Re: Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"
- From: "greysky" <greysky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:21:59 -0800
"Sam Wormley" <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4Tw4l.494882$yE1.186058@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/813/3
By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
13 August 2008
This might be a rare case about which Einstein was wrong. 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. Now four Swiss researchers have brought the possibility
closer to reality. Testing a concept called "spooky action at a
distance"--a phrase used by Einstein in criticizing the phenomenon--they
have shown that two subatomic particles can communicate nearly
instantaneously, even if they are separated by cosmic distances.
Alice's Wonderland had nothing on quantum physics, which describes a
bizarre state of matter and energy. Not only can the same atom exist in
two locations at once, but merely attempting to observe a particle will
alter its properties. Perhaps least intuitive is the characteristic called
entanglement. As described by quantum mechanics, it means that two
entangled particles can keep tabs on each other no matter how far apart
they are. Physicists have been trying for decades to determine whether
this property is real and what might cause it. In the process, they've
uncovered evidence for it but not much about its properties.
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. Thinking of the photons like traffic
lights, each passed through specially designed detectors that determined
what "color" they were when entering the cable and what color they
appeared to be when they reached the terminus. The experiments revealed
two things: First, the physical properties of the photons changed
identically during their journey, just as predicted by quantum
theory--when one turned "red," so did the other. Second, there was no
detectable time difference between when those changes occurred in the
photons, as though an imaginary traffic controller had signaled them both.
The result, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Nature, is that
whatever was affecting the photons seems to have happened nearly
instantaneously and that according to their calculations, the phenomenon
influencing the particles had to be traveling at least 10,000 times faster
than light. 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. Gisin says that once
the scientific community "accepts that nature has this ability, we should
try to create models that explain it."
Although the research doesn't demonstrate spooky action at a distance
directly, it does provide "a lower boundary for the speed" necessary for
the phenomenon, says theoretical physicist Martin Bojowald of Pennsylvania
State University in State College. Cosmologist Sean Carroll of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says that it's "yet another
experiment that tells us quantum mechanics is right" and that there
"really is an intrinsic connection between entangled particles, not that
some signal passes quickly between them when an observation is performed."
And physicist Lorenza Viola of Dartmouth College says there's much more to
be determined. "I am sure we are not finished unveiling what the quantum
[effects] due to entanglement really are and how powerful they can be."
This experiment will not alone result in the development of a FTL
communications system. The researchers were measuring changes they have no
control over. Unless you can control how the changes are done, you will not
be able to overlay meaningful information on what is otherwise a random
carrier or thusly transfer a message. All it shows is that the universe does
allow FTL propagation -- but there are several more steps that must be
accomplished before you get your FTL comm device. But, to give them credit,
it is a first, small, baby step towards FTL Transilience. Also, the
propagation speed is almost infinite - it occures in less than a planck unit
of time, and that's a constant irrespective of distance. Whether you are
talking to someone in the next town, state, country, planet, or galaxy
cluster, it is all the same so I'm not sure it's accurate to call it a
propagation speed, or to measure it in how much faster than light it really
is.
Merry Christmas
Greysky
www.allocations.cc
Learn how to build a FTL raddio.
.
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- Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"
- From: Sam Wormley
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