system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is an observation in quantum mechanics?

From what I understand, an observation causes the wavefunction of a particle to collapse (forgetting this year's Nobel for a minute). This collapse is due to the interaction between the measurement device and the particle. As a simplified example, to observe an electron in some way a photon can be scattered off of it. The interaction between the two causes the wavefunction to collapse. Now if an electron is traveling through space in an area near an energy source so that the photon density in the space surrounding the electron is very high, does that mean the electron will constantly exist in some sort of collapsed state? How exactly does this work? We don't really cover what exactly constitutes an observation in class, but the professor almost makes it seem like there is a human element attached to the process -- as though even though the electron would be constantly colliding with photons its wavefunction would evolve as though the photons are not there unless a human observes the interaction? Can someone please explain this to me?
gpt
Observation does **not** require a human element.

In QM an observation can be thought of as any interaction between two quantum systems which entangles them. When this happens, if you try to look at the state of one system alone, you get a classically mixed state (which is basically what people mean when they say the wavefunction has collapsed).