Zeno's quantum paradox

Picture to attract attention, but related to the topic.
Hi, Habr!
Want to stretch your brains a little? “Once upon a time there were ancient Greeks. They lived well because slaves worked instead of them. And it was very boring for the ancient Greeks: they were not accustomed to work, there was nothing to do. They made a lyre for playing music, invented a theater, geometry, mathematics, philosophy and other sciences, but there was still not enough entertainment.
And then Zeno of Elea came to the aid of the suffering, with his so-called aporia - paradoxes designed for a considerable load on the brains of his contemporaries.

Contemporaries rejoiced: now it was possible not just to idle, but to think long and hard about the proposed paradoxes, which, moreover, partly justified laziness ”.

In fact, if the movement does not exist in principle, then why try in vain, go somewhere and do something, you just have to lie on the grass under the acacias and philosophize slyly over the secrets of the Universe.
Interested? Welcome to habrakat (cited several references to the textbooks of quantum physics).
Why doesn't movement exist? This conclusion stems from the famous paradox, called “the arrow of Zeno”. The bottom line is that an arrow in flight remains stationary at every single moment in time. As in the photograph. So, in fact ... does not fly anywhere. And if it flies, it is only from the point of view of those who watch it.
')
In 1958, Leonid Khalfin recalled this paradox in the USSR. Unlike the ancient Greeks, Halfin was engaged in business - investigated the problems of quantum physics. And he put forward a completely mystical hypothesis. At first I will retell it in bird language. Under the condition of discreteness of the energy spectrum , the decay of quantum states depends on the frequency of measurements directly. If you observe an unstable particle often enough, then it will not disintegrate at all.

Now - in normal language. If no one looks at an unstable particle, then it is offended by the lack of attention to its person and disintegrates. But it will not disintegrate until at least someone is interested. For the very fact of observation contributes to the extension of the existence of the observed entity. The arrow of Zeno is flying as long as we see it fly.

Twenty years later, the Americans decided to continue the study of their Soviet colleagues. In particular, physicists George Sudarshan and Baydyanat Mizra. It was they who in 1978 designated the phenomenon as the “Quantum Paradox of Zeno”, calling their article so. And in 1989, rumors spread that this effect was allegedly confirmed experimentally. Apparently, someone was staring at quanta for a very long time, not allowing them to sink into oblivion.

It turns out that not only quantum states of anything, but even the decay of radioactive particles are subject to the effect. Allegedly, the particle either decays more slowly, or becomes everlasting, if a Geiger counter or similar sensor is placed next to it.

Sorry, there were not enough sensors to fill the Chernobyl NPP with them and thus eliminate the consequences of the accident ... "

This is how the humanities for the humanities write. I will keep silent about the conclusions, if you want, read it yourself.
But there they remembered that Tesla believed in the theory of the ether, they say that it is true, that the theory of relativity has not yet been proved, and that one unknown Soviet scientist has already proved everything: "Scientists simply earn money from a collider."

Oh, in fact, this behavior follows from the Schrödinger equation.
If we consider the probability of decay of a radioactive particle, as we used to: w = 1 - exp (-t / T), then the probability of decay, if we measure N times, does not change.
w = 1 - exp (-t / NT) ^ N = 1 - exp (-t / T).
If we consider the behavior of the wave function in the same process, using the Schrödinger equation, we will see the dependence on the number of measurements. Moreover, as the number of dimensions tends to infinity (continuous measurement), the particle will not decay.

There is an even simpler explanation, without mathematics, which follows from the work of John von Neumann, in particular from the hypothesis of the existence of von Neumann's reduction (collapse of the wave function) . This phenomenon is an instantaneous change in the wave function when measured on an eigenvector.
Therefore, if measurements are made frequently, the time for changing the state is reduced, the quantum particle remains in its state.

For example, a particle can go into an excited state, then the observation will reduce the probability of transition.
A more complex and interesting example: an atom transitions from an excited state (1) to an even higher energy (2), from where it can go to the ground state (3) with emission of a photon of a certain frequency. Even the ability to observe this photon, not necessarily its observation, says that the more likely the transition is 2-3, the less likely the transition is 1-2. You can read it here.

The effect can be used to “freeze” an atom in the desired quantum state, so that a quantum computer can read information, it can be used to produce commercial atomic magnetometers.
Many consider this effect to be the basis of people's thinking and the unique features of birds to orient themselves on the Earth’s magnetic field.
They say that a group of scientists decided to use it to transfer information faster than the speed of light.
Someone dreams of using it to protect information from being read by third parties. You can read about this by clicking on this link. In general, this is an almost inexhaustible topic, because this topic has many references to other topics and you can talk about it almost endlessly.
Thanks for attention.
UPD: Thanks to the user sheknitrtch for showing the error and sending it to the dialogues.