Re: Quantum Ph. Vs. Relativity

In article <dbff58$7nr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Siddhartha <gtg669y@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Thank you all for your helpful comments. If I might impose on your
>generosity with one more question: Has the difficulty with Quantum
>Entanglement (which was discussed in the EPR paper) been resolved? That is,
>Relativists were averse to the "instantaneous communication" that could
>apparently take place between entangled electrons even when separated by
>large distances. Since this is now accepted as a very real phenomenon, I was
>wondering whether the Relativists have found some way of reconciling this
>idea with the principles of Relativity.
>Again, I would be very grateful for any input on this.

Here's how I think of quantum entanglement.

Suppose a red ball and a blue ball are placed in an urn. One drawn at
random, sealed in a small box, and sent by express delivery to Stan in New
York, the other packed and sent to Vladimir in Moscow. When Vladimir
opens his package and sees the color of the ball, he immediately knows
which color ball Stan got. And vice versa when Stan opens his package.
There is no need to communicate, except knowing what the possible results
are.

When you turn that into a quantum mechanical problem, the wavefunction
will be something like

|psi> = (|Stan has red and Vladimir has blue>
+ |Stan has blue and Validimir has red>)/sqrt(2)

The quantum mechanical problem is no different from the classical problem
in the sense that when Vladimir knows which color he got, he immediately
knows which color Stan got because Stan will get whatever color Vladimir
doesn't. No communication required.

Selecting which possible result actually occurs is the million dollar
question (how much is the Nobel worth these days?), and there are about a
dozen interpretations of quantum mechanics with no real agreement. But
it's the same million dollar question that applies to a single observer.

--
"You're not as dumb as you look. Or sound. Or our best testing
indicates." -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson
.

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