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Human Eye Could Detect Spooky Action At a Distance

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Feb 19, 2009 08:37 PM
from the I-seen-things dept.
Science
KentuckyFC writes "The human eye is a good photon detector--it's sensitive enough to spot photons in handfuls. So what if you swapped a standard photon detector with a human eye in the ongoing experiments to measure spooky-action-at-a-distance? (That's the ability of entangled photons to influence each other, no matter how far apart they might be.) A team of physicists in Switzerland have worked out the details and say that in principle there is no reason why human eyes couldn't do this kind of experiment. That would be cool because it would ensure that the two human observers involved in the test would become entangled, albeit for a short period time. The team, led by Nic Gisin, a world leader on entanglement, says it is actively pursuing this goal (abstract) so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months."
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Submission: Human Eye Could Detect Spooky Action At A Distance by KentuckyFC (1144503)
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  • Entanglement? Sounds cool! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster (602015) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:39PM (#26924403)
    I'm thinkin', me, and Halle Berry ... or maybe Famke Janssen.

    Yeah, okay, so I just watched X-Men on cable.

  • uh oh ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:40PM (#26924409)

    I sense a host of new bad pickup lines coming in the near future.

    • Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Concerned Onlooker (473481) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:15PM (#26924639) Journal
      And even worse posts in 3, 2, 1...

    • Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by CopaceticOpus (965603) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:15PM (#26924985)

      Baby, I feel so connected to you. Almost like we simultaneously (from the perspective of a fixed point midway between us) observed a set of photons with quantum properties amplified from the quantum properties of a single photon, that single photon being one of a pair of photons with linked quantum states, so that by observing the photons we caused their probabilities to collapse into a single observed state which was not predetermined but which was shared by both photons, a result which we later confirmed by comparing our observations using a conventional method of information sharing which propagated at less than the speed of light. Ya know, entangled. Don't you feel it?

      Actually, I've heard of worse pickup lines.

      • Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CODiNE (27417) on Friday February 20 2009, @06:15AM (#26926997) Homepage

        Prior art: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

        "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you -- especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

    • Re:uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ozphx (1061292) on Thursday February 19 2009, @11:19PM (#26925387) Homepage

      Bad pickup lines? They certainly worked well enough when I became entangled with your mom last night!

  • Also (Score:3, Funny)

    by interkin3tic (1469267) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:40PM (#26924411)

    It can see sexy action at a distance.

  • It takes two to tango (Score:5, Funny)

    by flyingfsck (986395) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:41PM (#26924423)
    It may be a first, but lets hope they keep it boy-girl. Same sex entanglement can't be much fun.

      • Leviticus 23:45

        Thou shalt not entangeleth with another man as thou would quantum entangle thyself with another woman - this is an abomination.

        He also goes on to talk about not getting quantumly entangled with beasts of the field.

        In fact theres not very many Jewish physicists, because of the risk of accidently entangling yourself with a passing insect or even a flamboyantly gay bosun.

  • Frogs (Score:4, Funny)

    by dachshund (300733) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:43PM (#26924427)
    I've heard that frogs have the ability to detect single photons [iop.org]. This is from a cryptographer who jokingly proposed a frog-based system for quantum key distribution.
    But on a more serious note, what does it really mean for two people to become entangled? And does it matter that the photons are detected by a human retina? Could the entanglement just as easily happen if the photons were fired into my left butt-cheek?

    • Re:Frogs (Score:5, Funny)

      by ScrewMaster (602015) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:51PM (#26924487)

      I've heard that frogs have the ability to detect single photons [iop.org]. This is from a cryptographer who jokingly proposed a frog-based system for quantum key distribution.

      So I'm guessing that the unit of measurement for frog-based quantum encryption is the "ribbet".

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hordeking (1237940)

      I've heard that frogs have the ability to detect single photons [iop.org]. This is from a cryptographer who jokingly proposed a frog-based system for quantum key distribution. But on a more serious note, what does it really mean for two people to become entangled? And does it matter that the photons are detected by a human retina? Could the entanglement just as easily happen if the photons were fired into my left butt-cheek?

      Furthermore, how does one "record" it such that the data can be retrieved? Yes, I know your dumb girlfriend "saw" the flash, and can report it, but it's still subjective. It's not like saying "hmm, that photon bumped the meter to 3.2eV"

    • Re:Frogs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iris-n (1276146) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:14PM (#26924975)

      Well, your retina is a little more sensible to handfuls of photons than your left butt-cheek, but apart from that, it's no difference. By interacting with an entangled particle you acquire its entanglement.

      In this experiment, the entanglement will happen only momentarily in a few cells of the people's retinas. Then the self-interactions of the eye will kill it. So it's not interesting in the consequences, but in the concept of having a micro-macro connection, a human measuring apparatus having quantum mechanical properties.

      But what would it mean to people becoming entangled? Technically, their actions would be correlated. Practically, its completely impossible to do it. A person's nervous system is a very slow and noisy system. By the time it would take to the entanglement couple itself all the way from the eyes to the brain it would be long dead. And to spread to rest of the body, pft.

      But I can make a car analogy. If those entangled people would be driving cars, the cars would become entangled to. And if Alice turned right, Bob will be turning left at the same time. And vice versa. Not as a result of their actions, just a correlation. But of course this is silly and impossible.

      That said, it is one of the funniest articles I've ever read (yes, I RTFA. Sorry;). Filled with subtle jokes, and has some science juice. It appears that the eyes are a quite good detector indeed, very resistant to noise.

      • Re:Frogs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Vellmont (569020) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:25PM (#26925061)


        I think perhaps we are constantly entangled, but that our "consciousness"

        Just because it's unusual to us doesn't mean it's mystical or magical. For your idea to actually be science and not philosophy you'd need a much better grasp of what you're actually saying. Saying something like "we're all constantly entangled" doesn't really mean a lot, since entanglement doesn't occur on a macro-scale.

        People have tried to tie together mysticism, quantum mechanics, and consciousness before. At best it's an interesting exercise in thinking. At worst it's nonsense gibberish. To my knowledge it's never really produced anything approaching science.

  • these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zappepcs (820751) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:43PM (#26924429) Journal

    so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months

    I'm guessing the avalanche of crazy whacked out girlfriend stories is about to start...

    • Re:these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)

      by zach_the_lizard (1317619) on Thursday February 19 2009, @08:49PM (#26924477)
      Avalanche of crazy whacked out girlfriend stories? Sorry to disappoint, but this is Slashdot. We don't have the regular girlfriend stories!

      Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to stalking this one chick....

      • Re:these guys don't get out much? (Score:5, Funny)

        by pyrrhonist (701154) on Thursday February 19 2009, @11:57PM (#26925555)

        Not here, I never saw my crazy (ex) girlfriend coming...

        For people who are about to post an immature, snide comment about this being the possible reason for HartDev and his girlfriend's estrangement (ostensibly due to HartDev's ineffectual sexual performance) or how they have personally witnessed the orgasmic pleasure of HartDev's ex-girlfriend (insinuating that they not only were able to locate the ex-girlfriend of a virtually anonymous poster, but have also succeeded in obtaining coitus with her and moreover had satisfied her pure animal lust one warm summer night with the moonlight playing upon her silken hair, her nipples erect on her firm heaving breasts, while every thrust of the throbbing manhood penetrated deep within her quivering quim bringing her ever closer to a screaming climax the likes of which only the mythical consorts of the Greek gods have ever experienced), please take note:

        HartDev is blind, you insensitive clods!

  • Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Timothy Brownawell (627747) <tbrownaw@prjek.net> on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:06PM (#26924583) Journal

    (That's the ability of entangled photons to influence each other, no matter how far apart they might be.)

    That's not what entanglement is. It's knowing "this is currently the same as that" or "this is currently the opposite of that" without knowing what "this" or "that" actually is. There is no "connection" or "influence", just a relation that says knowing what "this" is tells you about what "that" is (until it gets changed by interacting with the environment).

    • Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)

      by bh_doc (930270) <blhigginsNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:25PM (#26925053) Homepage
      Emphasis on 'without knowing what "this" or "that" actually is'. Entanglement is "measuring these two things will give related results". Example, you can perform an experiment where you have two photons, which are entangled in their polarisations, and you cannot know beforehand what the results of a measurement of either photon will be. Either photon might turn out to be horizontally polarised (H), or vertically polarised (V), with 50% probability each way. But, the effect of entanglement is that there is a definite relationship between the two, such that if you detect H the other detection will always be V. And vice versa. This is why people often think of it as a "connection" between the two particles, because the result of a measurement of one, which is random, ensures that the measurement of the other is well defined. It's as if the two suddenly know what state each other is in.

    • Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DriedClexler (814907) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:40PM (#26925163)

      Bingo. It's saddening how quantum mechanics is made out to be so much more mysterious and spooky than it really is.

      A non-quantum version of entanglement is this: I cut a coin through its side, so I have two pieces, one with the head, and one with the tail side. I put each one and in a separate envelope, and give one envelope to Alice, and the other two Bob.

      I separate them by a jillion miles.

      Now Alice opens her envelope and sees tails. So she knows Bob must have heads. Wow! So awesome and spooky and mysterious and wonderful! Not! They're not sending information to each other or influencing each other. Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.

      And after she sees the half-coin, if she polishes the tail image off and inscribes another image ... no more entanglement! That is, by looking at her half-coin, you no longer are capable of learning what Bob had.

      Ditto on the quantum level. When the particles are entangled, it simply means that learning one tells you something about the other ... but influence spread is still limited to the speed of light.

      ***

      Now, with that in mind, can anyone clarify what exactly is meant by this paper? What do human eyes add, and what insight is gained by proposing or performing this experiment?

      • Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BungaDunga (801391) on Thursday February 19 2009, @11:19PM (#26925385)
        The coins-in-envelope model is the same idea as the "hidden variable" theory, no? As I understand it, observations don't support the idea that the photons (or whatever) have a "heads" or "tails" hidden away somewhere that they synchronized when they were together- the probabilities are wrong.

      • Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)

        by nuclear_zealot (1227240) on Friday February 20 2009, @01:15AM (#26925917)

        You're missing the point by describing quantum entanglement as "less mysterious". It was Einstein's (discredited) "hidden variable" theory that used the analogy of two (unknown but predetermined) coins in a pair of envelopes. In that analogy the state of the coins exists but is unknown, and the relationship between the two coins is known. The key feature of entanglement of a pair of photons is that the state of the photons is FUNDAMENTALLY UNKNOWN i.e. "does not exist", but the relationship between the two photons is known.

        The only way you can explain that is in the real world is that the instant the state of one photon is measured (remember, quantum theory states that the state does not exist until measured) it them communicates this new information to the other photon (faster than the speed of light).

        If we were going to try to stick to the coin analogy, we would be mailing two identical dice in envelopes to two different cities. Who ever opens their letter first roles the dice. Whenever the second person opens their letter and rolls their dice, they get the SAME RESULT as the first person. Both dice are completely random, but they both roll the same result, ***even if they roll their dice at exactly the same instant***.

        Now I know you're thinking "the second dice isn't random at all". Well, it doesn't make any sense, but it's exactly as random as the first dice, it's just that the dice are both random in the same way. (btw, this only works for the first dice role. Looking at the die destroys the entanglement)

        Einstein said (politely) that "entanglement" was proof that Quantum Theory was a load of fucking bullshit. Problem is: entanglement happens.

        On the bright side, you're in exalted company if you think this is a load of bullshit. :)

        As for why they are using eyeballs instead of electronic photon detectors... I have no idea. Based on the abstract (not the "fine" article) I'd say they were really working on amplifying entangled photons (which sounds HARD!) and someone said, "hey, if we could cascade >x photons, you could actually see it....". Well, after that, it's just a matter of writing an important-sounding article to justify the expense! :)

        And I for one welcome our new entangled overlords.

      • Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FrangoAssado (561740) on Friday February 20 2009, @12:18PM (#26931455)

        Now Alice opens her envelope and sees tails. So she knows Bob must have heads. (...) Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.

        That's correct, but that's not the whole story. From what you said, it looks like classic mechanics is good enough to explain it, and it's not.

        The problem is that there is not only one way you can measure the state of this "coin" -- depending on the orientation of your measurement, you get heads or tails on that specific orientation. So, when Alice measures the coin in a specific orientation, this *orientation* is "felt" by Bob's coin, and it may influence the result of Bob's measurement. That effect simply can't be explained by classic mechanics.

        For a more detailed explanation, see the section on Bell's Inequality in http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f04quantum/notes/lecture1.pdf [berkeley.edu] (warning: requires a bit of math).

  • not quite a first, guys (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Goldsmith (561202) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:18PM (#26924659)

    We live in the physical world and experience entanglement all the time. Physics doesn't stop outside the lab.

    That's a cute gimmick, but that's all it is.

    • Re:not quite a first, guys (Score:5, Insightful)

      by radtea (464814) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:55PM (#26924881)

      We live in the physical world and experience entanglement all the time

      Absolutely. This is just a PR stunt, and very bad science if you think that science involves not misleading naive people for the purposes of PR.

      The claim that the two human observers would be entangled is problematic at best. Not only wouldn't any entanglement last longer than the coherence time of a human being (~10^27 particles in thermal equilibrium at 310 K!), it is difficult to understand how the researchers would fail to notice that in some reference frames one observer would detect their photons quite a bit sooner than the other observer. In those frames the entanglement of the observation systems never happens, which is why sensible people don't talk about such things.

      The very notion of assigning "an instant" to an "event" that is by its nature nonlocal is simply incoherent. This is what makes the whole business spooky: it cannot be described using the relativistic physics that necessarily describes the world of human experience.

  • huh? Wha? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dfm3 (830843) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:32PM (#26924773) Journal
    I know I'm not the only one who has no idea what this article is about. And yes, I read TFA. Just one link or two is all I'm asking for. I know this is News for Nerds, but the subject matter seems just a tad bit obscure.

    I know, I know, I should do a Google search. Problem is, I suspect that I'd have to construct my search queries very carefully, as I worry about what kind of results I'd get...

  • Yeouch. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:34PM (#26924787)

    This is getting closer to a novel by Greg Egan called Quarantine, in which a girl escapes from a mental institution. How she escaped, nobody knows. Cameras show nothing. Security doors show no logs. The plastic sheet used for the window shows no anomalies of breaking and fixing.

    Turns out her brain was "broken" in a most unusual sense: she cannot collapse her own view. Instead, her multiple worlds (from the MWI) combine and create a non-collapsed lifeform. All this comes about in finding a created device that selectively prevents the collapse, but allows the user to change it at will.

     

  • Many eyes more sensitive than humans. (Score:4, Informative)

    by w0mprat (1317953) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:16PM (#26924999)
    I would have thought they would be experimenting with cats, which Schrodinger demonstrated have strange quantum properties.

  • Are they for real? Its not April 1st yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hAckz0r (989977) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:50PM (#26925231)
    Ok, so lets assume that you can get a burst of 'entangled' photons into your eye and someone else's eye at the same time. And the point is? Last time I checked the human eye was incapable of determining anything about a photon except whether it was received or not, and the color if in sufficient quantity for a long enough period of time. Polarization? Not a chance. So how would you know its been polarized the same as a photon that someone else received? You can't even ask them because they will be just as clueless as you. Of course they might just lie to you to play a joke. Its too early to be April 1st, so why are the 'scientists' saying all this?

    • Re:Are they for real? Its not April 1st yet... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20 2009, @01:30AM (#26925993)

      Last time I checked the human eye was incapable of determining anything about a photon except whether it was received or not, and the color if in sufficient quantity for a long enough period of time. Polarization? Not a chance.

      Humans are barely capable of detecting polarization. If you're reading this on an LCD monitor, you can probably see the effect if you look at a completely white image.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger's_brush

      More to the point, yeah, TFA seems like BS.

    • Re:What could possibly go wrong? They are just eye (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cgenman (325138) on Thursday February 19 2009, @09:20PM (#26924689) Homepage

      They're just chemicals. If they ever did achieve momentary entanglement, chances are that there would be no way of detecting or knowing such a thing had actually occurred. In the grand scheme of things, one person may register as having seen a tiny, dim flash of light that is identical to the tiny, dim flash of light that the other one saw.

    • And how long before the experiment becomes the basis for a porn movie plot?

      You'll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning.

    • Re:We can hope (Score:5, Informative)

      by MoellerPlesset2 (1419023) on Thursday February 19 2009, @10:05PM (#26924929)
      'Quantum consciousness' and all that is complete and utter bunk.

      There are no quantum-entanglement phenomena going on in the body.
      To put it in simple terms: It's too warm, and too wet.
      Or in a bit more advanced terms: The decoherence times are FAR too short to have any chemical effect, much less a biological one. Almost nobody takes Penrose's ideas seriously, but just for the hell of it, the cosmologist Max Tegmark did the math a number of years ago to prove it.
      Here's a link to an article about that paper that was in Science [mit.edu].

      • Re:We can hope (Score:4, Informative)

        by joeyblades (785896) on Friday February 20 2009, @12:01AM (#26925571)

        >To put it in simple terms: It's too warm, and too wet.

        Penrose never claimed that quantum computations were going on in the conscious brain. In fact, he specifically says "non-computational action". What he proposed is that quantum processes in collections of microtubules might manifest macro behaviors at the neuronal level. Tegmark is way off base when he starts ranting about quantum computing and doesn't seem to understand Penrose's theory. As to Tegmark's claims of to rapid decoherence... he doesn't have a clue how hot or how wet or what other factors might be in play at the microtubule level, so really it's just one guy's opinion...

        > Almost nobody takes Penrose's ideas seriously...

        Well, technically it's Hameroff's theory, but Penrose was a big and influential supporter. However, there are still a few advocates of the idea as evidenced by the large number of books on the subject from Mindell, Walker, Paster, Radin, Rosenblum, Kuttner, Talbot, Stapp, Barrett, Lockwood, Wolberg, Clayton, Stern, Jibu, Yasue, Tuszynski,...(I got tired of typing - I didn't run out of authors)... So "almost nobody" seems a bit of a mischaracterization...

        BTW, for the record, I don't personally buy into the Hameroff-Penrose theory of quantum consciousness, but at least I understand it. I wonder if Tegmark ever read "The Emperor's New Mind" or "Shadows Of The Mind"...

    • Re:ESP = Quantum entanglement (Score:5, Interesting)

      by idlemachine (732136) on Friday February 20 2009, @12:17AM (#26925645)

      I can propose a real quantum and biological mechanism for people to think along the same lines, simultaneously

      Do two different brains operate in the same way, though? What data format do you use for the transmission of information? It's not like we all install the same mental OS when we're born...

      I genuinely don't believe that we can "stream" thought from one brain to another in the way you seem to be suggesting. Neurological development isn't fixed, it's highly influenced by environment, culture, genetics, food... That two independent brains would interpret the same information in exactly the same way seems highly unlikely, if not impossible. Hell, I'm honestly amazed that we even manage to communicate as well as we do.

      I'm also willing to admit that my viewpoint here has been highly influenced by Wittgenstein :)

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