Einstein's 'Spooky Action' Has Been Demonstrated On a Massive Scale For the First Time (sciencealert.com) 278
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: For the first time, scientists have managed to show quantum entanglement -- which Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance" -- happening between macroscopic objects, a major step forward in our understanding of quantum physics. Quantum entanglement links particles in a way that they instantly affect each other, even over vast distances. On the surface, this powerful bond defies classical physics and, generally, our understanding of reality, which is why Einstein found it so spooky. But the phenomenon has since become a cornerstone of modern technology. Still, up until now quantum entanglement has only been demonstrated to work at the smallest of scales, in systems based on light and atoms, for example. Any attempt to increase the sizes has caused problems with stability, with the slightest of environmental disturbances breaking the connection. But new research changes all of this, by demonstrating that this "spooky action" can indeed be a reality between massive objects. We're not talking massive in the black hole sense but in the macroscopic sense -- two 15-micrometer-wide vibrating drum heads. And the next step will be to test whether those vibrations are being teleported between the two objects. The research has been published in the journal Nature.
News to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Entanglement is a cornerstone of modern technology? Say what?
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Entanglement is a cornerstone of modern technology? Say what?
Welcome to Slashdot.
"Massive" scale? (Score:5, Informative)
Massive is relative.
15 micrometer is only 0.015 mm. Massive would be 1,500 meters.
0.015 mm is massive compared to 10^-10 m.
Context matters.
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's something like 60 times larger than modern transistor architecture.
Given we're used to entanglement involving single atoms, it is astonishing in size.
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/10/06/smallest-transistor-1-nm-gate/
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It would be interesting to see if they could quantum entangle two MEMS resonant oscillators. Change the amplitude on one and the other changes amplitude. But how do you entangle them in the first place - beams of quantum entangled photons?
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Informative)
Entanglement is poorly understood. You don't "change one and the other changes".
Entangled particles vibrate/spin/whatever the same way. You don't know what that way of movement is until you measure it. When you measure A and discover it to be spinning clockwise (or whatever), then you also know that B is spinning clockwise. Both A and B were spinning clockwise from the time they were entangled, there is no "change" involved, just the fact that measuring the spin of A lets you also know the spin of B.
The bottom line is you CAN'T use this to transmit information instantly across distances: if it were the case that you could cause B to spin the same way as A by changing A's spin, then you could transmit information. That's not how entanglement works.
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You are describing a hidden variable theory, which has been ruled out by Bell's theorem [wikipedia.org] and subsequent experiments (well, the local version has been, and no one but Bohm is kooky enough to believe in non-local theories).
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but Bell's Theorum only rules out local hidden variables. Non-local hidden variables are still within the bounds of the theory. But they're a bit weird, as they're non-local in time as well as space. I don't think the theory puts a bound on *how* non-local they can be, but a hypervolume of light years would be difficult to test. (OTOH, I'm no expert in this area. I believe that Boehm thought they were global rather than just non-local...but that was decades ago, and things may have been found out since then. OTOH, perhaps it's really implied by the theorum.)
Still, my favorite interpretation is EWG multi-world rather than hidden variables. For parsimony I add a supposition that I can't justify which is that in addition of the state space transitioning to all possible futures, it also arrives from all possible pasts, giving a lattice rather than a tree. I've got a vague feeling that this may determine the existence and strengthening of dark energy since all the pasts still exist in the hypervolume of the universe. You just can't go into the past because all of your particles have an inertial velocity along the time axis resulting from the big bang. If this *can* be made sensible, somebody much better at that kind of math than I am would need to tackle it. But it explains the rotation of the space-time axis as you accelerate near to the speed of light, or at least I think it does. I'm not quite clear how many dimensions this idea of the universe would require, but I'm sure it's less than the 16 that were used in deriving relativity, so it could probably fit into the same framework.
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So, can I put the cat in the box now?
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Changing the spin of A breaks its entanglement with B.
Based on current knowledge, you cannot transmit information using entanglement.
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Well, not quite. You change the state of an atomic particle when you measure it, but that's because your sensor is so gross when compared to the mass of the thing being measured. I'm not sure what would happen with things microns in diameter.
Also, you don't change the state of the other particle, by measuring one particle you KNOW something about the state of the other particle. You can't really say you've changed it, since you previously had no idea of its state. And in the traditional examples by sele
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:2)
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I'm not an expert, but I won't let that stop me.
We know that there is no local determinism, from Bell's Theorem and subsequent experiments. Those sorts of theories are hidden-variable theories. It's possible that everything's determinate on a global scale, but that goes a bit too far for most physicists. If particles were multidmensional things that have apparently random behavior when projected into our spacetime, the multidimensional things themselves aren't deterministic.
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Yes, and we probably never will, except at a great expense of energy. C, well it's a pretty stern barrier. It's the basic ratio of space to time, and there's no getting around it that we can see.
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Entanglement is useful for created shared encryption keys that cannot be undetectably intercepted. While you can't control the information being sent (it's random, which is fine for encryption keys) you are transmitting that information to a remote receiver.
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Both A and B were spinning clockwise from the time they were entangled, there is no "change" involved, just the fact that measuring the spin of A lets you also know the spin of B.
Actually, no. A key property of quantum particles is that their quantum states are undetermined until locked down by measurement.
So at the time of entanglement, A will have undetermined spin S and B will have undetermined spin S'. Once S and S' are measured, they will turn out to be strongly correlated. Measuring S will randomly determine its value (and that of S') within the probabilities set by the wave function of the entangled system (A, B). Because the wave function collapse is random, it's impossible
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Yeah, you're right.
I was just giving an off-the-cuff answer based on YouTube videos I've watched on the subject (coincidentally just watching one now about Bell's theorem), in response to the frequently-seen misunderstanding that entanglement could be used to transmit information.
Saying "Both A and B were spinning clockwise from the time they were entangled" was my (poor) explanatory way of showing how measuring the spin of A cannot 'change' the spin of B - we've discovered some information about A and thro
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Both A and B were spinning clockwise from the time they were entangled, there is no "change" involved, just the fact that measuring the spin of A lets you also know the spin of B.
Nit: They have opposite spin, not the same spin.
You're citing the "hidden variable" theory, which has been definitively disproven. An oversimplified-to-the-point-of-being-wrong explanation: There are multiple possible axes of measurement and it's impossible for the two particles to have opposite spin in all of them. Yet when we measure one particle in one axis, then measure the other in the same axis, we find that they always have opposite spin, regardless of which axis we picked.
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Ok, I'll bite. Citations if you will?
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Nope.
If there's a way to transmit information using quantum entanglement then it means the speed of light doesn't apply.
(and the Universe will collapse)
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:3)
Incorrect.
Quantum entanglement may be limited the same way the Pauli exclusion principle is.
Second, if ER=EPR, and that seems likely, then the speed of light is not violated except in the long-obsolete pre-relativity 3+1 model of the universe.
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Informative)
A very important part of the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment that is not always mentioned is the coincidence counter. And this is what prevents instant transmission of information.
The experiment is often described as "create a pair of entangled particles, do weird stuff and see where each particle go". But the truth is: most particles involved in the experiment aren't actually entangled, so if you just look at the detectors, the only thing you see is noise. You need the coincidence counter to tell you that two blips in the noise pattern are actually two entangled particles, but only after the two have arrived. That's the important part, you only know after the fact, you can't watch the thing happen.
You can't use a delayed choice quantum eraser to build a useful machine that allows you to transfer data faster than light. With the current understanding of physics, it is simply impossible, and no experiment disproved that. The "information traveled back in time" interpretation is just one of many.
Currently, science isn't settled on a correct interpretation of quantum mechanics. In fact, scientists have no fucking idea how all that stuff work. The maths work, experiments match predictions, engineers put it to good use, but we don't know how to interpret the results.
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Yes Occam's razor is often misunderstood and misused. It's only an (on the surface) obvious rule that one should check the easy explanations first.
Many people that should know better take it as meaning one of the easy explanations _is_ the answer instead of one of the easy explanations being very likely to be right. That can introduce biases in the process.
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The Chinese supposedly built a satellite to test using this system to generate uncrackable one-time crypto pads. It's also not interceptable because if someone could listen in, they'd disrupt the measurement and the pads wouldn't match.
Quantum is identical to an infallible key agreement protocol with all of the same underlying baggage. It is no more or less valuable than that and hardly uncrackable.
No matter what all parties to the communication are required to guard classical sources of trust using classical means of leveraging that trust to authenticate the channel. All of these things are subject to classical attack.
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You've got your stories mixed up. It's not the Chinese, but rather the Russians who are interfering with the |i>
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:5, Insightful)
In most ways it's not different. All these "entanglements" are just the basic laws of physics in action. So for example spin is conserved, so if two photons are created and speed away in opposite directions the laws of physics their spins must add up to 0. Therefore you measure the spin of one as 1, the spin of the other must be -1.
The issue as the physicists see it is a quantum variable is doesn't exist until it's measured, where "doesn't exist" means can have no effect on the universe. Although instead of "doesn't exist or has no value" they like to say it is a superposition of all possible values. Another way of saying the same thing is the particle has no idea what it's quantum values are because if it did it would behave differently. The classic example is the double slit experiment, where a photon very confused about where it is and forms an interference pattern. But if you measure where it is before it gets to the slits so it (and you) know the values of quantum variables, the pattern disappears.
The point is, before you measured it the spin on your photon didn't have a value. And that's true for it's entanglements partner too. Then you measure it and now you know. But it's entangled particular also knows its spin at the same instant, and starts behaving like it does. (Because if it didn't the laws of the universe would break down, eg charge or momentum wouldn't be conserved.) But if it's outside the light cone how could it know what the value it must take on to so the laws of universe aren't broken? It can't, so it must be spooky action at a distance.
The term "local hidden variable" is an explanation for how this happened. It means the photon knew all along what's spin was, but it was cleverly hiding it in this hidden variable. The key point here is it's value was computed at the moment of entanglement. It was hidden from then on until you measure it, but the value was agreed upon when the particles were entangled, and entanglement always happens when they are together, communicating. Global hidden variable is another explanation - it means the whole universe knew, which when you think about is means there is communication fast than light, because otherwise how could it be "global"?.
The local hidden variable sounds like the simplest explanation. The original reason said they said is doesn't work is Bells inequality. It may be still only be Bells inequality - I don't know if anybody has actually seen the double slit effect disappear for an entangled photon when it's mate is measured. I hope there is something more convincing now, because Bells inequality is a subtle argument.
It arises because quantum values are distinctly weird. Take spin for example. In the classic worked, you can look at something spinning and see what axis it is spinning around. In quantum world you can't do that. All you can do is point a ruler in a direction, compare the axis the photon spinning around to the direction this ruler is pointing. (You have to adopt an convention that describes the direction of spin - say ruler pointing up means spinning clockwise, down means counter clockwise on the same axis.) Worse when you point the ruler and ask the question, you force the photons spin to align with the ruler - so the measurement changes the thing being measured. But you do get something out of it - you are told whether the spin now (after it was changed by you observing it) agrees with the direction your ruler is pointing (up or down). So you get a single boolean answer, and that's all you get. But your measure is real and repeatable in the sense that if you do it again with the ruler aligned in the same way, you will get the same answer every time (because remember the spin is now aligned with your ruler). And if you measure it a again with the ruler pointed in the opposite direction (eg up instead of down), you will get the reverse answer every time. This sounds intuitively correct, and it's also somewhat intuitive that if you ruler isn't parallel it isn't entirely obvious
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That only refers to the size of the Gate, not the width of the transistor which is the dimension that is used when manufacturers specify "size".
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A drop of water 0.015mm across contains about 100 trillion molecules.
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I think that's something like 60 times larger than modern transistor architecture.
LOL! You you made my day, thanks!
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I don't think anyone has designed a system that could, even in principle, use entanglement to transmit communications FTL. I know at least one person tried, and didn't succeed while I was in contact with him.
Please note: I'm not saying they didn't succeed in building such a device, I'm saying that, assuming they had a bunch of entangled bits in separate locations, they still couldn't design a device that would work. Some people have claimed that this is, in principle, impossible, and they may be right.
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If you won't, I will: they didn't succeed in building such a device. They can't, entanglement just doesn't work that way. See the no-communication theorem [wikipedia.org], which mathematically proves that entanglement is a no-go as far as FTL communication is concerned. Actually, it's worse than that: entanglement alone cannot send information, any information, ever (you can with quantum "teleportation", but that relies on using a classical channel as well as entanglement, and those always travel at or less than the speed
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Massive is relative.
15 micrometer is only 0.015 mm. Massive would be 1,500 meters.
0.015 mm is massive compared to 10^-10 m.
Context matters.
15 micrometers is bigger than the cross-section of a single-mode fiber optic cable core.
If they can make this reliably work this could revolutionize communications. Manufacture two transceivers that are quantum-entangled, so four 'drumheads', one for each direction. Install these in the manner of SFPs in network switches or routers. Use them with no medium between them at whatever distance one needs. No more horizontal boring, no more trenching, no more fiber, no more intermediate points as repeaters, n
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No dice. Information still cannot be transmitted over the FTL channel.
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Given this, why do they feel the need to test vibrations?
two 15-micrometer-wide vibrating drum heads. And the next step will be to test whether those vibrations are being teleported between the two objects.
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Because they may learn something? Because having an entangled near light speed channel would be very useful? Because they have some time left until vacation time and have to do something?
I couldn't understand anybody that wouldn't want to do that experiment given the equipment...
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:2)
entangled near light speed channel
So there is theoretically a way to communicate through the entangled channel? It just cannot be FTL?
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No. The channel is always instantaneous. There cannot be any communication.
Re: "Massive" scale? (Score:2)
So the test is to see if the theory is correct?
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You left out a word at the end of your sentence. "Yet" With the world falling apart all around us I take solace in the fact that there are people actually working on pushing theoretical concepts off the whiteboard and into real world applications.
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And the funny thing about it is that we already have lasers produced in the millions that could probably affect change on the 'drumhead' and could read the 'drumhead'.
I would be very amused if they managed to squeeze such transceivers down to SFP-size.
It took Corning and partners decades to develop fiber optic cabling, and it has taken decades to refine it down to 9 micron cores. For 40 Gigabit I believe the effective distance is 40Km, a little under 25 miles. That means every 25 miles there has to be som
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Even theoretically, you cannot transfer information faster than light.
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Where did I say it would be FTL?
How would not being FTL make it worse than current communications systems?
Even if it's not FTL, as long as it's basically as fast as light, it should be a pretty damn awesome replacement for all that fiber optic cabling.
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You cannot entangle two objects while they are at a distance. You entangle them first, then separate them, then you measure them. The measurements are random but correlated. You cannot, not even theoretically, transfer information over the channel at the time of measurement.
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The article is about massive mechanical ocillators (Score:2)
And in that context "massive" probably just means "has mass", i.e. inertia is of central importance.
Apparently the slashdot submitter misinterpreted "massive" to implicate scale as in "really heavy".
Of course 10^12 Atoms is quite a step up from single atoms or simple molecules.
Re:"Massive" scale? (Score:4, Funny)
To be fair, Paul Ryan probably thought the Costco membership was like his exclusive golf/country club membership: many thousands of dollars per year.
"Spooky Action" (Score:2)
Hey, maybe we're on the verge of (re?)discovering magic is real and something we can harness!
Re:"Spooky Action" (Score:5, Funny)
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It's just our 12-dimensional overlords toying with us.
We'll have to give Buckaroo Bonzai a power-up. He's only gotten up to the eighth dimension. :)
Strat
Soooo spoooooky? (Score:2, Informative)
>which is why Einstein found it so spooky
Which is why you have no clue what Einstein was talking about. He wasn't spooked you knucklehead, he was mocking it as magic.
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It's not your phone, it's Slashdot, which doesn't support Unicode and so turns two-byte characters like that vowel in the scientist's name into different two-byte characters in a different encoding.
Cornerstone of modern technology? (Score:3)
Did I miss a bunch of modern technology development?
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Perhaps they actually meant the bleeding edge of modern technology, like quantum computers.
Strat
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"Cornerstone" is probably stating it a bit strongly, but superconductors are mainstream now, and SQUIDs [wikipedia.org] in particular are very important to the modern world.
Fundamental misunderstanding of entanglement (Score:4, Informative)
>"In quantum teleportation, properties of physical bodies can be transmitted across arbitrary distances using the channel of 'spooky action at a distance'," says one of the team, Caspar Ockeloen-Korppi from Aalto University in Finland.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of entanglement. It is not a mechanism for teleportation, it is a dual destination verification mechanism (ie. one must be opposite the other if they maintain entanglement). You cannot set the value at one end and have it appear on the other.
For us laymen (Score:5, Funny)
For those of us who don't know enough to really understand it, we can think of it like a cat.
You pull the cat's tail on one end, the cat meows on the other end. Quantum entanglement is exactly like that. Except there is no cat.
(The above is an old description of radio, often attributed to Einstein. Doesn't sound like Einstein's sense of humor, though.)
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For those of us who don't know enough to really understand it, we can think of it like a cat.
You pull the cat's tail on one end, the cat meows on the other end. Quantum entanglement is exactly like that. Except there is no cat.
No it isn't, because that would mean you could transmit signals by means of quantum entanglement, which you can't.
It's more like: if you look at the lengthwise orientation of the cat and get to see the tail, then the nose must be on the other end and vice versa. But you also might want to look at the crosswise orientation of the cat, and if you get to see the left ear on your side, the right ear must be on the other side. Also the cat has the strange property, that if you know all about the lengthwise orien
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You are right about quantum entanglement. But the team member was talking about quantum teleportation, not just entanglement, and I suspect that you misunderstand the difference.
'You cannot set the value at one end and have it appear on the other.'
Right, about entanglement.
'properties of physical bodies can be transmitted across arbitrary distances'
Right, where the properties are quantum states.
'This is a fundamental misunderstanding of entanglement.'
No, it's not. Quantum teleportation depends on having an
Definitively classical (Score:2)
Quantum teleportation requires a "classical" channel.
This is also described in the WP-Article. I wonder if you really need to transfer 2 classical bits per qubit though.
There are some quantum computer simulators out there with which one can "simulate" quantum teleportation.
E.g. http://algassert.com/quirk [algassert.com] has a ready teleportation example under "Menu" with which one can play around.
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"(ie. one must be opposite the other if they maintain entanglement)...."
For those of us who are a little slow, how does one know entanglement has been maintained?
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Good question (nothing 'slow' about it!). The short answer: Statistically.
Longer answer: Suppose you prepare a system in a quantum state you suspect is entangled. By definition, that system will have parts that can be measured separately. Because the parts are entangled, some measurements of the parts will be correlated. A single measurement of the parts might show that the correlation is violated, in which case you've learned that the state is *not* entangled (possibly is was entangled but that entanglemen
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Thanks, I was afraid that might be the answer. I should think that'll kind of limit the practical utility of quantum entanglement unless loss of entanglement is uncommon..
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What a stupid analogy
Spooky? (Score:2)
Damn (Score:2, Offtopic)
I so wanted to make a "spooky action at a distance" dick joke, but they said "massive scale". :-(
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It must be massless because otherwise it would be defying the law of gravity by standing up like that!
Is this faster than light? (Score:2)
Two separated items simultaneously communicating/sharing state information/controlling each other? I thought light speed was the fastest the simulation could update. The Simulators get a new algorithm or swap out some chips or get a faster HD or something? Or no?
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The angry "evangelists" will say to you "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE AND IF YOU DARE TO THINK THIS AGAIN I KILL YOU!!"
I will say "we should find a way to test this, maybe send the same message over a long distance using the entanglement AND a conventional radio (or fiber) link to see if both messages arrives the same time?"
Re:Is this faster than light? (Score:5, Informative)
Or try this older-technology test, which is equivalent:
1) Obtain two empty boxes
2) Into the first box, place a red marble and a blue marble
3) Put on a blindfold so you can't see anything
4) While blindfolded, reach into the box with the marbles and take out one of the marbles, and put it into the other box
5) Close both boxes and seal them shut
6) Remove the blindfold
7) Mail one of the boxes to Alpha Centauri
8) When it gets there, open the box you didn't mail, and note what color marble is in it
9) Enjoy the "faster than light communication" -- you just "instantaneously" learned the color of a marble located four light years away!
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Yeah! What you said!
Won't do any good, though. And don't forget the time reversal -- On alpha centauri and earth, people but the red and blue marbles in their respective boxes, they zip backwards in time (with rocket fuel magically appearing in space and being sucked up into the engine to store itself unoxided the tanks) to be opened by somebody wearing a blindfold so he can't see which marble was in which box who ends up with a red and blue marble in his hand. Like that, too.
That's the part that most fo
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You ignores the very basic idea of entanglement that is: "If I change a property of a entangled particle (spin, polarization, etc), that state automatically reflects on the other particle".
That's not how it works. You can read a property of a particle, and learn something about its entangled pair.
But if you change a property, you break the entanglement.
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Your example is completely wrong, and the fact that you have been moderated up shows how low Slashdot goes these days
The irony is that your observation only applies to your own post, which is so wrong as to be hilarious.
Re:Is this faster than light? (Score:5, Informative)
Improving the analogy a little:
1. Get two WHITE marbles, each with the property that if you shake it, it will randomly turn blue or red.
2. Put the marbles in boxes and mail one box to Alpha Centauri. Wait until you know it has arrived.
3. Open your box and shake your marble, and watch it become red. Now you know that the other marble will turn blue, or already turned blue as your fellow Alpha Centauri scientist shakes or shook his marble. This is because of a law of nature dictating that the total number of blue and red marbles in the Universe must balance.
Nobody can tell in a meaningful way who shook his marble first. Depending on the velocity of the observer, it could be either one of you who "instantly" programmed the other marble to assume the opposite color. (This is the part that most people forget when describing the spooky instantaneous, FTL action at a distance.)
Remember once more, none of you had any control over what color your marble turned.
Anyone of you may instead paint your marble to force it into the color of your preference, but that breaks the quantum spooky action at a distance. If/when your fellow shakes his marble, it may assume any color. But your fellow won't know the difference until you tell him that you cheated.
If you later communicate with your fellow and learn that his marble turned the wrong color, it just means that the marbles failed to become properly entangled.
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Re:Is this faster than light? (Score:4, Informative)
Actual physicists, please correct me if I'm wrong:
Yes it apparently is faster than light in a vacuum, but it doesn't seem to matter. The change in spin happens instantaneously at both places, but since you can't deliberately change the spin yourself, merely observe it, no information is actually propagated. Thus you're not transmitting anything faster than light, and the universe therefore doesn't explode.
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Actual physicists, please correct me if I'm wrong:
Yes it apparently is faster than light in a vacuum, but it doesn't seem to matter. The change in spin happens instantaneously at both places, but since you can't deliberately change the spin yourself, merely observe it, no information is actually propagated. Thus you're not transmitting anything faster than light, and the universe therefore doesn't explode.
Are you sure about this part? if I had a laboratory for that, that's what I'd be trying to figure out how to do right now (and also how to read the state without destroying the entanglement in the process or causing an unwanted state change).
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This is faster than light in a non-communicative way. If you shine a really powerful laser pointer at the moon and then flick your wrist you can make the red spot on the moon move from one side of the moon to the other faster than light... but you can't communicate FTL that way either.
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Simulators?
Spooky action but value was encoded before it left (Score:2)
Spooky action at a distance boils down to a simple thing really. Take a coin and slice it in half so that heads is on one piece and tails is on the other and don't look at it. Now put one piece in an envelope and send it to person A. Put the second piece in a second envelope and send it to the second person B. Now when person A opens the envelope and reads the value, They will also know the value that was sent to A. The information was encoded in the envelope before it left so it is not a mystery how t
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The second to last sentence was supposed to read...
Now when person A opens the envelope and reads the value, They will also know the value that was sent to B (B not A).
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What you're talking about are hidden variables, and Einstein considered them as a way to explain away the spookiness. The problem is, people like John Bell came up with pretty ingenious ways of testing whether hidden variables are really responsible for the spookiness, and, in short, they aren't*. Veritassium actually has a pretty good explanation [youtube.com] of why hidden variables don't work.
*Okay, local hidden variables (like those in your example) are ruled out. It is possible that hidden variables, that stretch ac
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We might need another analogy. Consider Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as entangled particles guaranteed to hold opposite views on any given topic. With Hillary in New York and Donald in Los Angeles, ask Donald a question about one of the few things he has no opinion on. Until you
Clarification needed (Score:5, Informative)
I find the summary in great need of clarification. Let me attempt to clarify it in the hope that will be useful to other readers.
First, the linked article links to a much better summary written by one of the team members, Matt Woolley. I recommend you read it instead:
https://theconversation.com/ex... [theconversation.com]
Second, the summary conflates *mass* with *distance*. The experimenters claim to have entangled remarkably massive objects (compared to the mass of atoms, for example). But the summary says 'any attempt to increase the sizes has caused problems with stability' and that, taken literally, is not true. For example, here's an experiment from 1998 in which entanglement was maintained over a distance of kilometers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Finally, the summary claims 'a major step forward in our understanding of quantum physics' but I doubt that. It sounds to me like a major accomplishment but one that *confirms* our previous understanding of quantum physics in more massive systems.
Quantum computing? (Score:2)
Entanglement exclusive to quantum properties (Score:2)
because physicists chose convenient coordinates (Score:2)
The physicists chose to describe their system in a convenient coordinate system, and usually work with very simple systems as well, e.g. those that have only two states like qubits.
Sure one could work with more complex systems, atoms with higher spins or systems of multiple particles, but that would just make everything more complicated, when there's still much to learn from simple systems.
I know what's holding them back (Score:2)
two 15-micrometer-wide vibrating drum heads
Do they have any 15-micrometer-wide cowbells to go with those drums? They need more cowbell! Einstein was a huge fan of BOC.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It's not quite the same as the cold fusion. With cold fusion there wasn't any cold fusion and some combination of noise and bad experimental setup made it look like there was. With entanglement, the entanglement part is not actually science. There isn't any way to disprove that measuring one particle affects the other particle. Science requires that a hypothesis be falsifiable.
Re: Massive Scale? (Score:3, Insightful)
Convert it into Planck lengths and you'll see.
Re: (Score:2)
This again. There's no need to get all Paranormal Activity on poor Einstein; the term he used was 'spukhafte Fernwirkung', which is not 'spooky action at a distance', it's much better translated as 'ghostly action at a distance'.
Could you please explain how 'ghostly' is less paranormal than 'spooky'? In my opinion, 'ghostly' is more magicky than 'spooky'.