951 – specified paper ballots and it therefore forbade the use of any other technology including electronic voting. The Court stated that the use of an alternate technology would require the Indian parliament to amend the law.[28]The parliament of India amended the Representation of People Act in December 1988. Section 61A of the amended law empowered the Election Commission to deploy voting machines instead of paper ballots. The amended law became effective from March 15, 1989.[28]The use of EVMs, their reliability and speculations about fraud through the use of EVMs have been the subject of many lawsuits before state high courts and the Supreme Court of India. These courts have either dismissed the cases as frivolous or ruled in the favor of the Election Commission and the EVMs.[29]Of these, in the 2002 ruling on the J. Jayalalithaa and Ors vs. Election Commission of India case, the Supreme Court of India stated that the use of EVMs in elections was constitutionally valid.[29][30]Electronic votingThe Indian electronic voting machine (EVM) were developed in 1989 by Election Commission of India in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited. The Industrial designers of the EVMs were faculty members at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. The EVMs were first used in 1982 in the by-election to North Paravur Assembly Constituency in Kerala for a limited number of polling stations.[31]The EVMs were first time used on an experimental basis in selected constituencies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. The EVMs were used first time in the general election (entire state) to the assembly of Goa in 1999. In 2003, all by-elections and state elections were held using EVMs, encouraged by this election commission decided to use only EVMs for Lok Sabha elections in 2004.Design and technologyBallot Unit (left), control unit (right)An EVM consists of two units, a control unit, and the balloting unit.[32]The two units are joined by a five-meter cable. Balloting unit facilitates voting by a voter via labeled buttons while the control unit controls the ballot units, stores voting counts and displays the results on 7 segment LED displays. The controller used in EVMs has its operating program etched permanently in silicon at the time of manufacturing by the manufacturer. No one (including the manufacturer) can change the program once the controller is manufactured. The control unit is operated by one of the polling booth officers, while the balloting unit is operated by the voter in privacy. The officer confirms the voter's identification then electronically activates the ballot unit to accept a new vote. Once the voter enters the vote, the balloting unit displays the vote to the voter, records it in its memory. A "close" command issued from the control unit by the polling booth officer registers the vote, relocks the unit to prevent multiple votes. The process is repeated when the next voter with a new voter ID arrives before the polling booth officer.[32]EVMs are powered by an ordinary 6 volt alkaline battery[33]manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad. This design enables the use of EVMs throughout the country without interruptions because several parts of India do not have the power supply and/or erratic power supply. The two units cannot work without the other. After a poll closes on a particular election day, the units are separated and the control units moved and stored separately in locked and guarded premises.[32]Both units have numerous tamper-proof protocols. Their hardware, by design, can only be programmed once at the time of their manufacture and they cannot be reprogrammed.[34][7]They do not have any wireless communication components inside, nor any internet interface and related hardware.[34]The balloting unit has an internal real-time clock and a protocol by which it records every input-output event with a time stamp whenever they are connected to a battery pack.[34]The designers intentionally opted for battery power, to prevent the possibility that the power cables might be used to interfere with the reliable functioning of an EVM.[34]An EVM can record a maximum of 3840 (now 2000) votes and can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There is provision for 16 candidates in a single balloting unit and up to a maximum of 4 balloting units with 64 candidate names and the respective party symbols can be connected in parallel to the control unit.[32]If there are more than 64 candidates, the conventional ballot paper/box method of polling is deployed by the Election Commission.[32]After a 2013 upgrade, an Indian EVM can cater to a maximum of 384 candidates plus "None Of The Above" option (NOTA).[6]The current electronic voting machines in India are the M3 version with VVPAT capability, the older versions being M1 and M2. They are built and encoded with once-write software (read-only masked memory) at the state-owned and high-security premises of the Bharat Electronics Limited and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited.[6][35]The inventory of election EVMs is securely tracked by the Election Commission of India on a real-time basis with EVM Tracking Software (ETS). This system tracks their digital verification identity and physical presence. The M3 EVMs has embedded hardware and software that enables only a particular control unit to work with a particular voting unit issued by the Election Commission, as another layer of tamper-proofing. Additional means of tamper proofing the machines include several layers of seals. Indian EVMs are stand-alone non-networked machines.[36][37]Procedure to useThe control unit is with the presiding officer or a polling officer and the balloting Unit is placed inside the voting compartment. The balloting unit presents the voter with blue buttons (momentary switch) horizontally labeled with corresponding party symbol and candidate names. The Control Unit, on the other hand, provides the officer-in-charge with a "Ballot" marked button to proceed to the next voter, instead of issuing a ballot paper to them. This activates the ballot unit for a single vote from the next voter in the queue. The voter has to cast his vote by once pressing the blue button on the balloting unit against the candidate and symbol of his choice.As soon as the last voter has voted, the Polling Officer-in-charge of the Control Unit will press the 'Close' Button. Thereafter, the EVM will not accept any votes. Further, after the close of the poll, the Balloting Unit is disconnected from the Control Unit and kept separately. Votes can be recorded only through the Balloting Unit. Again the Presiding officer, at the close of the poll, will hand over to each polling agent present an account of votes recorded. At the time of counting of votes, the total will be tallied with this account and if there is any discrepancy, this will be pointed out by the Counting Agents. During the counting of votes, the results are displayed by pressing the 'Result' button. There are two safeguards to prevent the 'Result' button from being pressed before the counting of votes officially begins. (a) This button cannot be pressed till the 'Close' button is pressed by the Polling Officer-in-charge at the end of the voting process in the polling booth. (b) This button is hidden and sealed; this can be broken only at the counting center in the presence of designated office.BenefitsThe cost per EVM was ₹5,500 (equivalent to ₹44,000 or US$640 in 2018) at the time the machines were purchased in 1989–90. The cost was estimated to be ₹10,500 (equivalent to ₹13,000 or US$180 in 2018) per unit as per an additional order issued in 2014.[38]Even though the initial investment was heavy, it has since been expected to save costs of production and printing of crores of ballot papers, their transportation and storage, substantial reduction in the counting staff and the remuneration paid to them. For each national election, it is estimated that about 10,000 tonnes of the ballot paper are saved. EVMs are easier to transport compared to ballot boxes as they are lighter, more portable, and come with polypropylene carrying cases. Vote counting is also faster. In places where illiteracy is a factor, illiterate people find EVMs easier than ballot paper system. Bogus voting is greatly reduced as the vote is recorded only once. The unit can store the result in its memory before it is erased manually. The battery is required only to activate the EVMs at the time of polling and counting and as soon as the polling is over, the battery can be switched off. The shelf life of Indian EVMs is estimated at 15 years.[39]LimitationsMain article: TotaliserA candidate can know how many people from a polling station voted for him. This is a signNow issue particularly if lop-sided votes for/against a candidate are cast in individual polling stations and the winning candidate might show favoritism or hold a grudge on specific areas. The Election Commission of India has stated that the manufacturers of the EVMs have developed a Totaliser unit which can connect several balloting units and would display only the overall results from an Assembly or a Lok Sabha constituency instead of votes from individual polling stations.[40][41]Security issuesAn international conference on the Indian EVMs and its tamperability of the said machines was held under the chairmanship of Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata Party and former Union Cabinet Minister for Law, Commerce and Justice at Chennai on 13 February 2010. The conclusion was that the Election Commission of India was shirking its responsibility on the transparency in the working of the EVMs.[42]In April 2010, an independent security analysis was released by a research team led by Hari K. Prasad, Rop Gonggrijp, and Alex Halderman.[18]In order to mitigate these threats, the researchers suggest moving to a voting system that provides greater transparency, such as paper ballots, precinct count optical scan, or a voter verified paper audit trail, since, in any of these systems, skeptical voters could, in principle, observe the physical counting process to gain confidence that the outcome is fair.[43]But Election Commission of India points out that for such tampering of the EVMs, one needs physical access to EVMs, and pretty high tech skills are required. Given that EVMs are stored under strict security which can be monitored by candidates or their agents all the time, its impossible to gain physical access to the machines. Plus, to impact the results of an election, hundreds to thousands of machines will be needed to tamper with, which is almost impossible given the hi-tech and time-consuming nature of the tampering process.[44][45]Manufacturers of Electronic Voting Machines, namely Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad and Bharat Electronics Limited, Bengaluru have said that EVMs are unhackable and tamper-proof as programming for EVMs is done at a secure manufacturing facility in ECIL and BEL (where operations are logged electronically) and not with chip manufacturers.[34]Control and ballot units in EVMs and VVPATs have an anti-tamper mechanism by which they become non-operational if it is illegally opened. EVMs are standalone machines, have no radio frequency transmission device features , operate on battery packs and cannot be reprogrammed. The control Unit of EVMs has a real-time clock that logs every event on its right from the time it was switched on. The anti-tamper mechanism in the machine can detect even 100-millisecond variations.On 25 July 2011, responding to a PIL (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 312 of 2011), Supreme Court of India asked EC to consider request to modify EVMs and respond within three months. The petitioner Rajendra Satyanarayan Gilda had alleged that EC has failed to take any decision despite his repeated representation. The petitioner suggested that the EVMs should be modified to give a slip printed with the symbol of the party in whose favour the voter cast his ballot.[9][46][47][48]On 17 January 2012, Delhi High Court in its ruling on Dr. Subramanian Swamy's Writ Petition (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 11879 of 2009) challenging the use of EVMs in the present form said that EVMs are not "tamper-proof". Further, it said that it is "difficult" to issue any directions to the EC in this regard. However, the court added that the EC should itself hold wider consultations with the executive, political parties and other stake holders on the matter.[49][50]Swamy appealed against Delhi High Court's refusal to order a VVPAT system in Supreme Court. On 27 September 2012, Election Commission's advocate Ashok Desai submitted to a Supreme Court bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi that field trial for VVPAT system is in progress and that a status report will be submitted by early January 2013. Desai said that on pressing of each vote, a paper receipt will be printed, which will be visible to the voters inside a glass but cannot be taken out of the machine. Dr. Swamy said that the new system was acceptable to him.The Supreme Court posted the matter for further hearing to 22 January 2013[51][52]and on 8 October 2013, it delivered a verdict, that the Election Commission of India will use VVPAT.[53]Another similar writ petition filed by the Asom Gana Parishad is still pending before the Gauhati High Court.[54]2019 allegationsSyed Shuja, described as a "self-claimed expert" on EVMs by The India Today,[55]has alleged that Indian EVMs can be hacked, and have been hacked by Indian political parties such as the AAP, BJP, Congress, SP and others.[56]Shuja appeared from a remote location using Skype in January 2019 for a press conference organized by the Indian Journalists’ Association[57]and the London-based Foreign Press Association.[58]He alleged that the EVM units can be wirelessly tampered with, and have been tampered with the help of Reliance Communications. He also made allegations of many murders and other criminal activity associated with EVMs tampering, allegations he could not substantiate nor did he present any evidence for his allegations before journalists gathered in London for the Shuja press interview.[59]The possibility of EVM tampering as described by Shuja have been rejected by the Election Commission of India.[55]The Commission stated that the Indian EVMs do not contain any wireless chips and related communication components.[59]The Election Commission reiterated that their official EVMs are manufactured in India under very strict supervisory and security conditions and there are "rigorous Standard Operating Procedures meticulously observed at all stages under the supervision of a Committee of eminent technical experts constituted way back in 2010".[55]The commission has charged Shuja under Section 505(1)(b) of the Indian Penal Code (titled "Punishment for Statements Conducing to Public Mischief") by lodging a First Information Report against him with the Delhi Police.[60]The Bharatiya Janata Party attributed this claim to the opposing Indian National Congress as an attempt by them to manipulate the electorate with fake news before forthcoming elections.[61]In January 2019, the London-based press conference organizer stated, "The Foreign Press Association strongly disassociates itself with any claims made by the speaker Syed Shuja during the #IJA event [about Indian EVMs and related matters] in London yesterday. Not one of the masked speaker’s accusations has so far been corroborated."[58]The India Today called Shuja's allegations as "sensationalism without substance."[58]Voter-verifiable paper audit trailFurther information: Voter-verified paper audit trailOn 8 October 2010 Election Commission appointed an expert technical committee headed by Prof. P. V. Indiresan (former Director of IIT-M) when at an all-party meeting majority of political parties backed the proposal to have a VVPAT in EVMs to counter the charges of tampering. The committee was tasked to examine the possibility of introduction of a paper trail so that voters can get a printout that will show symbol of the party to which the vote was cast.[10]After studying the issue, the committee recommended introduction of VVPAT system.[62]On 21 June 2011, Election Commission accepted Indiresan committee's recommendations and decided to conduct field trials of the system.[63]On 26 July 2011, field trials of the VVPAT system were conducted at Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya, East Delhi in Delhi and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.[64][65]The Election Commission on 19 January 2012 agreed to add a "paper trail" of the vote cast. The upgrade of EVMs that followed modified the EVM software and a printer was attached to the machine. With the VVPAT system, when a vote is cast, it is recorded in its memory and simultaneously a serial number and vote data is printed out. This states Anil Kumar, the managing director of the state-owned EVM manufacturer Bharat Electronic Limited, ensures more confidence in the voting results.[66]The printouts, Kumar said, "are used later to cross-check the voting data stored in the EVMs".[11][67]Voter-verifiable paper audit trail was first used in an election in India in September 2013 in Noksen in Nagaland.[68]The voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system was introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies in 2014.[69][70][71]VVPAT was implemented in the 2014 elections at Lucknow, Gandhinagar, Bangalore South,[72]Chennai Central, Jadavpur, Raipur, Patna Sahib[73][74]and Mizoram constituencies.[75][76][77]On 8 October 2013, Supreme Court of India delivered its verdict on Subramanian Swamy's PIL, that Election Commission of India will use VVPAT along with EVMs in a phased manner.[53][78][79]In June 2018, Election Commission of India decided that all VVPATs will have a built-in-hood to protect the printer and other devices from excess light and heat.[80]ExportsNepal, Bhutan, Namibia and Kenya have purchased India-manufactured EVMs. Fiji was expected to use Indian EVMs in its elections in 2014. In 2013, the Election Commission of Namibia acquired 1700 control units and 3500 ballot units from India's Bharat Electronics Limited; these units will be used in the regional and presidential elections in 2014.[81]Several other Asian and African countries are reportedly interested in using them as well.[82]See alsoRisk-limiting auditVoting machineElectoral fraudNone of the aboveFurther reading"WP (C) No. 11879 of 2009" (PDF). High Courts of India. 17 January 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 January 2012. Retrieved 6 July 2012. Delhi High Court judgement saying EVMs are not foolproof.ReferencesVerma, Arvind (2005). "Policing Elections in India". India Review. 4 (3–4): 354–376. doi:10.1080/14736480500302217.Madhavan Somanathan (2019). "India's electoral democracy: How EVMs curb electoral fraud". Brookings Institution, Washington DC.Kumar, D. Ashok; Begum, T. Ummal Sariba (2012). Electronic voting machine — A review. IEEE. doi:10.1109/icprime.2012.6208285. ISBN 978-1-4673-1039-0.Wilkinson, Steven (2005). "Elections in India: Behind the Congress Comeback". Journal of Democracy. Project Muse. 16 (1): 153–167. doi:10.1353/jod.2005.0018.Debnath, Sisir; Kapoor, Mudit; Ravi, Shamika (2017). "The Impact of Electronic Voting Machines on Electoral Frauds, Democracy, and Development". SSRN Journal. Elsevier BV: 1–59. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3041197.Lok Sabha elections 2019: Check FAQs related to EVMS, India Today (March 15, 2019)A look inside the electronic voting machine, The Hindu (March 10, 2019)"CPI(M), JD(S) back Advani on EVM manipulation issue". The Hindu. Chennai, India. 6 July 2009. Retrieved 23 June 2012."SC asks EC to consider request to modify EVMs". The Times of India. 26 July 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2012.Ranjan, Rakesh (15 December 2011). "Delhi HC to decide on EVMs". The Pioneer. Retrieved 10 January 2012."New EVMs to have paper trail". The Times of India. 20 January 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2012."EVM-paper trail introduced in 8 of 543 constituencies". Daily News and Analysis. 27 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."EC announces Lok Sabha election dates: VVPATs, to be used in all polling stations, help bring more accuracy in voting"."What are EVMs, VVPAT and how safe they are". The Times of India. 6 December 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Count VVPAT slips of 5 booths in each assembly seat: SC"."SC Directs ECI To Increase VVPAT Verification From One EVM To Five EVMs Per Constituency"."When the SC Says No for Software Audit Review of EVMs & VVPAT at Present".Wolchok, Scott; Wustrow, Eric; Halderman, J. Alex; Prasad, Hari K.; Kankipati, Arun; Sakhamuri, Sai Krishna; Yagati, Vasavya; Gonggrijp, Rop (October 2010). Security Analysis of India's Electronic Voting Machines (PDF). 17th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.Electronic Voting Machine, The Election Commission of IndiaCEO issues clarification, says faulty EVM polled votes for Congress, not BJP, United News of India (April 26, 2019)Goa's faulty EVM polled votes for Congress, not BJP: CEO, Business Standard (April 26, 2019)Arvind Verma (2009). "Situational Prevention and Elections in India". International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences. 4 (2): 86–89.Milan Vaishnav (2017). When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. Yale University Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 978-0-300-21620-2.Arvind Verma (2009). "Situational Prevention and Elections in India". International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences. 4 (2): 86–87., Quote: "Organized 'booth capturing' began in 1957 when a group of upper-caste muscle-men chased away the electorate and forcibly cast the votes for their candidate (Sen, 2004). Such booth capturing (the forcible casting of votes in favor of a particular candidate) and the use of force to prevent genuine voters from exercising their rights slowly became a serious problem in most parts of India and especially in States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh."Milan Vaishnav (2017). When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. Yale University Press. pp. 87, 111. ISBN 978-0-300-21620-2.N. S. Saksena (1993). India, Towards Anarchy, 1967-1992. Abhinav Publications. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-81-7017-296-3.Milan Vaishnav (2017). When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. Yale University Press. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-0-300-21620-2.Alok Shukla. EVM Electronic Voting Machines. Leadstart. pp. 70–73. ISBN 978-93-5201-122-3.Alok Shukla. EVM Electronic Voting Machines. Leadstart. pp. 72–74. ISBN 978-93-5201-122-3.Nandan Nilekani (2012). Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century. Penguin. pp. 115–117. ISBN 978-0-14-341799-6."Electronic Voting Machine, Chapter 39, Reference handbook, Election commission of India". Press Information Bureau. Archived from the original on 7 March 2009. Retrieved 1 September 2010. Used in Hazaribagh District.Vishesh Shrivastava; Girish Tere (2016). "An Analysis of Electronic Voting Machine for its Effectiveness". International Journal of Computing Experiments. 1 (1): 8–12."ECI Voting Equipments". Election Commission of India. Retrieved 10 January 2019."EVMs foolproof, can't be tampered with, says former ECIL chairman"."All Questions About EVMs Are Answered Here"."Election Commission plans to replace all pre-2006 EVMs with advanced M3 machines"."Zero Complaints Came Up After Lok Sabha Polls, Claims Expert Behind EVMs"."Electronics Corp, Bharat Electronics get EVM contracts". The Indian Express. 7 March 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Shelf-life of 50% EVMs ending, have to buy 14 lakh for 2019: EC". The Indian Express. 25 October 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2019."New counting method for Assembly polls". India Today. 4 December 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Know Your Electronic Voting Machine" (PDF). Press Information Bureau. Retrieved 1 September 2010."Swamy for expert panel on secure EVMs". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Archived from the original on 3 February 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2012.Ramani, Srinivasan (18 December 2017). "It takes a heck of a lot to hack an EVM". The Hindu. Retrieved 10 January 2019."EVMs cannot be tampered: K J Rao". Indian Express. 7 August 2009. Retrieved 17 September 2012.Lakshman, Narayan (10 August 2010). "Hot debate over Electronic Voting Machines". The Hindu. Chennai, India."SC order on EVM". Supreme Court of India. 25 July 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2012."SC seeks EC reply on EVM modification". The Assam Tribune. 25 July 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2012."Do EVMs need modification? SC asks EC to decide in 3 weeks". Indian Express. 25 July 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2012."EVMs not tamper-proof, but no paper trail: Delhi HC". The Times of India. 17 January 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012."EVMs not tamper-proof: Delhi HC". The Pioneer. 18 January 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012."Field trial of new EVMs with paper trail under way: ECI informs SC". Law et al. News. 27 September 2012. Archived from the original on 9 February 2016. Retrieved 27 September 2012."Supreme Court hearing in Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No(s).13735/2012". Supreme Court of India. New Delhi. Retrieved 27 September 2012."Supreme Court asks Election Commission to introduce paper trail in EVMs". India Today. 8 October 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2019."EC buys time on paper trail". The Telegraph. Calcutta, India. 5 December 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2012."Motivated slugfest: Election Commission slams man claiming EVMs can be hacked". India Today. 21 January 2019. Retrieved 22 January 2019."Rigged EVM".Under attack from BJP, Kapil Sibal tries to save face after EVM hacking drama, India Today (January 22, 2019)Foreign Press Association distances itself from Syed Shuja's wild claims about 2014 rigging, India Today (January 22, 2019)Mystery man Shuja makes wild claims as London event to show EVM hacking flops, India Today (January 21, 2019)"EVM hacking claim: EC asks Delhi Police to lodge FIR". Press Trust of India. 22 January 2019. Retrieved 22 January 2019."EVM hacking claim a Congress-sponsored conspiracy to defame Indian democracy: BJP". Press Trust of India. 22 January 2019. Retrieved 22 January 2019."EVM with paper trail to be tested in 200 places". The Times of India. 1 June 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2012."Election Commission to introduce EVM and VVPAT system for more transparent electronic voting". The Economic Times. 21 June 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2012."New voting machines found perfect: Election Commission". Kolkata News. 28 July 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2012."New Voting Machines Found Perfect: EC". Daijiworld.com. 28 July 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2012.New EVMs to have paper trail, The Times of India (January 19, 2012)"New EVMs to have paper trail: BEL". Firstpost. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2012."Nagaland first to use VVPAT device for voting". Business Standard. 4 September 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2019."LS polls: Voters to get 'automated-receipts' at Gandhinagar". Business Standard. Press Trust of India. 29 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."VVPAT machine to be on demonstration for 10 days". The Hindu. 4 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."VVPAT to be introduced in Jadavpur constituency". India TV News. 2 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."VVPAT to Debut in B'lore South". The New Indian Express. 4 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Patna Sahib electorate can see who they voted for". The Times of India. Retrieved 10 January 2019."400 EVMs on standby for Patna Sahib, Pataliputra". The Times of India. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Election Commission of India". Election Commission of India. Retrieved 10 January 2019."VVPAT, a revolutionary step in voting transparency". Daily News and Analysis. 27 April 2014. Retrieved 27 April 2014."EVM slip will help verify your vote". The Times of India. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Civil Appeal No.9093 of 2013". Supreme Court of India. Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2019."Elections 2014: SC directive to EC for paper trail in EVMs". The Hindu. 8 October 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2019.Vishnoi, Anubhuti (11 June 2018). "All VVPATs in 2019 to come with hood to keep light at bay". The Economic Times. Retrieved 10 January 2019."ECN unveils 'tamper-free' voting machines". Namibian Sun. 5 July 2013. Archived from the original on 9 July 2013.Tiwari, Rajnish; Herstatt, Cornelius (January 2012). "India – A Lead Market for Frugal Innovations? Extending the Lead Market Theory to Emerging Economies" (PDF). Hamburg University of Technology. p. 18. Retrieved 11 March 2013."Supreme Court issues contempt notice to Election Commission of India". Critic Brain - India News, Politics, Opinions - on Thoughts on Talks. 1 July 2016. Archived from the original on 21 January 2018. Retrieved 31 December 2018.External links"Electronic Voting Machine". Election Commission of India.Security Analysis of India's Electronic Voting Machines, Scott Wolchok et al, A paper presented at the 17th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security ConferenceCategories:Science and technology in IndiaElections in IndiaElectronic voting by countryElection technologyNavigation menuNot logged inTalkContributionsCreate accountLog inArticleTalkReadEditView historySearchMain pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom articleDonate to WikipediaWikipedia storeInteractionHelpAbout WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesContact pageToolsWhat links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkPage informationWikidata itemCite this pagePrint/exportCreate a bookDownload as PDFPrintable versionLanguagesभोजपुरीहिन्दीاردوEdit linksThis page was last edited on 5 August 2019, at 18:09 (UTC).Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. 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Tough question as answers will be so subjective.Personally, The Downward Spiral takes centre stage. Many reasons spring to mind:Angry, disillusioned young man signNowing a zenith in his abilities to express these difficult emotions in musical terms with utter laser guided precision. The resultant album crystallised the turmoil of his inner spirit with such jaw dropping efficiency and aggression. The album has proven to be timeless and a gift that keeps on giving.Fun with time signatures - no shying away from breaking away from 4/4 song structures. The results were incredible - think March of The Pigs, I do Not Want This, as leading examples.The alchemical nature of its production. Nine Inch Nails may well be Trent Reznor (and more recently Atticus Ross) however at the time TDS was being recorded, it was the alchemy of others such as Chris Vrenna, Robin Finck, Danny Lohner, Flood, Adrian Belew and to an extent the house 10050 Ceilo Drive where the infamous Manson Murders took place. I’d argue that the sound of the album could never have sounded as it does without the characters and location surrounding its productionFourteen tracks where nothing is wasted - not a beat or sample out of place. Not a single disposable song or instrumental. Genius manipulation of layers and sonics. 25 years later, I still notice things that I hadn’t before.For many the album remains misunderstood - TDS had garnered descriptions of being an ‘industrial metal album’ at times. While the shoe can fit superficially, the core of the album is electronic. It always was and always will be. Given how organic and abrasive the sound design was, it is easier to see why it was incorrectly pigeon holed, but drilling deeper into the production sonics, it becomes harder to not be mind blown by the stunning and meticulously crafted electronic production standards buried deep within it. Sampling mastery at its finest.I said this was going to be subjective…I was 23 when this album came out. Thinking of myself as something of a music aficianado, I remember clearly feeling rattled with such a deep unease during the first three plays of TDS. I thought that I’d developed a broad vocabulary for the kind of music I appreciated, thought I could describe it easily. TDS came out and I became lost for words as to what It was. I’d never head music that had got under my skin as much as this before. I remember Eraser being particularly horrifying upon first listen, it actually invoked something close to fear. I haven’t heard a record since then that could affect me in the way that this album did. When I reflect upon this now (an this probably ties back to point 4) the whole album has a deeply unsettling personality, there is the alchemy of the tracks and their sequential arrangement. Because of this detail, with all parts connecting to make the final sum, the album skilfully pulls the listener through a ‘heart of darkness’ and cleverly taps into a variety of dark emotions, concluding with a delicate thread of hope.I could probably continue with an ongoing list in this TDS TL;DR monologue of praise, but I’ll leave it here.I also rate The Slip for being up there in the cream of NIN albums. I found the immediacy of the album incredibly superb. The album is sharp and mostly punchy, therefore has another particular energy characteristic. I know that it was recorded in the spirit of quick production, allowing for imperfections.As a result, The Slip is a fun listen in some respects, it’s the sound of Trent and co-conspirators going Bang-Bang-Bang! firing out tracks in a short space of time compared to other NIN releases. It somehow feels lighter, very lean, attitudinal and unselfconscious. As NIN albums go, this one is as close in sentiment to the saying ‘Dance like nobody is looking, sing like nobody is listening’ There is an inherent rawness to the character of The Slip, making it (in my opinion) one of the best NIN albums in a generally impressive collection. Noteworthy mention here is that The Slip was a ‘Free’ download at the time of release. I still bought a physical copy though.Best of three.I surprise myself by choosing the most recent trilogy of e.p’s - ‘What about the Fragile?!’ Some of you say. I know that a lot of people rate it as the best of NIN, there was a time where with fewer albums under their belt, it would have been in the top three for me. However, further down the line of time, while I acknowledge moments of sublimity, brilliance, menace and beauty, I also have to acknowledge that there are a few tracks that just jar, for personal reasons.The recent trilogy: Not the Actual Events, Add Violence , and Bad Witch on the other hand, can and should be viewed as an album in three acts. I adored NTAE for returning to an earlier almost TDS sound in places, the self referential sonic nuances were a delight, especially as this sounded closer in spirit to what the imagined Hesitation Marks would sound like when pre-release articles mentioned NIN returning to earlier, familiar sound palettes (or words to that effect)The beauty of the e.p trilogy was that it was clear that however the final tracks were honed down and chosen, those that made it were succinct, blunt-force to the point and admirably exploratory in their presentation.Trent and Atticus may often tear up the rule book of what NIN should sound like, which is always refreshing. Sometimes this attitude works brilliantly, at other times you can sense that they just wanted to get something out of their system (Hesitation Marks being a good example)The trilogy presents a plethora of new NIN material, from the familiar to brazenly strange. What I liked the most about this collection was that It never settled on one identity and a consequence of this was that listened to as a whole, this felt like a brand new era of a revived NIN, bursting with imagination and new ideas. I particularly enjoyed the Bad Witch e.p for really taking me out of my comfort zone of what I think NIN should sound like. Those odd moments of Sax or Trent’s alternative approach to vocal delivery at first seemed alien and partly jarring, but then I think It worked on a deeper level, touching upon something Trent had mentioned in interviews at the time where he was recalling ‘working with an album that you may not like at first, but grow to love with each listen’ This is how it turned out for me and for the reasons stated above, the trilogy has cemented itself for being worthy of being in a subjective ‘best NIN albums’ trilogy.Noteworthy also were the first two e.p ‘Physical Components’ I absolutely loved the care and thought that went into the presentation of these two releases. I loved that the additional materials begged to be explored, examined, discussed. It was a masterclass in generating ‘user engagement’ beyond the commonplace boundaries of just playing an mp3/aac etc I hope that this spirit continues in future NIN releases. I personally don’t mind paying a little bit more for having an ‘experience’ that accompanies and extends the scope of the music.

In Simple Words REX is Compliance system initiated by European union for Certification of Origin.If one wants to export goods value exceeds 6000 EUR to Europe then has to attach this certificate with consignment.In Official Frame of words:Subject: – Certification of Origin of Goods for European Union Generalised System of Preferences (EU-GSP) – Modification of the system as of 1 January 2017.In exercise of powers conferred under paragraph 2.04 of the Foreign Trade Policy, 2015-2020, the Director General of Foreign Trade hereby inserts a new sub para (c) under Para 2.104 Generalised System o...