Re: PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 754 November 16, 2005 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein



Comes as no surprise. Afterall - for any two points A and B in the universe,
there is a path of zero distance from A to B.

They are simply measuring a single particle which appears to be in two
separate places at once, which it's not.





"Sam Wormley" <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BzLef.543810$x96.530854@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
> The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
> Number 754 November 16, 2005 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
>
> HYPER-ENTANGLED PHOTON PAIRS. Physicists at the University of
> Illinois have demonstrated for the first time the entanglement of
> two objects not merely in one aspect of their quantum natures, such
> as spin, but in a multitude of ways. Entanglement is the quantum
> affinity between or among particles (such as atoms or photons) in
> which the measurement of some property for one particle
> automatically and instantaneously determines the corresponding
> property of the other particle. Take the case of two photons
> entangled with respect to polarization, the orientation of the
> electric field associated with the photon.
> The photons, until detected, have no spin orientation; this is the
> principle of quantum indeterminacy. Indeed, both photons are said
> to be in a superposition of arbitrary -- but
> parallel -- polarization states. Consequently, each photon has a
> 50% likelihood of being measured to have any polarization
> state---e.g., +45 or -45 degrees. If now one photon's polarization
> is measured to be +45, then its entangled twin will surely also be
> polarized along +45 owing to the way the photons are made in this
> setup. One of the chief hopes of entanglement research is to
> exploit the superposition idea and the entanglement idea for
> performing unusually fast quantum computation.
> In the Illinois experiment, two photons, produced in a
> "down-conversion" process whereby one photon enters an optical
> crystal and sunders into two lesser-energy correlated daughter
> photons, are entangled not just in terms of polarization, but also
> in a number of other ways: energy, momentum, and orbital angular
> momentum (see http://www.aip.org/pnu/2005/split/721-3.html).
> Actually, the photon pair can be produced in either of two crystals,
> and the uncertainty in the production details of the individual
> photons is what provides the ability to attain entanglement in all
> degrees of freedom. Is it better to entangle two particles in ten
> ways or ten particles in two ways? They're probably equivalent,
> says, Paul Kwiat, leader of the Illinois group, but for the purpose
> of quantum computing or communication it might be of some advantage
> if multiple quantum bits (or qubits) of information can be encoded
> in a single pair of entangled particles. Kwiat (217-333-9116,
> kwiat@xxxxxxxx) says that his lab detects a record two million
> entangled photon pairs per second with ample determination of
> numerous properties, allowing a complete characterization of the
> entanglement produced. (Barreiro et al., Physical Review Letters,
> upcoming article)
>
> NORTH PACIFIC "BOING" ATTRIBUTED TO MINKE WHALES. Human singers
> send their voice into the supporting medium of air. Whales send
> their songs into ocean water. One particular song, a sort of
> fluttering echo, or"boing," sound first heard by human listeners in
> the North Pacific Ocean in the 1950s (and recorded by US Navy
> submarines) baffled scientists. Where was it coming from? Only now
> have the sounds been identified as coming from minke whales.
> Shannon Rankin and Jay Barlow, scientists at the National Marine
> Fisheries Service in La Jolla, California, have gathered hydrophone
> data in the body of ocean between Mexico and Hawaii and combined
> this with visual sightings of the marine mammals. Not only has the
> source been traced to minke whales, but the songs seem to be
> somewhat different on either side of a certain longitude. To the
> east, the boing sound is issued at a frequency of about 92 Hz and an
> average duration of 3.6 seconds. The west boing, by contrast,
> consists of a 135-Hz vocalization with a duration of about 2.6
> seconds. The acoustic trace is both frequency modulated (FM) and
> amplitude modulated (AM). (Journal of the Acoustical Society,
> November 2005; numerous whale sounds, including the boing, can be
> accessed at http://swfsc.nmfs.noaa.gov/PRD/PROGRAMS/CMMP/accsurv.html)
>
> QUANTUM SOLVENT. Scientists at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in
> Germany have performed high-precision, ultracold chemical studies of
> nitrogen oxide (NO) molecules by inserting them into droplets of
> liquid helium (see figure at http://aip.org/png/2005/240.htm). NO,
> Science magazine's "molecule of the year"for 1992, is important
> because of its role in atmospheric chemistry and in signal
> transduction in biology. A radical is a molecular entity
> (sometimes charged and sometimes neutral) which enters into chemical
> reactions as a unit. To sharpen our understanding of this important
> molecule and its reactions, it would be desirable to cool it down,
> the better to observe its complex spectra of quantum levels
> corresponding to various vibrational and rotational states. In the
> new experiment, liquid helium is shot from a cold nozzle into
> vacuum. The resultant balls, each containing about 3000 atoms, are
> allowed to fall into a pipe where NO molecules are lurking. The NO
> is totally enveloped and, within its superfluid-helium cocoon at a
> temperature of about 0.4 K, it spins freely. The helium acts
> provides a cold environment but does not interact chemically with
> the NO molecules. Because of this a high-resolution infrared
> spectrum of NO in fluids could be recorded for the first time. NO
> has been observed before in the gas phase, but never before has such
> a high resolution spectrum be seen in the helium environment.
> (Haeften et al., Physical Review Letters, 18 November 2005; contact
> Martina Havenith, martina.havenith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; lab website
> at http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pc2/helium_short_en.html)
>
> ***********
> PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE is a digest of physics news items arising
> from physics meetings, physics journals, newspapers and
> magazines, and other news sources. It is provided free of charge
> as a way of broadly disseminating information about physics and
> physicists. For that reason, you are free to post it, if you like,
> where others can read it, providing only that you credit AIP.
> Physics News Update appears approximately once a week.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The start of the big bang must be frame dependent.
    ... > Einstein was the main founder of quantum physics... ... Einstein /reluctantly/ added to quantum physics, ... It turns out that S is precisely the entropy of the system ... degree of entanglement with the other subsystems. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"
    ... even though quantum mechanics had suggested such ... Alice's Wonderland had nothing on quantum physics, ... Switzerland split off pairs of quantum-entangled photons and sent them ... This experiment will not alone result in the development of a FTL ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"
    ... More than 60 years ago, the great physicist scoffed at the idea that anything could travel faster than light, even though quantum mechanics had suggested such a condition. ... Alice's Wonderland had nothing on quantum physics, which describes a bizarre state of matter and energy. ... Physicist Nicolas Gisin and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland split off pairs of quantum-entangled photons and sent them from the university's campus through two fiber-optic cables to two Swiss villages located 18 kilometers apart. ... Given Einstein's standard speed limit on light traveling within conventional spacetime, the experiments show that entanglement might be controlled by something existing beyond it. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 754 November 16, 2005 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
    ... The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News ... Entanglement is the quantum ... Take the case of two photons ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Entanglement breaks new record
    ... Physicists have succeeded in entangling five photons for the first time. ... exploit the laws of quantum mechanics in quantum information processing. ... By taking advantage of quantum phenomena such as entanglement, ... Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb ...
    (sci.physics)