AMA | September 2024

1385.695 - 1413.329 Sean Carroll

Whereas in quantum mechanics, even the gentlest of measurements can extremely disturb the system because wave functions collapse onto specific values of whatever it is you have measured. And so what that collapse means is that if the particle, the system, is in some unknown state, there is literally nothing you can do to measure it and tell you what state it was in before the measurement.